The Park pt. 2 cuz Ray rightfully wanted details.

I can't believe I am putting this in writing. I can't believe how real these memories still are. I just want to grab my former self, my "crazy" self and love her, show her calm and surety and peace. Read below for details about me and Prospect Park and Paranoia/Psychosis.

I imagined I was running from random people in the park. There was a walking bridge through a woodsy area full of leaves on trees and the ground. I loved walking ON it, but more interesting was to walk the path that went BELOW it. And just stay under it and listen. Especially when oblivious people walked near. It coulda been a WWI (or two?) shelter - the randomly-shaped square stones, the tunnels of light on either end, the loneliness of that spot. It was so me. Or how I imagined myself: tragic, subtly and unwittingly gorgeous, worn, torn, overlooked, fatigued, solitary.

I read near the pond - Things Fall Apart. The mood of that book was my mood. Inevitably depressed. Like the main character, I was gradually less able to control my rage and violence. I had a sharp heat in my chest at all times. The pond waters cooled that a little, though. The air was fresher there and persuaded my heart like city smog could not. I could cry alone and sometimes loudly.

I though people were chasing me sometimes. In the park I could take paths that would throw them off, camouflage me, wind me back to solace. I had a whole scheme in my head of why I was being chased and watched. The FBI wanted to study me, the child of a former civil rights lawyer living in the city of the upcoming huge KKK rally. Really it was just a whirlwind feeling that told me I was picking up clues about being under surveillance. I would imagine my roommate having secret phone talks about where I went when I left the house. I thought it interesting in my dementia that I went to the park. In retrospect, that would have been the least interesting place for the feds to follow me. Just grass and trees and joggers. I laugh in awe of how my mind jumped its wires and still convinced itself of its sanity. Also amazing is the impact these thoughts had on my breathing, my heartbeat, my emotions, my physical reality. I wish I could comfort that fear-consumed young woman in my memories. I wish she could have remembered peace and joy and known that THAT is truth, that it is unnatural to live in hard, hateful paralysis. That suspicion of everyone and everything does not make you a smarter person. Even now I come out of milder panic states and marvel at the contrast between my "sane" mind (relative peace, joy, love) and my horrid delusions (sheer and utter fear).


So does that paint a better picture, Ray? I'll keep working on it. It gets hard to go back there and to put these sensations and false knowings into words.

Love,

Kali