I Took A Trip

It was a Saturday afternoon. We had just settled down in a beautiful airbnb house near Montauk, an A-frame house that was perched right on the bay. A friend brought mushrooms, little individual packs for all 7 of us. They each had the same strain name of ‘Puerto Rican’ except for two. I was drawn to the strain called ‘Brazilian.’ We loaded the entire contents of the bag onto graham crackers with a peanut butter spread.

This is great, I thought, hardly tasting anything. In fact, it didn’t even have a flavor. A brief thought flitted across my mind.

Should I really take all of this at once?

After all, I had never really taken mushrooms before, save for that one time when I attempted to try some with my sister but we hadn’t taken nearly enough to feel an effect. That time didn’t count. Plus, everyone else was taking the whole bag.

Should I just do half? Just to safely gauge how I feel?

Of course I didn’t. Have I ever been known to safely pace myself when it comes to trying mind altering substances for the first time? Absolutely not. Otherwise how else would I learn my lessons? But I digress. I finish consuming the bag and feel a jolt of excitement. This should be interesting. I wondered what kind of things I would see, and if I would encounter any revelations. My initial mindset was one of positivity and eagerness. A willingness to be open to anything that came my way. We covered the clocks, headed to the porch and reclined under the sun.

PHASE 1

I began to feel light. Things were becoming humorous and silly. My head was feeling tingly, swarmy. Almost like the beginnings of ecstasy.

Is this going to feel euphoric, like ecstasy?

The world began to feel flexible. I would stand up, and my surroundings felt elastic, stretched. I would walk across the room but instead of feeling loose like I had thought I would, I felt stiff, aware of my every bone. The first hour was enjoyable and light-hearted. It almost felt like being high– giggly and exuberant. Situated on the internal balcony of the house, I gazed out past the giant A-frame window and onto the gleaming water. I felt really grand. It was as if I were looking over something really important. I began to feel even more substantial effects at this moment. The floor beneath me felt as if it were inclining me forward. As if to say

Look. This is your moment. Look harder.

Faith and I were spinning Leo around in a chair and laughing. It was my impression that the majority of the trip would be much like this, but perhaps there would be additional visual aspects that would develop later on. I wasn’t completely wrong.

Leo and I laid on the carpeted ground trying to be still, when I noticed that as I focused my eyes on the ceiling, small visuals were beginning to materialize. A kaleidoscope pattern that was rotating and morphing into itself manifested seemingly out of nowhere. I started to observe the structure of the house and ceiling and noticed it looked like it was breathing heavily. Warping inwards and outwards.

Wow, so that’s what everyone means when they say the walls are breathing…

Time was growing slower, and slower. Even though it seemed as though time was coming to a halt, my emotions and hallucinations began to pick up speed, hurtling me forward like a rude awakening. It occurred to me what I had felt initially was just the warm up. This was only the beginning. It was simply the proverbial lube, and now was when the real fucking was going to begin. Mind fucking, that is.

Oh shit.

PHASE 2

I’d like to say I walked down the stairs, but it was more of a rigid float. A very strangely aware, float. My brain felt like it was mingling with the ceiling but my feet were awkwardly gliding across the ground. My energy was being stretched beyond my body. I was present in more areas than just my being.

Ok this is getting weird now.

I rejoined my friends, who were arranged around the kitchen and dining area somewhat haphazardly. They were giggling uncontrollably, something was ostensibly amusing. It felt like no matter where I sat, it wasn’t the right place or moment to be there. Maybe outside? No. Maybe at the dining table? No, this feels wrong. Maybe on the ground in the sunlight? I grabbed a piece of paper and pen and began drawing.

For a brief moment sitting there felt right. It suddenly felt wrong again.

Well where the fuck am I supposed to be?

I sat back down at the dining table with a glass of water and felt more laughter from the kitchen, behind my shoulder. Instead of feeling light-hearted, it began to feel evil. Mean spirited. Anxiety started to settle in at this moment. More whispering, more hysterics.

Are they laughing at me? Do I look crazy? Does my hair look insane or something?

At this point, I felt uncertain on whether I should look behind, and investigate for myself. But no matter what, I couldn’t turn around. I didn’t want to face the wall of paranoia that was building up behind me. Despite not knowing what it was, I was almost certain it was about me, and I didn’t want to engage with it. I could only slightly angle my body towards Faith. She seemed partially on edge, but could still muster out sentences that sounded coherent. She could engage. That’s when I noticed the eyes. Her eyes were sharp. In fact, they were positively feline. All of her features were being drawn upward, as if there were little strings attached to the edges of each corner and being pulled taut. It gave the illusion that she was wearing a thin sharp liner, rimmed around her eyes.

Callie, Peter and Yael finally emerged from their kitchen cave and stood behind Faith, engaging in more conversation. That's when I noticed they ALL were donning the cat eyes. I couldn’t bear to face it anymore. It was no longer intriguing to me, it was downright sinister. I looked away, praying that if I looked back it would be gone.

Swerve, my favorite song by Archie Hamilton suddenly switched on. I momentarily felt an instance of familiarity, which I welcomed wholeheartedly. Yael plopped next to me and commented on the song, how I had sent it to her once.

Yes! I love this song. It sounds so good right now.

But an abrupt energy overcame me. If energies could be compared to musical notes on a scale, it was as if it were tinkering on a major note that suddenly shifted into a harrowing minor note. I felt overwhelmed with paranoia. I was unsure what to do with myself and with this feeling. I had to get up, I had to leave. I had to...throw up.

This must be the nausea everyone talks about. It’s normal, isn’t it?

I frantically stood and tiptoed my way into the dark hallway, where the bathroom resided. Perhaps a moment of isolation would help stave away this apprehension. I looked at the toilet, wondering if I was really going to be the first one to vomit.

Wow, I’m really gonna be THAT bitch, huh.

I kneeled on the floor, the nausea multiplying. My head was hovering above the porcelain for lord knows how long. I remember staring at the reflections in the water, seeing the window and the outside world swirling around in the bowl. The sickness felt so strong, I was becoming worried.

Is this normal? Why is nothing coming out? I really feel like throwing up.

The thought of sticking a hand down my throat occurred to me, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I didn’t want to get to that level, lest someone were to walk in at that exact moment. Wouldn’t that have looked dramatic. I heard a knock, and it was Leo.

Mon, are you in here?

I momentarily forgot he existed, hell I forgot everything existed beyond the idea of me throwing up. But I was happy to be hearing his voice now.

YES. Come in!

Leo creaked the door open and saw me crouched on the ground in a position that I’m sure resembled Smeagol from Lord of the Rings. I certainly felt like a creature. I looked up at him sheepishly, wanting to explain how I suddenly felt so awful. All I could muster out was "I NEED TO THROW UP." He kneeled to my side and I felt his nurturing energy surrounding me. Peeking at him, I observed a glowing aura encompassing him, like the sun was constantly shining upon his face, but only him. It was an almost biblical-like scene. Instead of his eyes being pulled taut like a feline, they were round and childlike. They were innocent and full of worry. Whichever eye I chose to focus on, it resembled the effect of peering through a magnifying glass. One eye would enlarge with circular ripples around it. His hands were patting my shoulder and rubbing my back. He was telling me it was going to be okay. That this indeed was normal. He was the only one who didn’t scare the fuck out of me.

If you need to throw up, then you just do it. If you don’t, then that’s fine too!

This went on for another 20 minutes, so it seemed. A back and forth of stating how nauseous I was, and him offering his condolences. Suddenly the door swung open, and Yael stood there cackling and bewildered by the sight of us both crammed on the bathroom floor. She stopped when she realized I looked sick, hurrying back with an assortment of fruit, cheeses and crackers. The very sight of it made me want to gag. She offered a piece of pineapple.

No, I really can’t. I will throw up if I eat this, I thought.

Maybe that would be a good idea, actually. I reached out a claw and nibbled on the pineapple. It didn’t help me throw up like I had previously been so inclined to do, but only amplified the nausea. I insisted they leave me be for a few minutes. I began to grow ashamed of the idea of people fawning over my well being. I didn’t want to ruin anybody else's trip.

After a while I stood up and decided against my better judgement to look in the mirror. I knew even in this state that I shouldn’t do it, but my curiosity was stronger than my sense of logic. I stood in front of the circular mirror, the wallpaper reflection intensifying the alien image staring back at me. It was a jungle wallpaper with tropical palm leaves continuously warping and blending unto itself. It appeared I was standing in the middle of a jungle, the fronds swaying demonically behind me. This was a new dimension I had never encountered before.

I finally focused on my face. My eyes were uneven, growing smaller, then larger. One moving higher than the other. My face shape was round, but then grew angular. My mascara was perpetually smudged underneath my eyes, no matter how many times I tried to wipe it off. I just couldn’t seem to get rid of it. I stood back to observe my entire self, and it was as if my body was joining in with the dance of the palms. Slowly my midsection was bending and waving, performing a slow hula dance. My usual short torso was now long, narrow, malleable. The only aspect I did like was my hair. It had once been in braids at the start of the trip, complete with a cap, but that was a long gone adornment. My hair was wild, loose, like a lion's mane. Wavy like a mermaid and unbelievably long. A golden brown color that reached my hips, despite in reality, only being slightly past my chest. It flowed around my body, mimicking a suspended-in-water effect. Ebbing and flowing in slow motion.

Despite liking my hair, I knew it wasn’t me. I wanted to distance myself from it. Leo came back to find me again, wondering what I was doing. I had accepted that vomiting was just not going to be part of the agenda. I realized that even though my mind was convinced I had to, maybe my body didn’t actually desire to. You have to pick and choose your battles, I thought, and I certainly had a lot more battles on the horizon.

PHASE 3

I think I need to lay down, I announced with a wavering voice.

Why were my sentences so hard to relay? It was like I was choking out every syllable, slowly, wondering if that was the correct word. Language was starting to fail me. A dark room was the verdict. I was going to lay down on the bed in the dark bedroom with the curtains drawn shut. Yes, this should help calm me. Leo settled me in, reassuring me things would be all right. I told him he could come back in a little while, but I didn’t want him to be burdened by me. He rejected the idea of that, but agreed to give me space.

This is when I went completely internal and utterly mad. I thought isolation and darkness would help, but instead it heightened the fear ten-fold. In all but a few minutes of laying there, it felt as though I had retreated into a fetus state. Like a newborn baby, struggling to understand every single aspect, sound, sensation. I identified as the most strange creature, I was terrified to be seen. To be looked at or found. The bed was both entirely wide and extremely narrow. The sheets felt like tangled vines around my ankles. I wanted to cover myself, but my vision was severely impaired now. When I sat up to look, I couldn’t recognize the room I was in anymore. It wasn’t the same room I had just previously entered. The walls were blue and the bed frame seemed to morph into the wall. The panels of the room felt like they were closing in on me. They were expanding so tall, and sliding from side to side. I could no longer interpret edges or 3 dimensional shapes and surfaces. I could see all angles being spread out and dismantled in front of me, instead of neatly bending into normal corners.

Everything was foreign. In a sense, describing it back, it sounds engrossing. It sounds like an appealing experience to see the world from such a different lens. And I would agree with that, if it weren’t for the fact that my mind was dismantling at the same time. Had the trip been purely visual, it would have been exceptional. But the visuals weren't the part that scared me. It was my thoughts and fears that began to drown me in the strongest trepidation I have ever experienced. It felt like a lifetime of fears coagulated into one moment. It felt like the fears of the entire world, from every human, had plopped down and anchored onto my shoulders.

I began experiencing heavy feelings of distress, tangibly surrounding my body like a nightmare that wouldn’t end. Sound had begun to warp and lag. The music playing wasn’t music anymore, but haunting, taunting blips of clattering pandemonium. It wasn’t entering my ear conventionally. It was circulating around my head, muffled and distorted. Slowing down and speeding up. The laughter from the other room was purely demonic and trenchant. It was fiendish, like little gremlins were pleased by my sudden afflictions. I realized now that I was truly suffering and wanted to exit stage right, but that simply wasn’t an option and wouldn’t be an option for a very long time. And then panic settled in.

How do I make this stop? Can I fall asleep and make it go away? I can’t turn it off. I can’t escape. There’s no escape. I need to get away.

After squeezing my eyes shut for an unknown amount of time, I opened them for more clarity, but was met with more confusion. I was completely and utterly disoriented. It was that feeling when you first wake up from a deep dream and momentarily have no idea where you are or what anything is. The world feels flipped upside down. Except now, it was this feeling perpetually. In this constant state of confusion, I simply couldn’t reason with anything. Time was stretched immeasurably. Every second was a crucifying second of torturous thoughts.

Driven to madness. Driven into madness. This is what madness is. I’m in madness. This is where the devil is.

I began to have visions. I closed my eyes and felt a soul who was lost in the desert. Nothing around them but heat. Nothing but feelings of fear and disorientation. Nothing but the feeling of madness. Deprivation. Unremembered, forgotten. Vanished from reality. Was this me? Was I this soul? Or was it somebody else? This soul was led astray, completely off-course into a land of pure madness. And this is where they were going to die. I was in hell and hell was this eternal loop where I was forced to believe I was fine, just so I could go through the hell of realizing I was actually still suffering.

What. is. anything?

Leo came back to check on me, lurching me out of the desert. I was grateful his presence was there, but a feeling of even deeper dread settled in when I realized I couldn’t reach him anymore. Even he couldn't help me now. He wasn’t making sense. His reasonings and condolences weren’t making sense. He was lamenting over the fact that his trip was average, with hardly any visuals. Just a mellow vibe. I tried over and over to stress the fact that he wouldn’t want to be in this state. I tried to explain where I was, but words were failing me now. It was like I had forgotten how to use words, how to structure normal sentences. It wasn’t coming out right.

How do I speak? I thought, with a lump in my throat.

But isn’t it interesting? It seems cooler to see that, then to see nothing, he mused.

NO. I wanted to scream. This is HELL. I feel like I am drowning in a pool of confusion, fear, stress, anxiety, and demons. He was in a different dimension than I was, and I desperately wanted to break back onto the other side.

But what do you see? He asked.

I see everything and NOTHING. I feel everything and nothing. I know everything and NOTHING.

I simultaneously felt all of these things at once. The plight of human existence. I suddenly understood it all. To exist was something that wasn’t timed. To exist was only a moment in the present. There was no past, present or future. Just right then, and it was extending for seemingly a century. I felt as though I had grown into an old woman on that bed, with a lifetime of misery ahead of me and behind me. I felt a sensation of despair for Black people. That I had understood their pains. I felt it cut so deeply. I couldn’t shake the idea that my ego was the cause of all of this. I kept thinking.

The ego. The ego is in the way. If I could just rid myself of the ego.

Leo would come in and out periodically – and I was continuing my trek into unfathomable madness each time he came back. It was getting deeper, lonelier, scarier. I tried thinking of every possible avenue of escape but it wouldn’t remedy anything. I tried to think of my virtual yoga teacher’s voice. To come back to the breath. She withered into blackness. To make matters worse, I was on my period and had a stubborn cough beforehand that tripled my anxiety.

I kept feeling as though I was soaked in blood. Bleeding everywhere. I constantly felt my pants to check and felt like I was drenched. But upon inspection, it was completely dry. I could not stop bleeding, but I wasn’t bleeding at all. My froggy throat didn’t feel like a cough anymore, but a suffocating ailment. At moments, I was unable to breathe. My throat was completely clogged with a seemingly heavy, sludged barrier. Every time I coughed I thought - this is the moment. I’m going to die. My throat was closing in on itself.

I’m going to die here, and Leo’s not even going to know what happened to me.

I tried to open my mouth to scream out his name, but nothing would come out. Similarly to sleep paralysis when you struggle to speak, but you are immobilized –this was that moment. I panicked, hoping I could call him with my mind, given the fact that my voice was rendered useless.

Maybe I took TOO much mushrooms. Is it possible to overdose? Oh my god. I think this may be an overdose.

Each terrifying thought required a lot of mental work to overcome. I would spend several minutes with each thought, trying to make sense of it and move on. I wondered how I could break out of the loop of the same terrifying ideas. There was this irritating thought process of what was normal and what was not. I couldn’t stop myself from wondering if it was completely bizarre, irrational and weird that I was holed up in a dark room while everyone else was out there laughing and happy. It didn’t make sense in my mind, what I was doing, or why I was there. I couldn’t shake the fact that I had done something bad.

What did I do wrong? Did I do something? WHAT DID I DO?

Odd memories came and went, uninvited and unwanted. I couldn't discern the difference between being awake or dreaming. Was I dreaming? Suddenly I was in a college dorm room. It was empty, and I was on the cold, uncomfortable plastic mattress with no sheets on. There was a presence of a male, whom I remember actually existed. He lived in the dorm above my floor in college. I remember once he invited me to smoke weed and drink in his room one weekend. I found him very unattractive, but thought maybe we could be friends if we had similar interests. I remember he got me incredibly drunk to the point that I passed out in his dorm room, his roommate wasn’t there that night. I don’t remember how it happened. But I woke up, and my pants were soaked. Did I spill something on myself? Or worse… did I fucking piss myself? I remember him brushing it off, saying I probably just spilled something and he gave me an extra pair of sweats and I left in a rush. I avoided him after that.

I have never thought of that memory until this trip. It was repressed because I never considered it having any significance. Now, it suddenly reared its ugly head into my thoughts and I became overwhelmed. I was transported back to the dorm room. I was lying on the bed, and I felt the male presence. It was looming behind me. It was evil. It was lingering and felt seedy, dark, with bad intentions. It was robbing me of an innocence, unknowingly to me. It was taking advantage of me. I felt like I was being...raped?

Oh my god. Did he rape me? Did he rape me when I was passed out?

I began panicking again with this thought. Why was this coming up now? Did I repress this memory? Did I somehow, in my subconscious state, remember this event deep down and it's only now coming to the surface? I felt the deepest hurt for myself. I couldn't accept the fact that maybe I was raped and never knew. I wished I could shatter the memory into tiny pieces and sweep it away. I wanted to get away from it so badly, but it wouldn’t go. I shut my eyes, I shifted positions, I covered my face. It took what felt like hours to make it disappear. It didn’t occur to me that this could ever end. I felt damned for an eternity. Nothing anyone could say could convince me otherwise.

Leo finally came back into the room to check on me. He laid down next to me, to offer me his company. To console me. He assured me that I wasn’t acting that erroneously. In fact, I seemed pretty normal. I was acting normal. The dichotomy of this statement and the state of my mind in that moment was perplexing me to my core.

But nothing about this is normal! I’m going completely mental. I feel INSANE. Can’t he SEE?

He attempted to guide me into normal conversations, but nothing was making sense. My blocked throat was continuing to torment me. It was taking on new levels of suffocation. It felt like a foreign lump that I couldn't exorcise.

It feels like my cough has evolved, I announced.

Okay, well that's a weird statement. Leo said, confused.

To me, it made all the sense in the world. How did he not understand that? I realized that no matter what I tried to explain, he would not understand what I truly meant. He could only experience the sensations himself to truly empathize with me. I wanted to make him understand but the right words were just out of my reach.

I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy. Well except maybe Trump.

You know when someone sleep talks, and it’s in a completely different language? A cacophony of odd sounds. To the conscious human in reality, it sounds like pure gibberish. However, to the sleeping human, they are speaking in a coherent language and communicating effectively in their dream. That is what it felt like to conversate. Like I was in the dream world, and Leo was in reality.

I just want to come back to reality, I wailed.

I grew exhausted of the visions and the terror. Reality, a place that I often take for granted, or overlooked, or complained about, sounded like the most beautiful place I could dream of. Reality. I wanted to be in reality. I wanted to end it all, but there was no outlet, still. Time was NOT moving.

Leo stood up again, flung the curtains open, letting in natural light. I winced in anguish. I felt like a critter exposed.

You can’t stay in this darkness. You need light! Come join the rest of us, it’ll be better I promise.

The idea horrified me. There was no way I could be around people in this state. I was still trying to re-learn english and climb myself out of this internal hell hole. I couldn’t do that whilst holding a coherent conversation. I didn’t want everybody to watch my mental unraveling, to watch me be so vulnerable and scared. I couldn’t sit still, without squirming around, in a cold sweat. My body was heating up, but I wanted to cover myself with anything. The weather was violent and sporadic. I could perceive moments of intense sunlight, to dark concealing clouds, to a quick but torrential downpour. Suddenly it was bright again. The weather was moving at the pace of light, making me wonder if time was speeding up but slowing down all at once.

Getting up to pee was like a long, laborious pilgrimage. Walking out of the dark room was scary in its own right, but stepping out into the light and seeing the rest of the house was haunting. It looked so unfamiliar. I didn’t understand where I was. I held onto the walls, whatever was in front of me to stabilize my walking into the bathroom. In reality, it was maybe 10 steps from the dark room, but it felt like a century away. When I finally reached the bathroom I sat in terror, sensing that something would fling the door open and find me. I wanted to call for Leo again, but couldn’t. I had to get back to the bedroom promptly, before the neurosis engulfed me fully.

Back in the bedroom, I tried to stabilize my thinking. I distracted myself by looking out the window, now streaming in bright, scintillating sunlight. It burned my sensitive eyes, but I refused to close them in fear of being stuck in the dark once more. In that exact moment of peering hopelessly out the window, I saw across the street the most staggering, giant deer. The setting looked oddly occult and staged. It was a dead end path with a vibrant yellow street sign, swaying overgrown grass, and an old parked car. At the end of the road sat lush trees and wild flora, jungle-like, framing the scene. A rainbow like arc was spattered overhead. I couldn’t take my eyes off the deer.

Is this...real? Is that deer really there?

It was a moment of clarity. It took me out of my fears. I smiled for the first time in hours. She was walking carefully, gingerly sniffing the ground. Roaming gracefully in all her glory. She crossed the other side and disappeared out of sight. For something so casual it looked completely surreal. It was a sign, I was sure of it. This marked the beginning of my exit from the trip.

I began to feel a sense of normalcy. Things could be normal. There was a world on other side of this waiting for me. I wasn’t stuck here! I could leave very soon. It was comforting me, until I realized it was a tease. I thought that I was almost free, and then suddenly became overwhelmed with a nauseating sensation that it wasn’t over just yet.

More hallucinations. More confusion of thoughts. More illogical sentences that didn’t come out right. I slapped my face attempting to reach my senses.

WHEN is this going to end?

There was a moment when Leo came back to check on me and I felt so defeated that I slumped off the side of the bed and laid on the ground for a moment. He came to the side of the bed, worried. I finally was able to cry.

I don’t want this anymore. I want to be out of this. I don’t want to do this anymore.

He stroked my hair and said I would be. He helped me back onto the bed and pulled me into his chest. He tried to soothe me, but I was still lost. I needed him more than anything. Without him periodically checking on me, I’m certain I would have completely lost all sense of rationality and done something harmful to myself. Anything to escape where I was mentally. In a sudden and rude fashion, a new hallucination appeared. As I was huddled against Leo’s body, squeezing my eyes shut, I suddenly felt the presence of Dan, my ex. As if it were his body right there, rubbing my shoulder. It disturbed me to my core and I wanted nothing more than to get away from it.

No no no no, it’s NOT him.

I opened my eyes to make sure. I was washed over with relief to see it was still Leo. Thank fucking god. It was Leo, but his face was still warping. The perspective of his face was re-arranging, his jaw huge, but his ear miniscule. His eyes were big, round, fish-like. There were moments where he looked beautiful, so handsome, and then completely warped again. The inconsistency was driving me mad.

I looked at my fingers and they would simultaneously grow incredibly long, and then shrink. Tiny little stubby fingers. Long spindly, spider fingers. That was no consolation. I stopped observing them. Hours had gone by, and I was still suffering. Again, I began feeling a sense of reality coming back, but I was skeptical. Even though it kept coming and going, it was a good sign that it was coming back at all. Even if for a few moments.

Leo pulled me to my feet when I appeared to be more sensible. He finally convinced me to walk out of the room, through the living room, and into the sprightly outside world. The fresh air hit me like a wall of reality.

Oh yes, this world. It exists.

He brought me to the beach, littered with little rocks, and we perched upon a big one. The water gently rocked back and forth, almost reaching my toes. Everything was incredibly scenic. The sunset fell at this exact moment. Animals were thriving. Birds were flying. Swallows were gliding through the air so elegantly I felt like crying. Swans and ducks were passing by, reminding me of how they always lived in the moment. They didn’t have thoughts like I did. Nature was healing me at this moment. I needed it more than ever.

I need nature. I said, crouched in the sand. I feel like a Native American.

Maybe you are one, Leo said smiling, indulging me.

I felt myself coming back. I could form more sentences. Things weren’t radically shifting perspective anymore. The shining sea was constant, and beautiful. I was becoming me again. The fingertips of reality and mine were lightly touching, like Adam touching the fingers of God. The creation of Adam, only it was the re-creation of me, all over again. I was born again, sitting on the beach. I felt like I had lived a thousand lives in one moment. I was swallowed whole and spit back out again. I finally knew what it felt, to be one with everything.

I felt every spectrum of the human emotion. Everything a human could possibly feel, I felt it.

Leo laughed in disbelief, but I repeated myself. I really meant it. I knew it sounded dramatic. But it was true. I knew I could never explain it in a way that sounded credible. I decided not to. It was too hard to put into words. Eventually, by nightfall, I had returned to myself. I thought it would never come. Even though I never imagined I could encounter such intense emotional turmoil like that, it was something I think I needed to go through. Never again will I take for granted reality and the present moment. I will never disregard what it is to be grounded. Every breath is precious. I realized how important Leo is to me, and how truly luminous his guiding energy was. Even in my most disillusioned state, I could see an effulgent light radiating around him. I saw his true colors, and that he was innately a good person to his very core. I saw his true intentions. I loved him even more.

I found a strength in me I didn’t know I had. Throughout my suffering, I had one guiding voice. It wasn’t someone else's, but it was my own. It was me. I told myself I was still there. I was still somewhere in there. I was going to get us out of this alive. I had one voice of reason left in me, and though it was small, it was potent. I never let myself completely drown. I told myself if I pulled through this, I would be the strongest bitch there ever was.

Well, here I am, alive.

It was undoubtedly an experience like nothing else in my life, and while I’m in no rush to ever go back to that place again - I can’t say I didn’t learn some valuable fucking lessons while I was there. I realized that life could be so complex, yet it could be simple – it just depends on how you choose to see it. I understood now that whatever I ended up doing with my life could not be something conventional. I would not live a life of mediocrity. I had to do something greater than myself in this lifetime. I knew that If I had any power over this body I call mine, I would not take for granted the beauty of this world. Life is what I decide to make it.

Despite my constant lamenting over daydreams of the future, stressing over what I wish I could do and see – I must recognize that the present moment is just as pertinent. This reality is a beautiful place after all. It's exactly where I want to be.