Nothing is no matter what

What we all are going through right now is the felt sense of what I’ve been trying to describe when I talk about cancer: the hyper vigilance, the heightened awareness of every person around you as potential enemy, not friend, the sense of looming but unpredictable threat, the anxiety that wraps around your throat like tightening vines, the realization that almost everything you rely on can disappear in an instant and it turns out very very little of it was necessary.
Which you think could be freeing (eventually, maybe?) but is PROFOUNDLY disorienting currently.

This is the machinery you called your LIFE. 

This stuff is supposed to be important; after all, you spent your whole life putting all these pieces together so that they would RUN SMOOTHLY, so you could RELY on it to get you somewhere.
Now you are watching all the mechanics of your life grind to a halt.
Just. like. that.
As if it didn’t take your blood and sweat and tears, and sacrifice and hustle, and sacrifice and hustle, and sacrifice and hustle to build it.
In the silence that follows, you are left with your body, which is exhausted and tense, your thoughts which are frantic and desperate to find answers, and the silence....

The silence is like a heartbeat in your ears.
You can’t escape it.

The heartbeat says: Nothing is no matter what.

Nothing is no matter what.
Nothing is no matter what.
Every bit of everything you counted on can fall away.

You are left with a question: what matters?

If nothing is no matter what, what matters?
This is the question that has always been the heartbeat at the center of the world: what matters?
Let it beat. 

Until the answers come, let the question beat.