The Grey World

It seems dark, although it’s hard to tell here. Maybe I just haven’t opened my eyes yet. It’s difficult to remember what came before, difficult to think what will come after. All I know is here. I’m on the floor. Sitting? Lying? My legs are numb, so I can’t tell. As I stand my head begins to drum its thick pulsing beat again. This I remember. The pain I remember. As if it’s always been here, pushing at the inside of my forehead, trying to force its way out between the molecules of my skull. The air is thick and stale - dry against my throat. I open my eyes.

Grey. Everything is grey. It’s not dark, no, dark would require shades of deepest black and pin points of beautiful white and the shadows between as they dance together – beautiful and harmonious in their clarity. All I see here is grey. Light grey, dark grey, darker grey. Grey. I shift my feet and notice a thin layer of grey strewn across the grey floor, shifting like sand as I push it around with the toe of my boot. I look up and close my eyes again, and feel it falling gently from the light grey sky. Snow, but warm. Ash. I open my eyes and gaze at the grey clouds above, light upon dark mixing together to create nothing but more of the same. I hold my hands out, trying to catch the motes as they scamper down to the ground. Here they are laid to rest after their long flight from the heavens, resting at last. Quickly, my hands begin to fill. I drop them down and send the ashes billowing out around me, but my hands stay dusty – forever grey stained from touching what I thought was purity, but was not.

I look into the distance. Sometimes I think I can see people, or at least feel them near. Sometimes they are merely shadows flickering in the forever fog, but sometimes I hear them whisper. But now all I see is the grey numbness of eternal horizon stretching into oblivion. I begin to walk. It feels like wading, through the ashes, pulling my feet through thick pillars of greyness as I push forwards. Sometimes I am able to speak with the Shadows. They tell me the ash isn’t really here. Sometimes I believe them. Sometimes I wonder if it matters. I continue to walk. I’m not consciously sure where to, but I trust my brain to send me through the motions, to take me where the Shadows tell me I’m supposed to be. Sometimes, they tell me that this is normal; that they can see the forever grey, the forever fog, too. Everybody sees this. This is ‘Normal’. I get confused at this, and I stumble. Thinking makes it harder to walk through the ash. I forget to pick my feet up, forget to look where I am going, forget about the Shadows and going through the motions and the grey. ‘Normal’. I stumble again. My hands hit the ground and somewhere in my lower, more instinctual brain, I hear the word “pain”. I look at my hands, but all I see are the grey stained palms. Small lines cut across one side of my right palm. I push it and poke it, but grey ash flickers out of the lines and leaks across the rest of my skin. This scares me, so I stop.

‘Normal’. This means ‘other people feel like this’. ‘Others experience the grey’. No. This isn’t true. Sometimes the Shadows laugh, as if humour was an emotion capable to be felt. Sometimes the Shadows leak clear salty liquid from their eyes. This leaves streaks in the grey ash that covers their face, almost like it goes away. That’s ridiculous, of course, the grey cannot ever ‘go away’. But, it’s like they can’t see it anymore. This can’t be ‘Normal’. No. How do the Shadows walk without wading through the ash? They glide, like white things above the nothingness. How do the Shadows interact with each other? How do they speak without choking on the thick ash-filled air? No. If this is ‘Normal’, they are not this. Other people may see the grey. But the Shadows do not. Not like I do.

I push to my feet again, afraid to be buried under the piles of grey ash that dance from the sky. There is nothing. There is only grey. Forever. And ever. And ever.

But still, I keep walking.
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Something strange happened today. I was walking. And the Shadows were following. They sometimes do this, but I never know if they are Shadows of today, or of yesterday. Sometimes they remind me how normal this is, sometimes they remind me of ‘colours’ (they seem to think this word means something to me, I believe it’s a Shadow word). Sometimes they shout at me, and remind me why I am here. They grab me and push me under the ash and drown me and scream at me and kick me and tear at my hair and force their way into my skull to torture me with dreams of grey, suffocating my every sense with grey and grey and grey. Today, they follow me. I feel afraid, and I brace myself. I feel the familiar pull and push. My legs have gone. Numb. Sitting? Lying? My shoulders are pushed down, crushed under the weight of nothingness. I close my eyes. It’s warm. Too warm. Too hot. Stifling. I can’t breathe. It’s so hot and so dark and so unbearable and so nothing, so much nothing, everything is nothing.

And I push back.

And it pulls forwards.

And I push back.

And it drops.

Everything drops. The floor falls away and I am falling, falling, falling down. But not freely. I am contained. Something holds me together, and the force that was pulling me forwards I realise is pulling me up. Away from the floor. Away from the shadows. Away from the ash and the forever fog and the grey and the grey. I am not falling. I am flying. The heat is burning at my skin and my throat. But I cling to it. I can feel it. It burns and it hurts and it is a white hot ball of pain curling and unfurling inside my everything but I CAN FEEL IT. I will never let this go. This is not grey. This is fire.
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Its… dark? Although, its’ always been difficult to tell here. Maybe I just haven’t opened my eyes yet. I’m on the floor. Sitting? Lying? My legs are numb. It’s difficult to know. As I stand my head begins its familiar throb against my skull. I remember. The pain is still here, but I remember. I open my eyes. It is still grey. Grey stretching out forever and ever and ever. Into the past, into the future, into everything that will ever be. But now I am not alone. Next to me, I see the shape of something. Not quite a shadow, no, but flickering in and out of focus as my brain tries to register. “Grey is normal”, it explains, gently, “but not everything is grey.”

This makes no sense to me, but the shape doesn’t force me to make sense of the words, so I don’t. The shape doesn’t force me to do anything. Sometimes it follows me as I walk. Sometimes it disappears, then reappears as I stumble. Once, I fell, and grey ash leaked out of my arms and turned everything around me a deep shade of grey. The flakes got onto my clothes and I felt funny for a little bit. But the shape appeared, and wiped away the grey from my skin and brought me clean clothes, not stained by the forever fog of my world. I begin to speak to the shape. It had been so long since I’d spoken, and centuries of dust and ash made it difficult to even make sounds at first. But the shape never asked me or pushed me or went away when I wanted to speak. So I began to talk. I would point out the Shadows that had begun to keep their distance since the shape had joined me. I discussed how sometimes they still visited me, but it was easier to ignore the screams with the shape to cover my ears. It began to get easier to tell which Shadows would hurt me, and which only wanted to offer pointless and useless advice. I began to be able to notice where the Shadows had come from, and which ones where from yesterday’s forever fog, and which were not there at all – only the shadows of Shadows.

Sometimes, the shape would touch me. At first, I felt the fire again. Fear. Panic. White hot pain boring into my chest. It took my breath away and made it hard to focus. Worse than the nothingness that enveloped my everything before. But, with time, I noticed that it was not the shape that hurt me so. It was the thick, ash stain that covered me, forced onto me by the Shadows before. And, where the shape touched me, the stain became lighter. It hurt and it burnt and it screamed and screamed and screamed but, finally, the grey was a little bit further away than it had been moments before. Sometimes it was too much, and the shape would pull away. I would feel the grey closing back into me to taint everything I had worked to escape. But only for a short time. After, the shape would be there again. Silent. Listening. Ready to pull me out of the Shadow’s reach. There, even when I couldn’t see it. Protecting.
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It was when I first noticed the ash on the floor had gone that it happened. I hadn’t stumbled in so long, and ironically, thinking about this, I lost my footing. There was no ash to break my fall this time. No grey settled upon grey resting upon weeks and months and year long build ups of grey. Pain. I knew this feeling well now – one of the first I had learnt. The shape appeared, as I knew it would, to help wipe the grey ash from my palms. I turned my hands over, and did not see grey. I saw red. Thick, dark red gloop oozing from tiny lines, dripping from my fingers so unlike the way the ash used to drift away.

Panicked, I stared into the clear blue eyes of the shape I’d grown to feel so safe with.

“This is normal”, it explained gently, “Just as grey is normal. But not everything is grey. Just as not everything is red”.

I feel everything drop. I feel myself drop. I feel my chest drop and my throat and all the air inside of me and everything I am and have been and will ever be.

But the shape catches me.

Thick tears fill my eyes and leave thick pink trenches on my grey stained cheeks. My pain floods through my body and nothing makes sense anymore. Nothing is real and everything is filled with light and colour and black and white and senseless everything.

And I laugh.
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It’s been 2 years since I first saw colour again, and things are beginning to slide into place. The grey world still comes back, but more and more I am able to see through it and remember what came before, and what might come after. I understand my shadows, and how they influence my world. I still don’t understand why people call the grey world ‘Normal’. My belief is those that call it this have never been there. But now I know other people have been there, are still there, will be there in time. I just hope they can find their own shapes to help guide them out.