I used to stare at the sun in my head for hours on end, just sit on the floor in my bedroom and dissociate.

Moment by moment, I’d let the awareness of my body become like a smear of paint drawn across a canvas faster than you could turn a light on.

Neighborly voices withdrew into the background noise made by cars driving by our trailer at 14 Americana Drive,

and the very room I was disappearing in blurred into a grey light that could have been anything.

I didn’t want to be in the world so badly, I practiced removing myself from it the way you remove a stubborn sliver from a palm.

Now, I know what you are thinking. Didn’t that make it hard for me to love anybody and be present and make friends and be happy, and yes it did.

But who hasn’t wanted to escape a bad situation so deeply the mind had to go somewhere else for a while, unfolding roads that hours later seem like they were just driven onto?

The raw brownie batter of the unconscious bubbles over and forgets everything when it has to take care of you, and when it knows no one else can.

It’s why now, when I feel an urge to space out and become a passing sound or a streak of light behind some trees, I let my consciousness drift through walls and fences until it’s ready to come back to my body again.

I honor my unconscious by praying to it and thanking it for taking care of me all those years I couldn’t stand to be in the everyday world and just needed to travel a lot.