Lessons by the Same Name (Part 1)

(TRIGGER WARNING)

My memories have always been vast and something I have personally struggled with here. I live in infinite presents at once. I close my eyes in this world; I wake up in another. Sometimes, it’s into parallel universes similar to this one - where my furniture is different or arranged in an old way, and my tattoos are varied, and my scars are few or more. At other times, it is an entirely dissimilar universe from my situation - to my family, friends, routines, and world circumstance. Some places I live are apocalyptic in nature or egregious, and while others are relatively pedestrian but also grand in the way of dramatics.

If you want to call them dreams instead of traveling. Then I would describe these dreams as extremely lucid, repeated, and story-oriented, meaning if I wake up and fall back asleep, my dream will pick up where it left off or continue on without me. Not unlike days where everything feels like a daydream, as you walk around, in a standard routine. Those days blur together into complete obscurity. You could live a whole week, month, year, or life and not absorb or recall anything of real substance, but just know that, yeah, I went out, I had conversations, I saw people; I have proof of purchase; I have the scars, the pain, the memory.

In my early years, I spent most of my time in war-torn places, in my nightly travels, causing PTSD and night terrors: How am I supposed to focus on school when I don’t know if my people made it out alive? Running through these memories now, I realized I woke up because I had died. I remember my birth and some of my time in the womb here. I remember being annoyed to be awake again. To be human still. I do prefer other species, really. In all my travels, I always feel sorrow towards humans; whenever I am one. It causes my being to be conflicted in a majority of ways.

I bobble between the gamut of stable and insane in this world, not necessarily because of my penchant and admiration for death and karma. Or my need to employ methods to force their presence on me. It is a bit of respect, a bit of me being petty and mentally ill, and a drug addict, though drugs are also coming from a place of immense respect - and a ‘cheap’ and valuable tool for me to keep some semblance of normalcy. Because I am not aware of what is genuinely expected. It is more cultural openness - here to observe until I can assimilate.

Funny enough, for a long time, I suffered from insomnia. Even without the assistance or hindrance of uppers and downers, my mind is something that doesn’t sleep per se. The wiser and healthier I get, the more my travels align. Now, it is more of a long line of successive falling asleep. I go to sleep here, wake there ready to go to sleep, fall asleep there, wake someplace else, or back here, and all the variants, depending on my current mental state.

This is my reality.

It was a typical day, a day that could’ve been any other. I had woken up late the morning before but made it to work on time. Living on my own, at about seventeen - going on eighteen - years old. Attending community college part-time (after dropping out of high school in favor of a GED) and working for the government full-time in a paid-intern student program. I moved out of my mom’s apartment - against everyone’s advice - into a studio apartment at one of those multi-building high-rise complexes. Where all the buses ran past the front doors and housed their own 24-hour convenient store. With an expansive parking lot that always seemed full, as if no one left - but in truth, everyone just took public transportation - instead of dealing with rush hour traffic - more liable to make you late than a behind schedule bus or train.

As I said, it was a typical day.

I woke up, hungover, got dressed begrudgingly, and took the bus to the train into the bigger city. And made my way through the workday. Fortunately, I work at the same place as my mom. My job was enjoyable, if not easy, and the people were kind, if not familiar, or hungover themselves - so the day went by quickly. And I am home and ready for the weekend in relatively no time.

Already procuring beer, liquor, and drugs - with more on the way - for another binge weekend at my place. Where a stream of people would come by, and a close group stayed and slept. During this time, a broad spectrum of parties occurred, from the intimate chill session to the music-filled everything can be a drinking game, to the rager and back again. Its already become a standard, and I haven’t even lived there for three months. During these parties, I’m not entirely sure who is there and will begin to receive knocks and notices on my door - informing me of the noise complaints the following days.

But for now, it’s the evening after work, and I am continuously high on various drugs, alcohol, and company. While we continue on, the music may be an octave lower, and the chatter increasingly lively. It’s a good time, but I am tired of it all nonetheless. I haven’t been doing the best of late and was in a steady spiral down regarding my mental health.

I’m never really sure when my mind switches, and my body yearns in agreement that it’s about that time to attempt suicide. But it is a frequented and comforting state of mind while simultaneously being torturous and sorrowful when I disappoint myself and decide to keep on living. But once that faulty switch flips, genuine reprieve and contentment wash over me. I’m seemingly always willing to die. I look forward to it. It’s the most luxurious of drugs to a conscious immortal. I had already taken ecstasy and snorted small mounds of molly and cocaine. Throughout the night, I think someone had acid, and there is always weed. I know I partook in everything and drank my weight in beer and bra size in liquor. At this time, doing everything in excess - I’m also the heaviest I have ever been. But I was still awake and aware inside, which got me in trouble because my goal was to shut it down.

Also, at this time, my ego has me striving to “play at your own risk.”  But again, I am tired and annoyed and unhealthy and more attracted to finding a total end. To experience an extended meeting with the void and really feel it this time. I die and open my eyes, and it fills me with growing resentment. I am still on the journey of remembering why. I am still reluctant and naïve, ignorant, and aggrieved.

So, when everyone left or passed out, I decided to walk in my hazed blur to the convenience store. I wanted cough medicine; this was when it was sold everywhere and still had the ingredients that would send you flying when you drank the entire bottle or took all the pills. My mind was working as my body struggled through the mud to concede and move. I somehow completed the purchase and made it back to my studio. It gets me where I want to be, flying and out. Opening the void in a blurry, kind of dirty way, like a broken-down amusement park - super cheap, super fun, super dangerous.

---

           “Wake yourself.”

I hear a voice demand of me. It is a voice I am not overjoyed to hear, especially in my current state of a pure, stiffened, sickened existence. My last memory is stepping outside my body to see how blue my face had gotten. I know this because when I looked from the open bathroom directly through my ‘walk-in’ closet, my stripped twin bed was there against the half-wall and windows covered by dingy broken blinds, and I could clearly see my body was still lying down. While I stood in the bathroom and looked myself over in the mirror. I appeared and felt dead as I touched my pale face, my skin broken and ghastly, though I’m not afraid. I know that right now, I’m in between dead and alive. And like many times before, I decided to lay back down, and let happen, what may.

Deep down, I longed for some answers, some clarity. Something that always grounds me, I think of myself breaking down to my base atoms, or I keep myself whole, holding on to that feeling in the pit of my stomach that lets me know which way I’m falling. Feeling my body drop, I envision myself barreling through the earth and its layers, through the core, and back out into the universe. I have stopped to ask myself why I don’t ever just go up. Why do I feel the need to imagine myself plummeting before I can feel myself fly? Why, I sink, even when I ascend?

The truth being, at seventeen, I am infinitely afraid. I hate myself, and I am in constant absurd confusion on this planet, wondering what went wrong. Because the answer always remained the same, with the question: what is ‘wrong’ exactly?

What is ‘up’?  I ask myself as I continue to ignore the intrusive voices.

A fierce growl of disgust breaks the silence, “Ugh…ridiculous. Leave it be, Gabriel. I hate these forms.”

“Silence, Michael, kin calls. We must help.”

“She has purposely expired this form multiple times. I don’t wish to play these human games.”

“Of course, you do. Or wouldn’t have chosen such emotion.”

“Can y’all politely shut the hell up and get out my house,” I grumble. I know what is happening and who it is, but it's like a drunk emotional text you wished you never sent. I’m more in the headspace of, let me be dead or wake up to drink and drug this hangover away. A kicked can on a hamster wheel, at some point, I’ll lose track of how many times the can outpaces me, and I get hit from behind and sent toppling in a perpetual roll to nothing.

Eventually, I’ll stop.

“Studio apartment.” Michael’s, disgruntled voice quips.

“Oh! Okay. I really don’t want your shit right now, Michael.” I scoff.

“Stop it, Michael.”

“Whatever. I’m going to just stand with the concussed humans by the table of illicit drugs.”

“It’s amusing how judgmental we appear here.” Gabriel chuckles.

“Seriously…Why?” I say, annoyed, again, I know why, but I’m going to continue in willful ignorance. I’ve been lying in this specter form, looking through my half-closed eyes to my cracked ceiling, and my patience is thin, especially with these meetings.

Though, this felt different.

“You called my kin, so we are here. Now wake up and sober yourself. You are to come with us.” Gabriel answers politely, usually showing me more difference than Michael.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure I died this morning…so, no. Unless you want to carry me? Or maybe give me my wings back?”

“Ha!” Michael cackles.

“Stop being stubborn, kin. Get up. Unless you truly wish to expire this timeline? You have asked for a reminder, and we are here.”

“You know I am not religious here….”

“Neither are we. Now let's get going.”

“This is my worst nightmare.”