500 Lives

I went to a techno concert. I normally wouldn’t do this, not at all. I’m always telling people how much I hate techno music and that I only enjoy songs with lyrics. However, there I was. The place was called Drugstore and really, it fit perfectly. We walked in to a dark space with flashing lights and later learned that it had originally been a butcher’s shop. How fitting to imagine the blood dripping from large slabs of meat hanging from the ceiling. There was a statue of a crucifix on the wall complete with a Serbian-looking Jesus. It was creepy as fuck.

I was trying to enoy it, though. My swiss friend really liked the DJ and was saying that it was so much cheaper to see him here. She even paid for me just to have company. She was really into it. So were all the people tripping out to this weird collection of beats that will never constitute a rythm for me. But we were there, so we were dancing. Well, I was trying without much success. And then came the promise of fun. You know, the kind of feeling you can only get from a very specific green substance you light up and inhale. I thought it would be nice to get in the mood and loosen up to get through the rest of the night.

I felt it kick in after two hits. I was relaxed and floaty. And then I took six, seven more. I was going at it like I was on a mission and well… It was good. For about five minutes, I felt amazing and fluid and my body was moving automatically to the music. It was connected to the beats in a way is not consciously possible and I felt like flying. Then we went to the bathroom. Then things got bad.

I could tell I was weird because my body wasn’t obeying my commands automatically. I marched through the crowd to the bathroom in time with the beat. I couldn’t disconnect. When we got there, I couldn’t speak properly. I felt stuck inside my mind, as if I couldn’t move outside of myself. While my friend went into a creepy stall with no lock, the freak out settled in completely. I realized I was shaking. I realized I was far away from home and that if I passed out it would take some time until these trippy weirdos could get me some help. I thought about if my travel insurance would cover a bad trip. I felt like I was sinking with no water in sight. I thought I would drown and started whimpering. I thought about how stupid I probably looked and how someone could easily take advantage of me right now…

The boyfriend said take care of yourself. Always, I answered. I always do. And I do, really. I don’t drink too much, I don’t take so many risks. I’m always playing hide and seek — with others, with myself. Keeping hidden the parts of me they can’t handle — the parts that I can’t handle. And yet here I was, with my life and loves flashing in front of my eyes while I tried to focus my sight somewhere that could ease me. I started pulling my hair and gritting my teeth. I felt heavy, a pressure building from inside out. “You’re good”, I told myself. Just find your happy place. And then the happy place struggle was a completely different affair in itself. “My mother”, I thought. My mother would judge me so much right now, was my automatic response. She never even smoked a joint. “Then my father,” “Yeah, the father that would be ashamed to see me out of control like this”. The boyfriend, then. But he was away and confusing. The ex, the great love — a love that was over and still persists and that threw me over. A place, I tried to grasp at the edge of my control and bring myself into Cumuruxatiba, my happiest place in the world. The place I’ve spent every summer since I was two and whose expression of love I tattoed on my arm. I couldn’t enter, though. I couldn’t go anywhere but this creepy bathroom that was a perfect setting for a rape. I’d make that joke earlier, and now it was haunting me. Oh my God, I could get raped. Oh God, oh God. And episode of Law and Order SVU flashed before my eyes. And then she came back. She looked me straight in the eye and asked: “Are you okay?”. “No”, I answered, “I am NOT okay.”

So we sat down in one of the chairs close to the bathroom. It was still creepy, but less so. I could here the music, though, and the music was driving me crazy. I wanted to leave, but I was shaking so hard I couldn’t walk right. So we sat and drank water. Sooo much water. “Drink more water”, they told me, staring at me with worried expressions. “Oh God I feel so stupid” was the most recurrent thought on my mind at the time. I apologized countless times for getting so fucked up. I was freaking out in a way I’d never experienced before, my mind traveling through countries and continents from here to Brazil to USA and back, tracing inconsistent patterns of feelings and thoughts. I need to get out of here, I thought. It took me a while to express it and then it felt like forever until we left. I wanted to cry.

We had to walk down a flight of stairs. I didn’t feel like I could. The helpful guy put my hands on his shoulders and we descended for what felt like 20 minutes. I later learned it was just about 30 seconds, but I couldn’t believe it. We were waiting for a Pink taxi, because they’re cheaper. I could feel the water working it’s way back up through my throat. I pushed it back down. It was getting harder to control my breathing. I threw up the water on the ground, my shoes and Lydia’s. I felt like shit. The guy offered me some tissues and I wiped myself off to look half decent. The paper spread my grape colored lipstick across my face. “I must look like a nightmare”, I thought. “How fitting.” We finally got into any taxi that the guy paid for and were moving back towards the city center. I was still trying, without much success, to find my happy place. My mind was darting from my family to my friends to my loves and wishes and I was so lost I couldn’t even remember where I was, most of the time. I thought about smoking in Brazil with friends in an open space with nice music playing. Trying to follow their conversations. Trying to formulate an adequate train of thought. Trying to keep myself from floating away in the moment…

And then now, in the taxi. My mother would be so proud (not). My sister wouldn’t know how to react. I hated myself for letting me get like this. “It’s your fault. He said to take care of yourself.” If it were Brazil I could scream help. Everyone would understand me. How do you say help in Serbian? I can only say thank you. And I’m sorry. I’m so so so so sorry. I wish I could leave. Leave myself and come back later because who would want to stay inside this weird mind that can’t focus and eyes that can’t focus and a stomach that can’t hold down water?

The taxi stopped. We successfully (yet slowly) made our way to the hostel. I was so happy to see purple walls. Home, it wasn’t actually, but the place I’d been calling home for the past two months. I got in the room and laid down under a blanket. Was I so cold before? I couldn’t remember. “You should sleep”, she said, probably thinking the hard work was over. Let me give you a hint: it wasn’t. It was far from over. When we were walking up I asked her how long it had been since I’d started tripping. “Half an hour or so”, was her answer. Mine was: “Are you fucking kidding me? I’ve lived 500 lives already and you’re telling me it’s been half an hour?”

I thought I would get in bed and shut down. I didn’t. When my head hit the pillow it didn’t turn off, it restarted in way I could never imagine possible. In a space of seconds, I was outside of myself. I was seeing my life in a greater sense, as if from above, seeing connections between all my actions and my people and the issues of the universe. I thought about my parents, their marriage and the patterns of their fucked up relationship that I’m reproducing in my own life. I thought about love, and how it fades, warps, changes from one thing to another in the space of seconds. About friends. About how my friends react to me, how I react to my friends, how I love them and wow Lydia is being so amazing listening to all of this. “Are you hungry? I think I have some chips”. Gave her the chips and continued ranting. I could feel her getting tired but the thought of being alone with my thoughts was more paralyzing than I could bear. “Please just stay with me”, I begged and she complied, so kind. She was always kind. And then it was the love cycle in my head: who, why, how. Why do I love? How do I feel and express this feeling? Is it lasting? Will it go away? Do I love more the old or the new? The old is rooted into me in a way that will probably stay forever, holding pieces of my heart that will be certainly forclosed to any other. The new is still growing, still asserting it’s space, still twisting and working his way into me. What will end and what will begin? Do I want one or the other, one life or the other, do I need to have someone linked to my past to see a future? Do I want to give up who I’ve been so far and find another self?

Discrimination, violence, land struggles, Life, love, feminism, sexism, friends, marriage, kids, who I want to be the father of my kids, I miss my mother, my mother would hate me right now, I need to talk to my father maybe if I just explain more he can understand, he probably won’t he doesn’t care, why doesn’t he care about people? He kind or reminds me of my dad but can also know the end of movies like my mom does he seem more like my dad or my mom oh fuck they’re both crazy where’s my happy plaaaaceeee? I started thinking about happy things and sad things and variating my breathing according to them. Happy, smoothe. Scary, rapid. Lydia kindly let me know I was now hyperventilating and I tried to get a hold on my brain and shut it down.

I must have talked, in monologue, for an hour or so. Maybe more. It felt like an entire life to me. I felt washed out, as if I’d been swimming endlessly without reaching the shore. I put on some music. The old him had sent me this song a while ago and I’ve been listening to it incessantly. As it came on I heard the sweet sound of the accordion and the drawl of portuguese took me home. That was my happy place. I slowly drifted into a state of calm and told Ladina I was good. I had stopped twitching and was able to control my movements. Changed, brushed teeth, got back into bed. Felt calm. Felt safe. I wished I’d found it sooner, but I was now there to stay.