Bubblegum Concrete

Recently I realized a lot of anxious feeling comes from this metaphor of “bubblegum concrete”. Inspired by the “elasticity of the brain”. By how youth is best encapsulated as “possibility”. Or how life is a conveyor of doors and rooms shrinking, opportunity squandering.

Afraid of one’s own shadow.

Where to look away means it’ll stay in place. It’ll stay in a place where light is now fading. Until one may be swallowed.

I have to keep moving. Doesn’t everyone feel that way? Somewhere more promising, we could whisper; omnia mea mecum porto no longer. Nihil meorum eternal.

Because if you stay still enough, repetitive enough, the bubblegum turns to concrete: at once you can lock your arm in a plastered grey, with the fingers stretching for the next jagged sill. You can still use your torso, though if you miss, you’ll break everything.

This is the age of Autistic Stimming, and the last thing I want to do is stim into a statue amongst all the others. So you try to be hyperviligant about everything you’re doing and everything you are: project outward all the possible ways you can fall.

Yet whether one dreams up all the pitfalls to avoid or not, there’s a whole slice of the pie occluded. Unknown unknowns stuffed between earnest decision making.

It’s a strange riddle, though the answer is plain. You have to cast your lot.

You’ll have to trust in something that can’t be named. Whether resigned to fate or a guardian angel, to toss your coins all the same.

Maybe then you’ll confidently look ahead.