Help from a smoke detector

Sometimes, one finds oneself at one of one's lower points in life. It isn't necessarily one's lowest point, nor even necessarily one of one's lowest points. All one knows it that the point one was previously at was higher than the point at which one finds oneself now.

Sometimes, one doesn't even know why they've sunken so low. One doesn't know why one is no longer at the point one was at previously, the one that was higher than this current point. One might not know what it is exactly about this current point that makes it lower than the point that preceded it. One might not even know what point one is at - one might not even be able to describe this point, not just in a way that makes it clear why it is so low but in a way that makes it clear what it is at all. Nevertheless, one finds oneself here, and it is confusing and a little bit terrifying but mostly just accompanied by low feelings, the sort of feelings in every low point in anyone's life. It's just low.

I say all this because I found myself at such a point earlier today.

I'm not really sure what it was about. This happens with me - as much as I like to put forth an image of control over or at least understand of my emotions, and as much as this image is usually indicative of reality, I do find myself in situations where I can't explain to myself how I got where I am now, much like someone might find themself in their kitchen and think, "Wait, when did I go here and what was I trying to get?"

I don't remember what led me to sit on my bedroom floor and try to hold a conversation with a stuffed African wild dog, trying to justify to it the choices I had made throughout the day. I held its head and occasionally made it nod in agreement. I liked the illusion that it was actually communicating with me. Among the things I justified to the dog (and by extension - actually, as was my real intent - myself) were not doing anything productive all day, not wanting to write, being too afraid to do any writing submissions today, and making a weak cup of tea whose weakness I tried to disguise with excess amounts of orange extract.

At some point, I realized I was literally just sitting on my bedroom floor and trying to justify myself to a stuffed dog. And not even a sentient stuffed dog; this whole thing would have been justified were I in a speculative fiction piece where sentient stuffed animals existed, but I am to best my knowledge not in a speculative fiction piece where sentient stuffed animals exist, so it wasn't justified. 

I couldn't justify myself.

I gave it up and just lay down on the floor, putting the stuffed dog beneath my head. For a while, I lay there shouting at who-knows-whom (probably myself, when you get down to it). My shouts went to the effect that I didn't know what I was doing with my life and I was having a existential mini-crisis and I didn't even know what it was about and I was going to get places with my life but they wouldn't be places I wanted, and what was I even talking about anyway.

It was futile. I finally gave up and silently stared up at the ceiling. I've heard it said that sometimes you have to lie on your back in the dirt if you want to see the stars overhead. Or that when you find yourself lying on your back in the dirt, you can look up to see the stars. Or something like that. Something to the effect that, if you want to see something beautiful, you have to humble yourself and find yourself in an uncomfortable, undignified position, or if you're at the lowest point in your life, you have a better view of things than you would otherwise and somehow this is supposed to bring enlightenment.

However, I was not lying in the dirt, and I was not looking at the stars. I was lying on hardwood and I was looking at a plaster ceiling.

Sometimes, one finds oneself at one of one's lower points in life and then finds oneself suddenly lifted from that low point and back to a higher point. It can be through something that actually makes sense, like a solution to the problem that put one at that low point or a friend who actually has some sensible, helpful advice for once (unlike all the other friends who had offered unsensible, unhelpful advice). But sometimes, it is through something purely random.

Yeah, it was the latter of these that helped me in the end.

It was the smoke detector. I saw the smoke detector on my ceiling. I didn't know why I found it funny - by all accounts, I shouldn't find smoke detectors funny, because I have a small history of unpleasant experiences involving smoke detectors that didn't work and the tedious solutions to this problem. I should, by all accounts, find smoke detectors unfunny.

But nope. I found that smoke detector funny. I started laughing - silently at first, as though I were crying with no noise, and then out loud, raucously and hugely and sincerely.

I had found myself on my back in the dirt - or the hardwood, as the case was - and I was finally seeing the stars - or the smoke detector, as the case was.

I lifted myself from the ground. I looked at the place where I had previously been, shouting at life and its incomprehensibility and my inability to do anything worthwhile and my general inability to do anything, period.

I was back to a higher place in my life, figuratively as well as literally.

I could carry on.

The point of this narrative is that no matter how low you find yourself, you can almost certainly find a way back up, and maybe you can't help yourself back up but something will happen to help you get there, and sometimes that something is a smoke detector and the inexplicable amusement derived thereof.