Asphyxiating Illusions

“Of all men’s miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.’ — Herodotus

I cling tightly to the illusions of control with gritted teeth, believing that this much anxiety will keep my world together.

Every day signing into my online financial matters, and emails — checking daily for any fraudulent activity, being a victim of fraud more than once. The anticipation tastes harsher than the truth, an addiction to the emotions of trepidation.

How will I cope if or when my money runs out? How will I replace my car once I have to scrap it when it becomes unfixable — which it will soon, according to the mechanic?

How long can I keep my belongings in storage? When will I have a home to paint my flowers of life onto the metaphorical walls of security?

Survival mode kicked in years ago and became a stubborn and unwelcome guest. Sometimes I can breathe and feel ‘safe’, and then the dread comes back to the ‘what is going to happen’?

I have no control over so much of what can happen in life, apart from the attitude I can adopt as well as giving sanctuary to my perspective and illusions of what is deemed as ‘should haves’!

The delusions of life,

its fabrication woven by convoluted imagination

Duplicity, as cunningness masquerades its fantasy

My hallucinations of apparitions breeds its deception, a semblance of reality

Life’s paradox,

a fallacy, a veil

a guise to disguise

My mental façade, a veneer to cope

Trickery and chicanery

Ambiguity

All but an enigma

I remind myself to trust more, and have faith in something bigger than me. To think of the infinity that reaches out past the skies into galaxies and places beyond our worldly imaginations.

I try and trust God.

“Be still, and know that I am God” — Psalm 46:10

© Chantal Weiss 2025. All Rights Reserved