The Other Side
‘We decided to give her ketamine even though she has PTSD, because her blood pressure and heart rate were low,’ the woman tells the ER room.
‘Ketamine?’ I mumble. ‘I thought I got k something nest.’
‘Ketanest is ketamine. The PTSD flashbacks can become worse due to it. It’s what happened to you.’
‘I thought I was dying,’ I reply.
The room is silent. I can see the professionals exchange looks.
‘Yeah, you were talking about “the other side”. Some people get hallucinations and dissociate when given ketamine. We put you to sleep because of it.’
Time jumps back. Only it’s not to 2016.
‘Did you fall on your head?’
‘I don’t think I did,’ I reply.
‘What date is it?’
‘The 6th or the 9th. January, 2021.’
I can barely speak because of the pain.
‘Good. It’s the 9th. What’s your last name?’
What is my last name? Oh right.
‘Roelofs. I don’t think I fell on my head.’
I’m on the floor. I know I just helped my neighbour climb through the window by opening it, with the last energy I had. I can’t see her anywhere now, only the ambulance personnel. Cold sweat is streaming down the back of my skull. Am I wounded? I must be wounded. How bad is it? I can’t tell. I feel nauseous and light headed. This is survival instinct. Autonomic nervous system taking over. I’m going to faint soon. That, I can tell.
‘Do you have any conditions?’
I utter my allergies, my metabolism problems. My cyp something. Like a computer I repeat everything they need to know as soon as possible. That last time during anaphylaxis when I didn’t respond to the epinephrine. Not that it matters, because this is not anaphylaxis, but maybe it matters. Maybe I matter.
‘Oh. And PTSD. With derealisation. I have PTSD with derealisation. Bad PTSD.’
‘How come you have PTSD?’
‘A double rape,’ I mumble.
Hands become softer after that. The empathy in the room increases. It’s almost as if I can taste it in the air. I’m safe. I’m safe. They know what they’re doing.
I can hear the woman say she can’t measure my something. It must be inconvenient. She tries to stick a needle in my arm, without the desired effect.
‘Are you difficult to poke?’
‘What?’
‘Are you difficult to poke with a needle?’
I remember I am and tell her. My body is difficult at everything.
‘Alright, it will be a pink one today,’ she tells her colleague, while taking my hand. She tells me it will hurt, but it doesn’t. The other pain overwhelms everything. The pain. Where did it come from?
I open my eyes and see the screen. I then see 2016. Moments. Great. Waking up to this every day, just great. I could stay in bed longer, but it won’t make the flashbacks and derealisation go away, so instead I get up and talk to my friend. I tell them about it. They listen patiently, as usual, they try to comfort me. I walk down the stairs trying to ignore His face and the damn derealisation and before I finish my sentence my body twists itself to save my head. I hear the sound of a bone breaking. I’m on the floor. An explosion in my leg. All I can think? Well, this sure as hell feels fucking real. Because it is. The screen is still there but the pain comes pouring through, to the person watching it.
The clock starts ticking. My friend is screaming.
‘We’re going to give you something,’ the woman says.
I stare at the white wall in front of me as I can feel my body slipping to the right.
I love you, I think, while focusing on my little boy and his name. Someone grabs the left side of my shirt.
Darkness.
Everything upside down.
Nothing.
Tentacles? Tunnels? Darkness. Nothing. Everything. White and green blocks. A pattern? White green white green white green. Squares. Blocks. More blocks. So close. Blocks made of light. Ceiling. Not ceiling. I am blocks. Patterns. Stone? Close. What? Shapes. More shapes. Falling through shapes. I am at the end. No. The beginning. No. The other side. I am a block. I am a layer. I am made of layers. I am a metaphor. I am a block made of layers and metaphors. I am all metaphors. I am a number. A metaphor of numbers. I am layers of metaphors made of layers of metaphors. I am the amplification and reduction of all metaphors. I am binary. I am a block.
I am fucking dead. Holy fuck. I am fucking dead. But I am conscious. BUT I AM DEAD.
I feel my family. But I don’t see them. I realise they are. But I am not.
The white green block rattle snake appears again. Two blue balloons.
THIS LAYER.
I KNOW THIS LAYER.
I AM BREAKING THROUGH THE SCREEN.
A ridiculous face attached to those blue balloons. I’m holding the balloons. Soft sounds. Sweet sounds. Another strange being to the left, holding me too. Oh right. These things. This layer. These beings again.
I barf in code.
I vibrate metaphors.
I need to tell them where I am but they don’t seem to understand.
They want to help. I know these things. I must trust them. They will bring me back. How do these things communicate again? How do I tell them? How does everything work on this layer?
‘Help,’ is the code I utter.
THAT IS HOW THEY COMMUNICATE.
THAT IS HOW I COMMUNICATE.
COMMUNICATE AGAIN!
‘Help,’
TELL THEM!
‘Other side,’
The face with the blue balloons looks friendly. His mouth is blue also. He repeats my melody with a code at the end called a question mark. Above me I see another face and this one is familiar. A face I have seen so often in this layer. He looks ridiculous however. Square hair. A cartoon. But I know his code.
SAY HIS CODE.
He will help. He will always help.
SAY HIS CODE!
‘Dad dad dad dad dad.’
I know the words mean so much and keep repeating them. He will get it.
‘Other side. Other side. Other side. Other side. Other side.’
A black-out. Light again.
‘Where was I? Where was I? Where did I go?’
Another black-out.
Then, an ambulance from the inside. Everything looks normal again.
I survived.
Again.
‘So you need surgery,’ my friend says.
‘Yeah. Otherwise I might not be able to walk anymore in the future.’
I can’t shake how funny a coincidence it is: that I wrote in my last post about falling down the stairs and my fear about general anesthesia, and here we are.
‘Remember when a friend of mine did ketamine and I told him how stupid he was?’
‘Yeah.. You said you never wanted to try it in your life.’
‘I never wanted to!’ I say with a dark undertone. ‘I spent months getting off medication and fighting derealisation, fall down and BAM. They give the autistic PTSD patient ketamine, who then drops into k-hole.’
I’m trying to laugh about it but the reality is that I am terrified. I went somewhere, and it wasn’t my choice. I came back but everything now feels even less real. And I soon need to see the darkness again. I feel like my time is running out. I need to write everything down as soon as possible. I need to stay positive.
‘I bet something really good must happen soon,’ I say. ‘It’s always gone like that. Every horrible event was followed by something good.’
I think of the post I wrote the days before I fell, but didn’t publish yet: Radio God. And how in it, I jokingly gave God a ‘third chance’.
I think of the video I finished before the accident: A theory of everything. I think of the ridiculous symbolism one could find in the fact that this all happened after I published Numb Me. I tell my friend, and they agree.
‘Well,’ they say. ‘I think three good things should happen, since your bone is broken in three locations. I think you deserve three good things, so let’s hope for that.’
‘Yeah.. Let’s hope for that.’
Late at night.
I think of synchronicity. I think of Experiment A.
I think of the man who still has not taken accountability for the inhumane experiment he did on me.
I look at the ceiling and contemplate how everything looks fake. I know it’s not fake, but it looks fake. It looks like a simulation. Thoughts I despise rumble through the chaos that is my mind.
I listen to my fearful voice: You got lucky this time. The PTSD will kill you if you won’t stop it. It will kill you. Next time you will break your neck. And then he will win. He will win. Do you want him to win?
I listen to the me from 2016 who’s screaming a layer lower, trying to overpower my voice. She’s in the part of my mind that’s built a direct bridge to my consciousness as it is. It’s where the me lives that thinks she needs Him.
I think of the Proposer. The me who still believes in him, and that he can and will shut down the experiment, recognise it, and cure the Subject. Her.
Me.
I tried smothering her for 4 years with prescription medication. But she’s become so clear again when the derealisation fades. She shouts and cries and curses into the void and is standing on the ladder to the top layer trying to reach me (I’m in the attic). For some reason she also sings and dances and points out the butterflies in the darkness there. They glow and shimmer among the stars. She points at them as if they mean something. As if it all truly means anything. She’s convinced of it and sings it, while she flies through the universe and swims among the nebulae.
Right now she’s screaming though:
‘THERE’S ONLY ONE PERSON WHO CAN SAVE YOU AND WHO CAN END THIS!’
I know who she means. I blow away the dust, peek through a hole in the wooden floor, and whisper my thoughts towards her layer:
‘But Roelofs, I know that person doesn’t want to save you.’
‘THEY DO’, she screams back.
I roll my eyes.
‘THEY ARE JUST SICK’, she continues. ‘I NEED TO TALK TO THEM.’
‘You can talk all you want,’ I reply. ‘It won’t matter. They won’t save you. It’s pathetic to keep believing it. And because they won’t, I’ll have to end you. You know that but don’t want to accept it.’
‘YOU WILL KILL ME,’ she screams.
‘YES,’ I scream back. ‘I HAVE TO.’
And then I whisper:
‘But I’ll give you a chance to say what you have to say.’
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