Personal Journal

episode

that crying was the first religious episode I've had in so many many years, perhaps ever.
I'm speechless by what I just felt. I thought the hot flash memory was terrible on Thursday, or whenever it was. But to remember that last, unliving hug, it took me to a place where emptiness would have felt full compared to what I was feeling.

I gasped for air like had been running. I was crying and not breathing for long periods.

I feel calm now. I feel calm.

I wonder what psychological term there is for what just happened to me. I've never experienced anything like it, nor heard of anyone who has ever had it. That's why I'm describing it as religious. Spiritual, a better word. I was definitely someplace else - really I think I was back on that Friday morning 6 weeks ago. Who was here I don't fucking know, but I'm back now.

I remember now, Dire Straits was on the radio, one of my absolute favorite songs, Sultans of Swing. And I just vaguely now remember consciously recognizing that the lyrics were playing, but the rhythm of what I was experiencing was happening so much more slowly than the rhythm of the music, that the song and whatever happened after that on the radio just completely disappear from me. I didn't notice it again until I "came down," which was when the radio started playing a song from an album I picked up the day before Jean died. John Mayer - it was the album I listened to almost incessantly on my drive to New Jersey the week after she died. That's when I realized I was crying, but the music slowly brought me back to this room, rather than the one 6 weeks ago.

If you made me describe it, I'd say it's my first legitimately verifiable (to myself) out of body episode...