Mr. X by Carl Sagan

Mr. X by Carl Sagan This account was written in 1969 for publication in Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life.

It all began about ten years ago. I had reached a considerably more relaxed period in my life – a time when I had come to feel that there was more to living than science, a time of awakening of my social consciousness and amiability, a time when I was open to new experiences. I had become friendly with a group of people who occasionally smoked cannabis, irregularly, but with evident pleasure. Initially I was unwilling to partake, but the apparent euphoria that cannabis produced and the fact that there was no physiological addiction to the plant eventually persuaded me to try. My initial experiences were entirely disappointing; there was no effect at all, and I began to entertain a variety of hypotheses about cannabis being a placebo which worked by expectation and hyperventilation rather than by chemistry. After about five or six unsuccessful attempts, however, it happened. I was lying on my back in a friend’s living room idly examining the pattern of shadows on the ceiling cast by a potted plant (not cannabis!). I suddenly realized that I was examining an intricately detailed miniature Volkswagen, distinctly outlined by the shadows. I was very skeptical at this perception, and tried to find inconsistencies between Volkswagens and what I viewed on the ceiling. But it was all there, down to hubcaps, license plate, chrome, and even the small handle used for opening the trunk. When I closed my eyes, I was stunned to find that there was a movie going on the inside of my eyelids. Flash . . . a simple country scene with red farmhouse, a blue sky, white clouds, yellow path meandering over green hills to the horizon. . . Flash . . . same scene, orange house, brown sky, red clouds, yellow path, violet fields . . . Flash . . . Flash . . . Flash. The flashes came about once a heartbeat. Each flash brought the same simple scene into view, but each time with a different set of colors . . . exquisitely deep hues, and astonishingly harmonious in their juxtaposition. Since then I have smoked occasionally and enjoyed it thoroughly. It amplifies torpid sensibilities and produces what to me are even more interesting effects, as I will explain shortly.

I can remember another early visual experience with cannabis, in which I viewed a candle flame and discovered in the heart of the flame, standing with magnificent indifference, the black-hatted and -cloaked Spanish gentleman who appears on the label of the Sandeman sherry bottle. Looking at fires when high, by the way, especially through one of those prism kaleidoscopes which image their surroundings, is an extraordinarily moving and beautiful experience.

I want to explain that at no time did I think these things ‘really’ were out there. I knew there was no Volkswagen on the ceiling and there was no Sandeman salamander man in the flame. I don’t feel any contradiction in these experiences. There’s a part of me making, creating the perceptions which in everyday life would be bizarre; there’s another part of me which is a kind of observer. About half of the pleasure comes from the observer-part appreciating the work of the creator-part. I smile, or sometimes even laugh out loud at the pictures on the insides of my eyelids. In this sense, I suppose cannabis is psychotomimetic, but I find none of the panic or terror that accompanies some psychoses. Possibly this is because I know it’s my own trip, and that I can come down rapidly any time I want to.

While my early perceptions were all visual, and curiously lacking in images of human beings, both of these items have changed over the intervening years. I find that today a single joint is enough to get me high. I test whether I’m high by closing my eyes and looking for the flashes. They come long before there are any alterations in my visual or other perceptions. I would guess this is a signal-to-noise problem, the visual noise level being very low with my eyes closed. Another interesting information-theoretical aspects is the prevalence – at least in my flashed images – of cartoons: just the outlines of figures, caricatures, not photographs. I think this is simply a matter of information compression; it would be impossible to grasp the total content of an image with the information content of an ordinary photograph, say 108 bits, in the fraction of a second which a flash occupies. And the flash experience is designed, if I may use that word, for instant appreciation. The artist and viewer are one. This is not to say that the images are not marvelously detailed and complex. I recently had an image in which two people were talking, and the words they were saying would form and disappear in yellow above their heads, at about a sentence per heartbeat. In this way it was possible to follow the conversation. At the same time an occasional word would appear in red letters among the yellows above their heads, perfectly in context with the conversation; but if one remembered these red words, they would enunciate a quite different set of statements, penetratingly critical of the conversation. The entire image set which I’ve outlined here, with I would say at least 100 yellow words and something like 10 red words, occurred in something under a minute.

The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before. The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse. There also have been some art-related insights – I don’t know whether they are true or false, but they were fun to formulate. For example, I have spent some time high looking at the work of the Belgian surrealist Yves Tanguey. Some years later, I emerged from a long swim in the Caribbean and sank exhausted onto a beach formed from the erosion of a nearby coral reef. In idly examining the arcuate pastel-colored coral fragments which made up the beach, I saw before me a vast Tanguey painting. Perhaps Tanguey visited such a beach in his childhood.

A very similar improvement in my appreciation of music has occurred with cannabis. For the first time I have been able to hear the separate parts of a three-part harmony and the richness of the counterpoint. I have since discovered that professional musicians can quite easily keep many separate parts going simultaneously in their heads, but this was the first time for me. Again, the learning experience when high has at least to some extent carried over when I’m down. The enjoyment of food is amplified; tastes and aromas emerge that for some reason we ordinarily seem to be too busy to notice. I am able to give my full attention to the sensation. A potato will have a texture, a body, and taste like that of other potatoes, but much more so. Cannabis also enhances the enjoyment of sex – on the one hand it gives an exquisite sensitivity, but on the other hand it postpones orgasm: in part by distracting me with the profusion of image passing before my eyes. The actual duration of orgasm seems to lengthen greatly, but this may be the usual experience of time expansion which comes with cannabis smoking.

I do not consider myself a religious person in the usual sense, but there is a religious aspect to some highs. The heightened sensitivity in all areas gives me a feeling of communion with my surroundings, both animate and inanimate. Sometimes a kind of existential perception of the absurd comes over me and I see with awful certainty the hypocrisies and posturing of myself and my fellow men. And at other times, there is a different sense of the absurd, a playful and whimsical awareness. Both of these senses of the absurd can be communicated, and some of the most rewarding highs I’ve had have been in sharing talk and perceptions and humor. Cannabis brings us an awareness that we spend a lifetime being trained to overlook and forget and put out of our minds. A sense of what the world is really like can be maddening; cannabis has brought me some feelings for what it is like to be crazy, and how we use that word ‘crazy’ to avoid thinking about things that are too painful for us. In the Soviet Union political dissidents are routinely placed in insane asylums. The same kind of thing, a little more subtle perhaps, occurs here: ‘did you hear what Lenny Bruce said yesterday? He must be crazy.’ When high on cannabis I discovered that there’s somebody inside in those people we call mad.

When I’m high I can penetrate into the past, recall childhood memories, friends, relatives, playthings, streets, smells, sounds, and tastes from a vanished era. I can reconstruct the actual occurrences in childhood events only half understood at the time. Many but not all my cannabis trips have somewhere in them a symbolism significant to me which I won’t attempt to describe here, a kind of mandala embossed on the high. Free-associating to this mandala, both visually and as plays on words, has produced a very rich array of insights.

There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day. Some of the hardest work I’ve ever done has been to put such insights down on tape or in writing. The problem is that ten even more interesting ideas or images have to be lost in the effort of recording one. It is easy to understand why someone might think it’s a waste of effort going to all that trouble to set the thought down, a kind of intrusion of the Protestant Ethic. But since I live almost all my life down I’ve made the effort – successfully, I think. Incidentally, I find that reasonably good insights can be remembered the next day, but only if some effort has been made to set them down another way. If I write the insight down or tell it to someone, then I can remember it with no assistance the following morning; but if I merely say to myself that I must make an effort to remember, I never do.

I find that most of the insights I achieve when high are into social issues, an area of creative scholarship very different from the one I am generally known for. I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

But let me try to at least give the flavor of such an insight and its accompaniments. One night, high on cannabis, I was delving into my childhood, a little self-analysis, and making what seemed to me to be very good progress. I then paused and thought how extraordinary it was that Sigmund Freud, with no assistance from drugs, had been able to achieve his own remarkable self-analysis. But then it hit me like a thunderclap that this was wrong, that Freud had spent the decade before his self-analysis as an experimenter with and a proselytizer for cocaine; and it seemed to me very apparent that the genuine psychological insights that Freud brought to the world were at least in part derived from his drug experience. I have no idea whether this is in fact true, or whether the historians of Freud would agree with this interpretation, or even if such an idea has been published in the past, but it is an interesting hypothesis and one which passes first scrutiny in the world of the downs.

I can remember the night that I suddenly realized what it was like to be crazy, or nights when my feelings and perceptions were of a religious nature. I had a very accurate sense that these feelings and perceptions, written down casually, would not stand the usual critical scrutiny that is my stock in trade as a scientist. If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I’m high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say ‘Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!’ I try to show that my mind is working clearly; I recall the name of a high school acquaintance I have not thought of in thirty years; I describe the color, typography, and format of a book in another room and these memories do pass critical scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that there are genuine and valid levels of perception available with cannabis (and probably with other drugs) which are, through the defects of our society and our educational system, unavailable to us without such drugs. Such a remark applies not only to self-awareness and to intellectual pursuits, but also to perceptions of real people, a vastly enhanced sensitivity to facial expression, intonations, and choice of words which sometimes yields a rapport so close it’s as if two people are reading each other’s minds.

Cannabis enables nonmusicians to know a little about what it is like to be a musician, and nonartists to grasp the joys of art. But I am neither an artist nor a musician. What about my own scientific work? While I find a curious disinclination to think of my professional concerns when high – the attractive intellectual adventures always seem to be in every other area – I have made a conscious effort to think of a few particularly difficult current problems in my field when high. It works, at least to a degree. I find I can bring to bear, for example, a range of relevant experimental facts which appear to be mutually inconsistent. So far, so good. At least the recall works. Then in trying to conceive of a way of reconciling the disparate facts, I was able to come up with a very bizarre possibility, one that I’m sure I would never have thought of down. I’ve written a paper which mentions this idea in passing. I think it’s very unlikely to be true, but it has consequences which are experimentally testable, which is the hallmark of an acceptable theory. I have mentioned that in the cannabis experience there is a part of your mind that remains a dispassionate observer, who is able to take you down in a hurry if need be. I have on a few occasions been forced to drive in heavy traffic when high. I’ve negotiated it with no difficult at all, though I did have some thoughts about the marvelous cherry-red color of traffic lights. I find that after the drive I’m not high at all. There are no flashes on the insides of my eyelids. If you’re high and your child is calling, you can respond about as capably as you usually do. I don’t advocate driving when high on cannabis, but I can tell you from personal experience that it certainly can be done. My high is always reflective, peaceable, intellectually exciting, and sociable, unlike most alcohol highs, and there is never a hangover. Through the years I find that slightly smaller amounts of cannabis suffice to produce the same degree of high, and in one movie theater recently I found I could get high just by inhaling the cannabis smoke which permeated the theater.

There is a very nice self-titering aspect to cannabis. Each puff is a very small dose; the time lag between inhaling a puff and sensing its effect is small; and there is no desire for more after the high is there. I think the ratio, R, of the time to sense the dose taken to the time required to take an excessive dose is an important quantity. R is very large for LSD (which I’ve never taken) and reasonably short for cannabis. Small values of R should be one measure of the safety of psychedelic drugs. When cannabis is legalized, I hope to see this ratio as one of he parameters printed on the pack. I hope that time isn’t too distant; the illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

For the child in all of us

Can You Imagine? (For the Child in All of Us) by Robert F. Potts Can you imagine a world without witches, A world with all people the same? Where the only known dragons are hiding in books, And children are terribly tame? A world without magic would be sad indeed. I cannot imagine the pain Of having a world where there's no Santa Claus, Where wizards are searched for in vain. Can you imagine a world without spells, That science and businesses run? And think of the sadness a unicorn feels When he no longer plays in the sun Can you imagine a world without witches, No elves, and no magical pools? And can you imagine how dull it would be If all that we had were the schools? I cannot imagine a world without witches, A world with no magical wand. A world without beauty, or even a dream, Or a wood sprite of whom to be fond They say I should grow up and be more mature, Like a normal adult ought to do. But I'd rather, at night, go to dance with a witch, And I'll bet that you feel that way, too.

45 Life Lessons, written by a 90 year old

45 Life Lessons, written by a 90 year old 1. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good. 2. When in doubt, just take the next small step. 3. Life is too short not to enjoy it. 4. Your job won’t take care of you when you are sick. Your friends and family will. 5. Don’t buy stuff you don’t need. 6. You don’t have to win every argument. Stay true to yourself. 7. Cry with someone. It’s more healing than crying alone. 8. It’s OK to get angry with God. He can take it. 9. Save for things that matter. 10. When it comes to chocolate, resistance is futile. 11. Make peace with your past so it won’t screw up the present. 12. It’s OK to let your children see you cry. 13. Don’t compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about. 14. If a relationship has to be a secret, you shouldn’t be in it. 15. Everything can change in the blink of an eye… But don’t worry; God never blinks. 16. Take a deep breath. It calms the mind. 17. Get rid of anything that isn’t useful. Clutter weighs you down in many ways. 18. Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger. 19. It’s never too late to be happy. But it’s all up to you and no one else. 20. When it comes to going after what you love in life, don’t take no for an answer. 21. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don’t save it for a special occasion. Today is special. 22. Overprepare, then go with the flow. 23. Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to wear purple. 24. The most important sex organ is the brain. 25. No one is in charge of your happiness but you. 26. Frame every so-called disaster with these words, ‘In five years, will this matter?’ 27. Always choose Life. 28. Forgive but don’t forget. 29. What other people think of you is none of your business. 30. Time heals almost everything. Give Time time. 31. However good or bad a situation is, it will change. 32. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does. 33. Believe in miracles. 34. God loves you because of who God is, not because of anything you did or didn’t do. 35. Don’t audit life. Show up and make the most of it now. 36. Growing old beats the alternative — dying young. 37. Your children get only one childhood. 38. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved. 39. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere. 40. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else’s, we’d grab ours back. 41. Envy is a waste of time. Accept what you already have, not what you think you need. 42. The best is yet to come… 43. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up. 44. Yield. 45. Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.

15 Facts About Me

1. I'm learning French. 2. I'm super tall and my bestie isn't :) 3. When I was 17 I was flying a Cessna through this really lame 'club' type thing called the Civil Air Patrol. 4. The first time I threw up on the Cessna was after we landed in a corn field for breakfast and took off. The guy flying was Jürgen Pierce, and I was in the backseat. woo hoo! ty for baggies lol. 5. I was really good at selling things, like when we had a fundraiser in school, or up-selling things at work. Ironically, I hate asking people to buy things they normally wouldn't. 6. I get paid to go to school. 7. I was a really bad cheerleader in high school, mostly because I would have rather of been in band which I was during half time's until I fully committed to band and theater only type clubs. 8. I'm in a five year relationship with my Zac. Most people find him abrasive; however, I find that he is the salt to my pretzel. 9. I enjoy complex math problems and science humor. I went to a private school until 8th grade and they left a lot out of the science and math areas so I would teach myself the kinds of things I wanted to know, like algebra and chemistry. Because I was a weird kid. 10. I religiously watch Dr. Who. For some reason, Zac and I watch a lot of things on the tv, I wish we didn't, but it's just what happens when schedules allow for momentary breaks of relaxation for him. 11. My best friend lives on the same block as me and it's awesome. And the people next door and down the block can always be caught outside, rain or shine, having a fun time... most of the time. 12. I like Irish pub music. 13. I'm a sucker for gummies and goldfish crackers. 14. I love to read. I could get lost in a book for a very long time like how those strange WoW people get sucked into living at the computer desk. 15. I like strange socks that are calf high and higher.

Posting in Over a Year

Things have gotten a little crazy to say the least. The day before Christmas, we had to put our dog, Harmony, down. That was the worst experience of my life, and I never want to do it again. I've had less panic attacks, I think that's what you could call them, which is great. I can sleep at night. Yay pour moi. My friend of years moved down the street from me a while ago. So I have someone to hang out with all the time that doesn't live super far away. We don't really do much except internet things and school stuff. We used to go to the beach and lay out in the sun in the yard, but than it got way to hot outside. Though all in all, I have much fun with my lady and her two dogs. Speaking of dogs, we got a new one, named Zoe. She is four years old and we got her from a gay couple living in Valpo who were moving to a condo in Florida and couldn't take her with. She doesn't fetch, and the neighbor and I decided she is officially more useless that their cat. And speaking about the neighbors, Rose passed away and we got new ones, who like to grill a lot and are kind of hillbilly, but awesome. They also have a daughter, who is completely more awesome than what we were making bets on. School! The last bit, my brother, who is not so little anymore, graduated from Thea Bowman Leadership Academy! I'm so proud of him. He's now at Robert Morris University in Pennsylvania with a basketball scholarship. The second school occurrence, Zac, my love, is going to Ivy Tech to study nursing. I'm going to be with a sexy nurse :) He's also lost a lot of weight since the winter which was not so much of a winter but a really cold autumn to spring.

Some veuge college experiances

1! High school started around 8am, now anything before noon time is early. Actually, anything around 8am is more like asking someone to sign their own death warrant, unless of course you’re in problems in PR, than it doesn’t matter what you think about early mornings and late nights and caffeine intake. There’s a science behind that, I promise.
2! There is always more alcohol in the fridge than food. I don’t know why this is true, I like to think it’s because as a college student you are either a.) and alcoholic or b.) you thought you were going to drink that, but you never had the time. Too many early tests around noon. Lol. Personally, I kept my alcohol in my locked drawer, and if it didn’t fit there, I put it under my dirty laundry pile in the closet. What RA is going to sift through that… unless you’re a perv…
3! Weekends officially begin on Thursday. No Friday classes at all, sometimes there’s a group meeting or two, but I like to think of Thursday now as the day to tie up loose strings so I can have a guilt free weekend without procrastination… That’s what I tell myself anyways.
4! 4am is when you go to sleep. Most people go to bed around 3 I would say, 2-3am, than being a college student, and that extra hour is spent in two ways, 1.) your drunk, or 2.) your mind is thinking or reflecting for about an hour.
5! You learn to cook ramen noodles in more than one way. Just to keep up the diversity on the dinner plate lol.
6! Instead of falling asleep in class, you stay in bed. You do, it’s just what happens, and for once, most of the time; it’s alright.
7! You will know the hours of operation for places like white castle, mcd’s, dunkin donuts, taco bell, and BK.
8! You think it’s the weekend on Wednesday and you don’t know what month it is. Sometimes this happens when you are really wrapped up in what you’re doing in school. I think that every student should be willing to go the extra mile to accomplish their goals, and this happens a lot when you put your all in.
9! You can’t remember when the last time you washed your car was. I remember fondly once, that my car was covered in a film of green from the spring, and the only thing that made me was my car was after parking under a sap dripping infested tree of doom for the period of the whole day. That sucked.
10! Your socks and panty availability will dictate your laundry schedule, especially when you live in the dorms.
11! Facebook will be checked more than once a day if it’s not already.
12! You will fall off of a bed loft if you have one, at least once in your life. I lived under my bed for a semester because I would wake up thinking I was mid fall from the top of the bed. Unfortunately, I didn’t figure out you could have maintenance raise the bed higher, so while sleeping under it, I would wake up and slam my head on the bottom of the bed, which in my opinion is much worse on a daily.
13! You talk about beer pong like it’s a competitive sport.
14! You crack a beer at 11am and your friends ask if you have more.
15! The standard meals per day narrows to two or maybe even one. You will become the master of snacking.
16! Your trash is overflowing and your bank account isn’t.
17! You end up at Walmart or Kmart or Target more than twice a week.
18! Breakfast consists of a soda or juice and a cereal bar, something that’s edible on the go because your more than likely going to take it to class.
19! Silver change is like the most amazing thing ever, particularly quarters, they’re comparable to gold.
20! Your idea of feeding the poor is feeding yourself some noodles.
21! You talk to your roommates on IM when your all home.
22! Your study periods often consist of surfing the web, mingling with friends, ect.
23! You have observed a hit and run of a pedestrian or biker, and you probably have seen a foreign guy crash a car.
24! You will run into people you know you have met but can never remember their name or where you knew them from.
25! What is a square meal? Let me tell you, it’s called pop tarts.
26! The travel partner is a pile of dirty clothes.
27! You pay $200 for a book you will never read and sell it back for $15.
28! It takes preparation and three people to take out the trash.
29! Going to the library is like a social event.
30! Your flip flops are your cleanest pair of shoes.
31! You join clubs of strangeness during gatherings because there’s free food.
32! Bikes suddenly don’t seem as lame as they once did.
33! You will skip one class to write a paper or study for another.
34! You stay up late to finish homework then sleep through the class in which it was due.
35! Going to the mailbox is either an ego booster or breaker.
36! You never realized how many people there are that are smarter than you.
37! Than on the other hand, you’ve never notices how many people are dumber than you.
38! Care packages rank up there with birthday presents.
39! You meet people who you thought only existed in movies.
40! Printers are the most technologically unreliable pieces of equipment. And they only break down when you need them, so they’re basically never running lol.
41! Anything can be cooked in a microwave.
42! Buying groceries at midnight is a normal thing.
43! You call delivery more than you call your family. (said call not text)
44! Life without the iPhone, Droid, iPod, lap top would be unbearable.
45! Hoodies and PJ’s are the norm and when you need to get fancy, jeans and tshirts are the common option.
46! Cancelled class is almost as exciting as Halloween :P
47! Teachers swear in class and no one cares.
48! Candles are contraband, but cigarettes are a-OK.
49! Smoking will happen less during the winter when you live in the dorms.
50! Napping has occurred in more public places than imagined.
51! Socks from the laundry room may or may not be yours. How it got there? Who’s missing socks? Who knows.
52! Betta fish are like family.
53! There’s a condiment collection somewhere in your crib.
54! You know what people carrying suspiciously heavy backpacks in the dark are doing.
55! Elevators take forever, but you will wait for a retarded amount of time so you can avoid taking the stairs.
56! Christmas lights are a year- round thing.
57! Class sizes double on exam days.
58! You are no longer thankful that smoke alarms are here to protect you. I was the worse for this, any time I cooked anything, even boiled water, I would turn on the smoke alarms. I’m not really that bad of a cook, I blame it on the coils.
59! People help you kick the vending machine for your 50 cent bag of chips. Well, more like 85 cent bag of chips.
60! Laundry is an all-day event.
61! It’s no longer uncool to take naps, in fact, they can be quite amazing.
62! It is illegal to have alcohol in the dorms, yet the bookstore carry’s an array of impressive shotglasses, beer mugs, flasks, ect.
63! You have eaten cereal out of a cup… with a fork.
64! You know one person who dropped their cell in the toilet.
65! You set your clock ahead so you might make it to class in time.
66! You check, ratemyprofessor.com, before picking out classes.
67! You can text faster than you can type.
68! You run out of black ink, so you use blue because it adds a nice flair.
69! The food in your fridge may or may not be older than your little brother. Lol.

Life Action Impact pt. 1

I have always been a curious person, someone aching to explain that which I do not know. When I was in elementary, I went to a private school which did not teach at the same levels as public schools. One day the Hobart library was throwing away old textbooks, which I stole an algebra text. I studied it on my own time, and taught myself the magical world of complex math. Sometimes my grandma would have to take me with her when she took things to Hobart High school, and I would enjoy sitting outside of the classrooms in the spring and listening to the lectures that I had yet to experience. I learned new things, some of it I couldn’t wrap my mind around, but the point is: I learned.

While I was in school, I was also very active in church. I was drug to church every weekend by my grandma, putting on our Sunday best and pretending to be equals with the other more wealthy individuals who saw church more as a conversation topic, or a reference of character. I never fit in with the girls in my church classes, they were always more beautiful seeing that they were allowed to utilize things like razors, tweezers, and makeup and I wasn’t. I simply loathed myself for not being one of them. There were two boys who became my best friends because they had the same problems. One of them moved away and I haven’t talked to him in years, but we were very close. The other boy became someone who I would soon follow around like a lost puppy, and later compete with academically. He was a friend of the family, someone who lived across town but I never really got to be as close as I was with my other friend. Regardless, these two people made a world of difference to me.

After years or misery and persecution by the girls who I should have felt were best friends, I left the church and joined another. This new church was much smaller, but most of all they were a family, one that I instantly knew I would be a part of. I made friends, authentic friends, between the ages of preteen to eighteen. Once I felt at home with everyone, I became more involved with the church. I was comfortable asking questions, deep thought out questions I had for years but never had someone to answer. This was how I learned that I learn best in debate mode. I learned how to ask the right questions in the form of statements. This was the beginning of my shameless and repetitive questions asking everywhere I went.

Before I knew it, I was more active in the church than I could have ever anticipated. There was an amazing group of people who did human videos, and we got to go on a “tour” and perform for other churches. This was the most memorable time I ever had even if my mind was enthralled with a boy about half of the time. Young love, such fond memories. After becoming a voice in the church not just a seat warmer, one of my two friends from the other church came to the new one. I was thrilled, it could be like old times, but better because this time I had friends. A couple of years of tears and sweat and love and of course, human videos, I felt ready to explore a new feeling I wasn’t comfortable with at all: speaking in tongues. No matter what, I just couldn’t do it; I started to doubt myself, than doubt god. I began asking scientific question which was the wrong place to start knowing that religion and science don’t really see eye to eye. I still couldn’t find my answer; the closest I got was around the lines of: you have to fully give yourself up to a higher power and live perfectly and it will happen. I soon started thinking maybe it was because I had doubt in my life. This was about my senior year in high school. I completely geared my life to fit the requirements to make this a reality or have the experience. I remember when I was younger at the other church, I was prayed for and the preacher smacked me in the head a few times to knock me out in the spirit, and after a few times, I felt that I was being disrespectful so I fell and pretended to be unconscious until the person next to me moved. I also did the same thing for my initial problem, I would make funny noises (which actually took a lot of concentration believe it or not) so that I wouldn’t disappoint the person praying with me if it was someone with a proper title.

A month before I graduated, I decided that this was not working for me, I completely lived my life according to the book, I put aside all selfish thoughts and desires, and spent several hours of the day praying and meditating. I decided I wanted to take a day and explore all the things in my mind that may have been hindering me from gaining my ultimate goal: speaking in tongues. One of the major things I wanted to explore was Paganism. That boy who went on tour with us back in the early days left the church with a friend and he was a part of this coven I heard wonderful things about, so I gave him a call and he said he was actually with everyone from the coven and I could come over and meet everyone if I wanted. So I did, on a whim, about a half an hour after deciding to take the day off to explore and question the world around me.

That day, I filled an application to be a member of the group and didn’t step foot into a church in two years (which was a long time for someone who ended up being at church five of seven days in the week). <- that may be a slight exaggeration. Thus beginning the second chapter of my life.

While I was busy being pagan and enjoying not having any rules and regulations outside of my personal ethics, my heart still felt broken and I authentically missed the people who made the culture of my old church. I never told anyone this, because who would believe the girl with short purple and pink hair rocking a Manson shirt and some funky pants. I still do miss them, they are still a part of me, and helped me become the person I am today.