Tran of La Mancha (2021)

Q1

One of my major concerns over the last several months since the beginning of COVID, was that I really just wasn’t getting any work done.

I’d smoked a decent amount of pot in September, November, and December. I… didn’t think that was my problem.

I just couldn’t make my mind work. I blamed it on not being able to go into the office because of COVID. I’ve never been very good at working at home, and have always been more productive with an office or library to context-switch into; even if the trip would be otherwise unnecessary.

I brought this up with my therapist. I wondered if I should get tested for ADHD for something, and began to think that might be my problem. She suggested I talk with my primary care doctor.

Dr. Reid, who I’d since switched to after missing an appointment with Dr. Meier and having trouble getting rescheduled was, with a letter from my therapist, alright with just prescribing me methylphenidate to see how I did on it. She started me out with a low dose of Ritalin. This was initially helpful; but, I could soon tell I’d need a larger dose, which seemed to be expected.

---

Susan kept reeling me in to take her to various doctor’s appointments. She ostensibly still struggled to drive long distances, and agreeing to help her with this was part of my bargain for getting away from her after a mere month.

She kept on asking me “how my workbook was going”. I remember trying to cut yet another weekend with her short, and she couldn’t understand why I couldn’t stay wif uh’widdle muver just one more night… She sort of volunteered that I probably needed to “get back to my workbook”, and I was tacitly like “sure, whatever…”

I remember this happening around Valentine’s Day; and she seemed deeply resentful.

---

I had a surgery consult for SRS in March, after having done a virtual appointment with them some number of months prior.

I remember telling Susan this around Christmastime. And, I remember her telling me she couldn’t go because of work. It was just the consult anyway; she was very into being involved with the actual surgery process.

When I reminded her about my consult a week or two before, she acted as if I never told her; and did not react well. She panicked, talking to herself out loud for a bit about whether she could still go somehow with her work schedule as I thought to myself about how I’d already booked the AirBnB based on her negative response a few months back; before she ultimately concluded that no, she could not go because she had to work.

I myself had not been coordinating this trip well. I booked the accommodations at the last minute, and hadn’t planned specifics other than deciding months ago I was going to park the car in New Jersey and take the train into town to avoid the traffic.

She made a big deal about how I didn’t tell her about my trip sooner, and called me up crying about something before I was about to leave. I tried my best to console her. This woman’s feelings… ugh. It’s no wonder I decided I couldn’t be a woman “like her” when I was younger.

I made it to New York just fine without her. She got bitchy when I didn’t want to do the things she was suggesting and send her pictures. COVID was still going on; I didn’t even take all the days off work that I spent up there, and didn’t really want to do much except eat different food and drive up to Massachusetts one of the days.

Anyway, it was cool. I spent the better part of a week in New York for a 15-minute consult, but I made the best of it. Have you had actual New York bagels?

NYC Bagels in Cary is actually pretty spot on, and I certainly wouldn’t drive all the way up there for one given the alternatives; but they’re good. Real New York bagels. Maybe someone who’s from there would feel differently.

This isn’t about bagels. I’m sorry I’ve made you read all of this.

When I got home, I noticed something a little unusual: the key inserted and turned in the lock easier than I was expecting. This historically has been an indicator of Susan’s presence. I’ll explain.

I gave her a spare key to my house when I moved in; I guess because it seemed like a good idea at the time. After not even trusting her with the door to my room unlocked in my early 20s, I had… relaxed my policies with her a bit.

When she visits Durham and uses her spare key, she complains that it is nearly impossible to turn in the lock. This is a problem I’ve never been able to reproduce myself, and I feel like you’d need to have either really weak hands or be a fucking Neanderthal who can’t finesse the lock right. But, whatever.

She started bringing WD-40 with her when she comes to Durham, which she says helps her. My lock always turns real smooth for a few weeks after she visits.

So when I came back from New York and it felt like my lock turned real smooth, I had this initial feeling of panic run down my spine. Did she… do what I think she did? As quickly as the thought occurred to me, I told myself I was imagining things. We had an exceptional amount of rain while I was away, and I figured that might’ve had something to do with it. I also couldn’t convincingly reproduce the smooth turn I got when I first opened the door. I grew evermore convinced it was mere luck when I returned to my room upstairs, with all the mess and disarray from haphazardly packing still just as I left it a week ago.

I got back after dark, and hit the bed not long after taking a shower and undoubtedly having myself a smoke.¹

Tomorrow was Sunday; this had since become the day we did our weekly video chat, after I told my mother I was dealing with childhood trauma last summer and she handled it poorly. Every Sunday at 7pm, for like the last six or nine months or so.

At 7pm on Sunday, March 21, 2021, I had fallen asleep after getting high and watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. My phone was on silent, and I didn’t notice what had happened until about 7:45. I think I saw my phone lighting up on the table, and picked it up right away.

Susan was panicking. She had called a bunch of her friends trying to figure out what to do, and was about to call the cops if I didn’t pick up in the next 15 minutes.

45 minutes late. For a “tradition” that had gone on for no more than nine months. I can’t even say this is the first time something like this has happened.

Her side of the story is always the same. “You’re never late! This never happens!” Meanwhile, I’m left thinking to myself “this always happens; every time I give Susan anything on an even semi-recurring schedule”. I swear, this woman is absolutely unreasonable.

Oh, I almost forgot. The main reason I was late? The time had just changed, and it was still light out. You could be 45 minutes late to a video chat the day after daylight savings time and this crazy lady still would find some reason to expect the worst from your absence.

Our brief and uncomfortable video chat revived my previous concerns. She made various snarky references to the presently disheveled state of my house; but in such a way as to very thinly veil that she had just visited.

• Have you still not gotten the fireplace fixed yet, love?
• Have you not done your flower beds since I last saw you?
• Well, sometimes you just get another pizza and another pizza and another pizza box…

This reinvigorated a panic of my own. A bigger concern than the invasion of privacy itself was the gap between what my reality was, and how I knew Susan would interpret the things she found in my home out of context. When I noticed there were tissues lying around my bed, I knew she wouldn’t think I was dealing with seasonal allergies. She would think I was crying myself to sleep over my childhood sexual assault or something.

Who knows what she’d think of the toy box. It doesn’t matter, but it’s just annoying. Like, the fleshlight I bought in college to try and help with chafing from doing it other ways without a vibrator? It was a lot of hassle, I honestly didn’t really like the sensation of it, and there’s a reason I bought a Hitachi as soon as I was out of earshot of vanilla roommates. But her? I bet she thinks I masturbate with the fleshlight every night or something. How do I inform my mother of my actual sexual habits after she’s probably gotten the wrong idea by invading my privacy? I shouldn’t even have to do that, goddammit! I should just get to have a decent, normal mother like everyone else.

Oh no. The workbook. She thinks I have a…

Personal reading materials. I actually did own a copy of the text “Coping with trauma related dissociation”, which I purchased acutely aware of how weird that was, in the hopes that I might find relevance in it, what with the weird plural stuff and the…

Goddammit!

I hadn’t really even done much of anything with it, except badmouth Susan a tiny bit…

Okay. So… Susan may’ve angrily torn through my house in search of my “workbook” that was taking time away from her. And, she would’ve assumed based on placement and context that this was my “workbook”.

• Extremification (“I drink Sam Adams sometimes” → “He only drinks Sam Adams”)

I know Susan well enough that… I’m just gonna assume if Susan has looked through my things, she will assume I’ve been diagnosed with

Dissociative identity disorder.
“Multiple personalities”.

Ugh…

---

About a week after my return to North Carolina, I went to visit Susan for reasons. I think the main one was to get the COVID vaccine. I decided to work from her house that day.

It happened to be therapy day, so I did it in Susan’s living room that morning while she was at work. I don’t usually remember therapy sessions years later. But, I remember this one; partially because of the different venue, and partially because of what we talked about.

The conversation meandered between Susan, some rant about religion I managed to go on… but, somehow the conversation turned to “mysticism and magic”; and how a lot of my friends seemed to be into that? And, I kept hearing things that lent credence to the idea that there really was something to it, after being an atheist most of my adult life. I brought up the time, then a couple years ago, when Persephone was all like “You wanna know the truth about UFOs, Rachael?!” To which my therapist quickly replied

You know the truth about UFOs, right?
(beat)
Reincarnation…

Vickie’s reminder jogged my memory.

Oh, yeah! I have this friend! Uh… Heather! From… Vega!

Wow; I almost forgot. By now, I’m starting to feel like most everyone must know the truth about UFOs. I bet just about everyone who’s chill and open-minded has a friend like Heather. Hell, maybe everyone has a friend like Heather, and they just don’t know it yet. Maybe it’s really private and they don’t want to spook out religious people or something.

I got the impression that stuff was somewhat private, and felt a little bad for bringing it up. I should maybe be more careful. But at the same time, it’s not like anyone broke down any real rules for me, or vetted me or anything. It can’t be that big a deal, right?

---

When Susan got back after work, and after I had gotten my shot, she gave me a sort of belated Valentine’s Day basket or something. Among the things she really wanted to gauge my reaction to in person was this charm that read

I’d smoke my last bowl with you.

This re-reinvigorated my fluctuating anxiety that my mother really did do the unthinkable. I turned to my new friend Kristina for advice; who urged me to be wary of her while at the same time encouraging me not to give in to paranoia. “The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.”

There were a lot more minor incidents that continued rousing my suspicions. She was convinced I was crying in the bathroom stall when I took more than a couple minutes at the Chick-Fil-A.

When I noticed there were tissues around my bed, I knew she wouldn’t think I was dealing with seasonal allergies and not picking up the trash. She would think I was crying myself to sleep over my childhood sexual assault or something.

During what might’ve been our next call, she asked how my workbook was going; like that woman asked Jake from State Farm what he was wearing. And I tried, one last time to explain that “Look mom, I don’t really have a”

Your workbook!

She snapped, cutting me off mid-sentence.

At this point, I felt I had little choice but to just lean into it.

Uh… good! It’s… going well…

She seemed… very jealous of my “workbook”.

Q2

After some initial success with the Ritalin, I was switched to Concerta (which is just an extended release form of the same thing).

Working through the levels of methylphenidate, I could tell that it could be helpful when used carefully; but, it’s a drag to take every day, and I felt I was building up a tolerance pretty fast. I eventually worked up to 36-54mg of Concerta, which I quickly backed off of taking daily.

Around late May, I started getting this really weird feeling that I was on the verge of… something. Like, a breakthrough of knowledge or understanding of something really profound. It was strange. I’d elaborate, but there isn’t much point.

I went on a, likely methylphenidate-induced thought experiment binge. Judging myself now, I did have some neat ideas, but there ultimately wasn’t anything substantial, and my reasoning as a relative layperson was likely flawed in various ways.

Anyway, by mid-June I felt really weird about all of this. It was normal for me to casually think about science stuff, but not to this extent. I didn’t know what had gotten into me. Thoughts, ideas… I didn’t know where it was coming from. It didn’t really even feel like it was coming from me. It felt like I had inadvertently tapped into something. Or like, the collective consciousness had just gotten an upgrade.

For a little less than a week, I grew obsessed with various ideas of a collective consciousness. I thought that might explain what was happening to me.

It was now that, when scrolling through the front page of Reddit, I saw the thing. (paraphrasing)

Congressional UFO report to be released on Friday

And I thought, goddammit dude. It’s that.

Like, maybe some academics had early access to the report, and started learning about weird physics beyond the standard model. Then, maybe when I started daydreaming about it, I started pulling related ideas out of the collective consciousness without realizing it. It’s like… a poisoned cache entry, or something. We normally wouldn’t notice the collective consciousness, because we generally have access to similar information at a population level. We’re probably “hitting the cache” all the time without realizing it. But maybe if there’s a sudden imbalance, like the intelligentsia just learned how flying saucers work and is subsequently going nuts re-evaluating everything about the standard model at the same time…

Lots of people on Reddit were discussing various UFO theories. Extraterrestrials, breakaway civilizations, secret histories of Earth… it’s been a while, but I know it didn’t take very long before I thought to myself “Well, the truth about UFOs… that’s just reincarnation. Everyone knows that…”

I was expecting the UFO report to contain something crazy because of what was going on with me. I was a little disappointed to find that there wasn’t much of anything substantial.

Q3

I made a few, initial, seemingly logical presumptions on which to base my initial search for an explanation.

• Heather, Maureen, and my therapist knew what they were talking about when they said it was “reincarnation”. (Along with Persephone, who knows “the truth about UFOs” and “what Freemasons do” but never said the “r” word; she’s merely into Buddhism and weird shit like that.)
• Whatever the truth about UFOs actually is, way too many people seem to know it for it not to be on the internet somewhere.
• “The truth about UFOs” is related to whatever is happening to me right now. This feeling of… expanding consciousness, or whatever.

Everything that was on the internet at the intersection of UFOs and reincarnation, spirituality, etc. was absolutely bananas.

There were people talking about some kind of a “big shift”; people talking about a “5D new Earth”; some well-SEO’ed site purveying the “Law of One” with content that would make L. Ron Hubbard blush; some chick on Reddit who’s either nuts or trying to start a UFO cult; these people called “starseeds” who think they actually have souls from other planets; some weird shit about waves of volunteers…

When I saw things about a “big shift”, my initial thought was “Goddammit; it’s that! I’m… shifting or some shit!”

I hadn’t lost insight into the bizarre nature of my experience. Knowing the possibility of stimulant psychosis, I discontinued my use of the aforementioned medication. I did not discontinue my usage of cannabis.

You wanna talk about stress, you wanna talk about STRESS? Okay? I’ve stumbled onto a major company conspiracy, Mac, how about that for stress?

At some point in July, I managed to blurt out what I was dealing with to my therapist. I have a really hard time talking about things, especially something this… weird; but, I remembered that “the truth about UFOs” had recently come up in therapy a few months back. And, I remembered her unconventionally bringing up a sort of alternative shamanistic “soul retrieval” process around the fall of 2019, when I first nervously mentioned something about parts in my head. So, I figured Vickie was one of “those people” who knew “the truth about UFOs”; and, whatever it meant for people like me.

I didn’t get it out of me until the end of the session. I remember I felt very paranoid during this period; I was all but jumping at my own shadow on the wall. I forget what all I blurted out. There wasn’t much time, and I’m really private.

The next session, Vickie basically opens by telling me

I’m so glad you know about the big shift!

I’m so glad you know about the 5D new Earth!

Do you know about the Law of One?

So, I’m thinking, “phew… I guess that… is right?” I really don’t know. I just know “it’s reincarnation”, and I have no idea how to fill in the gaps.

Woah, dude. This is a lot to process. I started to remember the stuff about Heather. I always wondered how she found out she was “from Vega”, or whatever. I guess… this is it? Your shit just starts breaking down, and yadda yadda or something?

I was freaking out. I didn’t know what to do. “You know about souls, and shamanism and stuff, right?! What do I do?!”

Over the next few months, I pieced together all the weird stuff about Freemasons and UFOs that had happened to me throughout my life. There was one thing, though, that stuck out: the shark people.

It’s what we were talking about, right before everyone at the table got really weird and Tommy pulled me out of the activity building at that dinner a long time ago. Remember? It was the first time Susan realized the sharks were shark people. And everyone started acting sketchy when I started describing them, and the round room and the metal table…

Holy shit, dude. What was I; abducted by aliens?

How many times have I been abducted by space aliens?! Is it just the one time? Dude, what about the time I woke up locked out of the house as a kid? I woke up outside to the neighbor lady shaking me awake. She said she saw a bright light. We had to knock on the door for a while for my parents to open it, ’cause they didn’t initially realize it was me trying to get back in. Didn’t that happen again like a month later, except I woke up by myself?

And goddammit, what about that time in middle school? I woke up outside with the chain lock still on the door. I let myself in through the back window that wouldn’t close all the way on account of the RG-8. I didn’t think too much of it, but it was one hell of an unsolved mystery how I managed to sleepwalk my way into the church parking lot with the doors still chain locked and dead bolted. I’d argue its neigh impossible; but I was too much of a skeptic at that age. There was an extra-wide two post rack with a bunch of junk and wiring piled up around the window, and it was a challenge to climb in and out without making a mess while awake. Dammit, if only I’d have considered…

Okay. So that’s… three alien abductions? At least, right? Goddammit, what the fuck is this all about?

Vickie referred me to her friend Doris the Shaman. Everyone was still doing COVID protocols, so we met over Zoom.

Doris needed my address so she could… locate me psychically, I guess? She purported to do various things over the next 90 minutes or so. I think she… temporarily grabbed my soul into a teddy bear so she could do things with it in person? Removed a reptilian that was attached to me by pulling it out of my crown chakra? Gave me a sort of psychic protection? Suggested I start burning sweetgrass and sage my house? I wouldn’t have taken it seriously at all if it weren’t for the weird shit going on with me…

Oh, right. The biggest, overarching thing might’ve been toward the beginning, when she proclaimed

You’re different. You’re not from here. I’m not either.

I guess this meant I was… a starchild or something? I had a lot of questions. We spent some amount of time trying to figure out where I was from, before settling on Arcturus.

I kept talking about my experiences to my therapist. I had the feeling of being able to see shadow-like figures in my periphery and sometimes head-on, especially while I was about to go to sleep and after meditating for several minutes. It felt like I was getting messages in my head. My therapist and I used the word “download” to describe the sensation.

I hadn’t lost insight into how weird this was. At the same time, I couldn’t deny what was happening to me. My paranoia began to relax after my talk with Doris convinced me I wasn’t in any imminent danger.

This company is being bled like a stuck pig, Mac, and I got a paper trail to prove it; check this out

After having seemingly been dubbed a starchild or whatever, I proceeded on this sort of quixotic adventure to figure out what it meant to be a reincarnated space alien. I mean, this shouldn’t be hard, right? Aren’t, like, half my friends into this stuff?

I was only missing one thing.

Sancho.

---

I started keeping a handwritten journal of my thoughts and experiences during this time. It was a few weeks after that when I made a series of connections that led me to yeet my phone across the room in excitement.

Facts about Anthony Kiedis

• From space to teach you of the Pleiades
• Part of an unstoppable wave
• Would seem to be into sex magick
• Rose to fame after covering Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground”, a 70s funk song about reincarnation
• Has other songs referencing reincarnation, weird spirituality, and maybe even UFOs (I won’t enumerate them, but they are pretty egregious.)

Naturally, I started remembering my bizarre history with the 90’s rock band, which I was never really even that big a fan of to begin with. The floor seats, those weird people who were sitting around me, that conversation I had with Heather back in 2016…

Q4

After a couple months of this, I really needed to talk to someone other than my therapist.

I considered Persephone, since she seemed to know a lot about this stuff before. The thing about that is, Persephone had increasingly proven herself to be “problematic” within the greater trans community; I’ve never had a falling out with her, but it seems most of my friends have. She’s just a little “BPD” and can be a bit of a control freak.

At this point, it seemed like a lot of my friends were into “mysticism and magic”; whatever that was. It seemed like maybe I didn’t have to go to Persephone; at least not right away.

I had a little bit of a crush on Stephanie for some reason, and started inviting her over to watch stuff on the weekends. It was late into 2021, but things still felt pretty COVIDey. I knew she was into… mysticism, magic, shamanism… whatever all that weird shit was that I apparently needed to get my head around.

At one point, she was flipping through memes on her phone; and stopped to laugh at one making light of the recent UFO report. It seemed to be poking fun at the apparent gap in knowledge between practitioners of mysticism and magic and the general public.

This emboldened me to proposition Stephanie, based on the information or lack thereof I had at this point in time.

#snipWell… I was going to paste what I sent, but I’m afraid I deleted it. I doubt I wanted to remember the part where I told Stephanie I figured out I was a reincarnated space alien from Arcturus, or a starseed or whatever. Ugh. I understand why I did that, but I kinda wish I hadn’t now.

We kind of started quasi-dating; in a situation somewhat comparable to what happened with April, because we’re both bottoms.

It felt good, having Stephanie to talk to as I started remembering more and more crazy shit. It pretty quickly became clear that Stephanie didn’t really know anything about UFOs; but she was into this stuff, and seemed willing to lend an ear.

I made this sort of seamless transition; from finding some really weird shit on the internet when my brain was doing crazy stuff, to thinking what I really needed to explore was comparatively “mainstream” mysticism, magic, esoteric occult stuff. This felt a little more palatable, at least; and, a bunch of my friends are into it for some reason, right?

I set out to the internet, to look up… I don’t know, the subreddits for mysticism, magick with a funny spelling weirdos use… I quickly found a reading list of about half a dozen things to get started exploring the subject matter.

One of these texts was titled “the Kybalion”: a public-domain work released under mysterious circumstances around the turn of the 20^th century, seemingly associated with the poorly-aged theosophic and “new thought” movements.

By the time I finished reading the first page of “the Kybalion”, I knew I had read it before. Like, a really long time ago. I don’t even have to look this thing up again to remember the line “if indeed man he was”. Where on Earth have I seen this before?

Oh, shit.

This is the thing Tommy had me read. When he pulled me aside after confirmation class that one time, remember? He gave me that slip of paper? He told me not to tell anyone, but I told Josh anyway?

Uhh…

The Wikipedia page. That same fucking picture with the green cover, that says it’s from the “masonic press” or whatever. I remember looking it up in middle school. I’m sure the article has changed somewhat, but they’re using the same fucking Wikipedia picture.²

I kept looking through it. All those different laws. The law of correspondence. The law of gender. That one was so weird. I remember reading that in middle school and thinking, “Uhh? Does he know I’m trans somehow? Is that related?”

Something that really stuck out to me in this text, which I still don’t think I’ve more than skimmed all these years later, was the so-called “law of correspondence”; summarized by the adage “as above, so below”.

I was convinced that Tommy and I were related by this mystical law; because, we were both coincidentally born in Warren, Ohio. We both happen to be born far away but from the same place; we both made our way along our separate paths, until we met in the small town of Elizabethtown… to cross paths there, against all odds. Applying this axiom to my present situation would suggest that Tommy and I are from the same place, in more ways than one.

I began to remember the discussion that happened in elementary school, when Tommy first came to our church. It was me, my mom, Tommy, Terry, the Stewarts… Tommy said he was from somewhere.

This is what I remembered; decades later.

• Freemasons. They started talking about Freemasons, and they seemed a little “on the down low” about it. Terry was a Freemason.
• Tommy. He said he’s from “the Pleiades”. I remember it now. That’s the place.
• Jody. She said she was from Vega. I remember it. Jody and Doug knew about this stuff, but Jody was the one that’s different. Shit.

Phew. Deep breath.

Okay. So, Tommy had me read this in middle school. I suppose I’m that much further behind on learning it, first of all.

So… he knows. About the reincarnation, and the UFOs, the Heather people…

Shit. So, what do I…

That right there is the mail. Now let’s talk about the mail. Can we talk about the mail, please, Mac? I’ve been dying to talk about the mail with you all day, OK?

I didn’t have Tommy’s phone number, and I hate social networking. I didn’t really want to ask Susan for it, because she’s fucking nosy. I don’t think I spent more than a few days thinking about it before I just decided

What if I show up for Sunday service? Just drive over there to Cary and see what happens. He’s still at Cary, right?

This might’ve been the strangest part yet: my atheist skeptic ass anxiously looking forward to Sunday morning. Maybe I’ll get some answers about what I should do next.

I attended Cary United Methodist Church on what happened to be All Saints’ Day.

Today’s scripture reading is from Revelation chapter 21, verses 1 through 7

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new Earth,”…

Wait, did she just say “a new Earth”? Like all that weird 5D new Earth stuff I found online?

Uhh… Maybe it’s a coincidence? (I didn’t particularly think so at the time.)

I went up for communion. He walked down and gave me a hug.

Okay. He knows I’m here.

He seemed really excited to see me. He later remarked that he’s never left church to go home so fast. I followed him home, and Nancy made us lunch.

He definitely seems like he’s excited, beyond just wanting to catch up. But, nothing’s happening. Is he gonna make the first move, or should I…

It felt like we were exchanging innuendo at the time, but nothing overt was happening. I obviously wanted to talk about UFOs and that time he had me read the Kybalion for confirmation class, but I never got a moment alone with the guy. And, you’d think he’d make it easy, right?

We exchanged numbers. At least I can contact him easily now.

Eventually, we made our way to the couch, and I think Nancy ultimately asked the big question.

So, why did you come to visit us?

I dropped one final hint at Tommy about not being sure if we were all “on the same wavelength”, before going into a frank yet sanitized version of the last several months; free of UFOs and explicit mentions of reincarnation.

Well, I actually left the church not long after I went off to college. But, I started going through this spiritual awakening earlier this summer. I’ve had to face some difficult facts about myself, but the reality is, I can’t deny the fact that you don’t really die when you die; and, I’m having to contend with the reality that atheism is simply not correct.

There may’ve been a couple shots across the bow about how Tommy doesn’t believe in hell, and how he’s got Nancy not believing in hell. It wasn’t after much more conversation that Tommy left me with Nancy, as he had to leave to teach confirmation class. I resisted cracking any jokes about whether he’s had any of those kids read the Kybalion.

I talked with Nancy a few more minutes before driving back to Durham.

As I returned home and reflected on what just happened, a couple less obvious things stood out about the service.

Tommy used a seemingly unusual appellation “Jesus the Christ” in part of the bulletin, and correspondingly part of the service. First of all, this seemed to match up with a lot of the weird, esoteric stuff I had read lately; referring to Jesus as “the Christ”, as opposed to using Christ as a pseudo-last name as would seem to be the norm in mainstream Christianity.

More importantly, this awakened a core memory. That weird church service Tommy wanted me to pay close attention to. I think it was the same one, at least. Was it… yeah, I think it was All Saint’s Day. In, like, 2005 or something. Because, Emma wasn’t there, and my Junior year would’ve been too late.

I remember Tommy making a somewhat bigger deal out of All Saint’s Day than he usually did back then; and we did an unusual joint youth group with both Tommy and Paula Conner for the next session. I remember him asking if we noticed anything unusual or different about the service. And I mentioned it; Jesus the Christ? I saw that in the bulletin. That seemed a little unusual…

There was more. It was the scripture reading, which I had done. We talked about that, too. I remember Tommy making a somewhat peculiar point at that youth group; that as the preacher, he got to chose what went in the service – and what stayed out. It was that last part that he wanted us to reflect on; where he cut off the scripture reading, which I had read. The very next verse was all about hell and damnation; I remember it very clearly condemning “the sexually amoral”, “practitioners of magic arts” and “all liars”.

It felt so familiar. That scripture reading. Wait…

I actually pulled my old Bible out of the closet.

⁸But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.

It was this! He had me read this for the scripture reading! The same thing, some fifteen years ago! I mean, the exact same verses, cut off right before all that fire and brimstone bullshit.

Shit, dude.

Okay. So… he had me read the Kybalion in middle school, he had me do this scripture reading and made a big point about how he could just “nix” the part in the Bible where it talks about gays and magic people going to hell…

If I recall, it took a month or more for the really big one. Like, December.

Fuuuuuuuu…
…
…uuuuuuuuck

The sermon. It was me.

That woman. The one in her early 30s. She was dealing with childhood sexual trauma, she had “multiple personalities”, her mom was problematic and kept invading her privacy…

It was me.

I… became her.

Fuuuuuuuuck

And, all those people, who went very out of their way to surround me and tell me they loved me afterward.

Didn’t Jody call me some weird girl’s name? Shit, I think it might’ve been…

Fuck.

Okay. So, lots of church people know. Well, not lots. Like, The Stewarts and the Richardsons and maybe the Mitchells. And, well… Tommy.

What are they? Like, Freemasons? Occultists? Starseeds? Dude, what?

How do they know? The same way weird shit just started happening to me, I guess? They have visions and stuff? Visions of the future, like people from the Old Testament or some shit?

Dude. What?

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I had remembered more about Heather too. She seemed to know things about me from the future back when we talked in 2016, just like that crazy old man Tommy. And, I remembered her saying something about a concert. She said I’d be really cool when I was older, but I wasn’t ready yet. Or… something.

I checked to see if there were any Red Hot Chili Peppers concerts in the near future.

My fucking birthday? This is too good to be true!

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The insanity of the second half of the year had since widened the distance between Kristina and I. “Star Buffy” was essentially on hiatus by this point.

#TODOCan I not end a document with message bubbles?