Slow Motion

Chapter 7

The slowing doesn’t arrive like a warning.

It arrives like a thickening — a quiet shift in the internal physics of my body and mind. After the dimming, after the weight, after the quicksand, everything begins to move at a different speed. Not the world — me.

The first thing to slow is my thoughts.

Not in a confused way.

Not in a foggy way.

In a viscous way.

Thoughts stretch.

Sentences elongate.

Ideas drift instead of forming.

It feels like my mind has been dropped into cold syrup — not stuck, just slowed. The sharpness that once cut through everything now moves like it’s underwater, dragging a tail behind it.

I’m not racing.

I’m not spiraling.

I’m not climbing.

I’m decelerating.

The second thing to slow is my body.

Movements that once felt automatic now require intention.

Standing up takes a beat longer.

Turning my head takes effort.

Walking feels like wading through invisible resistance.

It’s not paralysis.

It’s not fear.

It’s physics.

My limbs feel like they’re moving through a different medium — thicker, heavier, slower. Even blinking feels delayed, like my eyelids are negotiating with gravity.

The third thing to slow is my reactions.

Someone speaks, and I hear them, but the response forms a few seconds behind.

My children ask a question, and I know the answer, but the words take time to surface.

A sound happens, and my body registers it late.

It’s not dissociation.

It’s lag.

A delay between stimulus and response.

Between thought and action.

Between intention and movement.

The fourth thing to slow is time itself — not the clock, but my perception of it.

Moments stretch.

Tasks elongate.

Minutes feel like hours.

Not because I’m suffering.

Because I’m slowed.

The world moves at its normal pace, but I move at half-speed.

Everything feels slightly out of sync, like watching life in real time while I’m stuck in a slow-motion replay.

The fifth thing to slow is my internal narration.

The voice in my head that once raced, once sparked, once narrated everything with clarity and speed… now speaks softly, slowly, as if choosing each word with care.

It’s not silence.

It’s deceleration.

A gentle, heavy, inevitable slowing of the self.

The slowing is not dramatic.

It’s not frightening.

It’s not even painful.

It’s quiet.

A quiet surrender of speed.

A quiet collapse of momentum.

A quiet shift into a different kind of weather.

The slowing is the body’s way of saying:

You cannot outrun this.

You cannot outthink this.

You cannot outpace this.

The slowing is the mind’s way of saying:

We are conserving energy now.

We are moving differently now.

We are surviving differently now.

The slowing is the Ground’s way of saying:

You are here.

And here is slow.

This is not the sky.

This is not the fall.

This is not the impact.

This is the aftermath —

the slow-motion state where everything inside me moves at a fraction of its former speed.

Not racing.

Not manic.

Not chaotic.

Just slow.

Heavy.

Measured.

Relentless.

This is the slowing of the body and mind.

This is the Ground’s gravity.

This is the weather I move through now.