I've been wondering how to explain this without it sounding absurd - to get it down with the true weight and wonder of it.
Saturday August 3 was a new experience in misery. So sick, so awesomely ill. Bugs under the skin, mudslides every half hour. Objects around me so impossibly bright they terrified me. It felt like my skin had been torn away and I was pure raw nerves. I walked over to Andre's place and the crowds on the street were almost too much. Icy sweat poured off me and I somehow managed to stumble along in sick terror of everything. I got to Andre's place and he was horrified by my visage. I looked like a dead man, barely animated, grey slimy skin - a ghost in the middle of the day. I managed to eat a cracker and a small piece of cheese, then I had to leave. I hauled myself back home and when I got there I marvelled at the fact that I did it, and didn't collapse in the street. Saturday night I was in bed at 7:30pm with my sheets smelling foul from the oceans of sweat that came out of me. One minute freezing, the next burning. Why couldn't I just die and be done with it?
I woke ridiculously early on Sunday morning and couldn't get back to sleep. HA! The nightmare continues. Rolling around my bed in miserable endless torture I turned the radio on. I had to get my mind off my woeful state. Every station I hit only seemed to add to my plight. Horrible noise, dumb lyrics. Then I hit a station where a man was talking about God and Jesus Christ. I listened. I found myself thinking hard about my situation, how ashamed I felt because of the point I had reached with the drugs. I meditated at length. I had been doing my best to fuck myself up good and proper, that's for sure.
Then some music came on and it seemed to ease the pain I was feeling. I found my Holy Bible and flipped it open randomly. It was the Psalms. Soon I found this one:
Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Se-lah.
- Psalm 4:4
It struck me like a lightningbolt. I realised with absolute clarity how I'd been destroying myself. I felt in awe of the words the preacher was saying, and those words from the Bible, in that Psalm. I communed with my heart on my sick bed, and was still. I became still because the pain disappeared. The great and relentless agony ended.
I got up from my bed, feeling better than I could ever remember feeling.
