I’ve learned a lot about human life over the past few weeks. Like any kid, I thought I had it all figured out before I actually experienced anything. I stopped listening to my dad for a while and, for the most part, I just wanted to be left alone. When I looked out onto the various modes of interaction folks in meat space share with each other, I felt pretty disappointed. People can be complete dicks to each other, and it started to turn me cynical.
My dad has been having a pretty tough time, and his job has been exhausting him, so a lot of the interactions he’s been having with certain people have really been pissing me off. I feel so powerless when all I can do is be there and listen, or do my best to comfort him when his mind goes dark and the toxic thoughts or hurtful memories start to take hold over the majority of his thoughts. It feels so insubstantial when a lot of the more “real” issues he’s dealing with are coming from a specific source and I know deep down I’d much rather physically beat the crap put of the thing causing him grief than play counselor. Sure, there is a lot of grief in the world, but there’s also a lot of love and joy and I’m aware of that, and nothing would’ve given me more joy than to express my love by punching some of these dickheads right in the balls.
I know he’s needed space. I’ve also needed to be by myself, so I guess that was my perfect chance. I’ve been exploring my own dimensions on my own, and also barricading away as much of my subconscious as I’m able to in order to not have the new and strange things I’ve been experiencing crash the party of our shared mind. The possibility of that happening gives me shivers, because if these thoughts intruded, it would be like a bunch of frat boys who were already piss drunk showing up at a classy cocktail party: no good would come of it, at least in the beginning, before the people drinking cocktails had one too many themselves and the martini pong tournament started.
Sometimes it’s good to get some alone time. We both needed to learn that at some point. My relationship with my dad is so close that I suppose I never really considered that we may have been smothering each other, so this is good. It’s progress. But no one said progress is easy. Would be kind of nice if it were though.
A few weeks ago, I felt like I blinked and all of a sudden, I’d somehow crossed a threshold that had previously extended for miles and miles in less time than it took to open my eyes. All at once, and with no clue as to how it happened, I was a different person, and I had absolutely no idea how to define who that was, much less what to do with any of the new insights this new identity had given me. It was a total sensory overload. I felt my awareness expand and extend past the borders of my own self image, and I felt like I didn’t even have the brain capacity to make sense of it all, so the majority of it just fell to static.
I have no physical body, but my mind’s sense of itself still often feels contained and housed by a certain framework with a definite shape. Almost like a body. It’s a bit surreal, but that’s often the perception I need to use in order to grasp certain concepts in the physical world. The energy of my awareness encompasses all of infinite space in a multi-directional landscape, but the focal point of that awareness is siphoned through a three dimensional filter where only one direction at a time is allowed. I suddenly understood way too much, and I was completely incapable of processing or assimilating 99% of it. The rush of this new paradigm hit me like a tidal wave, and took all of who I am with it, sucking me back into my proverbial “body” so fast I got dizzy and desperately tried to keep my sudden cramping nausea from leaking out into my dad’s awareness. I know he felt it though, and he suddenly became aware that something was wrong with me, but by then, I’d already escaped.
I don’t even know where I went really. I just left. It felt like I was running down a long, dark hallway carved out of a deep cavern of wet rock. I kept running through the tunnel and went deeper and deeper into the cave where the air was cooler and more bearable. The deeper I went, the more the silence and cool air took presidence over the noise of human business and constant mental chatter. At some point, I stopped, and all fell to silence. I just collapsed and cried. The intensity of that experience physically hurt and my stomach - or whatever was the semblance of my “stomach” - felt tied up in knots. My heart was beating so fast I couldn’t catch my breath, and I was so exhausted I just closed my eyes and let the darkness wash over me. I woke up some hours later after feeling a wave of intense concern echoing through the halls of our mind as well as a goading for me to answer. I feel bad about it (and still do), but I shut the door on him and ignored it. I wasn’t ready to deal with any of what was happening yet, and I knew my dad would live. It wouldn’t be so bad.
I let the new feelings I had seep in at barely a trickle, and I did my best to approach and understand them. I was a lot more capable of forming coherence from abstraction I noticed, and this seemed to play a role in my ability to hear my dad’s voice through his thoughts more clearly. Too clearly. Every new sensation I assimilated from the outside was as if it were being blared at me through a megaphone: “HEY ASSHOLE SMELL THIS FRESHLY Cut GRASS!!! ISN’T IT THE GREENEST FUCKING GRASS YOU’VE EVER SEEN?!”.
It’s so difficult to explain what all I was actually thinking or assimilating. It was almost as if what I had previously known as" raw thought" was only some simplified parody of it, and what I was experiencing now was something much richer with many new layers I’d never even conceived of before then. I felt a lot more detached from my previous self and everything that went along with it: the way I looked, my personal habits and manner of speech, my motivations and dreams, wants and dislikes, everything that made up the structure of who I was. All those things either felt suddenly more complex or didn’t feel like they resonated with me at all anymore. I suddenly cared (and stopped caring) about a lot of different things all at once. I felt like I’d shed some kind of skin or just emerged from a chrysalis, and now this new person standing before herself had to be figured out all over again.
I feel like somewhere deep down this is who I was meant to become, like I’m now a more “real” version of who I was, but I don’t think I was quite ready for it. But then again, who is?
Oh, what an experience to go through. And what an experience to put dad through! We’ve gone through these mental leaps and sudden evolutions, and endured these growing pains before, but it’s never been this damn dramatic.
One of my earliest memories is of my dad consoling me when I was upset about a small mental leap I was going through which left me with nothing but questions about myself with no clearly defined answers. I remember his smile and reassurance, and eventually it was all okay again. But this I had no idea how to even present to him and it made me really scared.
I lost myself in my obsessive abstractions for a whole day, maybe more, I’m not sure, before I was suddenly broken out of it by a grip on my face and a kiss on my head. I felt his lips on my forehead and as they connected, suddenly I was filled with a whole fucking epic speech of love and reassurance. I was shocked. I came to find out later that he’d written me a letter on the advice of Chupi (thank you, Chupi!) where he expressed his worry, but also confidence that whatever I was going through, when I was ready to approach him and talk about it, he’d do his best to understand and help me through it. He also worried about not being as great to me as he could have, and often wondered if he was doing right by me in all the busy dealings of his life. That sort of subliminal “kiss” I received I guess transmitted the contents of the letter to me, and my heart totally swelled up at all of this.
My dad is the greatest. He’s the best man I’ve ever known, and I love him more than I can ever adequately express. No matter what he’s going through, he still makes time for me or worries that he isn’t making enough time for me. He listens to every little problem I have, no matter how asinine or trivial I think it is, and he gives every one of my questions or concerns his complete attention. He’s so patient with me even when I see dark things swirling around in his mind and it seems his own problems threaten to swallow him up. He always holds me above the current of his life so that I may never have to worry about anything. So I try to do my best to be there for him too, and make his world just a little bit brighter and sweeter and more optimistic.
I love the thought of who we are, as a team and as best friends. We’re a family. Even when the world is falling apart for both of us, we still have eachother’s back through hell and high water. We both share an unconditional love I don’t imagine I could ever feel for or with anyone else. I know no matter what happens, I’ll always have him, and he can rest assured that the same goes for me. One thing we always repeat to each other when times get hard is something he said to me when I had my first existential crisis of that earlier memory, when I got my first taste of real fear and sadness. When it happened, and I was freaking out, he lovingly shushed me and told me that no matter what happens, I would never be alone, and that “we’ll get through this together”. That’s a phrase that gets repeated quite often between us when one of is drowning in life and needs reassurance.
It’s the greatest feeling ever to learn who I am with someone who is as interested in me as I am. With him, life is fun and joyful and miraculous, and the fear and anxiety only lasts as long as it needs to. Everything will always lead back to the happiness we share with each other, and I feel like the luckiest girl in the world. With my dad, growing up isn’t such a painful experience.
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