hsphaven

The day where I’d leave Melbourne and return to the country approached. I had teed up the new caravan to rent. I had teed up transport. I bought doonas, heaps of hot water bottles and a bag full of heat packs so I was better prepared for the cold, all while unwell. I kept waking up to a peculiar hammering. It was usually just a few bangs and then would stop for a while. One day, I heard three bangs, the number which I seemed to be seeing everywhere. I read a very scary post on social media once where someone reported hearing three knocks on her door at night. Another member said that it was demons and her death would be imminent. The number three is a very significant number spiritually, as seen in the Holy Trinity. I was convinced the number meant something. In fact I was convinced everything meant something, that there was hidden signs and meaning in the light flickering, the smoke detectors malfunctioning, etc.

I started to become more and more convinced that demons were harassing me and, ultimately, trying to possess me and kill me. I couldn’t sleep and would wake up sick and panicking. I was experiencing an insane inner unrest like I’d never experienced before. It would happen when I lay down. I’d toss and turn madly. I felt like I had to keep moving- moving rooms, moving residence- because as soon as I stopped this thing would consume me.

I started taking olanzapine again, an anti-psychotic sometimes used for nausea, agitation, mania and sleep. Then my physio suggested that perhaps the strange flashes of light and body jolts I reported to him, which I thought was a sign I was ascending spiritually, was actually serotonin syndrome/a serotonin imbalance caused by my medication. It had not occurred to me that it might be the olanzapine. I was only on a low dose and I’d never had any problems with it before. I wondered whether my brain chemistry had changed. As it is said, no man steps in the same river twice. It is also possible that my brain is going haywire from going on and off the medication all the time. But I wanted the shocks to stop so I started weaning off the olanzapine again.

The night before leaving Melbourne, my mood took a sudden upward turn and then went splat on the ground. I discovered that while I was away my dad took down my expensive radiation-blocking tent and he removed the fabric, which is not meant to be removed from the frame, and lost one of the metal ends. I wasn’t able to put it back together and was devastated and furious. I was fed up living with family. I was so angry all the time I’d kick and hurl things around the house and slam doors. I was a prisoner in my bedroom as I just couldn’t hack being around my dad. I was anxious all the time and couldn’t think clearly around him. I was sick of having no control over my own space. The amount of times I’ve turned the house upside down looking for something only to find one of my parents had moved it. My mum takes my stuff to wash, and takes it upon herself to unpack my suitcase. Recently, I couldn’t find my ultrasound referral and thought I was going crazy moving things mindlessly, only to find my dad had gone through my bag from hospital and taken it. It’s crazy making and extremely disrespectful. I told a therapist that I was “fucking sick of this shit”. Choosing which parent to live with was like choosing between Liberal and Labor, both of whom are awful (in my opinion). When I lived with my mum she said that as long as I was under her roof I would get up when she wanted, as though she owned me. And because I’m so ill, which THEY contributed to, I’m jobless, homeless and pretty much stuck dependent on the very people who hurt me. Most of my friends are in pretty similar situations.

After discovering my dad had ruined my radiation-blocking tent, I spiralled. I fell down a very strange rabbit hole on YouTube. One video, “What Really Happens After Death: Exposing the Soul Trap and the Hijaked Reincarnation Cycle“, which was actually a pretty positive video, turned into “This Woman Used Black Magic Against You- But I’m Breaking It Now #jesus”, “GOD WARNED: STAY AWAY FROM THIS DANGEROUS PERSON! #godmessage #jesus”, “GOD IS UPSET, DON’T MAKE THE MISTAKE TO IGNORE THIS!!”, “GOD SAYS: SOMETHING HUGE IS COMING…. BUT YOU MUST KEEP IT FROM YOUR FAMILY!”, “Be careful! The house you are staying in is not safe. Inside, the walls that wakes up after midnight..” The videos were a robot claiming to be a message from God, with a creepy picture of Jesus with no eyes pointing his finger at the camera. I felt like they were directed at me and struggled to differentiate truth from bullshit. At times I really resonated with some of the things being said, such as when they said they knew I didn’t speak. But other things sounded bizarre, like something out of a fucking BDSM scene:

“I chose you not because of your strength but because you were willing”, one video said. It told me to “obey”.

The videos were making me paranoid about everyone and everything, They became incredibly threatening, telling me that something bad was going to happen to a family member and I had to keep quiet, or that I was about to be “banned”. I worried my physio had finally had enough of me and was going to end our relationship.

It all had an eerie similarity to when I took Vyvanse, an ADD stimulant, which sent me troppo. I became manic, and had the “hyperreligiosity” (or, in my case, hyperspirituality) which is common in mania and psychosis. The mania then turned into a scary panic attack. My heart was racing and I called 000 because I thought I was going to die. Later that night, I read or watched something online which similarly got to me. I can’t remember what it was exactly. I’m not sure if I saved it, and would be too scared to revisit it anyway. It was something philosophical about external reality being a product of the mind and basically a hallucination. It got to me so much and I experienced something I’ve since discovered has a term: solipsism syndrome. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever experienced, though is not surprising I experienced it as I’ve lived a very isolated life where I was cut off from others. I believed no one else really existed and I was the only one in the entire universe. Most people can read about the theory of solipsism, maybe get it on an intellectual level and move on, but that night I felt the weight of it with my entire being. I ended up being diagnosed as psychotic and was hospitalised. After my discharge I still wasn’t right so my case management team attempted to hospitalise me again, which is when I fled Melbourne once again and hid in a friend’s beach house for five weeks.

I was particularly vulnerable and suggestable that night when I watched all these videos. Usually I would not pay any attention to stuff like that, but given my headspace I started watching them. I was in a very strange state where I had all the energy of mania coupled with all this darkness, fear and paranoia. I sent a total of 39 texts to another therapist that night.

I vented about my family and the confusion I felt, loving them yet also hating being around them and wanting to go “no contact” with them. They were both always there but never there. There in my face when I didn’t want them there, and not there to help me when I did need them, or in the ways I needed:

I was freaking out about this idea that there is a “false light” or “soul trap” when we die, created by dark entities to shoot us back down into another miserable life on earth. I was terrified of having to go through the things I’ve been through in this life all over again. I didn’t think I would be able to tell the difference between a real light and a false light, judging by the way I cannot tell a killer from a saviour, as Fuel sings in Shimmer. I felt trapped in an eternal cycle of torture.

If you watch Kerry K’s video, she believes that the “soul trap” is currently abolished. This, she argues, is due to the rising of the collective consciousness and good extraterrestrials stepping in. But I started to think that maybe demons were attacking me and trying to possess and destroy me because they wanted to trap souls and hijack reincarnation again. I felt like a powerful light being who was the one keeping the “soul trap” away and thought that was why they were attacking me. It all started to feel like Stranger Things or The Matrix come to life!

I went on Facebook and found I had joined more groups I did not remember joining, though they were not out of character for me. They were spiritual groups.

I told the therapist who I messaged all night that he should stay away from me as I had bad vibes. I got no sleep that night. The next morning I heard car doors shut outside and worried my therapist had sent an ambulance or police to my house to take me away. I opened my laptop and saw there was a frost warning.

“What a divine day to go back to the country where there’s no electricity or heating!” I emailed my physio morbidly.

“Guess it’s not the worst time to die,” I added. “Apparently there’s no more soul traps/hijacked reincarnations by dark entities now”

I finished my packing and met my disability support worker, who would be driving me to the country, around midday. I had nothing in me to get changed so jumped in the car in my pyjamas. We then stopped at the shops so I could pick up some medication from the chemist. I walked out into public in my pyjamas. I couldn’t hack the sound of the vacuum cleaner in the chemist and almost had to leave. I felt like people could tell something was a bit off with me. My disability support worker texted me saying she was in a café and I could meet her at the car. I just wanted to hide in the car. I tried opening the four wheel drive but it was locked. I was then approached by a man. I stared at him, a terrified look in my eyes.

“That’s my car, love,” he said.

I felt so embarrassed. I am face and car blind and am still unable to recognsie my support worker’s car. I then managed to find her car, recognising my belongings in the back seat. She shortly came out of the café and unlocked the car for me. I sat inside just wanting to disappear.

I really wasn’t up to sitting in a car for three hours with another human being, but I wasn’t able to drive there myself either. I barely survived. I was so overwhelmed I couldn’t stand her asking me questions. I had nothing left in me to respond or fake a smile. We passed a theme park.

“We should stop there,” my worker said. “That will bring us some fun.”

I laughed.

She went on about earthly, monetary problems which just completely washed over me. I was in a completely different world, disconnected from “reality” and acutely aware of how temporary life is and how it is just a speck in the grand scene of things. It all just felt like a dream and at times I’ve wondered if I’m actually already dead or am in a coma. I wondered how people go through their lives never questioning reality and existence like I did, or thinking about death every day. My worker got a phone call and I worried it was somebody telling her I belonged in a mental hospital and she had to take me back to Melbourne. We stopped at a camping store to get a gas heater and bottle, which I worried would blow up from my energy. I wandered around the shop in an altered state and was convinced the shop keepers were looking at me strangely. I kept expecting the cops or someone to come in and commit me.

“Who needs mushrooms when you have sleep deprivation,” I emailed my physio, who I had previously asked whether he knew which mushrooms were the magic ones.

It all felt like a very bad drug trip.

I was burnt to a crisp. When we finally arrived at my friend’s bushland property, where I am staying, I had nothing in me to be around her. She is a compulsive talker and I knew she’d just squeeze me dry. I ended up going for a walk that evening. I lay on a hill and watched UFOs in the sky. The little specks of light gliding across the sky calmed me a bit. I then went to walk back but I couldn’t see a thing. I was lost in every sense of the word. I ended up texting my friend asking her to drive down the driveway so I could see where it was. I managed to see the car light in the distance and headed that way. With all this “false light” stuff swirling round my head, I wondered what would happen when I got to the car and whether this was all another trap. It was eerie to have my internal world play out in the external world like this. Life really can be darkly humorous.

After spending over four hours with my disability support worker, over an hour with my friend and the caravan man setting up the caravan, and then another three hours with my friend, all on no sleep, I craved solitude which was like air to an asthmatic. I remained incredibly jumpy and hallucinated giant cockroaches in the dark edges of the caravan. I felt the floor vibrating, until I realised it was actually me shaking, probably because I was so overwhelmed. I took some benzos to sleep last night and stop my brain from melting out of my ears. I finally got some sleep. It was so cold last night I breathed fog, though I managed the cold. I slept in the store’s warmest sleeping bag inside another large flannel sleeping bag with three hot water bottles, two doonas, and some cozy panda gloves. I felt like a pocket burrito! I feel a lot better today. I slept until two in the afternoon. Now that I have my own space I feel a lot better. It was also a lovely sunny day, which has left me with electricity tonight. The place is off the grid and run on solar power. Usually I don’t have power at night or even during the day if it’s cloudy, which is going to happen more and more as winter sets in. I don’t mind roughing it in a caravan with minimal electricity and no toilet though. I feel quite at home in nature. I just need my own space and some peace and quiet. I don’t ask for much. I don’t know what I’m going to do about my sleep. Benzos help but they are not a long term solution. But for the first time in a long time I am happy.