hsphaven

“It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has travelled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages. And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever. But there is no other way. The river can not go back. Nobody can go back. To go back is impossible in existence. The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear, because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.” Khalil Gibran

I will have to go over emails I’ve sent people to help me remember the last week. Writing and art are usually people’s only glimpse into my inner world, a dark and terrifying place, though that inner world is starting to spill over into the outside world now.

My sleep has reached an all time low. I am not sleeping at night, nor the morning. The sun sets, the sun rises, the sun sets, the sun rises. The birds start up. My dad gets up and I hear the scrape of piping in the walls when he uses the water. Neighbours get up and start their machinery. I’m awake through it all. It’s maddening. I start to feel like I’m tripping on drugs. And when you’re sleep deprived, everything is ten times funnier (yes, sleep deprivation giggles is actually a thing). So I was laughing so hard one night that I felt my ears and then my throat get really tight, and now it feels like an iron rod is wedged in there.

I’ve been pissed off at everything and everyone. I was up one morning typing an email when my dad peaked through the gap in my bedroom door and startled me with “Hello! Did you get woken by the noise?”

“Yeah thanks for thinking of me too when you blasted your fucking hair dryer in the bathroom outside my room!” I thought. I ignored him as I still don’t speak. I just want to be left alone and hate having no control over my environment here. Today he brought in some wood which reeked of strong glue and started drying it with the hair dryer while I was trying to make a meal in the kitchen. I had a meltdown, and stormed off into my bedroom, slamming the door shut. Finally I managed to write him a note telling him to take the fucking wood back outside. Now he has turned on the vent heating which is loud. I’m not sure why, it’s not even that cold, though maybe I’m running a bit on the hot side. We seem to have completely different temperatures. Usually I’m turning the air con off because he turns the house Antarctic.

I saw my physio. I often vent to him in emails about not just my physical issues but also other things in my life. He strikes a good balance between showing empathy/validation and challenging me. I vented to him about the ear pain I have been left with after a doctor examined my ears, and how angry I was that everyone blames me and do not take responsibility for their wrongdoings.

“I’m sick of everyone blaming me, gaslighting me, saying there’s something wrong with me, that I’m too sensitive, that I’m fucked up, that I’m the bad guy,” I wrote. “I’ve heard it in abusive relationships, from doctors……”

“Hi Zoe,” he wrote back. “Yes I can see you’re very angry about your ongoing symptoms, after what seems to have been an innocuous examination. You are not too sensitive, you are you. It’s just that your nervous system is hyper-responsive to things due to past trauma, poor sleep, poor nutrition and everything we’ve discussed.”

When I saw him he acknowledged my latest email and empathised with me. I was in a bit of a state. I was dressed in more masculine attire, rocked and rubbed my hands up and down my legs, made no eye contact, and was barely able to even write. It was excruciating. I felt infantile. I wrote short sentences all in capital letters and it was hard to spell. He would flip the pad of paper over for me. He didn’t pressure me to talk, and accepted that I couldn’t.

We talked a bit about psychedelics and ayahuasca. He told me I wasn’t really well enough to take those kind of drugs, especially in the context that I did it in. It was validating to have the severity of my mental health acknowledged by someone. He then brought up the details of a psychologist who he said does psychedelic therapy. He suggested seeing her. I was blown away by how many boxes she ticked. She specialised in trauma, borderline personality and dissociative identity disorder. I had never told my physio exactly what my diagnoses were and couldn’t believe he found someone so fitting for me. She was also spiritual. My physio asked me to tell him if I was going to see her so he could write her a letter. I wanted to hug him all session and cry, but I didn’t.

My physio told me he really wanted to help me, and suggested I let him treat my TMJ, which he believed might be contributing to my ear pain.

“You will be in control,” he told me, and suggested a gesture I could use if I wanted him to stop. He said it was up to me. He knows when to push, and when to back off.

I finally trusted him enough to let him touch me. I lay on the massage table with my hands close to my face, pressing my fingers together to form a house shape as he gently cupped my jaw. He moved to my ears. I did sort of push his hands away at one point and he moved back to my jaw. I was touched by how well he read my body language and got me despite not being able to talk. Not many people are so attune to me. It was a beautiful, completely silent language going on between us. He said he was talking to the nervous system and communicating safety to it. He told me that I didn’t need to keep going to hospital to get the care I was searching for.

He shortly stopped, saying that was enough for one day. He asked me how I found it, and I wrote “GOOD”. I was a bit overwhelmed though by ancient feelings that were coming back. I usually don’t like to be touched and feel nothing emotionally. My numbness was thawing like ice and it scared me.

He asked me when I’d like to see him next, suggesting 2-4 weeks. I wanted to see him again soon, but didn’t want to come across as needy. He suggested two weeks, as though reading my mind.

He let me recover for a while. He asked if I’d like him to leave.

“I can stay in the room if you’d like,” he said.

I didn’t really give him an answer. He ended up leaving. I lay on the table in a bit of a trance, my legs squirming and curling up into a ball. He came back and found me like this. I then got up and left hastily, not looking at him or saying goodbye. I was falling, getting in too deep. This wasn’t going to end well. “Run,” a voice in me said. I felt like telling him it’s best not to get involved with me. I felt his next patient staring at me as I left the clinic. I then climbed up some steps of an apartment and sat there for a while in a state, both wanting someone to find me and not. A man then started up a loud electric blower. I wanted to scream. I managed to make it back to my car and left. I’m lucky I didn’t have an accident on the way home. There was a fair bit of traffic, and I was frustrated by people driving too slow. When I got home I opened my laptop and emailed my physio again.

“I swear to god satan is after me and demons are real,”  I wrote. “They were right outside the fucking clinic when I left. They fucking follow me everywhere!!!!!!!! They’re fucking killing me!!!!!!!! This world is fucking killing me!!!!!! They destroy everything that’s good. Just when things start to get better or I fight back they fight back harder. They torture me. There are no words for what they did to me when I took marijuana which opened the door to them. I thought it’d never end. I pray to god they never come after you.”

I wrote another email.

“Sorry I don’t mean to spread fear,” I wrote. “You should be ok. I’m sure you’re not too worried anyway. I think it’s mainly me they’re after.”

“I’m definitely not worried Zoe, and I’m sorry that you’re so afraid,” he wrote. “Marijuana can be a wonderful medicine for some people but others find it can definitely promote paranoia and worsen symptoms of bipolar or schizophrenia. Your best drug, if you can get it, is sleep. The incredible things that a good few sleep cycles would do for your brain would make you feel better than any pharmacology known to man. See if you can calm down your system first (mindfulness) then have a warm shower, cup of honey tea, and then see if you can get a few hours of shut eye. I’ll see you in two weeks, hopefully you feel a little better from some treatment today. Even if it does nothing, I think it went pretty well in terms of establishing trust and connection, and that has to be positive.”

“Yes, I’m glad you know it went well today,” I wrote back. “It did. Thank you so much.”

I added a praying emoji and a smiling emoji with a tear.

“You’re also welcome to come to the zoom support group tonight if you like, can leave camera on or off, depending on preference,” he wrote.

I told him I would join them, and I sent another email thanking him for the info about the psychologists.

The next day I wrote more emails.

“They seem very different from most psychologists. I got an email from [psychologist] at 1am.

I thought I’d sleep better last night. I did feel calmer for a bit, but I get panic attacks and they kind of happen when I’m trying to sleep as well. I’m drifting off, then I feel like I’m dying or something and wake up again my heart racing. I don’t know what I’m experiencing or confronting. My unconscious is a very dark place. It happened again last night unfortunately. I ended up taking some benzos, which didn’t really make me feel much better (sometimes they work great, other times do nothing). They do help with panic attacks. That is how I manage my day time panic attacks, where I also dissociate pretty bad and become what you’d consider psychotic. I hide in the forest and take some benzos once I believe I am safe and I find the combination works pretty well. I finally got some sleep, but my sleep is still so shit. Head feels like a tangled ball of mass and I don’t wake up feeling refreshed at all. Those demons I spoke to you about, they actually used to harass me in my sleep as well. I said “whoever’s doing this to me fuck you, you miserable low life. You’re gonna lose this battle in the end and you know it”. And that seemed to make it stop.”

“Also, after our sessions, do stay with me until we have to finish up,” I wrote in another email. “I would usually say leave, but I have come to feel safe with you.”

“I haven’t felt like myself,” I wrote in a third email. “I feel like I’m being taken over by different parts of myself who hold different feelings, memories, strategies etc. and some of it really scares me. It’s like a battle of control over the body. I argue with some of them. I feel [psychologist] might be able to help. I had actually been looking for another therapist who does Internal Family Systems. I am going to wear my native american clothes, drag myself out of the house and go spend some time in nature away from the computer now. I used to love wearing clothes that are different, but now I am in two minds about it because people stop and comment and I can’t answer them and don’t want to draw attention to myself.”

“I didn’t bother showing you the journal as you seem to have a pretty good grasp of what’s going on,” I wrote in a fourth email. “I must say it’s refreshing to do a kind of therapy which talks directly to the body, not just keeping you in the mind all the time. That acknowledges there is a level that exists beyond the conscious mind. It is really not all that different from psychedelic therapy in that sense. But those psychedelics were just traumatic. I found out there’s meant to be a lot of preparation you should do before taking something like that, which I did none of. And even if I did, I suspect I would have had a similar experience. I agree not a good idea for me, though lately I’ve been so distressed being in my body I’ve thought about doing it again as it took me out of my body. Then the “helpers” were talking to the part which came out, which was actually a child at one point. People said I was reliving something horrendous. I still didn’t know exactly what. But the marijuana was even worse. I don’t know whether I was being tortured by demons, whether I was psychotic, or whether I was in some kind of flashback. I suspect maybe all of them.

Anyways sorry here I go again yack yack yack. I’ve not managed to get dressed or leave my room. And my ears are fucking killing me.”

“I could have had a physical reaction to the plant too,” I wrote in a fifth email. “I think I was overdosed on it. I remember not being able to breathe. It was actually pretty negligent of them not to call an ambulance. I’m just so traumatised from it.”

I didn’t get a reply to my emails. I went swimming with a friend that night. My friend said that night was the worst he’d seen me.

The next day I wrote my physio another email, titled “torture”.

“You know sometimes I wish I did die at that goddamn ayahuasca ceremony. It would have saved another six years of torture. I have spent the past 18 hours asking people how to bring on an out of body experience, suicidal, fighting off urges to take another overdose, wishing I had heroin, scrambling around in my collection of drugs wondering if there’s something, anything, that would give me some relief. I took dexamphetamine at night thinking maybe I could transcend my physical agony if I felt better mood-wise. It’s not meant to be taken at night as it stops you sleeping, but I don’t sleep anyway so what the fuck. I thought maybe I could bring on another manic episode with it, or at the very least be able to actually do something other than sit in my room on the laptop 24/7. It did nothing. I did manage to drag myself out of the house and went swimming with my friend at 2am. I got lost in my own little world out there. Then my friend called me from shore, snapping me back. I didn’t realise how deep I was and struggled to swim back.

We sat in the car at 4am and my friend asks me whether I’d snorted cocaine or something because I kept scratching my nose. My stomach wouldn’t stop making noises, though I wasn’t even hungry, even though I don’t think I’d eaten anything all day. I said to him I didn’t think I was up to going on to Pancake Parlour. We listened to some songs in the car, but they were just noise, eliciting nothing in me emotionally anymore, not even my own songs. I show him my playlist. On it is “The Way I See Things” by Lil Peep. My friend says he cannot stand to listen to Lil Peep as his songs are just, too sad. I think Lil Peep ended up dying from an overdose, like all my favourite singers.

We go into the house and I wait with my friend while his uber comes, offering him my dad’s arm chair, the only seat in the house which doesn’t have shit dumped all over it. Once he leaves I go to bed but don’t sleep and lie there writhing in agony coughing and still feeling like I have a fucking rod wedged in my throat. I managed to fall asleep around 8am and got maybe four hours of shit sleep at the most. That’s the best I’m going to get.

I’ve woken up sick, nauseous, breathless. I keep swallowing trying to get rid of the lump in my throat but it’s still there. At times I’ve felt like I’m going to pass out, and wish I do as that would be a welcome relief.  

You’ll be sorry you’ve ended up with me. I’m like the crocodile in Gone Bush, the card no one wants. I’m unrewarding, I’m constantly suicidal, I spam people’s inboxes with misery and no matter how much people try to help me, I continue to deteriorate, leading them to finally give up on me, or wonder whether they are actually making me worse. My disability worker is still not back from his stress leave, which I contributed to. I think I was too far gone long before you met me. My whole life is fucked. It’s like this degenerative thing. The point I’ve reached is like that point of no return they talk about with climate change. So much ice has melted that there’s nothing to reflect the heat, which then melts even more ice and it all speeds up.

My darkest moments are when I don’t even think death will save me. I wonder if I’m going to carry all this into the next life, stuck in a perpetual, inescapable cycle of hell, just like in that marijuana trip, or the false awakening nightmares I have where I can’t actually wake up.”

Then came the second email that day:

“Postman knocks on the door with another fucking parcel from my spending spree. It’s like Christmas every day here. I couldn’t answer as I was on the toilet with diarrhea, cold chills and in pain. All my parcels are stacked by the door. I don’t even care to open any of them.”

The third email:

“Do you know how I can get a do not resuscitate order in place? Like how would paramedics know you’ve got one? I’ve seen it in movies where people have it tattooed across their chest.”

“I’m not sure you could, given that you’ve been under such regular psychiatric / psychological medical care,” he wrote back. “No doctor would certify that you were making the decision “of sound mind” and so you’d be considered incompetent to make the choice. 

We do have voluntary assisted dying in Victoria, it’s legal, but you’d have to pass a psych screen first which would be unlikely. 

Wouldn’t it be better to try to get better a bit instead, and see if life doesn’t suck as much as you think? Once you’re dead that’s it, no more chances, at least alive there is hope for recovery. 

Here’s a tip, getting some actual sleep might help. Some regular exercise and maybe better eating would help. Your outlook would change, you’d be less paranoid. Dexamphetamine are not a sleep aid, knock it off. Try to optimize your day for better sleep, instead of just doing everything arse backwards and then suffering from the lack of it. You’ve literally done everything perfectly to make you less likely to sleep well. It’s not going to happen magically, is a skill that requires some effort and time to do well. 

Everyone can get better, you’re not broken or damaged, you don’t have alien physiology. You’re just a human like me, but you’re struggling for sure. 

Try again, there’s always tomorrow. 

Go for a long walk, in the afternoon / evening sun as it cools a little. Get tired. Light exposure is critical, from sun shine. 

Go for a swim, during the day time. 

Bike ride? 

Come to the clinic for a gentle massage. 

Optimize your day for better mood and physiology, just try one thing at a time. Habits only change slowly, just do one thing consistently better each day.”

I forwarded my physio’s email to my therapist.

“I’m not sure how I feel about my physio’s reply,” I wrote. “It’s true, who would sign off a no resuscitate order with my psych history? I need one doctor to sign it. Maybe Dr Zac would?

I have a wonderful session with my physio and then he gets an email like this from me. I bet he’s already getting pretty pissed off with me like every other therapist.”

“I have to get the hell away from here,” I wrote in another email to my therapist. I wasn’t sure where. I’d kinda burnt my bridges at the farm I ran away to after absconding from hospital where I nearly caused a traffic accident.

“I was conceived arse backwards,” I wrote in another email.

“I lay on my bed listening to music for 9 hours straight today,” I wrote in a fourth email. “It was this playlist that came up on YouTube, and I thought wow there’s actually some other tortured soul just like me out there. Then I realised there’s not, a robot had created the playlist just for me based on the kind of music I listen to.”

“Unless you have any other ideas, I plan on clearing out my car and living homeless,” I wrote in a fifth email.

I ended up going swimming with my friend again that night. He said I stayed in the water for one and a half hours, a long time after he got out. I wasn’t there at all. Nothing felt real. It was like living in a dream world. We walked back to the car in silence and I felt like I was actually already dead. When we got home I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. My eyes looked so scary. Just completely vacant.

That next day this thing that had been building in me reached climax and I broke. I was still awake at 9am and decided to just start my day. I decided this would be the day that I turn my life around. I managed to drag myself down to the shops to get some stuff for my throat which my physio suggested and some manuka honey. I was lucky I didn’t have an accident. The receipt machine malfunctioned at the shop and wouldn’t stop printing receipts. I thought that I had caused it to malfunction. I made it home and ate something. Then I decided to try get some sleep. But when I drifted off, there was something really dark there. I woke up extremely nauseous and my hands and arms also turned numb. While I could still text and hold a phone I texted two of my closest friends asking them to come to my house, but they just seemed confused by my request. I was home alone and was terrified. I managed to open the front door, which was a struggle with my hands so numb, and wandered onto the road. I sat on the road, trying to communicate to people that I needed help. It was a hot, windy day. There was an irritable guy right near me fucking around at his car and he completely ignored me. The wind was so loud it muffled the noises I made in agony. It felt like the time I almost drowned in the surf and no body could hear me as it was so noisy. The postman arrived to deliver another bloody parcel from my spending spree, saw me pacing around screaming and just ignored me too. Where were people when you actually want them around? I just needed someone to be with me. I felt rage so intense I wanted to kill people. I was in an extremely altered state and started to slip into solipsism syndrome, which is a terrifying type of dissociation and existential terror where you feel like no one really exists, that everyone’s a hallucination and you are completely alone in the universe. It is also considered a form of psychosis. I went back into my house and sat under the shower fully clothed screaming, crying and clawing at the glass. All the red dye washed off my dress like blood. It was one of the loneliest hours of my life. Eventually my mum came to the house. Apparently a neighbour saw me outside and called my dad, who then called my mum as he was out. She found me in the shower and thought I’d injured myself because of all the red everywhere. She called an ambulance. Shortly my dad arrived home and came into the bathroom.

“What’s the matter?” he asked me. We live under the same roof yet he has no fucking clue where I’m at. He touched me. I just wanted him to go away. I screamed louder and kicked him. Eventually the ambulance arrived. The paramedics passed my “bed box”, a noise proof box I sleep in which now also contains a swag made of grey semi-transparent, radiation-blocking material a little like mosquito netting. They climbed over piles of clothes, and stood in my tiny ensuite with its dirty sink and cluttered table space. Bottles of alcohol and medication packets were lying on the floor. By this point I had calmed down and my numbness and nausea had passed. While it only takes one look at my house to tell I’m clearly not functioning, I gave them no grounds to commit me to hospital. They asked my mum what services were looking after me and Mum told them how everyone had dumped me basically. The paramedics offered to take me to hospital to get my stomach issues checked out, but I decided not to go with them. They then left. I didn’t want to go to hospital, I didn’t want to see another psych cunt, I didn’t want any more medical procedures, I didn’t want to know what was wrong with me as I feared it was something bad, and I felt they wouldn’t understand what I was going through. I kept thinking that a demon was trying to possess me and ultimately kill me. The self-destruction, like the way biblical characters would cut themselves with stones. Becoming mute. A change in personality. Isolating from friends and family. Becoming nauseated and having diarrhea. Sudden loss of weight. Sleep disturbance. Hysterical laughter. Losing things. It was all there. My mind is still entertaining these thoughts about demon possession. It is almost like this entity has now lodged itself in my throat and is literally strangling me. But I wasn’t going to tell the paramedics this. The hospital might not let me out this time.

My episode was like a storm. It cleared something from me. I remember burping in the shower, which a friend said is a good sign that our system is releasing stuck baggage. I took my red dress off and had a proper shower. Some of the red has stained the cream bath mat, a reminder that this day wasn’t a dream and actually happened. I was exhausted yet terrified of falling asleep. I was terrified of waking up like that again, or even worse getting trapped in that dark place. That night I took some olanzapine again, the antipsychotic I weaned off from last year. I ended up sleeping. I had a dream that my physio knocked on my door and told my mum he didn’t want to see me anymore.  

My throat is still uncomfortable and my stomach is not happy, constantly making noises as though full of croaking frogs. I find it embarrassing and it makes me not want to see people. I’m wondering if starving myself has damaged my gut. I’m also wondering if I have developed a food intolerance such as a wheat allergy, have Irritable Bowel Syndrome, a stomach bug, or even a parasite. I am still waking up quite unwell. I am trying to eliminate certain foods from my diets, such as wheat and gas-producing foods, but this just leaves me with barely anything to eat, especially being vegan. I think I will go see a doctor, but unfortunately will have to wait until next week as it’s the weekend.  

Last night I sat up having an existential crisis and grappling with the fact that we all die. I left my therapist 8 emails to read. I sent him “The infinite zoom”. I watched a TED talk “Psychosis or Spiritual Awakening”, and read a Reddit discussion where people talk about their ego death and realising they are God.

“We are cells in planet earth that is a living being, earth is a cell in the universe which is a living being, the universe is inside another living being, and we keep going until we get to God,” I wrote to my therapist as he slept. “And then we realise that we are God. And…. God is us.

If we are God, then are we creating everything we see around us?

If the true God were a brain, we’d be a thought.

Why is there so much evil here if this is just an expression of God? Does that mean God is not actually love, but something a little more sinister? If I am one with everything and everyone else, then does that mean I am evil as well?”

I posted a few quotes from Reddit and other sources:

“”We are a way for the universe to know itself.” – This quote, often attributed to Carl Sagan, encapsulates the idea that through our existence, the universe experiences itself by perceiving and interacting with its own creation”

“It’s awakening to who we really are at source. It’s a very powerful feeling when you first understand the concept and the meaning that we share the same consciousness and that Conscienceness is actually what we called God!. It’s really quite something when the penny drops. Just be grateful you understand how interconnected we all are and just how special everything is. Most people in life never even stumble on it. Every great religion points to this cryptic truth and is the inner meaning of all religions as people discovered this understanding. Consciousness is life/god experiencing itself from every vantage point. What a beautiful illusion. If they was no apparent separation what else would be able to experience the beautiful universe… For if there was no observer and separation god/consciousness would be alone and no other part of itself to enjoy it all with. Peace and love to all of us. X”

“I had a near death experience, I flouted out of my body and up and up until I reached outer space. I flouted further and further from earth until I was in deep space. I missed earth and got mad because I thought I would never see earth again. I told myself fine if I can’t go back to earth I will make my own earth like planet, and I formed a planet, I tried to make it as much like earth as I could remember.”

I actually found these ideas pretty scary. It sounded lonely being God and terrifying to have our egos dissolve so much and float so far away from earth that we lose sight of every individual we met here. It’s like we are both completely one yet completely alone at the same time. When in these altered states talking to other people just feels like I’m talking to myself. The final comment on Reddit stood out to me:

“This has actually scared me a little. I get anxiety thinking we are all one, and thus alone. But that is my human ego putting human emotions on the ultimate I Am. The absolute I Am does not have anxiety, yet experiences it thru my human ego. It does not cause I Am to be anxious, just to add to the our ultimate knowledge.

This is deep, and most people can’t grasp it. But when you do, it totally blows you away!”

While usually I feel nothing outside of me exists, last night I also started to question whether I even existed. This is something that a YouTuber, who sounds a little manic honestly, talks about in their video, “A Solipsistic Psychosis”. He mentions suicide, and how there is really no self there to kill. “Roses are red, violets are blue, I don’t exist and neither do you,” a person commented.

I feel like these thoughts can drive a person crazy or even kill them if they get in too deep with them. I don’t know if anyone’s actually allowed to know the truth. It reminds me of the Basilisk in Harry Potter which kills anyone who looks directly at it. Only a dying person gets to see the truth.

My anxiety continues to be rife today. I feel like I’m going to die. There is a strange rattling vibration that has got into every room of the house. I first noticed it in my en suite. Then I noticed it in the living room near the TV. Now I am hearing it in the back bedroom (behind my Alice in Wonderland “We’re all mad here” tapestry) which I moved to, thinking I might sleep better in here. I keep wondering if it’s caused by a supernatural entity attempting to harass me and communicate its presence within the house. According to Michael Murchie on Hub Pages, infestation is the first stage of demonic possession. Demons thrive off chaos and mess. Now, just as I write this and research rattling noises and supernatural entities, the smoke detector has gone off. This is the second time today. When it went off earlier today my dad said it was because there was dust in the heater he turned on.

“How do you know it was dusty?” I asked.

“I could smell it,” he said.

But now it has gone off again. It was sitting in the courtyard outside.

I don’t know if it’s trying to tell me something.

According to one source, “In a spiritual context, a smoke detector going off can be interpreted as a warning sign, signifying a need to address a potentially destructive or harmful situation in your life, often related to negative thoughts, emotions, or behaviors that could be causing inner turmoil or “burning” you out, prompting you to take action to cleanse or purify your life.”

The smoke detector is a wake-up call, a “forceful message from your intuition or higher self to pay attention to an issue that needs immediate action.”