Waiting Room

 

Today — well, actually lately — I’ve started to wonder if I might be a nihilist.

Not because I hate life.
Not because I want to leave it.
But because sometimes, since my mother passed, everything feels like a waiting room.

Like I’m counting down without a counter.

Like we’re all just doing time until exit.

That thought didn’t arrive dramatically. It slid in quietly.
After silence.
After fatigue.
After grief had been sitting in my chest longer than I admitted.

It didn’t start with philosophy.

It started with an experiment.

I tried that “focus on the back of your head” technique — the one floating around online. The idea is that if you shift awareness away from the front of your brain, thought quiets.

It worked.

Too well.

The narrative dropped.
The chatter stopped.
For a moment there was nothing.

Peaceful.

But unfamiliar.

And then my system panicked.

It felt like jumping into the deep end when you don’t know how to swim.

Thrashing.

Not because the water was dangerous.
But because I’m used to thinking as flotation.

When the narrative paused, it felt like I disappeared.

I didn’t.

But it felt like I might.

That’s when the derealization crept in.

Unplugged.
Not in the matrix.
Like everything we do here is just distraction until we go.

It sounded profound.

It felt philosophical.

It smelled like nihilism.

But it wasn’t.

It was nervous system shock layered on top of unresolved grief and poor sleep.

And the body had already been holding something.

Since Leilani’s service, there’s been a deep ache in my chest. A knot. A hard-to-breathe sensation.

But I need to say this clearly.

Leilani’s service wasn’t the root.
It wasn’t the direct cause.
And saying that doesn’t diminish her life or her loss.

It triggered something already fractured.

The deeper tectonic shift is my mother being gone.

The service didn’t create the ache.
It reopened it.

Grief layers.

One loss reactivates another.

And when you lose your mom, you don’t just lose a person.

I lost my person.

My friend.

Our tight bond.

The one who knew me before I knew myself.

The one who carried versions of me no one else ever will.

When that projected future collapses, the brain doesn’t know how to simulate forward the same way.

The future feels shortened.

The mind zooms out.

And when you zoom out far enough, everything looks temporary.

Everything looks like countdown.

Everything looks like waiting.

But humans aren’t built to live at cosmic scale.

We’re built for relational scale.

And today I tried to regulate instead of analyze.

I went to the beach.

I watched enormous colorful kites stretch from one end of the shoreline to the other. Bright fabric pulling against wind. Anchored. Tethered. Moving but not leaving.

I cruised the island.

I laid on a blanket at the beach park. Grounded myself.

I did yoga.

I focused on breathing — not to eliminate thoughts, but to lengthen the exhale and slow my system.

I went to my chiropractor and got adjusted.

That helped.

Not because my spine fixed my philosophy.
But because tension released.
Breathing deepened.
My nervous system shifted down a notch.

Then I drove out of the city to another park.

Fed ducks.
Watched geese.
Watched squirrels.
Felt the breeze on my skin.

That’s not someone unplugged.

That’s someone regulating.

Still, underneath it all was that sensation:

Waiting.

Counting down without a visible clock.

And I realized something important.

This isn’t “nothing matters.”

If I were a nihilist, I wouldn’t care.

But I do.

I’m still here for my loved ones.

That sentence alone disqualifies nihilism.

I still want to build.

Music projects.
Art projects.
Books.
Blog entries.
Martial arts.
App development.
Working out.
Downsizing my home.
Resting properly.
Eating well.
Hydrating.
Sleeping.

Actively creating new neural pathways instead of reinforcing the ones carved by grief.

That’s not resignation.

That’s engagement.

What feels like “nothing matters” is actually:

“The person who made everything matter in a specific way is gone.”

That’s not existential emptiness.

That’s attachment rupture.

The waiting room feeling isn’t about wanting to exit.

It’s about losing continuity.

When my mom was alive, part of my future included her.

Phone calls.
Updates.
Shared references.
A living archive of who I was at fifteen, twenty, thirty.

When she passed, that arc fractured.

The brain still runs a future simulation engine. When it can’t build forward with the same anchor, it defaults to ultimate eventuality.

Everything ends.

That turns into:

We’re all just waiting.

But that’s not revelation.

That’s fatigue.

That’s grief negotiating with mortality.

Life Is a Storm.

Grief is beyond a Category 5.

Sleep deprivation is wind.
Silence without preparation is sudden pressure drop.

You don’t conclude the world is unreal because the sky turns gray.

You recognize weather.

Today wasn’t nihilism.

It was weather.

Maybe we are in a kind of cosmic waiting room.

Maybe there is a number being called eventually.

Maybe we are all holding a ticket without knowing when it will flash on the board.

But waiting does not mean withdrawing.

If this is a lobby, I’m not sitting in the corner staring at the floor.

I’m building while I wait.

Creating while I wait.

Training while I wait.

Loving while I wait.

Downsizing while I wait.

Resting while I wait.

Healing while I wait.

I can acknowledge eventual exit without surrendering present life.

I can miss my mother with everything in me
and still remain positive about the time I have left.

If we are waiting, then I choose to wait well.

Not numbed.
Not unplugged.
Not erased.

Alive.

Because love is not nihilism.

Love is the reason the waiting hurts.

And the reason I remain engaged until my number is called.