So, I don't think I ever really introduced myself properly here. Like, I wrote several horribly cobbled together "Introduceyourself" posts back in the old Steemit days but those lacked any semblance of honesty and openness. Time has gone on here though. The delusions of becoming a crypto millionaire through my blog have dissolved and so has my concern for writing things that I THINK people might like. Instead, I write what I feel so as to express myself and I hope that someone finds something of value from my attempts at wordcraft.
That leads me here. That's me in the picture. My name is Ben but some call me Benny. I like that but I've been told by more than a couple of people that Ben fits better. I am kind of awkward and I'm a closet introvert but I can fake being personable pretty well. I work way to many hours and I am worried that the last shreds of my youth are being lost in a dingy industrial building. I come off as serious but when I'm among friends, I tend toward joking and I laugh easily. I usually speak and write very formally, but when I'm comfortable I swear like a fucking sailor. I'll share more at another time. I never liked writing about me in this kind of way so lets move on to something more interesting.
I've taken three strong solo mushroom trips and three microdoses in the last several weeks. I would normally consider these experiences to be separate events but I really am coming to view them as one longer journey to what I believe is a better and stronger mental footing.
The first trip was about death I think. I spent a lot of time thinking about some chick who I was involved with at the time but aside from that, death was certainly the theme or maybe it was change, now that I think about it. I created some of that atmosphere unintentionally, I suppose, with my choice of music being particularly dark. The trip was serious but calm and different from the happier or "bad" trips of my youth. I don't necessarily believe the Woowoo supernatural things people say about psychedelics but I can't discount them either and, it would seem, that this experience was strangely prophetic in a way.
The second trip was the legitimately "bad" one. I had split from Ashley. I had learned things too. I found out she cheated the night before our breakup and I suspected that it had happened before that too. I was also apprehensive about moving to a new busier work station across town. It had been going well, the trip, that is. I was away from myself, in a sense. I took a total five grams so I should have been. I had few visuals, oddly, but ego death had come upon me. Time was slow. My consciousness was drifting as I watched the sealing and walls wiggle. Then she texted me near the end of the experience. "I miss you" appeared on my phone's screen and with it some other manipulative shit that I could have normally seen right through but was susceptible to because I was highly altered and still feeling lingering ties to this woman that should have been severed weeks ago. Anyway, I truly felt the death of that human connection that I had shared with her and reflected on the other coming changes in my life at work. I cried like a little bitch for like an hour and then retired to bed for the evening feeling broken.
I let twelve days pass before taking the third trip. In the intervening days, this chick keeps contacting me and I keep getting suckered back into it. "I still want to fuck" she says, and "I miss you as a friend." Her "partner" called while we were having lunch and she was saying these things to me. His number displayed on the screen and I know that my relationship with Ashley was and is a secret to him. A dark but somewhat satisfying impulse inside me took hold and drove me to commit it to memory and write it down when I had a privet moment.
I had few dates in the meantime too. One went pretty well and I am talking to her since our encounter. Another, with someone I met on tinder, was fine but seemed to go nowhere. I was mostly trying to entertain myself, I suppose, but I had a lot of fun smoking weed with the first girl when we met and I'd like to see her again.
I also reestablished contact with Laura, the person I had been connected to before Ashley. We were close and even though I walked away from her quite coldly, we have been becoming legitimate friends again, without the need to force our relationship into a romantic context. I found a renewed sense joy in her presence in my life. I was open about what happened between us, why I had left, and the current situation that I found myself in. She gave good advice: "That bitch is fucking crazy, revenge-fucking her so as to "get back" at the dude she cheated with and now dates is a really stupid idea born out of a weakened sense of self-esteem and your general "saltyness" over what happened, and you need to walk the fuck away before making the situation any worse." I couldn't argue with her and she told me that about 45 minutes before I drank four and an half grams worth of mushroom tea cut with a small bottle of Tropicana orange juice so I carried her words with me this time.
The third trip took hold shockingly fast. Tea comes on quick as it is, my stomach was empty, and I was tired from a long day of throwing packages (that is a lot of my job). Harsh words of advice, exhaustion, fasting, and psychedelic juice sounds like a recipe of a perfect vision quest. I chose to lie alone in a very dark room and listen to music through most of the trip. I wanted to let my mind wonder freely. I was afraid of letting it go to my Ashley situation. I didn't want another "bad" trip. I could not help it though. I was listening to Tool and I went to her in my mind. But this time it was different. Fuck that bitch, Laura was spot on, I thought. I felt good. I smiled. I laughed. The old way of tripping had returned now that the dark cloud had left my mind. My phone went off twice. I checked it. It was Laura and the new girl, both checking on me during my trip (I had told them what I did). I felt warm as I crawled into bed for the night.
I still have one lingering, dark thought, however. I have the means to out Ashley to her current "partner." I still have his phone number stored away in my memory and written on a rolling paper. I am not a monster and I won't, in fact, follow through on that impulse. I think I am firm in that decision but the idea intrigued me enough that I sketched out the text that I would send. It would have been devastating, I believe. It would like rip them apart and destroy the relationship that began after (or during maybe, I wonder) ours. It would be vindictive and cruel even if she did mistreat me. I chose not to act on that impulse but the fact that I had it worries me and it worries me more that, even though I believe I stand firm, I still refuse to lose that rolling paper.
Peace.
Except for the one of me, all the images in this post are from unsplash.com.