Dream of a nightmare

Someone told me once, when I was a little girl that only cowards run away from their worries and fears. If I cry to get attention or hurt myself in some way, I’d be chided with the dragon eyed look that could make me shiver in my boots. I learnt early on that if I hurt myself the only person to feel the pain would be me. This was a lesson well learnt, and over time, coping with it became easier.

Do you know how calming it is to stand atop a hill and feel the winds blowing over you, within you and all around you? Have you felt that the waves in the ocean throb with a million untold stories and can whisper them in your ears until eternity if you spare them some time? Did you realize ever that the forests and the birds, the animals and even the rocks and sands in some places can hold you in their grip, can make you see a quagmire of emotions in some moments?

My tryst with psychedelia started in somewhat the same manner anyone else’s does. A trip with friends, a moment with my guard down, a desire to let go and feel weightless in the starry expanse of the night sky. It was a wonderful and transformational moment and somehow defined the very nature of my existence and everything else paled completely in comparison to the beauty of this generous moment that overwhelmed me.

When I began, I would tell myself as the slow smells and tastes filtered into my system that it was the last time. I would tell myself that the colors in the sounds I hear, the sensations that seemed to make me tremble would be just this once. I would tell myself that I will not crave, I would just try to liberate myself from these tiresome heavy bonds that threatened to drown me.

I never knew when the need took over. I never felt it when that night I wanted to soar and somehow darkness would creep in and completely embody me. I never saw it coming when the pleasant and regressive slumber would turn into a darkening abyss, a nightmarish putrefaction from the bowels of hell itself.

The day, that fateful day when the shivers started, those uncontrollable shivers that seemed to rip my being in two, that was the day I knew, I was not a coward, but someone struggling to swim above the waters. I needed to be heard, to be seen, to be allowed to express. These words, these thoughts that flood my mind and these screams I held in always needed to be let out. It took me the final fall, that dark night when my mind fell into the black void to be free, It took me to the brinks of madness, but then there was silence as I curled into a shivering little ball of existence and learnt to let go, let it be and bid my antidote to pain goodbye and stand firm as the storms lashed and died down within.