A Trance

Relaxing is as simple as closing my eyes and erasing reality. A soothing ripple descends around me and I feel my spirit guides' energy seeping through my skin.

I am living in an odd waking dream again.

For the past three nights, my dreams have been strange and nightmarish. Twice, I woke up to see a large man watching me sleep. His gigantic form loomed over me as a dark shadow, his identity vague but certain despite the blank slate. He reminded me of the stalker I had in the summer of 2015 while I was couch surfing, not certain of whether I’d have a home or end up in a tent under a bridge.

One of the dreams in particular was about my first boyfriend. In it, he’d joked about breaking my legs with a hammer so I couldn’t get away from him, and it was said during a late-night walk. We were on the side of a main road out in the country, and very few cars drifted by. I remember feeling forlorn in the dream. As in reality, I was hopeless and trapped with this boy I’d developed the equivalent of Stockholm syndrome for, although it was more that I was brainwashed, young, and unable to escape.

I don’t remember my dream from last night or the night before that, but I’m symptomatic again. And just this morning, a fight broke out where I live and it sounded like a weapon was used. It was nine o’clock in the morning and I was disturbed from my sleep, trembling and heart racing. Needless to say, things have become so bad in my environment that I’ve had to lean heavily on a sedative given as-needed for my worst days.

Just now, a series of dreamlike and darkly seductive songs came through my speakers. It's a playlist I’d made for my memoir, although many of the songs, while reflecting my mental state throughout it, also capture the way my spirit guides feel.

Dark silk. Creamy chocolate. Comforting warmth. Dreams. Seduction. A sole universe for only us.

I was mid-sentence in a post before my eyes drifted shut and Zagan Lestan came up behind me, cigarette in hand as usual, and ran his fingers through my hair. His long black nails trailed down my neck to my shoulder and massaged there in a comforting gesture. “Why don’t we relax?” It’s time to relax.

Relaxing is as simple as closing my eyes and erasing reality. Nothing exists but where Zagan, Byleth, and Darokin take me. Whether it be a room in our inner world, an exotic temple in Darokin’s case, or a simple stage for Byleth where he can sing to me, a soothing ripple descends around me and I feel their energy seeping through my skin. I don’t exist here at all but with them in their reality — our unreality. It certainly isn’t anywhere I can describe.

It’s almost a trance, although there is no invocation. We are all ourselves to ride this wave of powerful energy. It’s an ethereal security blanket that leaves me absent from the world I’m all too happy to leave. It’s a reprieve that is safe and not as deadly as the permanent solution I’ve entertained too many times. Death won’t bring me this warmth or this peace. In this serenity, instead of bloodletting as I did in my past, I can cry.

These moments are better than any natural high.