-----
The strangest thing about losing one�s mind is that you can�t even tell that you�ve lost it.
There is no abrupt passage between the countries of the sane and insane. It is a slow and gradual slide into brilliance, a long and spiraling journey into someplace sharp and dangerous and vital, someplace where your eyes do no good and you find your way by touch. Someplace you grope blindly at a Lovecraftian city and try and assemble the coherent whole by touch and taste and smell. There are sounds there you have never heard before. There are things that you have never tasted, and the feel of faces under your hands that you have never dreamed possible.
There is genius there, and there is insight. There is a subtle understanding of everything that is, was, and ever will be. The fabric of the universe unravels at your feet and you�re able to count the threads, and name them, and assign them colors. Mysteries that shroud the world become apparent to you. The unknowable becomes the obvious. You find yourself alone in understanding what man has struggled in vain for since the beginning of time. Life and death are transparent and interchangeable, the structure of the world is revealed in strange blueprints, there are patterns in chaos, and numbers in the dark. You find yourself revealed in the nature of things. Everyone can hear you talking, even when your mouth is shut. Your thoughts are easily accessible by strangers. Lost people ask you your name and you�re sure you know them from somewhere, some strange place where the lights never go down and you�re still trapped in a small, bare cell, screaming at the dark as your whole life is revealed an illusion. They�ve never told you their names.
You remember places you�ve never been before. You�ve lost the same part of yourself over and over and over and someone keeps returning it to you, giftwrapped, only to lose it again. Bones disappear. The hills aren�t really hills, they�re moving, you can see them there, shoulders and limbs and massive toothed heads, shrugging out of sleep, rising on the horizon, behemoths the size of the world. You�ll see them from the passenger seat of an old white chevy and laugh, and you�ll laugh until you start to cry, because when something that big is set in motion there�s nothing else you can do but laugh. And wait.
People will send you messages in languages you�ve never heard before. They�ll come to you at work, a man with gold teeth and a lion painted on his forearm, and he�ll tell you Aaeryn is rising again, Aaeryn has returned, and you�ll remember when you last met him, at the pyramid beneath the earth, and you�ll shiver. He will send cannibalized monsters to you, and you�ll try to strike a deal.
There is something living in the wall behind your bed. If you pry it up, you won�t find it, but at night you�ll hear the most terrible sobbing.
Someone close to you will die. Tomorrow you will find their body in the back seat of the car. And in your office. And at the park. And in the driveway. And at night, when they�re laid out in your bed and there�s no place else to sleep, you�ll sleep next to them, and their smell will fill your head.
You will remember the name you used to go by. Before you became alive.
Sometimes, when I�m alone in the dark and I�m merely a girl who goes to work every morning and feeds her cat every night, I wonder if I miss it.