metaphysical panic

I've been told that we think ourselves into panic. It's certainly true in my case.

These recent panic attacks have all been metaphysical. Or rather, the thoughts have been thoughts about metaphysics, but the emotional content has flared right up out of that old wound in my soul where Christian fundamentalism and being gay collided.

But the thoughts are kind of interesting. And I'm getting better about not panicking when I think them. If "think" is the right word -- because they'd certainly qualify as the sorts of "thoughts" Wittgenstein would roll his eyes at.

So, basically, I start thinking about whether or not subjective experience "takes up room", so to speak, in reality. Does subjective experience have some kind of positive ontological content? If so, then who I am, as a subject, is, in some sense, an inextricable part of reality. And so is everyone else.

Which sounds cool at first. But it disturbs me when I really think about it. I don't want to be a part of reality. I like observing reality, commenting on it, etc., but *being* an inextricable part of it? That's scary. It means that I, my self, "me" -- whatever "me" is -- is part of something incomprensibly huge and weird and that doesn't ultimately make any sense whatsoever. It's a part of something infinite, yet groundless. And I'm not going off on some idealist trip here, necessarily -- even if "I" is nothing more than my body or brain, it's still a part this incomprehensible "thing" called reality. Which is made of matter (and energy). Which exists. So what could it possibly mean "to exist"? We can only think of existence in relation to non-existence -- which is even more impossible to think about.

The gist of it is that I'm left with this *feeling* that's the closest thing to a religious feeling I've experienced in years. That there "is" an "I" at all -- that I experience, that I am here, or that anyone is here for that matter -- better yet, that there "is" a "here" to begin with . . . suddenly, this most basic fact strikes me as the most extraordinary, dumbfounding, awe-inspiring, Kantian-sublime fact that one could ever come across. So much so that I begin to feel completely overwhelmed by it. It's just too damn sublime. More sublime than the stars, more sublime than the moral law within: the simple fact of existence itself . . .