Preamble

My 2017 episode has resolved – and for once I think I’ve come out of the storm substantially stronger and wiser, and more able to navigate the seas. It was incredibly close at points – steps were taken with more than one suicide plan, and I probably should have been sectioned again but I managed to hide the depths of my despair well enough from medical staff and therapists. I was held through it by some incredible friends who were literally my lifeline throughout, and after months of depression by turns furious and hot, and empty lonely and cold, I finally found myself back on dry land in September.

Now, it all seems a crazy dream from somebody else’s head. Strange, to think I thought the things I thought, that I did the things I did.

I put this stability down to two things: Buddhism and psychedelics. Buddhism is an every day thing; psychedelics is a once a blue moon thing. One of the reasons for this is that psychedelic experiences are psychically exhausting; while they’re incredibly beneficial in ways I’ll never be able to articulate, they’re also intense in a way I’ll never be able to articulate.

I’m kind-of due another session, which reminded me that after the last one I’d written down this. The trip involved far more than is given in this, and probably far more than I remember, but this was the most intense… episode? Vision? Experience?

Anyway; here it is. It’s a bit muddled, but these things tend to be, and a bit hyperbolic, but, again, these things tend to be. Like I say – psychically intense.

I am falling

I am falling, we all are falling, through silent liquid space.

I am falling, we all are falling, through silent hallowed space.

This is not how it begins.

It begins with grief.

No, no not grief! My body wreaks up, hands claw my chest, mouth agape, no don’t go there, don’t go to death, the cold end of it all; the fear of my parents becoming one day only memories; I see the body, the coffin, the red red earth and roots and the cold cold hammer of loss, no don’t go there don’t go there, not to loss and regret over all the words left unsaid, I love you I love you I wish you knew how much, don’t go, don’t be lost, lost to the cold and the dark and the red red earth.

The horror of life is that in the end we lose everything we love, this horror comes it’s cold, rips through me makes me hollow my mouth agape I fall into black into nothing into silence.

I am falling.

I am falling.

I am falling now forever through silent liquid space.

Falling through water, falling through stars, falling soft and safe through silent sacred space.

Through dark red space.

Through blood red space.

I quake, jolt up again, rock up into a foetal pose, arms curled around my chest, holding a newborn in blood red space, and this love this love it is fierce, it is wild and it howls, it howls, and it will break me apart it is breaking me apart in agony and exultation and the blood red lust of this world for life, for life, for life. I hold a newborn close furiously close I love you I love you I love you, you will never know you will never know how much, this love this love this love,

I sob, body shakes tears burst from clenched eyes I rock I shake I sob, no no no you don’t understand I whisper, you don’t understand this pain this blood red agony, this howl is a howl of love, I quake, the love of life for life, 

I sob

gasp.

Fall back.

We all are falling.

Ice cracks and thaws and cold crystal water begins to flow in channels, babbling and bubbling between still-frozen blocks, and as they thaw, as they thaw, this love trickles into all, into all the frosty walls we build between us, in the end in the end it’s alright, we love each other and that’s enough, we know we love and are loved and that’s enough.

Hands clasped over heart, chest rising with gasping breaths, falls, rises. Heart beating inside chest, pulse beating through body, blood, red red life. Only breath. Only blood. Beating, in silence, in black space.

Through all the pain and loss of this world through all your cruelties and misguided deeds, regrets and misspoken words, there is this,

love

and that’s enough.

It will be enough.

In the end is only grief, wild and terrible grief, it will break you apart and it is love, it is only love, wild and terrible love, it will be alright in the end, just remember this pain is only love, the only pain is love, the grief life has for life

I am still, breathing, pulsing.

Still breathing, pulsing. I am.

Still.

Breathing.

Slow.

I am falling,

up; flying up, into cool crisp air into the big blue, until I no longer am, up into the big blue into the night, streaming white stars flow from endless space into me, I am endless space rippling with streaming white stars, faster now faster, up into ruby red space, out and up and beyond, space and starlight dropping away from… from… I… away from… I…

and I vanish, and you vanish, we vanish, and this and that vanish, and words and the shapes around words vanish, and suspended outside time all that is left is the infinity of the universe

Until, again, I am falling

Falling, swift and gentle back into me, finally, white streaming stars become crisp streams of water flowing back into me, making me me again; breathing, pulsing. Gasping.

On the shore.

Lapped by warm clear waves.

We never stop falling; graceful and slow

through sacred silent space.