what it is, i do not know

Each morning I wake and take my medication. I never wake from a restorative sleep but I suppose it’s better than waking at two in the morning and truly facing my thoughts. I always seem to ache all over and a stale taste of nausea rests on my tongue. I’m forced to face my body sooner than I wish but my mirror is across from my bed and immediately reminds me of what I’m constantly trying to escape; my own flesh. It’s not all bad I realize as I saunter out of my room into the kitchen where I’m greeted by Hugo and I find subtle solace in the routine of making my coffee and the both of us going outside where Hugo will sun bathe and I will smoke a cigarette.

Today is “treatment day.” I will go to Oakland for my IV ketamine treatment with Dr. Haas, or is it Dr. Lau? I pray it’s not the other doctor but I suppose it doesn’t really matter because for an hour I’ll be hooked up to a dissociative anesthetic which many often mistaken for a hallucinogen but they would be wrong. How did I get here? It’s quite simple actually; I am here to treat acute suicidal ideation which has been present for several months now. So much so I have accepted that it’s my reality, my true reality which has only one destination: a grave. Sounds bleak, maybe even selfish but it’s the truth. Yet I’m here and I’ll give this ketamine a shot as it claims to promote neuroplasticity and the ability to create new neural pathways which my usual antipsychotics have failed to do, obviously. 

As was described to me, ketamine infusion can produce hallucinations, dissociation within the body i.e. “out of body experiences,” and altered perceptions of time, space and vision. As my dosage increases these become more and more prevalent. Before each infusion, it’s encouraged that I set an intention. How do I do this when I have no intention to even exist? Try to visualize what it would be like if you felt happy. What? It’s a foreign language to me. So we settle on allowing the ketamine to do what it’s going to do and where it’s going to take me. Here it gets…dicey. Nonetheless, I lay back, tune to my ketamine specific playlist, excited that I can at least escape my reality and drift to sweet oblivion for the next sixty minutes. 

Sometimes it's sweet, what I see. The back of a man’s head, a child’s too. I’m following them through a garden or a park of some sorts. Aphex Twin’s Avril 14th plays and I feel loved. Not understood and I can sense that too but I know I’m loved and I’m shown that I’m able to love as well. But this time, I don’t see that no matter how hard I tried to get to that place. This time I am somewhere I think I’ve been before as a child, on a trip to Italy but my mind has combined it with Saint Sulpice in Paris. You see there’s a dome and there’s a gaping hole above me and it’s raining. Pews surround me and I see men from my past, various stages of lives lived long ago. My father is there as well. They all stare at me as I writhe in the water, and I’m naked. I see myself from above, the outline of my skeleton but what I feel is indescribable pain. Pain that in my real life has become so intense, so extreme that it turns into numbness. I think that it’s similar to how the brain knows to shut down the body when it’s in physical distress. Bells in Santa Fe echoes in the background and so does Master Song. And you know what? This feels…right. 

Father, why aren’t you helping me? All of these men I realize are my father. He watches me, bare. Bones and all. My suffering has no direction. An empty cry for help that is paired with a defiance that if he offered it to me, I know I would refuse. You never understood me because you never understood yourself. If you did, maybe things would be different. You see we live in this parallel structure; not only in this ketamine induced dream but real life. Pills, anger, misplaced blame, harm to self and others and above all: desperation. I believe you only ever wanted to feel loved and accepted. How have I the same inheritance yet here we are; nowhere. If all else the treatment has shown me, I’m alone, maybe always will be. This is okay, we’ll be okay. We’ll be sad, but we are okay.