BRINK!

 I've just spent the entire day in the ER dealing with some medical issues. Along side this, for the past three weeks, I’ve been experiencing what feels like a third-person perspective of myself—As if I'm watching my life from over my own shoulder. Today, I had CT scans and blood tests, all of which came back negative. But despite that, I continue to have intense, unexplainable episodes multiple times a day, both physical and psychological.

After I got home, I experienced something that felt like I let go of the last thing tethering me to this plane of existence. A strange sensation washed over my whole body. I asked my wife to sit next to me and scratch my back, hoping to overload my nervous system and ground myself. But I lost control—of my body, my emotions—and collapsed into the couch, my eyes rolling back.

In that moment, I was overcome with a single, clear question: Do I want to stay or go?

I said out loud, “It’s happening.”

A deep warm feeling started to blanket every inch of my body. A slow weight compounding on my skeleton. Unlike anything I have ever experienced. 

Muttering to myself about "I can't put this on her". The last thing I wanted, to put this burden on Her.

But this wasn’t a thought in my head. It was a voice I recognized. It was… me, but not me. It was I. A voice outside of time and reason. A conversation on a different spectrum—somehow reaching me across dimensions. I felt pulled toward this energy. It was as though an eternity passed in negotiation with something greater—something that asked if I still had purpose. In that moment, there was nothing else in the universe. No past, no future—just this decision.

Hovering over myself at the brink of consciousness, my awareness flickering between waking and void. The only physical sensation I could register was my pupils shrinking and the warmth of the energy.

My wife began rubbing between my eyes and forehead, trying to activate my minds eye. I apparently cried and snored together—for just 30 seconds. When I opened my eyes, the ceiling above me had transformed into the Universe. Not just stars and planets, but the infinite vastness of time and space. 

Slowly, I started to panic and became overwhelmed with fear of the enormity of it all. Terrified that I was slipping away. Physically pushing myself lower and lower into the couch to escape. I had seen beyond the veil of reality—into the night of the unknown. I didn't choose to remember it, but the memory stayed anyway. I know now that I chose not to transcend, and that choice haunts me.

I had given myself permission to return. Unexpected. Unappreciated.

Now, I’m afraid to fall asleep. Afraid that it might happen again in my dreams and won't be able to fend off the warm shade.