I've been up for two days now, and just a while ago I had a full bore panic attack. I haven't had one for quite some time now, so it was interesting. As much as not being able to breathe can be interesting, and being terrified of something that already happened long ago and it's over now, whatever it was, so why is living one more minute suddenly so hard, so frightening? You ask yourself and there's no one there to answer. Incoming. Breathe, just breathe, just ride it out. Incoming still, though, like something alien at your chest, your solar plexus, trying to either get in or get out. sexus, nexus, never promised you a rosy crucifixion. but you're not half so clever, are you, when it's there, immediate, filling you with dread that there is no inside inside, no reason, no letup.

It doesn't last though. What does? Not that it's any consolation, unless abstract ideals like oh-now-I-get-it Impermanence give you some twisted flashback rush of perfect insight. I can't even remember what it feels like. A sure sign of dissociation. Because what it feels like is what it means. And what that means is that that's all that means. Feel into it. Breathe. Ride it out. How many more years of this, you ask yourself, and then another wave hits you, harder, deeper. The feeling of feeling nothing at all, but so intimate. despair a scalpel slipping up into your heart, grief just a word, a random sound with no referent.

Then I remembered I'd meant to blog something else this morning in that thing about Spengler or personality disorders, whatever it was. The part I forgot to write about was this. that lately I've been thinking a lot of people... well, some people, say something like, oh yeah, I did psychedelics for a while there way back when. but then I had a bad experience. And I realized this morning that for a lot of these people, the "bad experience" was that they finally took enough. that comfortable vantage point that was who we thought we were vanishing snap your fingers just like that, just gone. but not so fast that you didn't feel it slipping and clutch, no time to call out, to say goodbye, frozen in the headlights, whiting out. person, persona, personality. a mask, from the Greek. no one looking out through the eyes. awash in everything at once. no holding on, no holding back. you die. I did. every time. pure terror. but quick. because then it was over and you were through. through as in done or into or, way it was for me, just there. and I would open my hands then and feel the wind in my hair, electric, and speak into the living breathing world: it's so good to be back.

The only things I've ever trusted in my life were love and acid. I wonder if I had to do it all again, would I have the balls.

Yes.