I attempted to ground myself over the last week using the 54321 method which brings me native to my physical senses. The 54321 method as outlined by Calm is “a grounding exercise designed to manage acute stress and reduce anxiety. It involves identifying 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. By doing so, it helps shift your focus from anxiety-provoking thoughts to the present moment.” I was motivated to use this method in an attempt to take a moment to “smell the roses” so to speak.
Sometimes life can move so fast that it passes you by. I wanted to understand my world by pausing to see life through these freeze frames. I paid close attention to what I could see, touch, hear, smell, and taste at any given moment of time. My grounding stems from my observation and sensory stimulation and is used to show patterns and themes of moments of focus amongst the chaos. Enjoy the themes and patterns that were inductively determined from a week in my life.
See
Rays emitting from my computer, my sun that never ceases to radiate day and night as I revolve around it.
People constantly speeding by like trains, simply streaks of pigment in the distance.
Tissues of yesterday and tomorrow splattered across my floor.
The roots of your lips turning up as we collide.
Black spots in my vision, compartmentalization of the mind turned into detachment of the retina, and now even my eyes are not my own.
Touch
Night after night, cold metal jolts me awake as my hands collapse on the keyboard enough for my veins to feel sensation.
Emaciated, I bite off more than I can chew day after day, building intensity in my jaw as my teeth climb the mountain.
Warmth resonates over my glacial skin like rays pounding on black ice.
The ground drumming into the heels of my feet as I walk with haste in my favorite pair of shoes.
Hear
Sirens reverberating in my head with each crash of the head.
Rolling static of the quiet storm through my speakers.
The ignorance that danced on your lips last night, thoughts of yesterday banging against my cortex, slowly it becomes the only sound left.
Smell
Passages congested, with each inhale my chest fills with fluid.
In the short instances my channels are open, in swoops the smell of leaking, rotting flesh paired with condiments in the waste bin beside me.
Taste
Salt desiccates my mouth until my lips are seared together, and yet, in this silence, I begin to remember peace.
