Who Am I?

I had a “bad” mushroom trip.
“Challenging,” others say.
I just wanted to heal.
This is medicine.
I wanted to be a better person and partner.
My body was defiled by something and I had to ask it to leave.
I saw hell.
I saw Heaven.
I danced with Christ.
I received an emotional transplant.
Jumped into future memories.
Experienced physical death.
I saw the beloved moon distorted.
And wreckage everywhere on the streets.
I felt other consciousnesses stream through my mind rapidly as I fell to my knees and said,
“I think I want to come home now.”
I begged to be MY consciousness back in MY body.
I worried a portal was closing as my boyfriend walked up to me.
I felt his face.
Caressed his cheek.
Looked into his eyes.
“I’m afraid I did something bad and I’m in another dimension where we don’t end up together.”

“Was any of that real?” I asked him two months after we split.

“I don’t think it’s unreal,” he said.

I think about our home after that trip.

How I welcomed society in through the front door.

And the sounds of echo chambers spewed from my lips.

And when it ended: “I don’t even know who you’re breaking up with,” I said.

What happened to me? I wonder often.

I want to come back home now.

I miss me.
The girl who promised herself not to play small as she reinvented her life and crossed the border into California.
Who knew she could do it all.
Write the words.
Tell the stories.
Share the stillness.
I miss the girl who already made it through hell to save herself.
Fighting a fire of flames that were not just her own nor could be exhausted until she surrendered and added her own fuel to them wildly.
I miss the girl who made a life out of ashes.
Who extracted wisdom from trees.
Learned her voice through the whales.
And danced with the breeze on the way to the ocean.
The girl with the sharp tongue and the quick wit.
Who really loves to belly laugh.
The girl who studied the microbiome, sleep, and bio-individual wellness.
Who valued theta waves in the form of daydreaming, napping in the sun, floating in salt water, a warm drink, a candle, prioritizing nine hours of sleep, and slowing all the way down.
Who fell in love in this space and into a dimension where time stood still.
Speaking through our eyes.
Breathing in rhythm.
Two souls resting in homecoming.
I was also the girl who longed so much for stability and to build a life together.
She went back on her words.
Put shoes back on.
And sat back down in the office chair.
Back to something familiar.
And now sits alone.
Nodding along to faces on screens.
She has never met in real life.
Isolated for days on end losing her Self.
Playing the game she vowed never to enter again in exchange for health insurance and money.
All for a life that has now been buried.
Another home lost to the societal rift.
“Ah, another COVID death,” a friend nodded as I shared my story.
I’m pretending everything is as it should be.
Things happen for a reason.
Right?
Well, here I am, searching for the girl who briefly tasted a glimpse of absolute freedom when she was once fully alive.
The girl who was healing her trauma.
Moving her body.
Loving on love.
Until I made a decision that led to the floorboards parting and I found myself knocked back to the underworld again.

He told me he could no longer hide his truth.
“Go…I trust you.” I said, scared of myself.
Who I became when I let others fill my head.
So you leapt and I crashed.
Silence filled the space of the manufactured arguing.
Stuff I didn’t even care about.

Here I am saving myself again.
Looking in the mirror and asking,
“Who. Are. You?”
Now I sit alone in an office chair, swiveling back and forth.
Holding society’s polarizing views in my mind.
Am I losing it? Or are we?
I see the cognitive dissonance and the double think.
The divide between holistic and allopathic.
Natural immunity and pharmaceuticals.
Capitalism and Anti-Capitalism.
Control and Freedom.
DEI and Equality of Outcome
Trauma and Sovereignty

I’m finding myself time and again at a fork in the road.
Observing every decision and how much our environment shapes us.
The content we consume molds us.
The people around us average us.
We can always let go of who we are.
And let it be decided.
Or remember who we are
And decide who we want to be.

I am praying for unity.
Of the mind, body, and spirit.
I would like to come home now.
I don’t want to fight about what’s right or wrong for someone else.
I want every individual to be exactly who they are and decide for themselves what is right for them.
To be in integrity with their mind, body, and spirit.
I find myself some nights on my knees praying.
For me to come home.
That you’re okay.
The world will be.

I miss knowing me.

but for one day:
I walked in her bare feet.
Swam in her skin.
Danced in her heart.

I remembered her.

I am coming back home now.

Whole.