“Baker, baker, baking a cake, make me a day…make me whole again. And I wonder whats in a day? What’s in your cake this time? I guess you heard he’s gone to L.A., he says that behind my eyes I’m hiding, and he tells me I pushed him away…that my heart’s been hard to find.” ~Tori Amos

I have been asleep for the past week. This happens often…unfortunately. Maybe not so much asleep as nocturnal. I have fallen down the rabbit hole, again. Shit. Here, everything is what it’s not. I get stuck here and I loathe it. When I visit this land of covers and blinds, it’s as if someone has edited a video of my life, showing only the terrible things that have happened. A constant reel, that has absolutely no end, of things I have tried my best to forget. Then anger, regret, sadness, everything spills over and fills up every inch of me, it makes it hard to breathe. There is no conversation between myself and the living. This can prove to be difficult for everyone who actually lives with me, including my three children. Don’t get me wrong, I feed them, and make sure they’re safe, which is a huge accomplishment given the field trip I’m on, and the handicap I have to work around. How do I know they’re safe? They live on my bed with me. They have adapted. Shit. You have no idea how bad it hurts to think of how much they loose during these sporadic misadventures. I want so badly to get up, to have the energy required to do play-dates, and day trips. I want so badly to want to do these things for them. They should not have to adapt. This makes me so mad at myself, and so the cycle begins anew.

When I visit this monstrous place, everything that is not completely necessary ceases to be. There is no laundry being done, no dinner being cooked, nothing. My husband comes home and tries to be tough asking me if I have bothered to get up and out of bed at all that day, but I know he’s not tough, I can see the pain, and concern in his eyes. Add it to the cycle. I am effectively ripping everything to pieces, and I know it, put that one in too. I’ve even stopped making excuses for it. I just turn over and lie there until the side I am laying on begins to hurt, then I turn over.

I am well aware that most people reading this would think that I need medication. I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work for me. We are hoping (my husband and I), that these visits to no mans land will become less and less volatile, and frequent as my brain learns how to live without foreign chemicals. It will be a slow process, like learning to walk all over again. It mirrors a child’s development because in many ways I have to learn to do almost everything all over again. In certain areas there has been improvement, but when my train of thought is disrupted like this it’s hard to be optimistic. I’m not ready to give up.

I have diligently been reading the Bhagavad Gita, hoping that I will stumble upon that one thing that makes everything click and suddenly become applicable. I understand how it should be interpreted and applied, I just can’t seem to figure out how to put it in motion. This makes me feel like I’m failing, but to be failing means I am trying at something that requires no effort. Just the fact that I am putting my effort and action into it means I am starting the race running the wrong way, right? The same goes for the daily (or not so daily) asanas I have practiced, and the meditating, and all the other reading. I am missing the correlation between all of them. A.K.A. wrong.

All of this finding “God” stuff is really tiring. I guess you could say that I have never really put much thought unto Him, until the last couple of months. Maybe I’m putting too much into it, in fact I know I am putting too much into it. I have been an effective hermit the last couple of months, certainly not doing the things one would be doing had I found such Divinity. All the books, and apps, and blogs, and tweets, and status updates, and research, and the list goes on, has me kind of feeling more like I’m drowning more than swimming, and I’m pretty sure that’s not what is supposed to be happening right? So what am I doing wrong…seriously answer that for me please. The peaks and valleys I have managed to put myself through make me think I definitely without a doubt, need medication. Which is what I’m trying to avoid. At all costs. I think it may be hard for you to understand why that is so important to me. I really haven’t put much of my background out there, I mean I should be dead, literally. So yeah maybe there’s some Divine Intervention going on there. I realize this. I’ve always been told, by various people, along the many stops in my path to here, that I have someone watching out for me, but I long for a much more intimate connection and the current mantra “I should be dead” just isn’t cutting it.

Suffice to say, I resorted to self hypnosis. HUGE mistake. I should have known better than to think I could trick my mind into being happy. The name of the Podcast I used is My Gift, Deep Relaxation Hypnosis by a person named Joseph Clough. I had done some research on this person and he has quite a following on FB, so I just want to reiterate that this was MY experience, and I am in no way suggesting that it was this man’s fault, or that anyone else will have a similar outcome. I have used a few Hypnosis podcasts before, and last night, which I should have taken as a sign, my husband noticed them in my IPhone and warned me not to do it. In the beginning I found myself unable to relax, whether or not this is due to his technique I can not say,I was not in the right state of mind to begin with. I don’t remember falling asleep, but the dreaming I had while under what he calls a “trance” was anything but relaxing. I thought I was awake, and I could see my bedroom and all of it’s elements like it was real time, down to the light in the hall, and the program on the TV. Though I was dreaming I thought I was awake. I don’t remember how, but I knew I was possessed. Like the Exorcist type possessed. I tried frantically to wake myself up but could not, my body felt like I was having seizures, and I had this strange sensation in my head. I kept trying to pull the headphones out of my ears, and in my dream I could get them out, but then I would wake for a split second and they were still in there commanding me to go back to sleep. I then saw a scary man at the foot of my bed who took hold of my feet and proceeded to drag me toward him, the whole time whatever was inside of me was taunting me, laughing hysterically in my ears. I was trying to scream for my husband who I could see sleeping next to me, but nothing came out as I choked on the intake of air. In thought it was very hard to decipher what was a dream and what was not, as I think I woke up sporadically throughout. Then every time I drifted back to sleep my body immediately started convulsing. I had no control over my hands or legs, so I was paralyzed. You get the point. There are a few more things that happened, but if you have seen The Exorcist I need not explain them. I have not seen that movie in years so I know that it was not a trigger. As I said before, I don’t know why this happened, I have not seen a review written of this sort at all. Needless to say I will not be trying his program again, in fact I am hesitant about hypnosis all together now. When I was finally able to wake myself, I was afraid to go back to sleep so I spent a lot of the early morning hours reading a book that has absolutely nothing to do with feelings, spirituality etc.  Anyway so when I finally trusted that my headphones were not possessed I stuck them back in and used an app that I have history with instead of trying something new. Silva Mind Control has a meditation app I love, and I used the Goodnight Meditation and slept soundly, though shaken, and dream free, which for once I welcomed.

This is me being honest about where I’m at at this point. I don’t know why I expected for it to be all sunshine and rainbows. They need to include some pictures of really sad things or people or something that describes this point exactly in the brochure because I know enough to know I am not alone here. I just want to be done with the shit stuff and be happy all the time dammit.

Peace and Love,

Jenn