PANIC!
The situation has become dire. Confusion, darkness, and the unknown surround you. You dig deep into your bag, hoping for something useful, knowing that the bag will give you whatever fate decides.
Will you find help?
Will you find confusion?
Will you find glazed nuts?
This is the chance you take with BOTTOMLESS BAG!
Close your eyes
Reach inside
FROM WITHIN
This grouping was selected at random from a communally generated master list of four hundred. It is my hope that these ten items can be used as a forecast or guide to your week ahead. Whether you choose to take these items literally or metaphorically, it’s up to you to find how these things may help. For a more thorough overview go to Introducing Bottomless Bag and Bottomless Bag 01.
Item 011
#174: BREATH
In and out, in and out
Item 012
#180: DRIPS
An unwanted leakage
Item 013
#315: NOVELTY DECK OF CARDS
A meeting of curiosity and chance
Item 014
#353: BAND AID
To cover the wounds
Item 015
#269: PARENTS
The nurturing influence
Item 016
#35: OLD COMPUTER MOUSE
Manipulator from the past
Item 017
#8: PORTIERE
The masked exit
Item 018
#23: MOOD SWING
An emotional pendulum
Item 019
#381: CONTAINER
A place of keeping
Item 020
#144: NAIL
A fastener stuck in place
DIGGING DEEPER
Sleep
Ever since my son was born I’ve had no problems falling asleep. Give me a place to sit and a few quiet moments and I’m out like a light. This was not always the case and today I’m going to share how I figured out how to get some rest. I call the technique White Room Meditation.
If you were to ask me 20 years ago what I wanted in life, more than anything else, that would have been the answer you got. In my late teens and early twenties sleep was a rare commodity. It was during this period that my depression and anxiety was at their worst and those things manifested in me as insomnia.
I could go days without sleeping and the little bit I did get would be easily interrupted by any sound or movement I could hear. Light speech barely heard from another room might as well have been a klaxon for how efficiently it would rouse me from slumber. Footsteps heard from the apartment above was thunder. No position was comfortable and any sensations felt amplified. Most nights would be spent laying on my back, staring up at the dark ceiling, resigned to my sleepless condition.
Nightmares also plagued me during this time. I would dream of death and violence, mostly against myself. It wasn’t uncommon for me to see myself beaten to an unrecognizable bloody pile of meat. Fits of pained moans and thrashing would disturb neighbors and roommates.
I fell into a vicious cycle of dangerous remedies. I tried over the counter sleeping pills. I tried melatonin. I tried drinking. Eventually this turned into downing a coffee cup full of vodka to chase a half dozen pills every night. It did nothing more than make me drunk and filled with anxiety. This led me to my lowest point; a night that ended with me covered in gel cap filled vomit after trying to down a half bottle of pills with a half bottle of booze.
It’s at this point that I have to say that I fully know that I should have sought help. What I was doing was VERY dangerous and any mental health expert would have given me advice a million times better than what I was doing. This is what happens when you have mental illness combined with terrible health insurance. You seek your own answers because there is a very real paygate on getting better. I got lucky and found my own way out. Not everyone does.
It was shortly after nearly killing myself that I also started reading books about self-hypnosis, visualization, and memory palaces. These ideas boiled together in my dark night of the stew and emerged during a late night of ceiling staring.
I wanted something pure and light. White. Blazing. I closed my eyes and tried my best to concentrate on a blank field. It came in flashes. My anxiety and depression had made it nearly impossible for me to concentrate too long on much of anything before tumbling into a pit of self doubt and anger. Over time the field came easier and easier.
After some practice I was able to visualize an empty room, clean and fresh, in stark white. I imagined a place that was without anxiety and without pain. It was quiet. I had the time and space to explore the smallest of details without worrying about the real world. It was the most serene I had felt in YEARS. The first night I succeeded in creating this white room was the first night I fell asleep without trouble.
I would use the White Room every single night and a nearly dreamless sleep became more and more frequent. Soon I began making the room more complex, adding things like furniture and wall hangings to the space. It became something akin to counting sheep! Everything would be white and clean. The only way to identify anything was by outline and shadow. It was my peaceful oasis from the world.
Since this process was working so well for getting me back to a regular sleep cycle I decided to attempt transitioning it to help with some of my other issues. If I ever found myself overwhelmed I would try to find a quiet space and go to my White Room. In most instances this meant frequent bathroom trips where I would sit in a stall for ten or fifteen minutes to reset and recenter. Be it the mall, my job, or a family function; the bathroom was usually the most peaceful place that could be found.
Those anxiety filled moments happened less over time but I kept up the practice of visiting the White Room a couple times a day. You could almost call it a Serenity Palace because it served a lot of the same functions as a memory palace but for a different human need. It helped to keep me calm and centered. I’ve never been able to purely meditate but have found that my results from the white room hold with testimonials of more stereotypical practices.
I find much less need for the White Room these days. I still find time to visit a couple times a month but I feel like it’s only to keep in practice. Concentration is a muscle that needs to be worked constantly to keep in shape and the White Room is perfect for that.
I hope you try creating your own Serenity Palace. The White Room is mine. Find your own temporary oasis from the world. You never know how much a little escape to the inside might bring.
And that’s it for this week. Return next week for another 10 items from BOTTOMLESS BAG and another installment of DIGGING DEEPER.
LOOK INSIDE
DIG DEEP
AND AS ALWAYS
HAUNT ON
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