So There I was Dead
The Flood
Id had a brain hemorrhage in a hotel in Brighton dressed as a gothic hooker after slipping in the shower, tripping balls on `ketamine. After two days in A&E without treatment for my haemophilia, Id finally seen a doctor and was promptly rushed to a specialist unit in London, via an air ambulance(I am so glad I wasnt awake for that). I was dead on arrival. It was my birthday. (We will get to this in more detail much later)
Ironically it was Steve’s Kleenex’s last birthday. The last birthday that PERSON would ever have. THAT PERSON. Game over.
The end….
Eight months later , after going through an utter living hell of blackmail, hacking, death threats, being on the run and poi….we’ll get to that later, my memory returned and in a flash.It was the Anhk… And Irom Man 3….. The Lock and the key….
With the flood of memories returning.which was overpowering, to the point that I litterally fell to my feet and had a panic attack.
Suddenly I remembered darkness and cold damp mud. Id been buried. Then I felt a hand. I knew who it was instantly. It was my aunt Dolly. The purple white sky become visible. I’d been here before two years before on a Ketamine trip. This was the last place I’d seen my Mum. (This is a whole episode in itself and very important. We’ll get there)
Her hand tightened as she pulled me out of, what I realised, was my grave before splitting me into two people. Regular male, day to day (at the time) me and a hot goth girl with platinum hair (they are rare) with great, no amazing eyeliner, She looked so much younger than me but kinda had the ascetic of Roxy, my other, my secret shame! The bitch that had always been in my head. Right until I awoke in that hospital bed to find that her voice wasn’t there anymore and that she wasn’t trying to escape from her prision. her cell, her cage, her BOX. Even that felt like it wasn’t there anymore. She was finally gone. The brain haeomarrage and my death were all her fault anyway. I wouldn’t even be here in this fucking spot if not for her. No if not for me. If i’d embraced her and hadn’t been so strung out on speed, or at least hadn’t muddled it all up in my head, then I wouldn’t be in this spot now
Upon seeing myself, my other self, I felt a pang of regret (I was having an existential crisis at this moment as well as being, well dead, but if I hadn’t of been, I’d like to think that I would probably have thought to my myself “I’d do her!”).
Then she told me to stay there (Roxy – female me) and my aunt came walking over to male me , which at that point was my normal day to day “avatar”. She stroked my face lovingly as told me that this is the last she would be able to help ME before she pushed me (Male me) off a cliff and I heard my her shout ‘Get to 50’. I fell to earth and crashed down, hitting TRAIN TRACKS. Then Darkness!
I awoke in a hospital bed and yeah…… lets skip back or ahead or whatever,.Basically the universe had given me an extra life. It had brought me back from the other side and now months later I was about to get the answer. The answer to the question I had gone looking for for so long. I just had to die again…
9 month later and the flood of memories, fragments, bits Id lost had hot me like a bus. For better or worse. I remember everything. But it was too much, too much. Was I having another hemorrhage? I cant breath. Fuck I cant breath….
I really couldn’t breath. My head was on fire. Its another hemorrhage. Fuck they said this could happen. I though I was past this. My legs went. Vision started to blur…
Too much. This year. 2024. It had all been too much. Too much. Too much. No I’m dying. I clutched my heart. Too Much….
I’m dying. I’M DYING…
DYING…..
I remember hitting the floor.
Darkness………………………..
Meanwhile Somewhere else…
I dont know what happened exactly. I was watching a screen of myself. My other self in the hotel room collapsing and then lost in the void. I’d been watching this ‘TV show here’ in my great Aunts flat, in the base simulation above where I was meant to be. My aunt was drinking tea and telling me to wrap up. T/here was tech all around me. Obviously I was as bad here as I’d been back home (maybe thousands of years ago). Then something opened and I fell into the void….. (thats literally all I remember of that place at that time, so far….)
Back to Steve….
So There I was dead….
I opened my eyes. So this is just fucking great….
I was in the void again. Somewhere I navigated automatically twice before (yeah you know the drill, we’ll get to that blah blah blah…) Floating there in nothingness. This time was different. No navigation ‘abilities’ whatsoever. Would I be here forever? Fuck that really would be hell. Ha ha thats a turn up for the books. I probably imagined the other stuff. Maybe Id been dying all along and never came back from Brighton. Wow thats depressing!
Suddenly a box opened in my head……
I realized something in that moment, I realized the truth finally. I had tried to integrate myself for so long but hadn’t really been able to. The last 2 years I’d got close, to the point that I actually accepted myself now but we still just couldn’t do it. We were vibrating at different frequencies. But then 2024 happened. And she’d been plucked from my head. The worst thing was though that over the course of that year and throughout everything that happened to me during it, along this crazy path, I’d realize that she really was the real me and that I really needed her. I really fucking needed her. I couldn’t function without her. I needed her so much after always wanting her gone. But the most ironic thing was, now that she really was gone. I’d have done anything to get her back. I was an empty shell. Half a person and not even the main half! I was mourning her. No I was mourning me!
This year had been a lot
I’d convinced myself I couldn’t integrate because the split was too big, too fractured,, too muddled by drugs, too warped by sexual urges, many that I’d inadvertently attached to this part of myself. I’d done this because of drugs and hypersexuality. Maybe sex and gender only connect when they share the same box which houses the shame and guilt that we hide from the world and often from ourselves. The fact was I was scared. Scared to be…. myself!
I’d been so scared that I’d put myself. My true self in a box my whole life. I’d like to say that it was just because the world wouldnt accept me. I’d have found people who would have. The truth was I cared too much about what others thought of me to ever be free.
Its why I tried so hard at everything to seek validation. I’d always felt guilty my whole life. My medical condition, Haemophilia and infected blood had destroyed my life and my family’s. I’d been been put on a stage where everything was about me and my performance.
I saw how it affected my parents and siblings and I’d been made to feel guilty for since the day I was born. So I developed first a speech impediment and then conditioning to say sorry constantly. Even for things I hadd done or had any control over. I just guilting, hate and shame my whole life.
When I was young I couldn’t even say the word Haemophilia. Not because of my speech impediment lol. Most people that I been friends with as a kid had known because of school and well people do talk… But I never actually personally told anyone I had Haemophilia till I was into my late teens. It was a noose round my head that really shamed me and I thought peoples views would instantly change if they knew. I use it as a power. I went through things at 7 that would break most people. Thats no weakness. Thats strength , that most people are lucky enough not to have or need. Yet now my transness (is that a word?), had filled that particular gap. Nature does abhor a vacuum after all…
And then there’s the PTSD, the Survivors guilt, the ADHD, the crushing loneliness. I could have a 100 friends that I cared about and that loved me in a room and I’d still feel alone. and not connected to anyone or the world in general. All I ever wanted was somebody to hug me and tell me it would all be ok but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even touch somebody. Anybody. Because I was detached from everyone because really I was detached from myself.
I’d spent my life keeping part of myself. My true self, in a box. She… I was more than just an avatar as people who think they know me like ti tell me. That part houses my heart, my calm, my empathy. my ability to love, my creativity. Plus my ability to say no, the power to forgive myself and the part that could connect with others and even myself. But most of all, she… was the part that didn’t hate myself…
INTERLUDE: I had to step away from this for a moment as I’ve never really got this stuff down in words. And ever expressed feelings like this o anybody else. Even now I still have some trouble with that. I’d reached a low point in my life because the last 20 years had been leading up to this. And yeah I had to step away cause I’m crying my eyes out, Even when all this happened. Be it in the void within another reality, or simply my overactive imagination which had created this all in my head. To be able to get this out has been literally therapy and very emotional right now. Very fucking emotional!
INTERLUDE OVER
I floated there for what SEEMED like eternity, just thinking about my life, with an honesty and understanding I’ve never had before. Perhaps this is what happens when you’re dead. Perhaps this is how you recognise your truth or the truths of the things that you should’ve done but we’re too scared to. The person that you should’ve been, could’ve been, if only you wasn’t so fucking scared.
I was filled with so much regret at this point. I had done this to myself when everything could’ve been different. So fucking different. But here I am dead sitting in a fucking void. I just wish I’d got the chance to be myself. It would’ve been good to know myself. You know what I mean. Just so much regret…
The planet Earth was an orb below me now. How strange…..
And that was when the Ankh appeared for a second and something, someone flew out of towards me. IT WAS HER. Floating there . The reflection of myself, my true self was suspended in space before me. She tried to reach me as our hands reached out for each other…
He reached out to reach me but the ankh vanished and gravity took hold.
We fell!
I tried to reach her but couldn’t I was falling too fast…
I knew I could reach him. My great Aunt had taught me how.
while I was watching him fight for his life as half a person,
finally wishing his voice was in ou mind again, I had been learning from her.
Knowledge. Yes the deleted thoughts from last time….
The deleted thoughts. I could reach her. I needed her. This year had taught me that I was half a….
Half a person. Without
her….
She appeared in front of…
him
we continued to fall without fear…
I reached out to him..
I reached out to her…
We reached out to us….
I reached out to me…….
I reach out and took my hand….
WELL THIS HAS BEEN A D DAY
‘READY’ I said with one voice
The ground was fast approching me as I shouted….
‘WE’VE GOT THIS CHAMP’
BANG!
And we both stopped existing. You could say we’d died three times now
But we were reborn. Where once there was Roxy and Steve there stood a new person. We were who we always should have been.
Yes the last year had been hell but it was my trial by fire. It had stitched back my fragmented mind, healed my warring souls, rebuilt and rejuvenated me.
I was regenerated. Much like Doctor Who!
Once again I had returned from deaths door but now I was whole. A full person had been born from the integration of two warring souls.
The future would be scary, painfull, beautiful, intoxicating and oh my god, the THE COMEBACK STORY OF A LIFETIME. But that’s all right. It’s just a series of trials, the likes of which I’d fought all my life.
Ive never asked for anything that I didn’t have to earn. And I’d earned this. One by one I’d survived this year and all the trials, all the bullshit. I’d survived it. I’d survived it all and my trophy was my true self. The trophy was rebirth. After having gone through all of that. I can honestly say REBIRTH’S A BITCH!!!
One day you will tell your story, of what you went through and it will become someone’s survival guide