The most important lesson

When I took LSD last week at the Carnival of Electric Illusions, I found that it became an apt metaphor for my situation with my ex-girlfriend, with whom I had broken up just over a week before. This trip started at around 7:30 PM, I took it with my ex-girlfriend at her new boyfriend’s place. Now I’m very emotionally strong, and I hadn’t been overly upset about the break up until I saw her with him and hung out with them that afternoon. I was a little down, but I was still coping okay. The shisha cheered me up a little. I digress. The tab took quite a while to really take hold. I believed this batch to be not too strong, but sort of in a way where I knew I could handle it. It was probably around 9 before I really lost my mind, but it was there, it had taken hold and there was nothing I could do but submit. In a similar way, the reality of losing the one I love came over me, and it was inescapable.

Let me preface this by explaining why we broke up and why she has a new boyfriend already. I dated her for 3 years and 3 months, and we had decided to take a break, because she wanted to prove to herself that there was no one else for her. I wanted her to get this out of her system, so I let her go with it. Then she meets Kit, and they instantly hit it off. So she samples him out, and after like, two weeks, he forces her to make a premature decision. I didn’t really want this, but honestly, the concept of being single kind of excited me, further, I could see he could be a boyfriend I couldn’t, so I encouraged her to choose him, for her sake. I’m a little scant on the details as I’ve had to explain this to many people. That’s the basic gist of it.

I watch several episodes of Scrubs, each becoming progressively more confusing and hard to understand. The sadness of the characters and the serious situations in which they find themselves are the only things I can understand, and this becomes difficult to watch; I can feel their negative vibes. My ex and her Kit are also hard to watch. I try to tune this out.

After a while, Kit’s friend comes over, and they each have a line of coke. We roll out at around 10, and walk to this club, about 15 minutes away, where the Carnival of Electric Illusions is. This month’s carnival is a Halloween theme, although it’s not Halloween and every month encourages people to wear costumes.

The ensuing few hours are relatively uneventful for me, mostly involving me sitting on a couch outside being cold and trying to understand the true nature of this event. I know 4 or so people outside of my entourage. Most of the people there are friends of the organizers, or at least 2 or 3 degrees away from them, so I get a feeling of community from this place. However, I don’t know these people, so it would be weird for me to talk to a lot of them, although the vibes are generally good. This thought process hurts my head, so I try to think of other things. I try to explain these thoughts to those around me, but they are ineffable.

We are told to move from “the stage”. So we do, and this really strange play is put on my two people in giant skull masks, and this sparely dressed woman, at whom many on-looking women hurl friendly requests for the performer to disrobe. These people obviously know this woman.

I can’t work out the plot of the play, it has something to do with the masked men trying finding the woman when they are shipwrecked or something, and they try to eat her. She holds up signs saying “More organs!??” or something like that. This confuses the hell out of me. I’m sort of relieved when it’s over, because it was not particularly interesting to sit there watching something I couldn’t understand.

I have a cigarette and dance a bit to keep warm. After a while, I express my interest to leave, but Kit and his friend have taken pills so they wish to stay a little longer. My ex and I talk a little about how we miss each other, and she too wants to leave. We’re both still feeling the acid strongly, and still seeing movement in the floorboards.

After a while we start walking back to Kit’s place. We have some shisha and listen to music for a couple of hours. During this time, my ex becomes particularly emotional, and tears seem to appear most of the times she looks at me. This starts to distress me. I explain that I probably won’t write a trip report this time because nothing much happened. She reminds me of the crazy play, and I say that it didn’t make sense to me, and it wasn’t important. I explain that I did not reach any profound revelations during the trip. At this point she becomes a little angry with me, and starts crying, wondering why I didn’t have any revelation about how I miss her. I tell her that I already knew I had made a mistake to let her go. I didn’t really realise it, but I was actually in the process of fully realizing that at the time.

This sort of banter continued, and the vibes were deteriorating, as was my energy. Suddenly my ex decides she needs to “do something she should have done a long time ago” and go to bed. And she rushes upstairs without saying good night. This upsets me, but I’m still a little unsure if that was completely abnormal. I later conclude it is a little.

Once I realise she isn’t coming back down until the morning, I go to bed. In bed, I can see myself going across the Sydney Harbour Bridge like I was earlier in the day. I have some amazing closed-eyed visuals, most of which I’ve now forgotten. I think about my ex and if I’ve really made a mistake, and I decide I have.

Acid helped me gain a real clarity about this problem, however, the next day, I feel so depressed about this realization. It’s as if the truth was too much for me. I beg my ex to come back to the Blue Mountains with me, where we both live, but she wants to stay with Kit longer. I felt like shit the entire train trip home.

I don’t regret taking acid that night. Maybe I regret spending time with my ex while she’s with her new boyfriend. It did make me realise how much I miss her, which is a truth I must face. Most importantly, however, I realised that I was human, and that I felt emotions, the velocity of which I did not know I possessed. This is one of the most important lessons one can learn.