Staircase

I plan absolutely everything, to the very smallest of details. It was the only way that I could keep myself sane. I would not be able to go ahead without knowing exactly what could happen everywhere in every possibility that I go. When I reach that point of planning I am so exhausted that it does not matter what happens I am already on autopilot. In that mode of autopilot it would not matter how difficult a decision it is, the pre-planned option will be taken without any form of contestation. At that moment I won’t regret it or feel anything odd. Yet as soon as the exhaustion passes and my brain begins to plan for the next set of life, it just loses itself in retrospect thinking about how the plan may have actually not worked out the way I wanted it.

The steps pan out and reach the top of the staircase, yet you are on the wrong floor. Why? Did you plan to be on the right one? You did everything that was required of you to get to the correct floor. Yet you could not do it. The plan starts again. You want to reach exactly where you thought you would. Maybe you have already reached that stage and planned enough to just surpass it. yet it does not feel right, you feel the skin of your hands begin to sweat, one drop of sweat forming on your temple and your feet misplaced on a floor you feel like you should not have set foot on. Time seems to have sped up.

It is running away from you, and you plan an even more descriptive and detailed plan to reach the next level, just in a matter of seconds you’re already following that plan on autopilot. Yet you forgot about what you could never control in these plans. The steps you take are exactly what you planned yet their impacts are not what you thought. You thought the joke you would make would help lift the mood so you could get someone’s support, yet you realise that the joke was detrimental and completely offended them so now you have lost even the small inkling of support they would have given you before. The extra work you put in that you thought would help you in class was not asked for and just reduced the sleep you go the last night. On autopilot, all of this seems fine, yet over time these small deviations lead to an entirely different floor.

That is because it is not a spiral staircase, it doesn’t just go up straight and correct your direction with each step you make. This staircase goes up and down from the same step, it goes left and right from the same step. Even though you can plan which step your foot takes you can never decide which side the staircase takes you.