Dosed

I posted this a few days ago on Facebook since that's where my Burner buddies congregate. I wanted to get the word out and in particular express gratitude. I've edited it a little bit for this non-FB environment.

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It was an intense experience, awful at the time, but in hindsight simply another road traveled.

But first! Burn The River - Sacramento Decompression, of course, was outstanding. Amazing people, amazing creativity, amazing gifts brought and shared, gifts of food and drink and beauty and love. I was happy to be inspired to work so hard all week, to participate in concert with many others, visualizing and cutting and painting and building. About an hour after the gate opened I finally felt I was done and could switch gears. Quickly I donned a black kilt and tailcoat, and even as I changed costume I felt my mood elevating from a sort of hopeful exhaustion to that accelerating cheer that always seems to attend the start of a Burn event and causes all worry and weariness to fall away with the default world clothing until, damn, I was happy as hell.

OK, that was the Merni Drink. Still, it was all good, and for the next few hours, just getting gooder and gooder. You are all such wonderful damn people. And I’m a picture taker … and since my last one was taken a little after ten I would surmise that was about when the next phase of my trip began.

Somehow, perhaps between nine and ten, someone slipped me some sort of Mickey Finn. I happened to be up on the hillside stage, alone with the pyramids with heads, the black and white tapestries, the sectioned mannequins, when I was suddenly unable to move beyond dropping into one of the chairs. I’d never experienced this before and thought I was just tired … but then the depression rolled in, and my legs quit, and my balance was lost, and I was imprisoned within a howling void of despair for, we estimate, about the next three hours.

In my experience, when depression is debilitating, there is still a concept of an exit. It may be vague and dim, and we may not know how to get to it, but at some level we suspect we will float towards it eventually. This one was different. This was a darker trip with no thought of a way out. Every sad thing I knew piled on me then, and these defined my world. My childhood stepmother dying a few weeks ago, my dad dying a couple years ago, putting my sweetheart golden retriever down three years ago, other dogs lost, other loves lost, all the way back to what my brother’s death did to my parents when I was only a year old. All these things can carry sadness to me if I let them. But now I found myself in and amongst them, one of them, unable to escape them, and sobbing without ceasing, a prisoner, in darkness, and entirely bereft.

There were waves of change. I remember leaning over the arm of the chair to be sick. I remember banging my head on the boards wishing someone would find me and being angry that they hadn’t. I remember a moment of violence, knocking down the pyramids and punching things. Just as well no one was around. And then eventually, as I drifted atop the waves like a broken branch, I felt hands grip my shoulders and arms help me to my feet and down the hill while a kind voice said, “Come, let’s set you by the fire.”

A warm brazier, a chair, a firm grip and loving friends – these are how I returned to life and to the event. People that take care of each other far more than make up for the few who like to dose people. They brought me down the hill, sat with me, checked my eyes (dilated) and my head wound (unrelated); and fetched Sunya, who appeared in my lap, all smiles and beauty, and who, every time I shuddered down into the pit, lifted my face to hers and shone her bright lights into my darkness. “Come back,” she said. “Come be here with me.” I smiled then, in between decreasing moments of pain, until pretty soon I was more or less all right again. I looked around at the people leaving and lights turning off, and when bed was suggested, said like a child, “I don’t want to miss anything.”

I had, but no matter. Special thanks and love for ST, TD, and KK, for kind words and strong hands; and for a community so excellent that they are representative of you all, just by being so good.

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There was a shitload of comments after, 76 at this time, expressing so much love and warmth it was stunning; not to mention outrage, and the beginnings of an investigation. Several people had their nights wacked similarly, and everyone's unhappy about it.

I put it here for you all and cuz, you know, it's writing.

This leaves a really bad impression that is, of course, inaccurate. The intended audience knows better, as my experience was in stark contrast to the happiness and fun and good feeling that dominates these events; good feelings that I find impossible to describe. It's almost like a religious thing, or maybe sex: You don't really get it until you experience it.