Two nights ago, I spent the night with my oldest friend at the beach house. It was one of those times where I honestly wished I was able to write down our conversation in the moment, because I really got so much out of what we were talking about, and I only remember the things we discuss when I’m there. As soon as I am fully “awake” again, it all slips away.

The hardest lesson to learn in meditation- once you get past just learning how to go to the Silence and allow your thoughts become a stream- is how to accept visuals as they come to you. I’m not sure that everyone who is deep in the mystic world has the same elaborate second life that I do, but I don’t see why you couldn’t if you wanted to.

Then again, most people are not as actively pursued as I am. Most people do not have this much interference. Most people have dead lovers who stay dead, and don’t try to bleed into your current living life.

Anyway, he and I were in bed together and suddenly, I became Hermie (my Entire Self, the person I primarily present as on The Other Side). I think some part of our conversation triggered this transition, but I can’t recall what led up to it, except for the moment when I suddenly blended into her.

She’s beautiful like the freshly polished edge of a knife. Like the ripple of muscle across a panther’s back as it paces. Like the delicate fracture on the side of a building after an earthquake. Like the vivid depth inside the shade of newly spilled blood.

I am her, and I’m afraid of her.

He pulled back suspiciously, narrowing his eyes at the sudden appearance of her face. “What is this?”

She reached up to lay her hand on his cheek. “I just wanted to see you. I wanted to see how you looked at her. How you used to look at me.” Her thumb stroked across his cheek, her hand sliding around the back of his neck, pulling his mouth down to hers.

He kissed her back for a moment, then pulled away again, his eyes scouring hers. “What’s going on, though? What did he do? Are you in trouble? Did something happen? What is…”

“No! It’s nothing,” she insisted, reaching up to pull him close again. “I just wanted to see you.” Her eyes burned into his for a heavy, desperate moment before she leaned her lips up to his again.

The moment their mouths even briefly brushed together, she started inexplicably sobbing. So did I, in fact. The weight of it was so abruptly enormous that I was crying before I even realized it. It was like a brief thunderstorm, bone deep sobs that shook my entire body for about thirty seconds, then it passed back to blue skies, pulling hands, an aching mouth.

Instead of being sympathetic, my oldest friend appeared even more suspicious. He stared at her, me, her/me with his mouth drawn in a mix of empathy and exhaustion. But he stopped asking questions, and it wasn’t much longer afterwards that I fell asleep wound tight around all my pillows, crushing them against me as if I might mine warmth from their centers.

Yesterday morning, especially after binging all of Euphoria, I realized that he looks at me like I’m an addict. Like he expects me to ask him for money. Sell him on a hustle. Weave him a desperate fable. The exhaustion of my constant, unpredictable swings of behavior was easily visible in his eyes.

But certainly, if I am an addict, he is my enabler. The quiet defeat when he looks at me sometimes tells me I have wrung him dry more than once. Everything about me is a strategic move, it seems, and lately I worry genuinely that I have never loved anyone since I’ve existed. Not the kind of love other people talk about.

I really worry about it a lot, actually.

Even in this life, loving me is like trying to hold smoke. Like trying to catch a feral cat. I’m not someone you go to for softness or gentle encouragement. In fact, as soon as I feel like someone cares about me, I get extremely uncomfortable, anxious, suffocated. My eyes start searching for the exit. Oh no, you don’t want this. No… really.

And the harder part is seeing in the eyes of people who have known me longest that I am not entirely wrong to feel that way.

My two favorite words that people often use to describe me are “honest” and “loyal.” That is an enormous compliment to me, but I am also aware, as I have been for many years, that honesty is not a trait that most people value, and loyalty isn’t really the same as love.

The kind of healing I need to do in this life is a sort of ancestral healing, in the sense of my soul being its own ancestor. I have layers of my own personal identity that I desperately need to heal, especially if I am serious about not coming back here again.

There is something about my Entire Self that is treacherous, manipulative, duplicitous, and I have to find a way to repair some of this damage. If I can. Which is why this entire lifetime has been about being made smaller, conquered, disrespected, discarded. Why what I’ve needed to learn is humility, grace, asking for help.

Well. …I’m still learning.