I AM

This is what seems like it wants to be expressed through me today...

It feels/seems as if I lapsed into a coma of sorts sometime in mid-2013 and lasting until just a few months ago. This is how it seems to me. It seems like sometime in mid-2013 I lapsed into a coma in Oakland, California and two years later I somewhat magically regained consciousness and awoke here in Bremerton, Washington. This is in fact something of a quasi-dramatic overstatement being used mostly for effect. Obviously, I was not really in a coma during this period of time. However, it does somewhat realistically seem as if it did sort of happen.

I am also very cognizant of and have absolutely full consciousness and awareness about what has most likely triggered all of this.

Between February and May of 2013 I experienced two significant medical emergencies at my place of work in downtown San Francisco, CA. During the first event, I walked into my supervisor’s office very early in the morning and informed him of very concerning physical sensations I was experiencing. He subsequently called 911. Paramedics arrived, took some initial readings, and the decision was fairly quickly made by the paramedics to transport me by ambulance to Kaiser Hospital/San Francisco. I stayed at Kaiser for most of the day. Many tests were taken. I was eventually released several hours later. I went to Japantown and treated myself to dinner at my favorite Japanese restaurant there. The food was great, as usual. I then traveled back to Oakland to my partner and our apartment.

The second medical event occurred almost exactly 3 months later. I experienced very similar and equally concerning physical sensations. One again I walked into my supervisor’s office and explained to him that I was having the same symptoms I had experienced 3 months earlier. This time one of the physicians who was employed at my place of work was available and was called into my supervisor’s office for consultation. After a brief consultation with this person a decision was made once again to transport me via ambulance to Kaiser Hospital/San Francisco. Being carried through my place of work, however, on a gurney three months earlier, in front of co-workers and clients had been stress inducing for me. So this time I asked my supervisor if he would drive me to the hospital instead. He agreed. His car was parked several blocks away from the building. He informed me it would likely take him 15-20 minutes to come back and pick me up. I stayed outside and awaited his return. By the time he arrived back to take me to the hospital, some twenty minutes later, all my symptoms had abated and I felt oddly refreshed and very renewed. Given this, I requested that my supervisor drop me off at the San Francisco Transbay Bus Terminal instead of taking me to the hospital. He did this. I took a bus back home to Oakland and relaxed for the rest of the day.

Even though I had some very real physical symptoms during both of these medical encounters, like blood pressure readings of around 200/110 during both events, I slowly began to believe both events had essentially been rather intense panic attacks brought on by what I viewed as my extremely stressful life at that time. This, among other things, was significantly characterized by my job, which I experienced as both highly stressful and almost completely unrewarding in most ways. I also had other highly stressful aspects of my personal life at that time as well.

After the second medical “event” at my place of work, this place of work required that I get a release from my physician in order to return to work as a glorified wage slave there. Patrick, my Kaiser physician, was completely prepared to write me such a letter and told me so. However, I asked him not to do so. I was beginning to see certain clear writing on the wall in terms of my life, my life’s journey, and my future life’s vocation. This decision of mine to not get a work clearance from Patrick for all intents and purposes served as my resignation letter from my place of work. It also was the first conscious step toward what would eventually become a fourteen month stretch of homelessness for my partner, our two dogs, and myself, on the mean, somewhat unforgiving streets of Oakland, living in our twelve year old Buick Crossover. And it would also eventually be the decision that I would ultimately see as a lifesaving decision both physically and spiritually. But first, before I went to hell in order to save my life, we had enough saved from my wage slavery to pay for 6 months’ rent at our overpriced Cleveland Heights neighborhood Oakland apartment. And then we were graciously “put up” by a very supportive and loving Buddhist friend in Oakland for two more additional months before we hit the streets of Oakland living in our vehicle. Thirteen months later this same vehicle would transport us to our new home in Bremerton, WA.

Most of the things I experienced in my life before mid-2013 are relatively clear to me and feel very real, just like all of the life memories you have, unless, of course, you have dementia or some kind of chronic dissociative thing going on in your life. Things that happened in my life between mid-2013 and mid-2015 however, mostly feel like a somewhat shadowy dream or nightmare, (depending on different factors). I did experience many traumatic events during that thirteen months of living in the vehicle and of being homeless. Not all of that trauma had to do with living in the vehicle nor being homeless. My main point however, is that most of these events and even the people of that timeframe don’t feel completely real to me anymore. Events and people who are strongly connected to that 2-year period specifically and not to any previous period in my life feel the most abstract and unreal to me now. Each and every day many of these people feel less and less real and are pretty much on the periphery of my life at this point anyway. I experience relatively little sense of loss or grief around that. While at the same time I also have this sense that loss and grief are significant factors in why all of this is happening. However, it also feels like this entire experience has also been brought about by divine grace or will or some kind of weird destiny. This feels much more present and real than the grief and loss aspects do at this point. I experience this sense of divine grace and destiny as being very reassuring and as ultimately being very positive.

I know that trauma plays some role in what I am experiencing or have experienced in the last two years. It however, in no way has the starring role. I don’t believe I am in denial about that. Now that I feel relatively safe—and around what feel like authentically loving, caring, and supportive people—many of whom, in reality, feel much more like angels than mere mortals, I do not really have the motivation to lie to nor kid myself in such ways.

I believe I experienced a Dark Night of the Soul spiritual event, and a significant series of traumatic events simultaneously between 2013-2015. There were periods where the trauma was likely the most prominent. I believe I am now in a period where the Dark Night of the Soul experience is the most prominent. I believe my “coma” experience is due to the process of coming out of the Dark Night and experiencing a sort of “rebirth” that has come about as a direct result of it. I do not believe I think this simply because believing such is “sexier” than believing that everything I am experiencing is the sole purview of trauma or depression or some similar such thing. I am continuously consulting with both helping professionals and “spiritual friends” all of whom have my very best interests at heart and whom I believe would not in any way lead me astray. Each of these individuals concur with my assessment of things. 

My sense of now being awakened from my “coma” is marked by several current experiences. Some things feel almost completely foreign now--things that use to be very important in my life. Now it is as if they were never really a part of my real life at all. I will, for example, sometimes go to the social media pages of strident progressive social justice activists friends whose views I use to 99% agree with and I will read these people's last forty or fifty posts. Sometimes I’ll spend more than an hour just reading his or her posts. Or I will read an entire progressive social justice periodical or newsletter from cover to cover—one that used to be a favorite of mine. In each instance, I will have the sense while engaging in this activity and will also come away feeling as if I just read something in an exotic foreign language that I have absolutely no facility nor skill for understanding. I don’t experience anger nor frustration about what I have read. I used to when I would engage in this same activity a couple of months ago, but not now. I also don’t laugh sarcastically at what is being said and expressed. I don’t feel superior nor wiser. I don’t really feel anything. I just have this odd sensation that I simply do not really understand anything that is being expressed—that almost everything that is being expressed is something that simply no longer computes for me. I have the awareness that I used to hold the exact same beliefs as the ones I just read. Sometimes that feels somewhat odd. It no longer however, really makes any sense to me now.