SET AND SETTING

I grew more distant and despondent as the new year approached.

We wandered the cliffs overlooking a long glittering river. Exaggerated caricatures of ourselves only a group of drug addled boys at the cusp of manhood can achieve. Boisterous, arrogant and fragile. A heady mix. Nineteen year old me lagging further behind filthy dreadlocks swaying. Right ankle swollen from some recent misadventure. Complete with limp and shooting pain.

Anyone with acid experience knows how it reveals by projecting inner dialogue onto the external. It magnifies beliefs and expectations. Warps sensation to fit frame of mind. I think of it like when the universe winks it’s all knowing, all seeing eye and each random encounter whispers with significance. It was coming on strong, and I was well on my way to a bad trip.

Surrounded by a heaving crowd, deeply isolated.

I don’t remember the fireworks. Yet I recall the sense of loneliness crushed between apathy and friendship. The heart on my sleeve whispered ‘defeated reject’ in sad, lilting script. Looking back it kinda makes sense.

With such low self worth, I don’t blame them for hardly noticing when I sat down to watch my shoes. All but one simply didn’t notice my absence. He sat with me for a moment. His hand moved toward me, stopped. I convinced him to catch up with the others. 

An invisible barrier stood between empathy and I. 

PARANOIA TAKES ROOT

I watched him walk away as every human connection I’d ever made flipped inside out. Isolation filled my vision. 

I saw in stark detail how no one ever truly loved me…

I saw my mother’s love: mental illness played out over thousands of days of bitterness, anguish and guilt. 

I saw I was a fetish to the woman who raised me. A band-aid for unhealed wounds. 

As for dad, well. There’s only so many times a small boy hears the words ‘I don’t care’ before he believes them. That day came long ago.

I saw myself: unlovable.

PARANOIA BLOOMS

Drowning in shame so deep I couldn’t receive love if it gave me CPR, I decided to kill myself.

The sound of chatter grew as the bridge rose from the cliff-side. This was back before city counsel installed the 8 foot guard rails. Red and blue lights drew my gaze to a group of cops, I walked past them and saw the same apathy in their cold eyes as I felt from every direction: present, past and future. 

‘Another one, told ya.’

I’m currently convinced it was the psychedelic talking (magnifying my projected beliefs) but the sting of that callousness left a scar nonetheless. Regardless of what was said (probably minding their own business or talking about the weather), the experience was real. I heard the words.

A SLIVER OF LIGHT

That’s the tricky thing with mental illness, calibrating internal and external reality can be a real bitch when you can’t rely on your own frame of reference. But by that point I’d had enough experience trying to calibrate, I could recognise the struggle. My mother’s schizophrenia showed me countless times what it’s like to flip between internal and external. I watched my other parents grapple with their own personal demons. I saw how a lack of skepticism toward their own perception led to so much pain and suffering. 

Self awareness, the experience seemed to be saying, was critical to survival. If I couldn’t figure it out I was dead.

DESPERATION SLITHERS

I walked along the bridge searching the gaze of passersby, receiving all manner of confusion, fear and animosity. I felt repulsive, disgusting. 

I couldn’t find a reason to not kill myself. I tried. Like looking for a memento during a flood, I pulled up memory after memory and not one of them had what I sought. They were ruined. 

I was 18 or so, young, but old in the eyes of others. One of those curious kids with an ‘old soul’. Peers or elders, people seemed to look up to me. As far as I knew, my perspective was the best I had, and yet somehow, I saw it was failing me.

I leaned against the steel rail wondering how cold the water would feel. If I’d feel it at all. 

Lights bright and noisy, the city watched through intoxicated vision, drunk on celebration. It didn’t want anything to do with me, my thoughts and feelings and existence meant less than nothing. It would fish up my corpse like so much trash floating down the river. 

PERSPECTIVE SHIFTS

I believed each wayward thought I had, yet knew I might be dead wrong. Some deep part of my childhood clicked into place and a lurking skepticism was revealed.

I decided to suicide later.

Night wore on as Brisbane continued to do it’s thing, my projections warping what was likely harmless merriment into a dissociative dream-scape. The city became a microcosm of an undeniable reality; the universe is cold, cruel and heartless. 

What was I to all those stars? All those people? What good was I? 

I soon found myself in Brisbane’s botanical gardens, looking across the same waters I had watched from above hours before. A skeptical voice spoke up. Maybe it didn’t have to feel so fucking bad. Why not have both? Yes, the city, the world, the universe are inherently heartless, so maybe it’s up to me to bring what I want to receive.

DAWN BREAKS

If I don’t like how dark it is, how cold and hopeless life feels, maybe I can bring what I need.

In another lotus flower moment the universe smiled. I watched the uncaring horizon softly brighten. Clouds broke and a sunrise I’ll never forget crested over the river. It shone slow, gentle, magnificent. The water glimmered gold. The morning filled with the scent of waking flowers.

It was fucking glorious.

A view tailor made for me, and likely thousands more. The light I wanted so desperately to find shone straight into me. It was still impartial, it didn’t give a shit about me, but I found love in that light. Love and warmth and brightness.

I resolved to carry that sunrise with me wherever I went. 

Because it doesn’t matter if the universe is cold and uncaring, it can be a heartless bitch if it wants. 

I’ll do me. I’ll bring my own light.