Random Chaos

Two years ago, I had a friendship end in a damn ugly way. It ended with what could best be described as a bang.

About a month ago was when I realized that it had taken my tarot practice with it. The way things had gone with that friendship, something in my brain had started associating it with her rather than with the memories of my past, memories of friends, or even memories of hustling up some food money by slinging readings in the old neighborhood. And that pissed me off, to put it lightly.

I came into the new year without a resolution to speak of, but this inspired one: to take back the things that other peoples’ memories had started to color.

I began that this morning, easing into things with a digital reading rather than grabbing an actual deck of cards, and the card’s affirmation was one of gratitude. It made me think about all the things that I’d ‘lost,’ the things that had once given me joy and that I’d quietly abandoned without really thinking about it. My tarot practice, writing, even cooking, all of them had started to fade. And, I realized, my life was so much poorer without these things.

My resolution for the year (probably the first of a few) is to take back the things that I used to love.

I mentioned this resolution to my therapist today, and she touched on the subject of gratitude for things that one loves, and I got to hit her with the ‘funny story!’ and the revelation that my reading had told me some of the same things that she was telling me today.

I mean…if your therapist and your tarot deck tell you the same thing, on the same day no less, then it’s probably good advice.

Tonight, the plan is to spend a quiet night in (no cooking, though, sciatica is kinda stopping me from doing much cooking lately), alternating between gaming, cuddling Momo, and working on the tarot spreads section of my BoS.

It’s time.

I know a lot of people who make a big deal about the exterior of their pots and pans. And they gotta match. And the plates all have to match. And this is fine! If you need your pots and pans to shine like the day you got them, then that is completely fine. In fact, more power to y’all about that one, because I simply Do Not Have The Energy to keep up with that stuff.

(The exception is my kettle – I will make sure that mfer is pristine, you hear me? The way I drink coffee and tea, there is no excuse for my kettle to be unpresentable, tf)

I can tell you exactly why I’m like this, too, and it’s equal parts “oh that makes sense” and “wait what” when you think about it.

The first reason: I grew up in a home where we just didn’t have means. A matched set of dishware was considered high luxury – by which, I mean the entire set of plates match the bowls match the saucers match the mugs et cetera ad nauseam (ad nauseam here isn’t any kind of insult – it’s just that this could literally go on FOREVER if I don’t stop somewhere). It was the aunt who I considered to be rich growing up who had that kind of thing going on.

Meanwhile, at my house, things matched-ish? Like, things didn’t come from the same set or anything, but if you squint, everything goes together. Or there’s a combination of things that are so wildly apart that they work together.

Now, in my own little corner of the world, things once again match-ish with each other. I have an assortment of dishes that came to me in the handparting that don’t necessarily match, but when put together, have a certain level of charm. And I like this. It’s like putting together an outfit.

For that matter the cookware ain’t quite matching either. But it doesn’t break the utility. In fact, I’d actually argue that it helps me to make a system when I cook. And things are close enough that when I have to make, say, a monster sized japanese style pancake, I can go from one skillet to another without the size difference being a problem.

The second reason, which I found out there’s a name for, is wabi-sabi. Part of the definition is finding the beauty in transience or imperfection. While this often applies to art, I find that also applies to things in life: the mismatch of a homey kitchen; the rip in a denim jacket that turns out to look rather artistic; an imperfect assembly of furniture that, taken individually, makes no sense, but when applied as a set, has a certain charm.

And damn if that ain’t everything about me, too: I’m damaged, imperfect, and don’t quite fit in with a lot of things.

But in the end, that’s beautiful.

I’m a week off my most recent nde and frankly, I’m fucking exhausted.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’m afraid of consuming anything.

Between the incense trigger, the soap trigger, and finding out that I am probably allergic to Depakote, I’m scared of everything now. I’m even scared of my cannabis.

Isn’t that fucked? The very thing that I used to manage my anxiety, my sweet herb, the kind bud—because I was vaping at the altar when the last reaction happened, my brain has decided that it’s time to be afraid of cannabis.

I haven’t had a vape (beyond a test hit supervised by my roommate (long story I don’t feel like explaining right now if you haven’t heard already)) since the last event and even then I thought I was going to drop dead from it, because the last time I hit it, I was at the altar, communing.

Imagine being me realizing that I may have been spending the last couple weeks microdosing death.

As I write this, the memory returning to me again, Mowgli Beelzebub Momo Moogle Hawkins, Esq, sits netx to me, helping to bring my running nerves to a halt. He’s the sweetest cat I’ve met since losing Darling Prince. In fact I think he and Shelly are teaching Momo and Nanna how to ESA from the other side of the veil. The vaporizer sits next to my computer, running cleaning cycles as I try to make sure that there is no remaining resin from my last session inside of it. Since the last time I hit it for real was at my altar, the brain isn’t exactly primed to see this thing as a saviour rather than a threat right now.

The q-tips covered in black, fragrant resin are slowly accumulating next to the other side of the computer. The device itself, after its first run with Palmolive and boiling water, is running another cleaning cycle after having six or seven q-tips come back covered and one come back just fine. I don’t trust it.

I don’t know what I trust right now.

All that I know right now is that I fought the gods to come back, after having taken days and days on holiday in Suicide Ideation Island (and a week in the looney bin, which is where my relationship fell apart and turned back into platonic). I didn’t want to go the first day I went out again, and the cops had to epi-pen me back into life again. I didn’t want to go when the Depakote sent my body into lethal shock state not once, but twice, in a single day.

I spent way too much time learning about things that I wanted to live for to go out now because of a fucking pharmaceutical or a damn incense cone.

As I’ve said before, once you’ve been brought back a couple times, it gets harder and harder to drag back, especially if they’ve happened on top of each other like mine have been.

You ever heard your spirit guide shouting “GO BACK”  at you while your body tries to prevent that? It’s terrifying.

I’ve been sleeping on the couch lately. I’m not in the doghouse, I have my own room and shit, but I’ve been staying out here because I want to tell my brain that this room is not a giant flashing neon hazard zone, that the room is safe, that I won’t die if I look at my altar, that I won’t die if I hit my herb, that if I don’t die if I hit my meal, that I won’t die if I drink a bottle of kombucha, that I won’t die if I have a glass of pineapple juice….

I know that sounds like a whole lot of paranoia, but—I’ve died twice now, man. They epi’d me back—and at this point I’m not sure if it was the incense or the depakote that fucked me over the biggest. This is why I’m going to go see an allergist in January.

I…I’m so tired of being afraid of everything.

I almost died on the first, just the other day.

We were eating a breakfast cheese and cracker plate, leftovers from the Samhain feast. I was chowing down on fancy cheeses, crackers,, and fruit. We were discussing the bad luck of our delicious bacon-bourbon-brown sugar tenderloin containing juniper, and the sheer luck we had stopping that reaction.

As he leaves the room for a minute I decide to have the Gardettos with a bit of brie. Delicious, violently crunchy.

My swallow gets stuck. Not in the usual way it does occasionally.

Air is not happening.

Oh fuck.

I pull myself off the couch and try to get to my backpack.

"Babe?" The word comes out with effort.

"What?" He sounded a bit annoyed but I had to go on.

All I managed was "It's...Gardettos." Then I get my first breath in in the last 45 seconds.

That noise apparently explained everything. When he comes out of the bathroom I'm suffocating and can barely breathe.

My last clear memory was walking toward my fiance, holding an EpiPen, not breathing.

I could not tell you how I got to the couch. I just remember collapsing on it. Then there was a light, and the faint sound of a choir. Y'all, I am not making this up.

I don't remember much after that. I couldn't get air anywhere. An EpiPen was administered. The PUNCH from it barely registers because it came with my breathing coming back.

But I couldn't move. Couldn't see. Breathing was on manual mode.

Boy was it dark.

And I was tired.

Too tired to breathe.

I do not remember getting hauled outside.

I'm not positive I remembered getting in.

The light. I'm moving. Up.

I attempted to yell at the light. All I got was a hideous inhale, but it vanished.

But came back. For longer this time. And this time it came with...music?

I could feel it: this body was trying to die.

I tried to thrash my body around, getting little better than squirming around. I had to fucking move, or I knew that was it—

A flash. This one brighter.

I can't go yet!

This time it felt different. I could feel that my body was spent, but that wasn't where I was. I was standing over my body, and through a midnight-and-stars rift, I saw him. My guide. His hand was out, golden hair cascading down, and what was that scent...then I recognized it.

"You're not just a Salvia trip."

"Of course not."

You know, basso voices' rumbles hit different when they don't have to be filtered by your body.

"You have to come with me."

"It's too early!"

When I tell you the look he gave ripped me apart...but he didn't look sad or upset with me...

"You know what could happen."

I did know what could happen. If you "get a tour and come back," the trip alters you in subtle ways. Many shamans and other spiritual leaders say that a near-death experience is the purest, most raw form of initiation there is. IF you come out of it right, things will be different for you. If you come back WRONG, it breaks something in your brain to the point that all you can do is pine for what you saw until you either Leave naturally, or forcibly Exit (that'd be literally sui), unable to properly integrate what you have seen into a unified existence.

"I know what could happen, but I'm asking to go anyway."

Then I jumped, hand raised upwards. I could feel the vibration around me fall away. I felt my spirit body reforming itself, shaping into something larger, more powerful. A name flashed in my head, and it caused this little 'jingling' noise in my head. It was one of mine, one that I knew only we knew. I saw my body forming into what matched my feelings—a perfect tribute in form to the integrated, idealized form I'd always felt to be the real one.

As it turns out, flying is like riding a bike after years of no practice: you wobble a bit at first but once you get going.

When our hands connected we rocketed upwards, until we were up so high we could see the edge of the earth, that line you see looking at the planet from low earth orbit.

I probably should have been watching him because soon there was a...THING, in the atmosphere. Everything went purple and black. I started feeling queasy. Note to self, eyes on the road.

"You'll recognize this," he said, as I looked around, and suddenly saw the buildings, the landmarks. Architecture that looked like it was a marriage of Greco-Roman and classical Japanese. Streets full—and skies full—of us. Lighting from powered crystal. The skies were unsullied by light pollution, and I could see the knife of stars in the sky forming part of the visible galaxy

This was not how I pictured it and it was delightful.

"Not much time. Eyes forward!"

I didn't just put my eyes forward, I closed them—that first jump tried to take me out.

As I was coming out of there, I swallowed hard to reset my head before I looked around.

And the sanctuary and temple are as I had seen them before: edge of dawn, violent red-to-black-blue sky. Quiet rippling lake. The columnhenges formed by the outside ritual setups. The obsidian pyramid.

"It's just like I thought," I say, aware that things are getting hazy somehow.

"One more stop."

"Forward?"

"Yes."

FSHWAM. Another flash of light, another burst of sound. By this point the chorus is constant.

We—no, I alone—come out in space. There is a rich, indescribable color to the darkness. I remember the Terry Pratchett gag about the color of magick before jolting to the realization that that's exactly what I'm looking at. I figure "neat color!" and I reach out to see it against me—

I'm either colored by a different form of space, or made of it. In the back of my hand—larger and more elegant than I'm used to—I can see stars, suns, entire galaxies. Around me, an unfamiliar solar system that I very gently, carefully touch and prod at.

I realize that I, as I stand (float?) here, am as incomprehensible to these people on these planets as the divine would have been. Too much to take in all at once, but if I can understand just a bit of it...maybe I can commune with it—

I suddenly realize: that's the difference.

It was never about control or subjugation. Ultimately, these are distinctions that mankind places over things it doesn't understand.

What if we offered not a fight, pushing things away, but rather an embrace? Find the worth, the beauty, in things without trying to place ourselves superior? I feel my universe-self expanding even as my solid boundaries stay the same. I have to hold it all, see it all.

I hover a starry hand over first one planet, then the next, wondering if they could see the vault of stars in my palms. I notice that there is a Saturn-like planet in my pinky finger.

As I bring my hand upwards to see it better two things happen:

First, the flash of light and chorus strike again, both lasting longer than last time. Suddenly I'm aware of my body on the stretcher again. The flash had come with convulsions, some of them sending VERY mixed messages to my body below.

Then I hear him in my head: "You have to go now."

"I haven't seen it all!"

"You will, but not if you don't go back soon!"

The flash fades and I can see (?) The inside of my ambulance. I'm sinking back down into my body, feet first. I'm too tired to fight him from letting me go, as much as I want to stay.

...I mean, it's been a few thousand years since we Traveled together like that.

The flash is a beam this time. The choir, a cymbal crash stretched out long.

Then, I see something unexpected in the light: my mom's face, looking more badass warrior than chic suburbanite.

Two words from her: "Not yet."

Darkness swallows me. I'm falling.

Falling.

Such a long way down.

Then nothing. What felt like ten seconds of nothing.

I realize just in time what I have to do. I'm so damned tired, but if I don't pull this off I'm not getting this second chance.

Every ounce of energy I have left goes to screaming "NOT YET" as loud as I can manage.

What actually happens, at my body level, is this (I'm told) disturbing sort of strangled "NYAAGH" rips out of me and I take an entire breath that I immediately choked on. I can't see, I can't open my eyes, and I feel like something is trying to wring me out.

Then I hear the paramedic: "You're okay, it only lasted about a minute. Had to get 3 Benadryl shots through you AND a load of prednisone. Just breathe."

Not gonna lie, the first thing my body actually let me do was just break down for most of the rest of the ride to the hospital. I was exhausted, I was in pain. I didn't have the energy to move, or talk, or cover my face. I was still breathing on manual, but now air was getting where it needed to be.

Then I made this pathetic noise as I realized that at some point while I was out, I'd had an accident on the stretcher and there was nothing I could do about it. The paramedic totally misinterpreted the noise, just reminding me to keep breathing.

Then my body really was done with me, and I basically was a zombie until the end of the exam they gave me at the ER.

It was my fiance and cousin who met me at the end. "Are you alright? Did they help?"

All I could say was: "I saw it. I know where I go" in this exhausted tone.

A ride was called. I am loaded into the car with the hospital blanket and a plushie.

I don't think I did anything after that. I frankly can only tell you that the things I remember clearly are the rye chip that put me critical on the couch and the trip afterwards.

I'm told I was GONE gone at least twice, with the first instance being on the couch.

I don't know what's next. I'm honestly a bit out of sorts.

At this point, all I can do is leave my offerings and rest.

Initiation is tiring after all.

Yeah, it's been a while since I last checked in.

Nothing of note has changed recently minus a couple meds adjustments. Oh, and I started therapy. It's probably about time, but I'm not going to beat myself up over taking this long. The world's doing enough of that for me already, and I don't feel like adding to it frankly.

I may have made some progress on my burnout. That's about the only new thing.

Just kinda...checking in, letting everyone know I'm alive.