…It causes me to fall asleep, very quickly and very deeply.  I struggle a bit to keep awake, the away I do when I’m watching Craig Ferguson while I’m super sleepy.  Except I’m not lying on the couch now;  I’m half standing and half sitting against a rock which normally isn’t a position you could fall asleep in.  Evidently the boys see me drifting away, because they ask me if I’m okay.  I say yes because I don’t feel sick.  I just need to close my eyes and doze a bit.

I can still hear the boys’ voices as I fall asleep.  But gradually their voices become less distinctive, less clear, and eventually it feels too tiring to pay attention to what they’re saying and their voices simply turn into ambient noise.  At this point I guess I’m in a dream state because my eyes are closed but I don’t realize they’re closed.  I see red before my eyes; just a sea of red with moving red swirls.  I usually see the colour red when I close my eyes in a lighted environment, but this is a really bright red, with no dark undertones.

By now I have completely forgotten who I am and where I am and what’s been happening.  I start feeling a lot of pain; not a sharp, crippling pain that makes you cry out, but a pain from extreme and irremedial discomfort.  In fact, I am starting to feel like I am stuck in an infinite loop that’s impossible to get out of.  Seeing the swirls probably contribute to the feeling.  I am also sleeping while half-leaning against a rock. so obviously my body really wants to crash to the ground but part of me knows that if I let myself go I’d hit my head against the rocks or something bad.  So my mind is fighting with my body and it just feels like an eternal bout of back and forth, which further contributes to that infinite loop mentality.  By this time I’m completely zonked out and the boys keep asking me over and over again whether I’m okay.  Their repetition of the same words contribute aurally to the infinite loop sensation.  It’s a complete 4-D experience.  I feel like I’m in hell.  An intense feeling of impending doom comes over me and I’m struck with the thought that this is what life is: being trapped in an infinite loop for an infinite amount of time with no way out.  This is the actual meaning of life.  And now that I’ve realized this, it’s just going to feel this way for the rest of my life.  Or just forever, depending on whether I’m in hell now.  Either way.  I wanna die.

This goes on for a bit and I want very much for it to end, but I still feel like I’m stuck.  But the boys’ voices are starting to become a bit more clear and I start to register the meaning of their words.  I still hear them as general male voices and not that of anyone I know, so I’m still not remembering where I am and who they are.  It still doesn’t make sense for me to respond and I don’t try.  I hear them discussing whether they should put ‘her’ somewhere, not knowing who ‘her’ is, and I suddenly feel just slightly less uncomfortable.  I still don’t know what’s happening and I certainly don’t get the feeling that someone is carrying me, but that’s actually what’s happening.

In an instant the hellish feeling ends and I’m completely comfortable.  I feel blissful and revel in the moment, hoping that it stays this way.  I still continue to hear the boys’ voices, and I’m starting to be able to tell them apart and recognize them as voices I know.  It still feels like a dream though and I neglect to respond.  But I feel someone checking for my pulse and someone else holding my hand briefly, and the physical contact feels too real and it hits me that it’s all actually happening.  I start remembering what we were doing before the daymare began and the little pieces — the voices, the discomfort, the looping — start falling into place.  It still doesn’t make complete sense, and all I can still think about is how glad I am that I’m not in that loop anymore.  And that I just want to continue to lay there and sleep.

The boys are still talking and one of them suggests calling paramedics.  Up until now the boys’ words have all been very ‘everyday’ words, words that you hear all the time, that apply to everything in any situation, even one within a dream.  But the word ‘paramedics’ somehow screams out at me; it feels out-of-place and too real, and I understand that it’s time I try to do something.  So I move my head.

For the next few minutes they continue to test my responsiveness.  I open my eyes when they ask if I can see and it feels too weird.  It feels like I’ve been in a coma, that it’s been forever since I’ve seen the real world.  The thing is, it doesn’t feel like I hadn’t been seeing things prior to opening my eyes.  I was seeing red swirls, and the fact that I had been thinking and dreaming makes me feel like I had been ‘seeing’ things all along, and now to actually open my eyes and see for real, freaks me out because it makes me realize I was in my own crazy little world for a while, in broad daylight.  One of the boys runs off and comes back with water, and I sit up to drink.  Sitting up ends up veering my mind to another direction, almost back towards the one where the infinite loop is.

The boys keep talking but I stop paying attention to them because my thoughts start overwhelming me again.  Instead of feeling life is an infinite loop though, I suddenly get the feeling that life is simply one big show; everything is predetermined and there is no way to change anything.  The boys are saying the things they’re saying because it’s scripted, I’ve met these boys because it’s written that way, and everything that is happening at this moment is happening because they all lead to what is supposed to happen in the future.  There isn’t any way to change any of it because everything will happen the way it’s supposed to.  I feel like I’m able to tell the future if I try hard, because everything that is happening right now foreshadows what’s going to happen in the future, and if I just use a bit of inductive logic I will be able to tell everyone what’s exactly going to happen.  And even if I don’t, someone will.  Someone out there, for sure, knows what’s going to happen in the future.  Everything in life is predetermined, and someone has to know everything already if everything is predetermined.  And this is life.  And I’m stuck in it.  I can only do my job, which is to act out my part in this big-ass stage production.  So I’m forever doing this job; no break, no rest.  Even when I’m sleeping, I’m sleeping as Holly-the-robot-like-girl-trying-to-be-reasonably-happy-living-life-her-way-but-really-struggling-with-the-fact-that-she-can’t-do-anything-without-considering-how-others-think-about-her.  There is no way to stop working at this job.

And then quite abruptly my thoughts turn to the slow, jaded state of my mind.  For a few consecutive minutes statements to the likes of “Fuck.  My head is forever fucked” keep running through my mind rapidly.  I feel like a retard.  Like my brain is permanently damaged and I can’t stop thinking about it, and even though I’m perfectly aware of it I can’t do anything about it.  It’s that dreadful feeling of being stuck again.  The boys now diverge from their chatter about their past experiences of a similar sort and start checking on me again, asking me directly how I’m feeling.  And I’m so convinced that I’m now handicapped in the head that I neglect to answer.  I just stare ahead at them and they say it’s better for me to talk, to let them know that I’m okay.  I just continue to stare and think “I can’t.  I’m retarded.  How can I talk?”  You see them getting exasperated, and reasonably so because today just isn’t the best day for this type of thing to happen.

The rest of it isn’t so interesting.  I struggle to stand, struggle to stay upright and walk, and struggle to form coherent sentences.  I gradually get better at each of those, through time, but I don’t start feeling completely normal until I purge on the public transit.  One of the boys went to get a barf bag especially for me, and I have it in my hand when I suddenly feel the urge.  Yet reflexively I refuse to use it because I think there’s a greater chance of getting some of it on my lap if I do.  So I go all over the floor and let it splash onto my feet.  Maybe I am indeed fucked in the head, a bit.  But I have experienced and learned a bit more about myself and others.  And this time I succeeded in not caring so much about what others think about me.