Awake reflecting.

I cannot sleep. My legs are stiff from riding my bike so much and my mind is reeling with thoughts of art, drugs, being a hippie in Canada, stars, and the end of the world.

I wonder if we would be able to see the stars when the world ends. Or maybe, they'll be extra bright. I guess it depends on the atmosphere.

One week until Canada! I am so excited. I've been saving up money. Khyber's grandma is a big environmentalist, so she doesn't want us showering. I think she's a hippie. We are going to be hippies. We're going to bathe in the lake and sleep under the stars and do chores around the house and it's going to be excellent. His grandmother is a famous artist in Canada too, with her work in loads of galleries including the National Gallery of Canada. She is very excited to be having artists come and stay.

One of the reasons I'm awake is that I need to do art. I have to. But I don't know what to do. What should I do with myself? Sometimes periods like this come up where I know I should be producing, but have no inspiration. It's horrible.

I can't get over what happened to me. Drugs, guys. I find myself thinking about how things looked and felt, and wondering if somehow my mind could do it on its own somehow. It affects my dreams.

I'll describe it to you.

Doily-like patterns fell over the walls. Undertones became apparent-- like if you observed very pale feet with greenish-blue veins, your skin would take on a green hue. When I looked at Rachel's face, her freckles flowed from cheek to cheek as if caught in a river, and from the veins in her forehead emerged a reptilian scaled pattern. Prisms were everywhere. Vivi was extra furry-- her whiskers multiplied and stretched out. When I looked in the mirror, my blurry freckles took on a more animalistic feature and my face morphed into the skin of a leopard. Though drugged and crazed, I somehow saw innocence.

The sun was bright, close, and orange. The reflected effect on things could only be compared to the bright sands of an Arabian country that is drenched by the sun. Grass patterned itself and waved-- and if you stared at anything for too long, it began to either melt or move rhythmically. Limbs were somewhat numb, so it felt very loose and free to dance around.

You lost a sense of who you are. You do not care. You pretend you are everything. The floor is lava, you are a Mother Pearl and Rachel is an octopus with 8 legs because when she moves her arms that way, there are trails so intense that they become additional limbs. You can speak to the shower head and it talks back to you. You are a queen, you are a yellow bird (caw), you are an elephant, you are a DJ and you keep Irish treasure in your mancala set. Your inner voice is so loud that you can swear it's a person next to you speaking. You hear telephones ringing everywhere and they just cannot stop.

You don't want to eat. You don't want to drink. You don't want to read or write or draw. You just want to look and pretend and dance.

You are highly emotional.

That, yes, was part of my downfall, because outer parties interfered, but the main downfall was the fact that I just wanted to look and pretend and dance coupled with the fact that I couldn't feel my body. I couldn't feel anything at all, except at one point I thought I was really hot, and I was.

Since I had taken the drug, I didn't drink or eat anything at all. Hours in the heat outside. Hours in the heat inside. I danced. I took a shower. I didn't understand why I was so hot.

And then I passed out. I heard somewhere that before you die, a chemical is released in your brain, and a series of images pass through your mind. That's what happened. I stood in the doorway, about to show my friends the kitchen for a minute I heard,

"Kate. Kate."

I did an intake of breath. My eyes were wide open, but I couldn't see. A splotchy screen of a black and brown void overtook my vision. This has happened to me before; if I get up too quickly or if I take a really hot shower. It didn't pass like I thought it was going to.

From that splotchy black-brown, there was outward diamond patterns of black and flashing rainbows and white. So much white. And then I was carried off to some chaotic dream world, where I had no sense of self, no real sense of place, but there was a place in my mind of wild color and water and trees and voices and characters, but they were in no specific composition. They were just thrown together. And during that brief moment of being caught up in this imaginary world, observing and not caring whether I existed or not, it was okay. Because things were happening. I was entertained enough. But it was so chaotic.

And then I heard voices-- the real kind.

"Try and get her head up."

"Kate-- Kate, are you okay?"

"Here, drink this. See if you can drink this."

And the wild color filtered away from my vision, and the black-brown returned and then melted into reality once my eyes had reopened.

I was on the floor, next to the Playstation. I had fainted for about a minute. I drank a water bottle. My friends, who were there at the time, helped me over to the futon. I started sobbing. 

I could have died, I could have died! Oh my god, I could have died. At least, this is what I kept telling myself. And due to my state of mind, I believed it. And it was absolutely terrifying. They asked me if I was hurt from the fall. It turns out I had hit Tom in the head on my way down, and then I hit a chair, and then finally I hit the floor. 

I replied that I didn't know. I couldn't feel.

I cleared things up with Arielle. I am very glad she is my friend.

Christine didn't know what to say.

I sobbed for a couple of hours as my mind went wild. A voice was telling me I hated art. That I almost died. That things were terrible. I should appreciate my family more, etc etc etc. And sometimes it was pure madness what was going through my head. Rachel helped me during it all. I killed at least 8 water bottles by the end of the night.

When I was an hour or two away from being completely sober, Rachel told me what happened. That I had passed out-- and then here's the part that only outsiders could have known-- I had a seizure. It was a small one. But that freaked me out to no end.

The drug wasn't the cause of the episode, dehydration was... but that wouldn't have happened if not for the drug.

I've not been having too much fun doing things anymore anyways. Alcohol gets me down, as does weed. And after this, it just seems like bad news, and that's why I'm not going to do anything anymore. If I revoke this, it would probably only be in the instance that when I turn 21 and can go into bars... but that's not that thrilling. I've had my fun and I've had my experiences, and they still visit me in my dreams.

Which brings me to the end of the world dream. I was looking up at stars, and then they formed into a plus sign pattern with a very bright star in the middle. It became bright and brighter, and then turned into a planet. I thought to myself, "Oh hey, that looks kind of like Earth." But it wasn't Earth. Then it got bigger, which meant it got closer. I saw more of its definition. I could see the chunks of land swimming on its surface.... and that frightened me. The sky was dark blue in the distance, a lighter blue closer towards the planet, and then a hazy aromatic orange surrounding the planet. And then it happened-- the planet collided with ours and I felt annihilation. I was so sure of it too because I saw the same thing that I had seen when I passed out-- the black and rainbow and white exploding diamond pattern. A tingling rush seized my body, and then it went numb. Because of the radiation, obviously, I thought to myself. As I began waking up, I couldn't help thinking to myself,

I'm dead. I'm dead. This is what it's like to be dead.

How am I still thinking?