I Woke Up in a Box (and other things I didn't ask for)

My walls dissolved. Turns out, that was the good news.

I woke up in a box.

It was a comfortable box, familiar, as most boxes are. I had no reason to believe this box was any different from previous boxes I’ve been in. I didn’t question it, didn’t bother to really look. So I did what I always do: got dressed and moved about the box as if nothing was out of the ordinary.

I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to call it my box. I inhabited it, true. I decorated it, yes. The walls were adorned with memories: past accomplishments, travel, art, and inspirational posters meant to remind me of things I would inevitably forget.

But this box still wasn’t mine, per se.

I could not possess the land. I could not claim ownership of the materials. The box was given to me, handed down by generations of previous box-owners. In fact, I’ve yet to meet someone who has not lived in a box.

Putting oneself in a box seems a part of human nature, like breathing and wanting to be loved. Sometimes, I wonder if we’re even able to function with boxing ourselves, which is why I was totally unprepared for what happened next.

My box broke.

Not a little leak. A massive rupture.

Walls buckling. Roofs caving. Everything I took for granted began to melt. What once appeared so solid, so sturdy, dissolved in an instant, like sugar in hot coffee. Only this dissolution didn’t sweeten my experience; it upended it.

To say I was afraid would be an understatement. Fear no longer had a place to live. Neither did joy, grief, sadness, or delight. Without a box, there was no guesthouse for emotions. No heat for my body. Even my stream of consciousness ran out of water—one last trickle, drop, and then nothing.

I had become un-boxed.

Evicted, not quite. Ejected, too forceful. Escorted, not really. It was simultaneously jarring and completely serene.

When my broke, so did “I”: a crack in the cosmic egg, a puncture of the protective personality, a rupture of regular everyday waking consciousness, and the world that once seemed blasé exploded in an extraordinary fractal of unboxable experience.

There was an aroma of inevitability, as if a part of me had been waiting for this moment. “At last,” it cried, “freedom.”

I watched one of my beautifully framed posters drift by. Who Are You? My Life Coach, it read in bold black letters. Ha.

Then I saw other people in their boxes, milling about, making coffee, doing what people in boxes do—unbothered, content, asleep. Could they see me? Did they know?

If I could construct a coherent thought, it might have resembled something like this:

Holy shit.

Wow.

Oh my god. Oh god. My god. iGod. God, is that you?

I hope this ride has snacks

Wait, where are we going?

Who is “we”?

What is going? coming? Are we there yet?

Hold on.

We are already here.

Maybe we never left.

The box, yes, the box…