I have this recurring nightmare where a faceless boy dangles me by my ankles and drops me from our second floor balcony. The boy has no face, but he’s a Black boy, maybe nine or ten years old. Me, a baby. Not older than three. I can never remember how I got there, but I always remember the drop. I feel his chubby hands around my ankles, I see the hard wood floors of the foyer below us quickly come into view. His grip releases; I begin to fall. I always wake up just before impact. It’s the first nightmare I remember having, and although sometimes years pass in between, I still have nights where I can feel a child’s hands tightly tugging at my feet.
At around age ten I realized that I hated to sleep. Actually, let me correct myself: I loved my computer far more than I liked to sleep. Unfiltered internet access is an only child’s closest companion. Most nights I would stay up until the sun rose, my eyes tightly fixed to the monitor. Some nights I would play Solitaire or 3D Pinball or whatever free PC game was pre-loaded to Windows. Other nights I would draw my favorite cartoons on MS Paint. I felt free, curious, excited. I was afraid to sleep, afraid of who or what would appear in my subconscious. The dark frightened me.
By thirteen I’d gotten used to insomnia. I was less afraid of the dark, but the television in my bedroom stayed on the moment the sun set. Its glow comforted me. Plus, sometimes soft porn would play on HBO after midnight and I liked the thrill of eroticism. At this point my internet usage had quadrupled, and I would find myself on AOL chat rooms chuffing it up with whoever would take the time to talk to me. Aside from the many hours I spent dissecting my favorite My Chemical Romance songs with fellow fanatics, my favorite room was one called insomniaxchat, where fellow sleep-dodgers and I would commiserate over our lack of sleep and share our poor coping mechanisms.
GodofBP: has anyone experienced sleep paralysis?
My mouse hovered over the words “sleep paralysis”.
Chochip123: whats that???
GodofBP: A phenomenon where people are completely paralyzed in their nightmares. They are awake but cant move. Used to happen to me all the time
Paralysis. That’s often what I felt during my nightmares–paralyzed, unable to scream for help. Sometimes I would feel the weight of the faceless boy pressing on my chest and would try to call for my mother, but no sound would come out. Other times I would try to kick and thrash my way out of his grip but my body would not move. But most times I’d wake up drenched in sweat, screaming “PLEASE, NO!!”. So I stopped trying to sleep at night. I made up for it by sleeping on the bus to and from school, cutting classes to nap in the nurse’s office, and taking power naps between school and marching band practice. I felt miserable, and was very tired of feeling so miserable.
GodofBP: But I’ve figured out how to take control. Turns out its called lucid dreaming
GodofBP: You can wake up inside your dreams. You can take back control.
I liked the idea of taking control. There’d be nothing to be afraid of if I was in control. I needed to know more.
For weeks on end I’d attempt to lucid dream. Other people in insomniaxchat would tell me to affirm myself in my nightmares, to say to myself “I want to lucid dream” as the faceless boy swung me over the banister. They suggested that I visualize myself flying instead of falling. Soon, I began to fly. The child would let go of my ankles and I would take off, floating my way around the spiral staircase, through the kitchen and out the back patio. I would soar over our home and smile, knowing that I was finally in control. I could say “no, stop” and things would cease to progress. There was no need to call for help, for I was the one who could save myself. These were my dreams, I was the sheriff, the mayor, the governor. I would find myself wanting to go to sleep, knowing that I could control the outcome.
Over time the lines began to blur. The faceless boy morphed into my cousins, my neighbors, my teachers, my enemies. They would fight back with me, gripping me tighter as I struggled. It became challenging to differentiate between waking and dreaming. My lucid dreams began to change shape, to shift into something that I could no longer take control over. Oftentimes I would dream that the boy had shapeshifted into my estranged father, and now he was standing in my doorway.
“Papa…?” I asked in Creole. “Sak pase?”
Silence. I breathe deep. “I miss you…”
His blank stare bored a hole into the baseboard of my bed, which began to spark. “Papa… What are you doing?” Suddenly my room was filled with smoke. My dad stood in the doorway; a wry and devious smile slowly spread across his face. I couldn’t tell if I was dreaming or awake, if this was real or lucid. I stood up.
“Papa??” I asked again. The room felt significantly warmer and smelled like burnt plastic. This can’t be real, I said to myself, this is a dream. I want to lucid dream. Those are the magic words, right? Acknowledge and take control. Flames arose from underneath the bed.
~~~
A few months ago I had a conversation with my psychedelic therapist about my progress with ketamine therapy. I can wax poetic about how much ketamine infusions changed my life, how much it has alleviated most of my PTSD symptoms. I live a life with a lot fewer suicide attempts, which is a win in itself, but I’d like to get to a place where I don’t need to take this very expensive treatment every month for the rest of my life.
“I’d like to live a life without training wheels,” I say during our monthly Zoom meeting. I can see the snow-capped mountains through her window. Her small dog sunbathes underneath it.
“Mmm,” she says, closing her eyes. She bobs her head a few times, taking a moment to contemplate. “Are you interested in other psychedelic therapies?” I love when a care-giver offers me a solution that I was already going to ask for. I hope I didn’t nod YES too eagerly.
My experience with psychedelics outside of the prescribed ketamine infusions are relatively limited: a few microdoses of shrooms here and there, a little tab of acid once. I take weed edibles frequently but nothing that makes my consciousness astral-project to another universe. And my knowledge for anything beyond those is even more limited.
“Have you ever considered ayahuasca?”
I swallow hard. Ayahuasca? The one that makes you puke and shit? Ketamine infusions feel like a warm hug; where I’m wrapped in clouds and floating my way through a vortex made of rainbows and stardust. I am warm and drifting through an endless field of sunflowers. I am a koi fish carried through a rushing current. I am all my past and future selves collapsing into one another. I face my childhood traumas and say “You are very loved,” and when I regain consciousness I feel like a new person. I feel healed for a few weeks then go back again. I do not want to puke and shit.
“Is it as scary as they say it is?” I ask, and nervously twirl a strand of hair around my finger.
“It can be, yes,” she replies, “But healing is often scary.”
While both ketamine and ayahuasca are psychedelic therapies used to treat mood disorders like PTSD and Major Depressive Disorder, they run on different planes. My ketamine infusions last about 1-2 hours, where I go to a medical clinic, am under the care of licensed professionals if anything were to “go wrong”, and I can go back to my regularly scheduled activities the next day. My journeys are relatively contained, and the insights I leave with are typically simple. For the past four years these treatments have shown major improvement in my mental well-being. But now I feel like I have plateaued. Yes, I’m able to remind myself that love is in fact “real”, yet at the same time I still wonder what it would taste like to have a gun in my mouth. I still wake up gasping for air and sticky with sweat.
An ayahuasca trip sounds daunting. Not only does the trip last for 5-6 hours, I will also have to travel three hours to the desert for the ceremony, and will likely need weeks of constant therapy after. They say this medicine can unlock deeply repressed trauma, and I didn’t think I was ready to know exactly how my body had been keeping the score yet.
“And to avoid diarrhea,” my therapist adds, “you’ll have to follow a strict diet.” Boo!!! Hiss!! “None of this sounds fun…” I say. I look at the mirrored image of myself in the corner of the computer screen. I look worried. “This feels like a therapy I need but I’m not prepared for.” Again my therapist closes her eyes and does the head-bobbing motion. I like to tell myself that she’s using her psychedelic powers to connect to my ancestors or something.
Unbeknownst to me, you can now microdose ayahuasca in the safety of your own home. I ordered a small tincture with hopes that I could slowly make my way to the full vomit and diarrhea-inducing dose. My therapist told me that I shouldn’t feel much of an effect, that it would be similar to a microdose of psilocybin. I was to take 5-8 drops under the tongue each night for one week, and then after that to take 5-8 drops in the morning and the same at bedtime. It would take about a month to feel any substantial differences. She said it could possibly help me sleep.
My husband holds the tincture bottle up to his face, squinting to read the label. We are practicing our nighttime ritual of reading and drinking herbal tea in bed. A herbalist once told me that valerian root is a natural sleep aid, but I’m starting to believe I need something stronger.
“What’s in this?” He asks. I shrug.
“Hippie shit!” I take the bottle from his hands and unscrew the dropper. The tincture looks golden, like honey. It twinkles in the light. I think about the potential power in my hands and stick out my tongue. It tastes spicy and sour, with maybe a hint of liquorice. I hold the medicine in my mouth for about 30 seconds before swallowing.
~~~
I paced the large foyer, anxiously weaving my way around the white marble columns. A few errant balloons had floated to the top of the 30 foot ceilings. They seemed to be mocking me. “Fuck,” I muttered to myself, “I don’t have a ladder.” And why am I barefoot?
It was hard to believe that the day had finally come; that after years of research, writing, and re-writing I was finally launching my book. I followed my childhood passion and it paid off. This is what it takes, right? Mining your brain until you strike gold. Or crude oil. My stomach churned.
“Do you think he’ll like me?” I asked the faceless boy standing next to me.
“Why wouldn’t he?” He gurgled back in Klingon.
I’ve spent the last several years trying to spill and rearrange my guts in art form. I remember when I first told my mom that I was writing about Gerard Way, she said “Good!” I felt like she was able to see me for the first time. I think about my friends’ delighted faces when I told them that I had downloaded every single My Chemical Romance interview I could find on YouTube, and that I was taking extensive written notes on all of them. I think about how proud I am to be from New Jersey. I think about the stack of notebooks and printed drafts I’ve marked up with comments, questions, edits. I think about my writing coach Chelsea, and how much she has helped me find my voice.
I’ve thought about this moment for a very long time.
The faceless boy opened the large front door to the courtyard then turned to look back at me. “Ellos están aquí” he drooled.
Fuck. I took a deep breath in and made my way to the polished concrete porch. I watched as the car pulled through the gates and around the circular driveway. A Subaru, I thought to myself, How sensible!
The dark green Crosstrek parked and the engine quietly turned off. I looked down at my hands and saw that they were on backwards, again. Fuck!!! I started to shake.
Gerard opened the front passenger door and stepped out. His hair had completely grayed, but somehow his face remained exactly the same. No wrinkles, no crow’s feet. His skin was freshly tanned, as if he had just come back from the desert. My heartbeat quickened as I made my way down the steps. Ray, the guitarist, waved to me from the driver’s seat, but I was too self-conscious to wave back. Could they see my hands?
“It’s nice to finally meet you!” Gerard smiled as he approached. My mouth became dry. Here we go: the ground is about to open up and swallow me, isn’t it? Softball-sized hail will pour from the sky and pelt me to death. Gerard will surely throw battery acid in my face. Ray is going to tell his friends how ridiculous this whole book launch was. The house is going to catch on fire, isn’t it? My mom will tell me how much she hates me. My husband will start another family behind my back and leave me with nothing because he’s too embarrassed by what a fucking mess I am. And everyone will laugh. Everyone will laugh. Everyone will laugh. This is what always happens in my dreams, right?
Gerard extended his hand. The birds happily chirped around us. The sky is clear.
“I am so fucking nervous!!” I blurted out. I expected him to laugh at me, to ridicule my anxiety. I expected them to boo and throw mud in my face. But instead he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder and said, “I get nervous too. You’re doing great.”
~~~
I woke up feeling relieved for the first time in months.
The following days felt relatively normal and I hadn’t felt any massive changes in my overall mood. I continued to struggle while falling asleep, but my dreams were mild–pleasant, even. It was nice to wake up and not be panicked. It was nice to not wake up in pain. Days felt a little lighter. And every evening before tucking into bed I would take a couple more drops of the ayahuasca.
~~~
I just got home from the grocery store, where I bumped into a friend I had a falling out with six years ago. She apologized for her part in the split, and wished me well. It was shocking to see her, especially in a big city like Los Angeles–I thought she still lived out East. She told me that she still hangs out with TJ and said that he had been asking about me lately. I froze. She didn’t know that TJ raped me fifteen years ago and still I wasn’t ready to tell her now. She told me that she gave him my phone number and I began to panic. I thanked her for her apology and went home as fast as I could. When I got home I saw a missed call: TJ Welker.
I sat at the dining room table and picked at my cuticles–a nervous habit. My mind was racing.
“Stop doing that, love. It freaks me out,” my husband said. He was making sandwiches for him and his friend to take to the Clippers game that they were heading to that evening.
“Sorry, Kev.” I mumbled, still nervously picking. “I guess I’m still kind of just shocked. Should I really confront him?”
“You should absolutely confront him!” his friend said. “You deserve to say how this has affected you. How he affected you. What he did was beyond fucked up.” He crossed his long arms. Kevin nodded in agreement as he wrapped both sandwiches in wax paper. My cuticles were bleeding. I picked up my phone and typed out a message.
>>Sorry I missed your call… I think we should talk. Want to come to my place? 3199 Edenglen Blvd.
Woosh. A pause. Ding!
<<Sounds good, see you soon.
“Ok, I did it. He’s on his way.”
The guys wrapped their arms around me into a big group hug. I felt tiny and comforted by their warmth.
“You’ve got this, love,” Kevin breathed into my hair. “You can do anything.” I followed them outside and waved goodbye as Kevin peeled away in his black pick-up truck. “God, that car needs a fuckin wash,” I said to my dog. He wagged his tail.
TJ pulled into the driveway about 45 minutes later. He still drove the same dark blue Mitsubishi. I felt a chill go up my spine as he opened the door. Suddenly I was flooded with memories of the rape, the aftermath, the stalking.
“Hi,” He said, locking the car behind him. I stood in silence. “Can we go inside?” My dog looked at me curiously.
“Sure.” I said, surprising myself.
Inside, I filled the kettle with water to make tea. TJ sat down at the counter and stared at me. His once long curly hair was now cropped short at the sides. The curls on top of his head remained as bouncy as I remembered them. He smelled of cigarettes and Old Spice deodorant. I gnawed on the inside of my lip as the water boiled.
“Why did you do that to me?” I said after what felt like minutes of silence. The blood rushed to my face.
“Do what?” He asked, looking dumb.
“Don’t fucking play dumb. You know what you did. Why did you rape me? And why did you disappear? And why did you pretend to get in a car accident? Why did you let me call every hospital in Northern New Jersey looking for you? And why did you suddenly show up at school, after months of no contact? Why did you start showing up at my job? Why did you start showing up to band practice, even though you already graduated? Why would you call me then hang up? Why didn’t you ever leave me fucking alone?” I screamed.
Silence.
“Fucking answer me!” The kettle began to screech. TJ’s green eyes stared hard into mine. He pulled a switchblade from his pocket.
“I can’t have you telling this to people. It’s time to shut you up.”
~~~
I woke up gasping for air, drenched in sweat. My eyes darted around the room, looking for something, anything to ground me, to remind me that I was there, awake, alive, safe. I felt the calming warmth of my husband lying next to me. My dog snored softly in his crate in the corner of the dark room. I could hear the gentle whirring of the ice-maker in the kitchen. I grabbed the eucalyptus candle on my bedside table and took a deep breath in–a grounding technique that a therapist once shared with me. Reconnect to the senses. Inhale. Hold. Exhale.
Again.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
One more time.
Inhale.
Hold.
Exhale.
But my heart continued to pound. “What the fuck was that? What the fuck was that?!” I said aloud to no one in particular. Kevin stirred.
“Huh?” He mumbled, still sleepy. The clock flashed 4:08 AM.
“Nothing, baby.. Go back to bed.” Tears welled and quickly began to run down my cheeks. I was swirling, what the fuck was that? I have never had a nightmare that felt so real, so vivid. There were no indications of it being a dream: no faceless boy, my hands were on correctly, my home had looked exactly as it did in real life. I did in fact have a falling out with that friend before moving to California. My husband was wearing the same paint-covered gray T-shirt that he always wore. He and his friend love going to Clippers games. My dog looked exactly as he did, even down to the flash of white stripe that ran from the back of his head down to his nose. Hell, I even remembered TJ’s car and how he used to smell. My subconscious knew all the details with extreme clarity. I continued to cry until the sun rose.
The morning was undeniably difficult. Kevin held me as I sobbed, confused as to why this was happening.
“It was just a dream, love,” He cooed softly as he rocked me back and forth. “It wasn’t real.” “But it felt real! It felt so real!” I continued to sob.
What was so frustrating for me is that I thought I had gotten over the rape during my very first ketamine session over four years ago. During that infusion I had been transported to a movie theater, where I was the only patron in the audience. The reclining chairs were made of cashmere, and I felt warm and luxurious. Fireflies twinkled brightly, then dimmed as the film began to run. My rape played on the big screen in black and white, over and over again. But this time I was removed from it. I wasn’t in it. I could see it play out and for once, I did not panic. I didn’t scream. I didn’t cry. Instead I felt empathy for that sixteen year old kid, and was able to recognize that it was, in fact, over. I left the session feeling the most healed I had ever felt, and immediately bought into the treatment. The previous seven years of cognitive behavioral therapy did not heal me as much as this one session of ketamine. I felt like I actually got over it. I no longer had to cope because the feelings of anxiety around TJ were gone. So why on earth was this coming back to me now?
The day was even more rough. I tried to make an omelet for breakfast but continued to whimper like a hit dog between each bite. Nothing felt real, yet everything felt terrifying. My closest friend tried to cheer me up by taking me to a local botanical art show, where I felt both bored with the plants and overwhelmed by my racing thoughts. She dozed off during the ambient sounds concert and I became jealous of her ability to simply fall asleep. I spent the night at her place because I was too scared to be at home–I kept imagining that TJ would magically appear in the driveway. My thoughts kept circling back to him.
I was too afraid to sleep. I realized that the ayahuasca was communicating to me in the form of a nightmare, great! I was not touching that shit again, I did not want to know what else it wanted to say to me.
After going back home the next morning I reached out to my psychedelic coach, and was thankful for her quick response to make an appointment. Kevin inconveniently needed to leave for an international work trip to China; I clung to him in the living room.
“You can’t leave!!” I wailed. “I won’t be okay!!” His shirt soaked up my heaving sobs as he hugged me tight.
“I’m so sorry, love… I’m so sorry…” He repeated over and over. I knew he meant it. Neither of us felt good about being apart. He peppered my forehead with kisses until his Uber arrived. Throughout the morning I cried so hard that my head throbbed. My eyelids had become dry and cracked from all the salty tears. I texted a few friends, asking them for emotional support. Everything was terrifying–my world quickly shrunk into a dime-sized pebble. The thought of leaving my home sent me spiraling. The thought of staying equally petrified me. I felt paralyzed, again.
I met with my coach later that afternoon and recounted the dream over Zoom. I told her how TJ and I were friends. I even had a crush on him, but he was in a relationship and it didn’t seem like he was interested in me in that kind of way anyways. But once again, I was a lovesick puppy–goo-goo eyed at someone who wasn’t interested. It was kind of obvious how I felt.
One night he picked me up in his new Mitsubishi. It reeked of cigarettes.
“Dude… you smoke?” I asked, fake coughing for dramatic effect. The song “Copy of a Copy” by Dead Poetic crooned quietly through the speakers.
“Sometimes…” He winked. I caught my breath. He rolled down the windows. “Sorry about the smell. Wanna go for a joyride?”
“Ok,” I buckled my seatbelt and we pulled out of the driveway.
“Copy of a Copy” repeated again. TJ adjusted the volume a few notches louder as we made our way up the winding hills of River Valley. The daylight faded in the rearview mirror. “You really like this song, huh?” I joked, awkwardly.
“Yep.” Hmm.
“So like… you… uhh… big into Christian rock? I’m really into Flyleaf… oh and Underoath too…!” I tried again, feeling embarrassed for even having said anything.
Silence. He accelerated and turned up the volume even higher.
There were few streetlights in River Valley, especially on the roads that cut through the woods. The roads were narrow and zig-zag their way down the mountain, through the valley. The wind whipped through my hair, I clutched the door handle tightly. “Copy of a Copy” played again. TJ made a sharp left into one of the neighborhoods.
“Wanna do a donut?” He asked, but I knew he wasn’t really asking. I gulped and mentally braced myself as he jerked the wheel to the left again. Nausea bubbled up through my guts and burned the back of my throat. The synthesized drums beat through my skull. Louder.
He jerked the wheel again.
I caught and swallowed the vomit in my mouth.
Around and around we spun.
***
Andrea G. Dolan is a writer from New Jersey, currently living in Los Angeles. They are writing their first book. You can find them at agdolan.com
Rejection Letters 