I’ve been trying to write about this all day. It’s slow going,
I’m taking every opportunity I can between customers to type what sounds like nonesense into my iPhone so that I can put this onto the blog. I feel frazzled, a bit jittery, not myself. Just need to get this written down while the memory of it all is still fresh.

I’ve never had what I would call a ‘religious experience.’ I have felt indescribable feelings of itense awe and emotion when confronted with amazing pieces of art or inspirational words and performances, but never anything that other people have called religious. I have never had that feeling of the unseen Other that most people describe when they fall to the floor and begin speaking in tongues, or however people get through these sorts of things.

After my post last night I couldn’t sleep. This isn’t anything new these days. For the better part of the week I haven’t been sleeping properly. I was worried about the next month, thinking about God, nothing new. I don’t know what happened next, whether or not I managed to fall asleep, but I remember becoming aware of something terrible, something horrifying. I couldn’t move.

My jaw was clenched shut, and I think I may have been shaking, but I definitely remember everything getting rather… ugly. It was like the colour and life was suddenly being sucked out of everything, and even though it was dark I felt assualted on all sides by this distortion, this perversion of eveything around me. I must have been shaking by that point, shaking despite my repeated attempts to move, to turn my head away, to close my eyes.

Looking back now, I’m reminded of Karen Armstrong, about her autobiography where she described what it was like to suffer from seizures before anyone had diagnosed them as anything other than manifestations of deep psychological issues. She wrote about how everything went dark, how everything turned into sickly, ghostly forms that terrified her just before she would black out. On hindsight his may have been what I was experiencing, but I can’t say that I’m entirely sold. Karen Armstrong never said anything about hallucinating voices.

I couldn’t understand what it or they were saying. It wasn’t quite English, wasn’t quite human, and wasn’t really one voice. It was… difficult to describe, and even more of a trial to experience. To be frank I have never been so scared. Whatever this voice was, it was all around me, making me claustrophobic, pushing me down into my bed. It was so strong I thought I was going to die, that I was being crushed to death by each indecipherable utterance.

Waking was an experience in itself. I went from a state of sheer and utter panic to that of waking from a pleasant nap in a single moment. The last thing I remember was thinking that I could almost understand what was happening, that I could almost make sense of my pain and of what was verbally assualting me, and then I was waking up. It was like the whole thing had happened to someone else.

I almost leaped out of bed, my mind completely out of sync with my body, convincing it to flee, to run, to hide, to fight, to do anything but lay still and pretend it was all a dream. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to convince myself of that. But really, does it matter? I don’t know if I would be any more at ease knowing that this was some trick or misfiring in my mind than it was some… thing else. The only reason I’m equating this with something spiritual is because it happened in the context of the Year of Faith, and I cannot help but make that connection.

Whatever it was, I’m certain that I never want to experience anything like that ever again. Ever.