The Deep

The deepest mystery that's ever floated in my own head is why I'm scared of a certain class of things. I'm not even sure they are really a class. I don't know that they actually have a lot to do with each other. Maybe it's just that the fear feels the same, so I'm assuming a relation among the causes.

Or, perhaps, they can be generalized to "altered state of consciousness, not including sleep." I love sleeping. I love dreaming. That's never been a question.

But into the fear category have gone, at various points in time, spirits and seances, Wicca and spell-casting, hypnosis, mind-altering drugs, and That Damn Thing My Ex-Girlfriend Did*. I guess they are related after all.

What am I really afraid of? Is it just that age-old fear of the unknown that I've been told all people naturally have? Meh. Perhaps that's some of it. But I've busted into plenty of other unknowns with nothing worse than a touch of nerves, without experiencing that feeling of someone squeezing my heart in a fist. Drop me into a creepy alley in the middle of the night, and my pulse will race, but I'll march forward and face whatever's there, because I'm pretty sure I can handle it.

So maybe I don't think I can handle...what, exactly? A bad trip? That certainly sounds scary, but I don't think it would be any worse than a really long nightmare (assuming I don't actually encounter a malevolent demon from the abyss, which isn't exactly Concern #1). The Bad Trip explanation makes me nervous, but it doesn't quite reach as far down as the undefinable Panic. Moving on.

The night that Shelby came and stayed with me earlier this fall, I tried to explain to her what it was that made me want to run away screaming from the subject of drugs. I stumbled over my words, replacing some of them with helpless reaching gestures while saying, "I'm afraid of that other person going away. They're there, and I'm here, and we're both 'here' in this room, but I don't know where they actually are. I'm afraid they're going to go away without me." Yes, I'm definitely afraid of being left here alone.

If you're a person that I want to be close to, I want to be WITH you, not just exist in the same space as you. Lying near each other while we each experience something completely different sounds quite unappealing. Adventuring alone is all well and fine, but if I'm going to adventure alone, why would I waste the precious time that I get to spend with you to go off by myself?

That actually explains some of my behavior from the acid trip. I worked hard to get Aiden interested in sex, even though he didn't seem very interested at first, and then we fucked for what felt like hours. I wasn't particularly more turned-on than usual - in fact, I had quite a difficult time coming - but I needed to feel the human connection, to know that he was still there, not wandering lost in some other world. Touch me. Fuck me. Stay here with me.

Simultaneously, it explains why the thought crossed my mind yesterday that the keenest interest I have in drugs is to see how they affect sex.

I'm actually surprised how much that realization feels like the Truth that I was looking for. I was afraid that my ex-girlfriend would go off and do That Damn Thing without me. The "What do you need that for when this world is perfectly interesting?" question that I mentioned last time still feels the same when reworded as, "Why do you want to be over there when I'm right here?" Alcohol doesn't trigger this fear because I know exactly where it goes, and that it doesn't result in anyone mysteriously checking out on me. The thought of someone I love using drugs extensively does scare me, because I picture them ending up permanently changed, in a place where I can no longer reach them.

I spend a lot of time alone. This "don't leave me" discovery seems like an odd contrast to that. I often get overwhelmed and claim that I wish the world would just go away, that all the people would just leave me the hell alone. I guess this is the change when I get attached to someone...this is why certain people are allowed in my introvert bubble...this is why I resist when I find myself getting close to someone new. I won't hand over the power to leave me to just anyone. First I have to trust that you won't.

Being me, of course, I hide that. When I was tiny and my mom dropped me off at school, I envied the kids who held onto their parents' legs and screamed and cried and begged them not to leave. I wanted to do that. That was how I felt, but I knew it wasn't okay to express it. Being needy wasn't approved behavior. So I just let my mom leave and pretended it was fine.

The fear has matured since I was three, of course. I don't panic when someone walks out of a room. I'm not on the verge of tears every Monday morning when I go back to my own town until Friday night. But I can say that when I look back over the patterns that have appeared in my life, the things I've gotten most upset about, the things that trigger my OCD, the things I'm afraid of...they all fit this paradigm perfectly. They're all variations on a theme of Separation Anxiety.


*Something complicated that involved role-playing and visiting a mysterious "elsewhere" that couldn't be experienced by normal people who weren't "awoken."