Torn

For so long I have felt so torn in so many ways. Everyone always compliments me on how well rounded I am, but sometimes it really fucking sucks. I have so many sides of me and opinions that sometimes I get so lost amongst it all. I don't know who I am. I don't know who I want to be. It changes so much from day to day. Somedays I am so driven to succeed in school and other times all I want to do is drop out and travel and be like Dan. Is it normal? To feel so ambivalent about things?
A boy I graduated from High School with died in a car accident on Friday night. Makes you think. Life is short. So, so short. Why shouldn't I spend the time here doing things that I really want to? Martin was a great, great kid. He complimented my outfit everyday last year and always left me smiling. He was always positive and had something funny to say about life and cheer people up. What if I am focusing on things that don't even matter? If I'm making a difference in people's lives and discovering things about myself and contributing to society then what more can I ask?
I guess it all comes back to asking yourself what you want from life. I don't know what I want. I want a nice front porch and a husband that loves me. I want freedom though too. I want wind in my hair and sand beneath my feet. I want freedom from everything. Money, my life, my friends. I just want the opportunity to live life for me for a little while.
At the end of the day when I look at what is around me I always wonder how much of this is here because I actually wanted it. So many of the things I have I could care less if they were all thrown out my window right now. What I really want from life is memories and laughs and friendships. I know that's what matters. I can have that here. I really do believe I can make myself happy here, but so far I keep trying and it just isn't working yet. I just still feel so lost.
I feel like it's so easy for me to make "friends" but so hard for me to make friends. Everyone always comes to me with all their problems and questions about life but I don't have anything figured out, so why the hell would they ask me? And if they think I have it all together then who am I trying to fool? Why can't I be honest with myself and say I don't know what I want? Why is that so scary for me?
I think because then I look around and see all these people who come to me feeling lost and I wonder if maybe it is better to pretend I know what I want then to be lost in this world. When you're lost, you lose focus. And then you fuck up. I really don't want to fuck up. I have so much pressure riding on me.
I feel like my parents want me to succeed so badly. What if I don't make it? What if I can't make their dreams come true for me? I know if I ever told them this they would be so sad. They wouldn't ever want me to do anything that wasn't what I wanted, but if I don't know what I want, then why can't I just use their dreams for me? I just know Speech Pathology is secure, and couldn't we all use a little security in our lives? I want to know my family will be secure if I ever have one. I want to know my job is secure and my future is secure. I think that is why I could never commit myself fully to a world of wandering and soul searching because I need security and a back bone.
See, this is why I love blogging. Now I know I can't do what Dan does. I need stability and structure in my life. I need to feel like I'm working for something and going somewhere or else I will just feel like I'm seriously wasting time.
Even when I look at my friends though it reminds me of how lost I am, because they are all so seriously different. Joanna is such a pot head and I love her, and Cailee and all my speech friends are just the nicest, happiest girls. I want to be as simple and driven as them, but I'm not. I just have so much more.
Saturday I had my first experience with LSD.
"That's one reason LSD still fascinates us (and still attracts willing new test subjects) today. Because it promises -- in a single, paradigm-busting session inside a user's own head -- a journey filled with awe and mystery to people whose lives have been bleached white with conformism and consumerism and every other kind of -ism, except self-determinism and love."
http://www.doitnow.org/pages/115.html
Let me start from the beginning. We took it in the car shortly before we reached Bloomsburg. The plan was to start tripping mildly and then get to Ricketts Glen and start to really trip there. As soon as I took it knew I started to feel differently, but I thought it was just me getting paranoid about feeling differently, so I couldn't tell. We got to Bloom within about twenty minutes of taking it and by the time I was in my dorm I knew I was starting to feel it. My skin felt weird. Different. Oddly receptive to touch. I called my friend Joanna who was supposed to be coming with us, but she wasn't ready so we had to wait. It was Adam, and Cole, and I just chilling in my room. They were both laughing and smiling so much and I was too. My jaws honestly hurt a little bit because I just could not stop smiling and laughing with them. I just felt so alive and like the world around me was such a great place to be.
Ricketts Glen is about forty five minutes away from Bloomsburg, so it was kind of a long car ride. The whole time though I was just chilling really. Cole and I were in the back seat but I was feeling seriously cramped. The car ride there was starting to make me feel so unsure about the whole thing. Had I made the right decision to trip? Would I regret this? My legs felt so restless I just couldn't stand it. I wanted to get out and run not just sit in the car. I remember looking out the front window and thinking I was really starting to feel physically ill. My stomach felt nauseus and I didn't know how much more I could take of this car ride. Everyone else seemed to be doing so fine though. I didn't know how to handle it. I kept on thinking about Martin's death and wondering if how he felt before he died. Wondering what was going through his head. I started freaking out about having a bad trip. I had many conversations in my head calming myself down on that car ride.
The scary thing about acid is once you take it, you can't just let get it out of your system. Weed, you can go to sleep. Alcohol, you can throw up. Acid, you're stuck with it. It's in your central nervous system for up to twelve hours so if you're gonna get fucked, you're gonna get fucked for a long time. I kinda told myself this and realized I wanted this to be a good experience so I tried to focus on good things.
By the time we arrived at Ricketts Glen I was starting to feel very, very strange. We set out on our journey not knowing exactly where we were going at all. Joanna took a hit finally, to join the club. The first thing I really noticed was how my body felt though. I felt extremely cold, even in the beginning. I definitely didn't feel it in my mind for a long time. As we were walking we came upon a nice spot next to the stream and we stopped for awhile. The acid made me strangely paranoid.
Whenever Adam would talk to Joanna I felt extremely jealous and irritable. I was wondering if I was doing something wrong and why he wasn't talking or enjoying his trip with me. The first place we stopped I got my camera out and took some pictures. It was a beautiful place, and it would have been even if I wasn't tripping. Some of my pictures were turning out really strangely. They were turning out like lime, lime green and the leaves were transparent in the pictures. It was so strange and I first I honestly couldn't tell if it was me tripping or just my camera. Joanna confirmed that the pictures were indeed turning out like that. At this point, everything was starting to look really cool. Cole and Adam were both smoking cigs and Black and Milds and the smoke billowing just looked incredible. I lit myself up a Black and Mild and just was obsessed with watching the smoke pool around my hair and sweatshirt hood. I felt like every time I blew out it just should have been smoke. My mind was fascinated with the idea of the shapes it formed and how it billowed around me.
At this point Adam and Joanna were starting to talk more and I remember feeling extremely agitated so I took my camera and myself to another perch. I was enjoying snapping pictures of the moving water and the small waves and splashes that were taking place around me. I felt particularly aware of my body and how I was sitting and how my limbs felt curled around me. I was still cold. Just undeniably, incurably cold. As I was sitting a little ways away from the group, Cole ventured over. I still had my camera out and I had him pose for a while on some rocks. He was still smoking a black and mild and I took picture after picture of him laughing and blowing out smoke. I couldn't stop staring at how the smoke was taken up into the sky. It looked so beautiful with the sun streaming through it.
Shortly after this we continued our journey up the trail. On our way, we passed some people. Passing people was the oddest part of our trip. I didn't want to look at them. For some reason though, I felt like everyone was tripping and we were all a part of a big experiment or test. I felt like it was the most reasonable thing for all of us to be tripping on a day like today. The next place we went was when I really started to trip. We were sitting on a big boulder right next to the water and the water just moved in one continuous sheet. Even as it rolled over rocks and crashed on boulders it just kept moving and flowing relentlessly down the river. I couldn't understand how it was all so perfectly connected. Things stood out to me like never before. I noticed patterns in the trees around us. There was a group of trees on the bank across from us that were all bending the same way in a row. I kept on looking at them and wondering what had convinced them to bend. I also kept thinking how badly I wanted to plunge in the water. I still wasn't completely giving into the tripping because I knew it was the acid thinking that, and not me.
Cole and Adam both took two hits of acid and at this point they were seeing crazy visuals. They were both lying on the rocks while Joanna and I chatted away idly. The strangest thing was happening though, Joanna kept talking to me but she was just using her lips and we were having whole conversations until Cole or Adam would look over and realize she wasn't saying words and ask, "what the fuck is she doing?" and then it was like the spell was broken and I couldn't understand her anymore. our connection had been broken by their interruption. We were so fascinated with everything though.
It was while we were on those boulders that I really started to want to be with someone. I had this relentless desire to connect with someone. Adam had been sitting against this tree by himself so I went over and sat next to him and held his hand, but I was so restless. My hand muscles kept contracting and expanding like I needed to grip onto something. I would clutch my pants strangely and grab the rocks and trees around me. I kept rubbing my hand against itself just to give myself the sensation I desired. I did not have the connection with Adam that I was looking for at all. He was in a totally different state than I was and we were not connecting at all. I wanted to be held and touch his body and talk, but he was completely involved in his visuals. The group started suggesting another move, but I didn't know if I could handle it. I felt like my body was so oddly proportioned and hard to control. Sometime during this sit I had put on Adam's huge sweatshirt to try and keep myself warm, but it didn't help.
As our journey continued it got harder and harder to hike. I kept on getting distracted by things and I hated passing people. Cole and Adam were hiking so far ahead of us and I just felt so lost. Like I needed to be babysat. No matter how drunk I have ever been or how high I have ever been, I always felt like I could take care of myself, but I could not handle this. I needed someone to hold my hand. I wanted Adam so badly, but he was so absorbed in Cole and his own trip he really didn't notice me. Not that I hold it against him, but it was seriously depressing me at the time.
This one tree joanna and I walked under was like an entryway. As soon as I walked under it I remember stopping and saying, "Woah." I turned around and Joanna had just stepped into the same archway. I asked her if she had felt it and she had. We had just entered something else. It wasn't Ricketts Glen. That archway took us someplace else. Far, far away from Bloomsburg and everything I had ever known. We both agreed that we weren't where we had started. After this, the trip really began.
My crazy, wild thoughts began to flow as continuously as the river. With no real connection between them, just flow. I just kept thinking about the world around me. I wondered about if I had ever even entered the woods before and how I was on this journey. I kept stopping and touching and feeling and looking. I had never felt so alive. There was this connection I felt to something so much bigger than myself. I still wanted Adam so badly though. I wanted to be next to him and talk to him. I couldn't vocalize any of my thoughts though. No one else seemed to have that problem. Cole and Adam couldn't stop laughing and Joanna would not stop talking. She was like a little chatter box! It was so weird though because our thoughts were on two completely different levels. I was thinking deep thoughts about my purpose in life and she was thinking more shallow thoughts about how she felt at the moment. It was so weird because I was sooo in touch with my senses, but also so in touch with my brain. I just kept wondering about life and so many things. When we got to the first legitimate waterfall Cole kept signaling to me to get in the picture but I couldn't bring myself to do it. I remember nodding like I was going to get in the picture, but I just didn't want to, so I Didn't. I stayed put. I didn't want pictures I wanted to figure out what was going on in my head. I still wanted Adam. I just wanted it to be the two of us.I wanted to talk to him and help him explain what was happening to me. Why couldn't I speak?
Whenever we passed people I felt like they were all in on our little secret. I thought they had to know, but I didn't want them to know so I kept my head down and my eyes averted. I felt like I was stumbling, but I was walking fine.
One thing that stands out at me is how quiet the whole experience seemed. Even when people were talking or our music was playing, I felt deaf. My senses were so heightened, but I really couldn't hear or speak for the longest time. I just felt this energy pulsing through me and this continuous flowing of ideas.
The only person I wanted to connect with was Adam. Cole kept freaking me out because all he kept on asking me was how I liked tripping and I didn't' know what to say. I wasn't thinking about the trip itself, I was thinking about crazy existential ideas that I had never experienced before. And Joanna just kept on talking the most ridiculous nonsense that I felt like I was babysitting.
By the time we started venturing back my mind was whirling with ideas. Cole and Adam were still hiking so far ahead of us and leaving me in the back with Joanna. I wanted to be by myself in the forest. If I couldn't be with Adam then I didn't want to be with anyone and I just wanted to think about the nature and this world that I am such a small part of.
The strangest part of the trip happened at the end though. I still couldn't talk and I finally got a minute to be by myself when Cole and Adam were distracted by Joanna. I was walking along in the forest and I literally couldn't hear anything. I felt like a part of the forest. I was there and it was just me and the trees and the leaves and the sun and the trail. I felt like I was breathing with it. A living, breathing part of the forest. That connection that I had been wanting to have with Adam I think I had it with the woods instead, as strange as that seems. I felt like nothing could take me out of this world. I couldn't speak at all during this time though. And shortly after I had this connection Cole came up behind me and started asking me about my trip again and kind of broke me out of my spell.
I had had to go to the bathroom for the longest time, but I kept on forgetting. So we stopped and they told me to go pee behind a tree, but when I went behind the tree I just leaned up against it and listened to the deafening silence and again I had that connection with the woods. It was almost heavy on my chest the feeling. I felt remorseful about something but also deeply encouraged. I felt for once like I had found a purpose and it was obvious, to be a part of that forest. It was a very long bathroom break and I forgot to go to the bathroom.
I came back out from behind the tree and Joanna was halfway up a mountain. They made me follow her up and we discovered the most perfect little mushroom. We didn't want to move it from its place though, so I brought it back down in my hands and I could have sworn I was holding the mushroom, but when I got back down the mountain I told Adam and Cole to look at the mushroom in my hands, but I wasn't holding anything. I smacked the palm of my hand because I could see it wasn't there, but I felt like I was still holding it.
The last attempt of me trying to connect with Adam happened after the mushroom incident. I still didn't feel like I could talk but I was reaching my hand out to him as he was walking so far ahead of me with Cole and I was SCREAMING his name in my head, but I just couldn't get it to come out! I just held my hand out and I felt so alone. I wanted him to come and connect with me and hold my hand and hug me and hold me, but he wouldn't turn around. It was the saddest I think I may have ever been. I felt like he was walking away from me for forever. It was breaking my heart that he didn't want me like I wanted him.
The car ride back to Bloom was strange too. Joanna and I were still seriously tripping, but Adam and Cole seemed to be fine. I kept on feeling like I was the one being ostracized from the group though. I hated it.
I still couldn't speak on the car ride back but I just wanted to yell to Adam to stop the car. I wanted to get out and just sit in a field and be left there. I felt like no one wanted me and I had no place in this car with these people, but I wasn't sad about it. I just wanted to find something else to appreciate me if those people wouldn't. I felt the like the world was calling me to leave these people and join it, whatever it was because it wanted me and it had a purpose for me. By the time we got back to Bloom I could kind of talk and handle myself.
When we got back Adam and Cole immediately wanted to go out and get crazy but I just wanted to think and be and discover. I sent them out to get burritos and was so relieved to finally be left alone with my tripping self. I danced in the mirror and touche my stomach and my hair. I kept staring at the wrinkles in my face. I wanted to know myself. I tried to clean my room but I couldn't focus.
I kept on wondering if there was a little acid in all of us always, because I could connect some feelings that I was having to moments of extreme euphoria when I wasn't tripping. Like the Jack concert, or the Felice Brothers concert. I don't know what happened that day, but I feel more in touch with myself.
Overall, I enjoyed my trip. The world is indeed a beautiful place to be and I was more in touch with it then ever. Everything was so vivid and beautiful. I will probably do it again, but it takes up a lot of time.
Oh, and the other thing I forgot to mention was I completely lost all concepts of time and the whole day occurred in moments. I kept on remembering moments. It was all pieced together, but then string connecting the events was thin and hard to find. It was a long, strange day, but I'm happy I did it.
I loved it.