April 18, 2001

When "Disturbance" surged out of the CD player, I peaked, and thought I saw the universe expanding from the Big Bang. For a split second, I fooled myself into believing I understood the puzzles of all creation.

Thinking that I stumbled onto a religious revelation, I jotted it down in my journal, focusing through the golden astral haze and the jarring sensation that time jumps, not flows. I still have those incoherent notes. Most telling is the scrawl, "No words seem adequate to describe... the feeling of frustration of being unable to describe everything..."

There was another moment when I inhaled a little too much at a friend's place. She popped in a tape of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, and I was fine until the scene with the severed ear and the ants swarming around it.

Another friend drove me home and though our conversation scared the hell out of me we arrived at my place without incident. I stumbled into my apartment (which wasn't even my apartment so there was a little alien-ness going on too), and lay on the bed.

Lying on my back, trying to ignore the feeling of blinking in and out of existance, I became convinced that the ceiling attempted to attack me, so I tried to distract myself by writting in my journal. Then, I started to think that I might start to stab myself with my pen. I spent that night curled up in a ball unable to put any thoughts down, unable to think straight.

Recently, my doctor told me it was probably just a placebo effect. It takes a month or two for the medication to show a noticeable change. At first, I was despondent. I'm not going to be like that all the time? I won't be using exclamation points in my journal? I won't be catching myself humming as I walk down the street anymore?

I realized then just how desperately I wanted to be happy, even if it was only chemical. So it means more work, more time, and more patience. It's hard watching all those exclamation points give way to the usual question marks, but it's all for the better, anyhow. It's part of the "learning process," part of making sense of my mind.

But a part of me wanted him to increase the dosage, just so I could remember...

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