Eight Tabs Was Too Much

The way my saliva sends a wave of iron from the tip of my tongue to the back of my throat clogs all of my other senses as my mind debilitates. Each hit of my cigarette pulls me to the feeling of my brain being too incapacitated to fully take in anything like a wad of gum. Each side of my jaw is cemented to a sticky web on the hinge as I chomp open and close to catch a single feeling. My fingers, neck, toes, and legs are fully paralyzed as I can't even move my eyelids while my pupils lock onto the floor. I know this LSD is laced. For some reason, I know it's laundry detergent. But I love the way its soft fingers take my hand to bring me to a void where there's no feeling, no thoughts. Just emptiness. As I stare at the ground, the LSD projects images of people bolstering to gravity instead of the ledge of the bridge because that's the only solution to my problem. That's the only way I can stop myself. The fear triggers my skin to shake as tears flow but never fall. My organs turn clockwise as time expires til my presumed inevitable. So why do I love this?

I haven't been on a trip since I went to a haunted house with my mother two years ago, but I still miss it. Why do I miss it? I changed my lifestyle from eight tabs every other weekend to consuming scripture every night. Spirituality gave me glimpses of the other world as my arm hair rose from the shimmer of God, but I still wanted to see a woman come out of a TV screen to tell me it was all just a dream. You see, the deal with God is that if I stay away from that stuff, then the world's at peace, but every time I decide to indulge in the forbidden fruits, the sky starts falling. At least, I think that's the unsaid deal. Whether I'm being good or bad, there are coincidences all around me. Let's say I'm suicidal one day. I don't know why I want to die; I just do. My depression is killing me, and an ambush of bad memories has jumped in. And then I'll be scrolling through Facebook's videos section, and I'll come across a video of a woman who says, "Please pray with me." We rest our eyes and heads as God's spirit descends from the sky. She starts praying, "Please take the spirit of suicide out of the clouds." As each word passes, the dark feeling weighing on me follows the wind. I kept those thoughts away from the internet, and call me a conspiracy nut, but I kept those thoughts to myself, so there's no way my microphone could have sent those thoughts into the algorithm. I flowed with a crowd of people into the pedestrian crossing as we passed a sidewalk preacher. I gave him a glimpse to look into my eyes as he said, "Your mother's wounds from her rapist will fade." Those eyes follow me.

As I chased after purity, I found myself at the endpoints of my imagination. It's almost like chasing the end of a rainbow just to find a pile of dirt. I didn't eat for days because I thought God was telling me to extend my fasts. I gave thousands to the church because I felt a tug on the arm of my spirit. I avoided events because I thought the Holy Spirit was whispering in my ear to not go. I stay away from the public because I'm too afraid that God's telling me to not go because I'll run into the devils of my past. Is it God or just anxiety? Have I been crawling on beach sand towards the waves for water before realizing I'm in a desert? I would lay on my knees as I screamed for an answer, but all I could hear was the occasional dish tilt in the kitchen sink. Hour after hour passed as I blocked every thought in case he yelled, but not even a whisper.

Although I had all of these conflicting realities against each other, the more I got closer to God, the closer I was to peace. Even when I'd wake up to my house burning down, I would sit in the riot with a smile as my body rested against the spirit's bristle. The ceiling would fall in balls of flame, but I just laid my eyes as the wind moved through the pores of my body. So why did I feel so dead inside? There was a piece within the abyss that wasn't content with life. That just didn't feel full. I'd remind myself that God and literature filled me with every abundance I hungered for, but that wasn't true. My lips crisped as the flesh decomposed for a drop of something euphoric. The times that I would explore that void, the eyes on the pictures on the wall would look at me. It was almost like they were telling me, "I thought you wanted more than this?" And sometimes, they did. I know what it's like to have the edge of your fingers on the last ladder step to heaven and barely cling onto the cliff toward hell, so the only thing I'm sure of is God knows that I understand the answer to the test. At some point, I'm going to have to decide heaven or hell because this is the one concept where there's no middle ground. Just the end of the journey.

Something has been screaming at me to leave my partner, but I don't know why? I was diagnosed with schizophrenia, which helps make some of it make sense, but the eyes still follow me. I've even predicted that the drugs caused a permanent psychosis, but that doesn't explain why the light bulb flickered until it died as I stood up, even though I felt the Holy Spirit pulling my body back down to pray. So much of it just doesn't make sense. I'm back to drowning in vodka along with other illusions, but it's not the same when you feel like you've had a peek at the truth.