Trip Like Jesus: The Sexiest Part (8) (Parental Advisory: Explicit Content, 18+)

I was responding to this random stimuli that was coming in my head. I was imagining Brandon saying things. I thought that Erik had said before that the internet couldn't mess up. That there couldn't be messages that didn't get sent. I imagined Brandon talking about this, saying that Erik was stupid for thinking this.

Rachel:

Erik, it's weird that you don't think the internet could mess up.

Erik:

I never said it couldn't mess up...

My thoughts were rapidly darting from one subject to another. I heard Brandon talking. “She attempted suicide twice because of me. That is so horrible. I feel so horrible.”

Rachel:

Brandon shouldn't worry about things. Things are fine.

Then I had this amazing moment of deja vu.

Rachel:

I remember, at Bernard. I used to wear this orange shirt. Now, there's a story behind the orange shirt.

The thing about the orange shirt is that it really emphasized my boobs. So I went to the school store, and bought two Oregon state shirts. I came back to the dorm, and put on the orange one. 'Woah!! This shirt emphasizes my boobs!” It was bright orange, and said “OREGON STATE” in big letters that clinged to my boobs. So I took off that shirt, and put on the second one. “WOAH!!! HOLY FUCKING CRAP!! THIS SHIRT EMPHASIZES MY BOOBS EVEN MORE THAN THE ORANGE ONE!!” So I took that shirt off, and put the orange one back on. “Compared to that other shirt, this shirt is fine!” So I just wore it.

I listened as Chance and Brandon talked about the story.

“WOOAHHH!!! That was a really good story Rachel! Wasn't that a good story?”

“Yeah, that was a good story! That was a really good story!”

Their expression wasn't at all sarcastic. They really thought this was an awesome story.

Rachel:

That was a good story.

Wow, I just told a really good story, didn't I?

I flopped around my bed, moving my arms around. Wasn't that a really good story? Wasn't that a really good story?

Rachel:

Isn't there something you do when you are a kid where you tell a story, and then say, 'wasn't that a really good story?'

Erik:

Not that I did.

I googled “wasn't that a really good story.” No results.

Rachel:

No, it was, 'wasn't that a really good secret?' You say, 'Wanna hear a secret?' They say sure, so you whisper in their ear, 'it's a secret!' Then you say, 'wasn't that a really good secret?'

I started thinking about Brandon and Crystal. Brandon liked me? Well, maybe the reason Brandon removed me as a friend when I wrote to him was just to get me to stop writing on his wall. The subject of me had come up, and he knew Crystal hated me. He didn't want Crystal to see what had happened to me.

I had always just assumed that if the whole semen conversation never happened, the subject of me had never come up.

I started complaining again about how bad I felt for Chance. Did other people know he liked me, back in the eighth grade?

Erik started complaining about these rapidly changing conversation topics, where I didn't explain what I was even trying to say to him. I kept urging him, just roll with this, the chat window was probably bugged. But it was okay. We didn't want security.

Rachel:

I think maybe, the funny messages disappeared. Or something.

Erik:

The ones you sent me?

Rachel:

No weirdo. Because you think when I said, the other messages disappeared, that I was sending you messages, but they disappeared.

Oooh... disappearing messages. What did the disappearing messages say?

I wish there was some sort of clarification.

Let's pray for clarification!

Erik:

I'm going to need it after tonight...

Rachel:

Come on let's pray.

Oh father God... Ahh I don't know how to pray. Can you pray?

Erik:

Father and Creator, who art in heaven, kingdom come, thy will be done. I beseech thee, bring forth thy divine clarity to mine own mind and my beloved Rachel's mind, let us see within the dark corners, let the unseen be seen, and let us revel in the gained knowledge.

Amen.

Rachel:

That was excellent! I couldn't be more proud of you Erik!

Amen.

I'm going to leave for a few minutes.

I grabbed my headphones and headed out for a walk around my regular loop. There was a new, even higher energy. I felt like we were progressing in the spiritual plan, because praying for clarification was part of it. I heard my own voice echoing in my head, words I never spoke out loud: “Let's pray for... clarification!” My voice sounded really high pitch and squeaky. It was springtime now, there were beautiful flowers blooming. This noise I heard in my head, my voice talking all high-pitched and squeaky, triggered and awakened something deep inside my soul. I was on track now, we were making progress.

I returned to my room. No more mysterious messages had appeared while I was gone.

How was Brandon accessing my account? Did he hack my password? Or did he do something else to my computer? Could he access it when I had my laptop closed?

I started talking to Erik again, and waited for Brandon's divine insight. Nothing. I started losing my confidence.

Rachel:

Let's pray again. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, let's have some clarity.

Erik:

Amen

I heard stuff in my head. “Rachel learned that Jewish people go to hell. Not because they are bad people, but because you have to accept Jesus to get into heaven.” Brandon said.

Rachel:

What does it say on South Park? The Jewish people's home is the lake of fire.

Something really scary happens after you die.

I had gotten a friend request by a fake robot account. Jennifer Smallen. She wasn't a real person. I denied. It had her as one of my followers, so I blocked her.

I began imagining that Jennifer Smallen was Brandon. It wouldn't let him unblock me, so he was trying to follow me from another account so he could see all my updates. I was absolutely sure of this, so I went and unblocked Jennifer Smallen.

I was looking at her profile. She was friends with tons of people that I didn't know. Brandon wouldn't have done that, if he had just made this profile to look at mine. He wouldn't have gone an added a whole bunch of people. That meant what I was receiving was incorrect.

Rachel:

Okay that was wrong.

I'm off balance.

“She goes and unblocks Jennifer Smallen,” Chance and Brandon laughed about this.

I realized something from this. They weren't hacking my facebook, they were tracking my keystrokes.

I realized something else. Brandon had been reading my chat history with Erik. Erik had done something pretty fucked up. I had told him that I don't really feel the same way about him as he feels about me. He told me I was wrong, he knows how I feel about him. He mentioned something I said back in January, which I didn't even remember saying. That when I was with him, I felt like this was home. I had believed Erik. Maybe Erik knew how I felt about him and I didn't. I wrote Erik some messages.

Rachel:

Erik, you don't tell me how I feel about you. I tell you how I feel about you. If I tell you I don't feel the same way about you, I mean it. Feelings CAN change. You have these really romantic expectations about love, like, WOOAH... She likes me. THIS IS TRUE LOVE!

I sat on my bed. I heard words inside my head, over and over again. Lasagna pan. Lasagna pan?! Why did I hear that in my head?

Rachel:

Why do I hear the word lasagna pan in my head all the time?

Brandon must not have much of a life, if he was tracking me like this.

Rachel:

I remember Brandon telling me something in a dream. He said, 'the best job I can get right now is at Red Robin.'

Brandon must be unemployed. I had looked up his residence online and saw that he lived in a house. I had thought he owned a house. I checked again. Around the same value as my house, in Lake Oswego. This was his parent's house.

But he had a picture of himself in Venice as his profile picture. So apparently he had money to travel.

Rachel:

However, he went to Venice. Which reminds me of when I went to Venice... A song popped into my head one morning. The lyrics of the song were:

You can't go back and change the way you've treated me

You can't go back and change the way things go

You say you wish to change the way you've treated me

But in reality, you can't change the past

I remember back in 6th grade. I was playing Diablo, on the battle net. My character was a mage, which was a male character. But I wanted people to know I was a girl, so I called the character... Flame Goddess.

I rode a wave of laughter from this name.

Rachel:

That was funny. Then someone told me, 'That name makes you sound really gay!' So anyway, I was playing this character one day, when another little melody popped into my head. The words didn't make any sense, but I still sing it to myself because I liked it.

She sold everything she had, everything she owned

For the sweat and the blood of the one she loved

She sold ah-ooh...

Then it transitions through several notes.

I listened as Brandon and Chance sang this little melody to themselves.

Rachel:

One day in the library, I walked up to a bookshelf and pulled a random book off the shelf and turned to a random page. It said... “For the grease and the fat of a black tom cat.”

I listened as they sang this to themselves also.

“It went along with Rachel's little melody!” Brandon said.

Erik:

Rachel, what's going on?

Rachel:

I told you, the window's bugged.

Erik:

Did you sleep last night?

Rachel:

Oh yeah.

Erik:

Through the night?

Rachel:

I am fine, just roll with me.

I heard Brandon talking. “I read Rachel's emails. She talked to this guy about me. She said that she thought I was the kind of guy that a lot of girls like but don't want to date. I was surprised she picked up on that. Another thing about Rachel, we both know that when someone acts like they hate someone, but they are really weird about it, that's a sign that they actually like them but are uncomfortable about the fact that they like them. That's how I was towards Rachel.”

I realized what was going on. Back when I had sent Brandon messages, I sent him a bunch of them that made him think I was stupid. Offering to give him head, talking about talking to psychics online, and the whole Matthew the third thing. Brandon didn't think that was funny, he thought it was ridiculous that I was so ignorant and lacked street smarts. He thought it was ridiculous that I believed it.

I thought it was funny! Chance assured him that it actually was funny.

I had also sent him a bunch of messages that indicated that I was intelligent. However, those messages never got to him. Those were the other messages that disappeared.

Brandon realized when I sent him the message back in January, that I had to be smart, because I was worried that the internet had messed up and sent a message that I had never actually sent. And only smart people believe that the internet could mess up like that. This was one of my ideas. So he hacked my facebook, and found the smart messages.

Then, Brandon read my blog, and realized that I was smart after all.

“I know a lot about street drugs. Rachel knows a lot about the kind of drugs they prescribe at treatment centers.”

Erik:

I'll read your messages later, since you want to talk at me, not with me. I've got stuff to do.

Rachel:

You feel used or something? I'm trying to feel what you feel.

Erik:

I just dropped all defenses. Tell me what you feel from me.

Rachel:

Tired.

Erik:

Go on.

Rachel:

Say something. I need to read the energy off what you say.

Erik:

I just said something verbally.

Rachel:

Type, not out loud. I need to read the energy off the text.

Erik:

Rolls eyes lol

Rachel:

You are getting tired of this. Let me chat with Bob.

I switched from talking to Erik to talking to Bob, the one friend on my friend's list who was actually me.

Hi Bob. Can you read this? I don't know exactly what's happening. Twenty-three people online again. The reason I named this profile Bob Bobbit was because of my grandpa. He would walk around saying, “Bob Bobbit, Bob Bobbit” to himself.

“One thing I found out about Rachel from watching her computer use. She looks up the definition of really common, easy words on the internet. Like, 'toggle.' Like come on, you are a computer science major, how can you not know what toggle means?”

They called me a wordsmith at Innercept. I actually don't have a very big vocabulary. Or maybe I do. I just forget. Or something. Or like... I know words in context. But not out of context.

Brandon was tracking my keystrokes. How could he do that?

A memory came back to me. One day, my parents were gone. I headed out for a walk. Almost every time I go for a walk, the walk is identical. I take the same path, takes the same amount of time. And I don't lock the door. I remember coming back from the walk. It occurred to me that someone could just go in the house, run up to my room, and steal my laptop. But my laptop was still there. However, what if someone had entered and done something else? What if they had installed tracking software on my computer. My computer didn't even require a password to unlock the screen.

Lasagna pan. I kept hearing those words in my head. I went through my Innercept stuff, searching and searching to find my lasagna pan. Maybe there was something right next to the lasagna pan, like a notebook, that had something important written in it. I figured that must be it. But I searched, and I searched, and I couldn't find it.

Where the fuck is my lasagna pan?

Lasagna pan. I heard Brandon saying these words. There was something about the way they sounded in my head, something that indicated that these words were going to turn into something very important.

Finally I asked my mom to help me locate it. We found it in one of the boxes in the garage. There was nothing of any significance around the lasagna pan. I didn't know what to do with it, so I left it on the island.

I wrote to Bob:

Lasagna pan

I might have been dropped on my head as a baby.

I should make lasagna. YES!!! Lasagna!!

I had begun treatment with a procedure called neurofeedback. It is meant to correct brain damage. My naturopath did it, we went in, he put electrodes on my head, then administered light frequencies that were supposed to correct my brain waves. The first time it happened, I felt music after it. Life was deeper and more meaningful. The naturopath said my ADD may have been caused by a head injury early in life. That's why I said I might have been dropped on my head as a baby.

I started thinking about my parent's parenting. They weren't very good parents. Then, they get a guardianship over me so they can continue parenting even though their time was up.

“Beev.”

“Back when I was at Innercept, I remember you saying something. I was talking about how they would feed us macaroni and cheese and Wheat Thins for lunch. You said, 'they're not little kids, they need real food.' What did you mean by that? Do little kids not need real food?”

“Oh, I don't think I ever said that.”

But she did say that. I remembered back to kindergarten. Every day after school, my mom fed us hot dogs and Cheetos. That was it. A lunch of pretty much zero nutritional value. Every single day. But of course we were little kids, we didn't need real food.

Something else had started to haunt me, ever since late last year. I wasn't normal sexually. I wondered if my parents had done something to screw with my sexual development, when I was really young.

I had to make lasagna. I told my mother this. But my sister was coming over, and she had just made lasagna. I was not allowed to make lasagna. I had to do it another night.

Meanwhile, something wonderful was happening to me. I was experiencing an absolutely harmonious vibration. I began listening to the song “Annie You Save Me” by Graffiti6 and dancing all over the house. This was the only song that complimented the vibration I was experiencing, that didn't slow it down.

When I listened to this song, in my mind, I imagined a girl dancing, and dancing, and dancing.

Lasagna pan.

I wrote to Bob:

So I've been sitting here thinking that the lasagna pan thing was you guys. My parents wouldn't let me make lasagna yesterday. But I ate all the lasagna. No more lasagna. So now, I can make more!

Brandon and Chance had been telepathically pinging me with the words lasagna pan. We had a telepathic connection.

I imagined that Brandon had also hacked Nick's account. When Nick and I had lived together at one part of the program, I used to make lasagna. Nick said that his lamb dish was the best meal, but my lasagna really was better. I imagined that Brandon had read what Nick had written to someone, and he had talked about me, saying my lasagna was to die for. So now, Brandon and Chance wanted me to make them some lasagna.

I didn't really believe that Brandon had hacked Nick's account. It was just a thought that crossed my mind, I dismissed, but ideas from the thought entered my misconstrued ideas, like the belief that Brandon knew I made good lasagna.

I would get off track, I would get lost in thought about various things. I would start writing to Bob about them. Every time, I would hear it inside my head: lasagna pan! Let's talk about that in person. Make lasagna and we'll come over.

Come mid-afternoon, I started throwing together a lasagna. I was way too out of it to cook. I got out the Italian sausage, and started cooking it over the stove.

“Drain the meat,” my mom told me.

“Yeah... Yeah! I should drain the meat!”

I heard Brandon and Chance laughing. “She wasn't draining the meat! That's why it was so good!”

Huh? How did they hear that?

I was mixing up the cheese mixture, when suddenly, I started questioning everything. Did Chance really like me? Were my statuses really any good? Maybe my thinking was so complex and far above everyone else's, no one could understand it. This was the mind of God we were talking about. Maybe no one liked me. Maybe I should GO TO HELL.

Then something really scary happened. God was talking to me, through telepathic communication. I had fucked up this planet majorly, with so many people going to hell after they died. Because of this, God wanted Jesus, AKA me, to go to hell, for real.

I felt the happiness drain from me, and I started to fade away. I started to fade into an abyss of pain and despair. I was drowning in it, I came up for air, and with my last breath I began to plead with God, out loud, “Oh God! Don't make me go to hell!”

I didn't care that my mom was standing right there. It didn't matter. I was about to disappear and enter the lake of fire and be immersed in hot magma currents forever.

“Please God, please! Don't let me go to hell! I do have free will! I do have free will!” I started to come out of it, when I decided that the choice was mine. It was such a relief to get out of hell, I felt amazing suddenly.

I ran upstairs and started explaining to Bob what had just happened.

Rachel:

For a second, I was going to hell. That's a thought process that makes sense to God.

I heard Brandon say, “Yeah it makes sense to God, it makes sense to us too. You stopped believing in yourself, you started to go to hell. Even Jesus has to believe in Himself.”

HOW DID BRANDON KNOW THIS? Could he read my mind?

“Well, if you can read my mind, that means you know that when I was pleading with God just now, I heard myself talking in a Mickey Mouse voice.”

But I couldn't go to hell. Because I was Jesus. And if Jesus goes to hell, everyone goes to hell. That's one of the rules of human souls and human existence that no one else knew. Jesus can't go to hell permanently, without taking everyone else with him.

I continued putting together the lasagna. I was mixing up the cheese mixture, when I realized they could see me as well. There were hidden cameras in my house as well.

I continued making the lasagna. Part of the way through it, I realized I had forgotten to put in mozzarella cheese. So I dumped a whole bunch in the center. Then I popped it in the oven, set the timer, and sauntered back upstairs. Which was silly of me, because upstairs I wouldn't be able to hear the timer when it rang.

Upstairs, I was thinking about one of Chance's friends, a guy named Adam, who I had also gone to school with. Adam was in the same math and science classes I was in.

Rachel:

I remember Adam. In seventh grade, we were studying chromosomes. Adam made up a chromosome song. It went, “Pick a number from one to one, then add twenty-two. That's the number of chromosomes that make up me and you.” I remember thinking, if that song had a second verse, it would be, “Pick a number from zero to zero, then add twenty-three, that's the number of chromosomes that make up you and me!” Woah.... Good chromosome song!

I lay there and thought about how twenty-three was my special number, because I was born on the twenty-third of the month. I wondered what day Adam was born. Was he born on the twenty-second? I thought about looking it up, since I had him as a friend on facebook, but decided against it.

I spaced out for a long time. I was lying there with my mind completely blank, when suddenly... lasagna pan. Huh? Lasagna pan! I heard these words strongly and forcefully inside my head.

I jumped up. “Lasagna pan?” I ran downstairs.

By the time I got there, my mom had already taken the lasagna out of the oven, and was standing in the kitchen holding it. I had gotten there a little bit late. Brandon had put a camera where he could see the time on the oven. I remembered how six years ago, when I had been writing Brandon, I always talked about psychic lag. This was the reason I did that. So we could better time the lasagna pan game, with Brandon pinging me far enough in advance that I would get downstairs in time.

The lasagna wasn't nearly finished. I popped it back in the oven, set the timer again and headed back upstairs.

Rachel:

I remember Sarah. She said to me: 'Woah! We both listen to Coldplay!' I thought to myself, 'doesn't everyone listen to Coldplay?' I thought everyone listened to Coldplay!

I wondered if this was one of the truths of the universe that only I knew about. Secretly, everyone listens to Coldplay.

I lay on the bed some more. Lasagna pan. Lasagna pan. Lasagna pan, lasagna pan, lasagna pan. Lasagna pan!

I heard it quite a few times in my head before it consciously registered. I jumped up, exclaiming:

“las-agna pan!”

I ran downstairs. I was feeling really funny, I opened my eyes really wide and got a weird smile on my face, like I was a Sim, or some character in a computer game, a computer game that Brandon was playing.

I arrived downstairs at the oven, a few seconds before the alarm went off. Completely believable that that had been timed like that purposely.

I checked the lasagna. Still not done. I put it back in the oven, and set the alarm again.

“Woah.... This is like playing the Sims!” I said. But these were Brandon's words, channeled through me. I went back upstairs, and lay on the bed some more, before again I began feeling the telepathic ping of lasagna pan, I jumped up and exclaimed lasagna pan again, and arrived in front of the oven again, right before the timer went off.

This time it was done. I took the lasagna out of the oven and set it on the counter to cool. I went back upstairs, and lay on my bed yet again.

Lasagna pan. Lasagna pan! When I heard it now, those words had more force behind them, something in the way they were spoken indicated to me that it was time to get up and move. I ran downstairs, and when I arrived in the kitchen, I discovered that my mom had put the lasagna back in the oven. But it was done, so I took it out.

All these years I had been playing the Sims, and now, I had become a character in the Sims, and someone else was playing me.

Trip Like Jesus: Part 7 (The Holy Part) (Parental Advisory: Explicit Content, 18+)

At some point, though, it snapped back. And I felt like a guy again. At least, that's how I defined it. I didn't feel small and vulnerable any more.

So Chance and Brandon were looking at my facebook. At some point, I remembered how I had sent Erik a bunch of sexy pictures of myself, via facebook. Brandon and Chance could see them now.

I was sitting on the couch downstairs between 2 and 3 AM when it happened. I suddenly felt all this sexual energy directed at me. I started moving all around and writhing. It was intense, but it felt good. Really good. I moved around, gently humping the air for about five minutes, before it dissipated and returned to normal.

Rachel:

A couple minutes ago I felt a whole bunch of sexual energy, like someone was thinking about me while jacking off. It was pleasant.

Erik:

I'm not complaining, but this is sort of getting funny.

Rachel:

Was it you?

Erik:

Ya...

Rachel:

God dammit.

I was hoping it was someone else.

I got up the next day at around 7 AM, and I had not slept a wink. I was wide awake, and I started to write to Erik, even though I wasn't up yet. I wrote about how weird it was that there was an icosahedron in Pioneer Square, and I didn't even think anything of it. Like, I didn't even assign any delusional significance to it.

There was something about hand washing. Like, in the dream I had with the enlightenment house. I was imagining something, and I wrote to Erik about it. In high school, I imagined that there had been a rumor about some of the people I hung out with, that they didn't wash their hands after they went to the bathroom. I had had no knowledge of this because I was so isolated socially. There was something funny going on with the chat window while I was writing this, but I wasn't paying that much attention, and I closed my laptop so that I could go off and spend a few hours frolicking and wandering around the neighborhood.

I returned, and Erik had written to me, telling me that it sounded like the hand washing was more like an anointing. I agreed that this was much more likely than a rumor about hand washing.

Erik:

What other messages disappeared, btw?

Rachel:

Woah maybe that's it. Maybe I just made up the bathroom handwashing thing.

Erik:

Anointing has been around thousands of years, predates the bible.

Rachel:

I hate this.

Erik:

Btw what other messages disappeared?

Rachel:

What do you mean?

Erik:

And what do you hate?

Rachel:

What I am experiencing.

Erik:

I can sort of understand that sentiment.

As for what I mean, you said above, “my other messages disappeared.”

Huh? I scrolled back in our chat history. And there it was. There was text inserted in the conversation, like I had written this, but I had not written this:

The other messages disappeared.

I didn't bat an eye.

Rachel: Now did I write that? Or was that someone else?

That was Brandon. Brandon had written that. So that's what happened. Not all my messages had gotten sent to him. I had been wondering what had happened for six years, it had been killing me slowly inside. And now I knew. But it was no big deal. No big deal at all. I was very steady emotionally. I was riding high, above everything. My emotional state was unshakeable. I didn't get freaked out or anything, I just remained calm.

Erik: You wrote that.

Rachel:

Erik I don't think I wrote that, because that thought process makes no sense to me.

What it said was:

And

The other messages disappeared

There is something significant about washing hands.

Like in my dream.

Erik:

You got no sleep last night. I would be surprised if you remembered what you ate for breakfast.

Rachel:

Well, the thing is... I have been having delusions, or something... That there are other people reading my facebook, and that would make sense.

Erik:

Paranoia?

Rachel:

They aren't bad people. What's happening right now is something kind of trippy.

Erik:

There aren't other people reading your facebook private messages. I can virtually guarantee it.

Rachel:

I don't know if you can. How can you do that?

Erik:

Because my instincts are telling my so on this. Which is part of my intuition.

Rachel:

But I'm psychic.

Why did I say that? That made no sense.

A thought occurred to me. Brandon liked me. Chance liked me. I suddenly imagined this turning into a Twilight-like story, where it was a choice between two guys.

Rachel:

Oh my God!! I DO HAVE FREE WILL!!!

Erik: Why do you say that?

Rachel:

Because, I get a choice!

Erik, this is something funny. That's too weird.

Oh, God, I need coffee.

This situation calls for coffee.

So I had free will. Who would I choose? First I thought, Brandon wins out, because let's face it, even though I have been thinking about Chance a lot over the past couple of months, I still liked Brandon more. But then I thought some more, and I realized that I had to pick Chance. I absolutely had to pick Chance. Brandon had put me through way too much shit. Chance had not.

I came back to my room. I was high, not on drugs, but on my own body's chemicals. I started talking to Erik about rap music, and facebook God.

Erik:

He's funny as shit.

Rachel:

I know, but if you are Christian, you are supposed to find that offensive. Like religion is something VERY SERIOUS.

Erik:

Only zealots go that route. True religious followers can laugh at themselves and their own religion. Like Buddhists. A Buddhist walks into a pizzeria, and says, 'make me one with everything.'

Rachel:

Huh. That's a joke. I am above jokes right now.

I have a connection with God. I have experienced God. And I know, facebook God, is a lot like the real God. I mean, there is an aspect to it of humor.

Erik:

And our relationship with God is private, ours alone. Yours will be different than mine. Not wrong or right, just yours.

Rachel:

See I like the idea of a God that's funny.

Not a God that's all mean and grave.

Like Chance and his Old Testament God.

I inserted this last bit for Chance, because he was reading. I keeled over in a position of intense laughter, however, it was completely silent. I silently laughed at this for a long time.

Rachel:

Sorry I was riding some funny energy there.

Just so you know I am acting like a fucking weirdo right now. I have dry mouth. Like, I've been doing drugs. I didn't sleep last night. I am on a lower dose of Invega.

My brain was having a hard time staying on topic. I remembered back to yesterday when I gave money to the bum.

Rachel:

I thought illicit drug use was a worthy cause.

Ahh drain.

I need to reboot energy.

You know, I was thinking about it. I do pretend I'm black when I listen to rap music. But it's just for fun. I don't actually think I'm black.

I started telling Erik about a video my sister made in high school. In sociology class, they were given the assignment to do a project on minorities. So, my sister made a video about black people. At the beginning, they are standing around talking. “This is Lake Oswego, where are all the black people? Do you know any black people?” There aren't any black people in Lake Oswego. So the words “The Hunt” flash across the screen, and they were looking for black people to interview for the video. So they go to downtown Portland, by Pioneer Square, exactly where I met Larry.

The teacher liked Kristen's video so much they showed it in front of the whole school at an assembly. But some of the few black people at the school, or their parents, got upset, because they thought “the hunt” was a reference to when lynch mobs would hunt down black people to kill them.

Rachel:

Don't you think the Flying Spaghetti Monster is funny?

Erik:

Yes, lol

Rachel:

Like, if the Flying Spaghetti Monster doesn't exist, why are the planets perfectly shaped like meatballs?

I didn't make that up.

Erik:

Who did?

Rachel:

I got it from somewhere.

I started going on about how bad I felt for Chance. The other messages disappeared. Haha. The other messages disappeared.

Rachel:

Wasn't that thing about the messages weird? What the fuck was I talking about? It's a little bit of a mystery.

We should ponder on that mystery.

I love it when facebook God quotes scripture.

God didn't hate Esau.

Erik:

Ok, you can't focus.

Rachel:

Why should we focus? This rapid thought process suits me.

Trip Like Jesus Part 6! (Parental Advisory: Explicit Content, 18+)

A good practice in life is to project love and positive energy to your enemies.

Out of the blue, Jeremy contacted me again, and told me he wanted to hang out with me and another couple. I was doubtful because of all the times he'd blown me off, but I agreed to it anyway. I knew that he wanted us to get together and have sex. I told him I would, because “You don't regret what you do, you regret what you don't do.” This time, he showed up at my house when he said he would, and took me over to the couple's apartment.

There was a reason why I still gave Jeremy a chance, even after he blew me off so many times. I knew that Jeremy had a crush on me. I could feel this when I looked at his picture on facebook.

That was something I could do now. Something was happening to me. I was expanding, and growing spiritually. That was the magic of tai chi. I could feel my sense of self, my aura radiate, and grow. And with it, came my psychic sensitivity. When I imagined conversations in my head, that wasn't psychic. That was just in my head. But when I looked at someone's picture, and reached out with my energy and touched theirs, or felt their energy come through the screen, that was psychic.

I went online to a spiritual message board. There was a forum where people gave readings based on looking at people's photo. Anyone could read, so I tried reading people. I was told the stuff I said was accurate, and I should continue doing readings.

The trouble was, figuring out what information I received was psychic, and what was inaccurate.

So I could tell that Jeremy had a crush on me, but he wasn't interested in a relationship. He just wanted to have fun. Like me, he had just gotten out of a relationship.

We arrived at the apartment to meet Jeremy's friends. It was a young couple, the guy was tall, thin, and black, the girl was a stripper. We smoked a bunch of weed. I sat next to Jeremy, he put his arm around me and I touched him. I looked at him, startled by something. I was startled because I was with a guy who I was actually sexually attracted to! I had this problem where I would hook up with guys, and I wasn't really attracted to them. But I was attracted to Jeremy, and this was something new. Like, I was a virgin or something. I was an experienced virgin.

What Jeremy wanted was to see me hook up with a girl. So I made out with the girl. Then we all went into the bedroom and had sex with each other. Jeremy said that he had never done something like this before. But he liked what I said, you don't regret what you do, you regret what you don't do. It was interesting that I was the person he wanted to try something like this with.

The girl went down on me. I felt her energy. There was anger directed at me.

I felt something from Jeremy. As we had sex, my cross necklace dangled up against him. I got the impression that he was annoyed that I would wear a cross necklace to an orgy.

Afterwards, the girl yelled, “Thanks for making me look stupid!”

I went in the other room, and started moving my hands around really fast, making sound effects. “Shew! Shew! Shew!” I was shooting energy all over the place.

Jeremy tried to take a picture of me when I was naked. I told him not to. I was worried he did anyway.

Everyone else had an orgasm except me. I opted out.

As Jeremy drove me home, I kept rambling on an on about how terrible the weed was. “My weed was so much better than their weed!” Once at my house, Jeremy walked me to the door, and hugged me goodbye.

I think instead of calling it Innercept Academy, they should call it Zombie Academy.

Weird zombie girl needs some weird zombie Academy to normalize her weirdness and zombify her to states of dead zombie normalcy!

I was meeting Larry again to smoke some more of the weed he had given me. My parents hated me going downtown, but I told them I was going to do what I was going to do and there was nothing they could do about it.

I went downtown to Pioneer Square. In the square, there was an icosahedron tent. I walked around it and stared at it. It captivated me, however, I didn't really think anything of it. It didn't occur to me that it meant something.

Larry drove up in a car and picked me up. After I got in the car, he presented me with a new, very nice journal.

We drove around, smoked some weed, and listened to this rap song called Free Mason by Rick Ross. “I'd go to my grave before I'd be a bitch nigga...” The weed was hitting my bloodstream.

I thought about my book. I could feel, from listening to the melody of this song, that my book was going to be a success, it was going to be huge. I thought about Chance. I felt a cord connecting us. In my mind I imagined smiling at him and telling him I was sorry. I imagined him smiling really big and telling me it was okay. As if this were happening on a spiritual level between us. As if our higher selves were interacting.

Larry had to go to a class, so he dropped me downtown to hang out and wait. I got out of the car and I was high out of my mind. A cop turned his head as I walked by and I was about to freak but then I realized he was just checking me out.

Was this really just weed? Was there something else in this? This was the best weed I had ever smoked in my life.

I kept thinking about Chance. Something was going to happen with this. This was going somewhere. This was going somewhere.

This guy has a crush on you. But you are convinced he thinks you are subhuman.

This was so familiar. And that is what I thought. I thought Chance had thought I was subhuman. Like I was just an object, a thing, not a person, because he would get in my face and say my name and I would just sit there and do nothing.

Chance had liked me. Did other people in my eighth grade drama class know this?

I headed to the Pioneer Place mall. I forced myself to eat something because I needed to eat. That was the thing about marijuana's effect on me, or this marijuana's effect on me, it didn't give me the munchies. I wandered around the mall aimlessly.

I got carried away in my thoughts. I remembered how I had imagined Chance talking about me, back when I was messaging Brandon through facebook. I remembered how I had written as my status something about people from high school talking about me. “Why would I care what Chance thinks?” I had written as my religious views. Thank God, you can't look back at people's past religious views. Because Chance and I were friends now, and if you could, he could see that.

Then I imagined something else. Someone from my high school had seen that, and told him about it. Then Chance had seen me walking outside, the day before I attempted suicide, and I was crying, and he thought I was crying because I was hearing him in my head talking shit about me. This thought occurred to me. It would have killed me if I had known this earlier. This was the big fallout, the one the waterfall dream had warned me about. The waterfall dream that I had before I started college.

But things were cool now. Things were okay now. There was no need to worry. Chance liked me. Things were fine.

I thought about the pages I made on facebook. At the end of the Smirkydesmirkster profile, it asks, “Who smirked at Weird Zombie Girl? Was it one of your friends? Share this page to find out!”

“The page asks you, who smirked at Weird Zombie Girl? Isn't that really weird?”

People didn't understand who smirked at Weird Zombie Girl.

I imagined Chance talking. “Isn't it obvious who smirked at Weird Zombie Girl? It was Rachel Zuhl!”

Chance knew this, because when I sent the profiles to him, it didn't say, “Did YOU smirk at Weird Zombie Girl?” It said, “A spiritual high may have added a degree of smugness.” He deduced what I was doing here. I was making fun of a girl who had put puke in front of my door, in real life.

As I walked around the mall, the radio played over the speaker system. They were playing the song “Beat It” by Michael Jackson. This was significant, because back in eighth grade drama class, the boys used to always sing the parody of this song “Eat It.” I remembered how that was the time when I was obsessed with food. I got out my journal and wrote down “Beat It.” I wrote down the titles of other songs they played on the radio.

I remembered Chance's Ponzi Steam Cleaners status. It was a play on words, and I liked plays on words, but I hated the name Innercept, even though it was a play on words. I wrote down, “Innercept is a stupid play on words.”

I left the mall and walked around downtown. I saw an advertisement for cake, with a girl about to eat a piece of cake. I knew this was symbolic. This girl was me. I was about to have my cake, and eat it too.

Walking down the street, I bumped into a bum. He told me he needed money for “illicit drug use.”

“Woah! Illicit drug use! Well why didn't you say so!” I reached into my purse and handed him a dollar. He definitely needed this money.

“Woah thanks man! You are awesome! You are a special soul!”

I realized that the only reason I did this was because I was thinking, this would make a good facebook status. Because that's how I thought now. It was all about having interesting facebook statuses.

Today I gave a bum a dollar. He said he needed it for illicit drug use.

Larry picked up, and I felt enlightened, like I knew something now that I hadn't known before. Something was going to happen between Chance and me.

Someone had broken into Larry's mom's apartment. Him and I went over there to check things out.

Larry's mom was very rattled. I was barely aware of what was going on, I was high out of my mind. Larry dealt with the situation, and then we were leaving. We were talking to Larry's little brother, or someone Larry was related to, a kid who looked like he was twelve years old.

“You like her?” Larry was referring to me. “On a scale from one to ten, what is she?”

“A ten.” he said very decisively.

And then, I looked, and there was something very odd. There was a little baby, giving me the middle finger.

And then Rachel sees that the baby was flipping her off...

I shook my head a little bit to get this thought out.

Why would the baby flip me off? Because the little baby knew something. I was leading Larry on. I only liked Larry as a friend. Larry was interested in me romantically.

We drove around some more, listening to the “bitch nigga” song, before I rode the bus home.

I think it's odd. There are people who don't vote because Jesus said something about not being of this world. So they interpret that to mean you shouldn't participate in the world. But Jesus also said something about how you should put no thought into what you wear. Therefore, it should be a sin to color coordinate clothing, or wear clothes that match, or wear clothes appropriate for the situation. Because if you do, it indicates that you put thought into the clothing you chose to wear. But I've never heard of anyone who didn't do these things for religious reasons.

Did God even say we had free will? I wrote that as my status. Did God even say we had free will? Then I deleted it, almost immediately.

Maybe I didn't have free will. Maybe only I didn't have free will, because I was Jesus. Maybe everything I did was determined beforehand. The universe knew I would go downtown. That's why there was an icosahedron in Pioneer Square. I didn't have a choice in any of this. My life was planned out ahead of time, and I was just like a train on a track. That's why I had so many dreams about trains.

Even though we were broken up, I still talked to Erik regularly. I talked to him that night after I got home from hanging out with Larry. I was manic, wide-awake, and feeling like I was losing my mind. We talked through most of the night.

Rachel: Erik this is so in my head weirdly... Remember how I was talking about, how I will remember something was part of the plan. Chance likes me, and I like him, but I think that he thinks I'm like, subhuman... that sounds weird but it's in my head weirdly... That's what I thought, I realize. The reason I thought that, was because he said kind of rude things sometimes, but it was only because I wouldn't talk to him!

There are always fucking 23 people online.

God dammit talk to me Erik! I need to calm my brain down, because of going off the invega...

I am thinking there is something happening, but it is being confused because I am off-balance chemically.

There's something funny happening with me spiritually but I am fucked up mentally.

I had actually been working with the doctor on going off medications. He had taken me off Depakote, and now he had me on a lower dose of Invega.

Erik:

God dammit, I hate myself right now. I went to watch iron man 3 at the theater, like I said in my wall. I turn my phone off out of respect for everyone there, and about ten minutes into the movie I think to myself "I really hope Rachel sees that status and doesn't try to contact me..."

Rachel:

It's okay. I just looked at Chance's profile to feel the energy....

Because that's what I've been doing.

I feel really strong energy directed toward me coming from him. It wasn't there earlier.

Erik:

Well do you know what I'm going to say?

Rachel:

I hope it's not something bad.

Erik:

Do you? You know me pretty well by now Rachel. What I'm going to say is talk to him on it.

Rachel:

Okay Erik, let me tell you something, this isn't that kind of thing. These are things I should keep to myself. You realize how it works, if I were to ask him about this... THAT RUINS EVERYTHING!!

Erik:

Because of the what if?

Rachel:

Nope. Not the reason.

Sorry I spaced.

Erik:

What does it ruin?

Rachel:

A series of events. It's kind of like, a story has a lesson and it is shown through events.

There was something going on with me. In my mind, I was imagining Brandon and Chance talking again. They were reading this conversation I was having with Erik. Brandon had hacked my facebook and called him back over, because I was talking about him.

Rachel:

It has value that conversation doesn't have. If you were to just, tell someone the lesson you know with words, like sit down and talk it out....

Another reason, after all that has happened, there is no way in hell I am going to risk being embarrassed again.

Erik:

Never underestimate the value of telling someone something, and either giving or receiving validation. Like your growing abilities, and how you've felt me, and tonight alone, reached out and touched me.

Embarrassment is a part of life, baby. Learning to cope with it is what we do to grow.

I don't suggest gushing love letters on his wall or message box

But asking perhaps if, or what, he's interested in can clarify the boundaries, and maybe even clarify what you're feeling, for you.

Rachel:

Your advice sucks. I would rather shoot myself in the head.

Than risk being embarrassed again!!!!

I added that last line very quickly because I kept imagining Chance reading this, and he was shocked when I said I would rather shoot myself in the head than talk to him.

Erik:

I wish I was there for you right now.

Rachel:

Things are fine, because it will go how it's supposed to.

You should watch what you say here. It might be bugged.

Erik:

If they haven't picked up yet that fact, then it isn't.

Rachel:

I think I'm losing it.

Erik:

Ok babe. Right now, I want you to tell me a truth to you. something that no one can change in your mind. Inviolate.

Rachel:

I have a nose!! Is that a good one?

Erik:

Haha, ok. That can work for this. The next time you feel like you're losing it, I want you to touch your nose and say to yourself "I have a nose" and force your attention on your nose.

Rachel:

See this video I posted on facebook – Graffiti6, Annie You Save Me – Remember my enlightenment house dream?

Erik:

Vaguely – the one with the icosahedron room? I didn't watch the video by the way.

Rachel:

There was this part of the dream before the part about the house... I didn't mention this before because I didn't think it was important. I was at a beach house and I was looking at magazines of women with funny makeup on, kind of like in that video, where it makes them look sad. Really weird makeup.

Erik:

Like bad clown makeup?

Rachel:

YES!! Bad clown makeup!

It was supposed to make them look sad. But it was girls. They weren't actually clowns, but it was like clown makeup.

Erik:

I got the picture totally from you. Like I see it

...wait

The magazines were on a coffee table of white ash wood?

Rachel:

I don't remember!

Erik:

Your dream, was it very light and airy? Like a soft ambient perpetually active light.

Rachel:

What the hell are you talking about? This dream in general was positive. It was light, but sad, and mellow.

Erik:

Melancholy.

Rachel:

Yeah, that's what I said! Sad!

Erik, I feel like a girl now. And I liked feeling like a guy way better. Being a girl feels like death. Because of sex. There is something uncomfortable about sexuality.

Erik:

Not inherently.

Rachel:

Oh fuck yeah there is.

This is why girls don't want to have sex, and guys don't understand. I know you think girls like to keep track of how many guys they have slept with with notches on their belt.

...Oh God, be careful, the chat window might be bugged.

Erik:

Who do you think is bugging your chat?

Rachel:

No one. I am paranoid. But at the same time... it doesn't matter.

It didn't matter. I didn't care if my privacy was being violated. Even though I was quiet, I was an open sort of person. It was perfectly fine.

I tried to sleep, but failed miserably. I was wide awake. I felt the greatness of life, this spirituality, at the same time I was confused, and worried that it could all be chalked up to an imbalance of chemicals in my brain.

I felt like a little girl. I thought about how I went downtown, all the guys would turn their heads and stare. I was in great shape. But it made me uncomfortable now. This kind of thing had never made me uncomfortable before. Guys wanted to have sex with me? That was great! Now it was like, no, maybe that's not so great. I mean it was great, but it was also bad. A mixed blessing. Because it made me uncomfortable somehow.

Trip Like Jesus: Part 5 (Parental Advisory: Explicit Content, 18+)

It began to dawn on me that this world I lived in, Earth, was horrible. Everyone who has ever lived, everyone since Jesus, who wasn't Christian, is now burning in hell for all of eternity.

I didn't want to believe this. I wasn't a Christian now because this was a reality I wanted to be a part of. I was now Christian out of sheer fear. Fear of that misery I had been drowning in in my sleep, that I was now protected from now that I was saved. I knew that the sleep stuff was just a warning, a warning of something real that existed after we died, to the lots of people who did not accept Jesus as their savior. I wasn't baptized, but I was still saved. I didn't need to make a public announcement of it, all I needed to do was profess that Jesus was lord by mouth, and I was saved.

Sure, I was saved. But what about everyone on Earth that wasn't saved? Muslims, Jews, Hindus, atheists. They were all going to hell, unless I could somehow stop that. But I couldn't. I would be labeled intolerant of their personal belief system.

Not only was everyone going to hell after they died, but the ice caps were about to melt, flood the planet and turn Earth into a living hell.

God, this is horrible. Just give me some Adderall. Adderall will make the misery go away.

I started every day with my pill of Adderall. I felt horrible, I felt miserable, then I would swallow my pill, and immediately, I would feel relief.

It was kind of like I was in the Matrix, and I had just taken the red pill. I had just woken up to what a miserable place Earth was. Everyone here was oblivious to how horrible this planet was. God had fucked up the planet. For the love of God, get saved!

“Rachel has this really good song in her iPod called Fear of a Blank Planet by Porcupine Tree. I liked it so much that now, I listen to Porcupine Tree,” I heard Brandon say.

The lyrics to this song always spoke to me. I was reminded of myself in high school. I looked up the lyrics online.

Don't try engaging me

The vaguest of shrugs

The prescription drugs

You'll never find a person inside

My face is Mogadon

Mogadon? What's Mogadon? I googled it, and discovered that it was a prescription sedative, a benzodiazepine, used to relax people. So having a face that was Mogadon would mean a relaxed facial expression.

Curiosity has given up on me

I'm tuning out desires

The pills are on the rise

How can I be sure I'm here?

The pills that I've been taking confuse me

I need to know that someone sees that

There's nothing left, I simply am not here

The song goes on to complain about the acting in pornography.

I sat and thought about this. What other messages were hidden in the songs I had on my iPod?

I thought of the song Breathe by Prodigy. “You're the victim.” I thought about Amber's livejournal entry. I was the victim. The victim of all the crap people had been talking about me since I was delusional. I looked up the lyrics.

Breathe the pressure

Come play my game, I'll test ya

Psychosomatic addict insane

I was the psychosomatic addict. My addiction to Adderall was psychosomatic. It was just in my head. That's why I got immediate relief following swallowing the pill.

In mid February, Facebook shut me down. At least, they shut down my Weird Zombie Girl/Smirkydesmirkster accounts. I made fan pages instead and added all my friends, but I began to realize that I was delusional. No incident in particular drove this point home, I guess my brainwaves just returned to normal. I came down over a couple of days.

So where was I now? Well, two major things had come about from me being delusional. I was now Christian, and that had been a lasting change. I was also friends with Chance on facebook. I still really had a crush on Chance.

So what ended up happening was, I diverted all the energy I used to put into thinking about Brandon, and used it to think about Chance instead.

So the only thing I could really do now was, try to have interesting facebook statuses.

God and I have slumber parties. We do each other's hair and makeup and tell each other secrets. So if you were wondering how I got to be so wise, there you go.

Over the next couple of months, I grew immensely. I got into shape. My mom and I started working out at a different gym in Lake Oswego, one closer to downtown.

One day at the gym, this random thought popped into my head. What if, out of the blue, I sent Chance a message on facebook that said “I'm sweaty?” Wouldn't that be like the stupidest, weirdest thing ever? God, that would be stupid.

Because I thought things like that. I thought really random, stupid things in my head all the time.

After that, that thought occurred to me every day at the gym. Me sending Chance a message that said “I'm sweaty.”

Everyday I woke up in the morning, took a pill of Adderall, showered, worked out for a few hours, took another pill of Adderall, then worked on my book, studied mobile device programming, or both.

My goal was to make a version of my bug computer game into a game for smartphones or mobile devices, and that's how I would make money.

I was still in a relationship with Erik. I was going to move back to Coeur d'Alene to be with him eventually. However, it started to dawn on me that I didn't really want to. Was I really all that interested in him? What did I like about him? He was a Scientologist. He was there for me at a time when I needed someone. His dad was a survivalist talk show host. Was I in love with him? No. I was more interested in other people than I was in him.

So the thought entered my head one day, you know, I could just end it. I could just break up with him. I remembered January, how I had gone on and on about how I would never leave him. But that was January. This was March. A lot of things can change in two months.

I put off breaking up with him for the longest time. Finally, after a couple weeks, I decided it was time. I told him we should call the relationship quits. He was devastated. I was not.

I spent quite a bit of time talking to people online. I talked to a girl from Innercept, Izzy. She told me about this website that uses the power of the number eight to grant wishes. I was skeptical, but I figured I would try it out.

To have your wish granted, you enter your wish into the browser. Then you write down the number 8 on a small piece of paper, and carry it around with you for eight days. Each day at 11:11, you take the piece of paper into the bathroom, stare at it in the mirror and repeat your wish eight times. The piece of paper also needed to be exposed to the moonlight each night for 30 seconds, or two minutes if it was cloudy.

I wished for my book to be published, then I wished for guys I like to like me back.

I looked through the comment section. It was full of people raving about how their wish came true, or how now that they made their wish, they see the numbers eight and eleven everywhere.

Izzy was wild, imaginative, and into fiction. She told me how she wished for the goblin king to be real and for him to be her friend. The goblin king was from a 1980's movie called Labyrinth with David Bowie. In the movie, the goblin king turns into a barn owl. Izzy made this wish, and then she went camping, and there was a barn owl like in the movie hooting and making noises at her. She was freaked out by this, it must be her wish, she never quite completed it so maybe that was why it didn't manifest fully.

I thought it was silly, but I tried it out anyway, and for the next several weeks I was carrying around little pieces of paper with the number eight on them.

The night after I first got the wish, I was sitting there when I got a really funny feeling telling me to look at the clock. I did, and it was 11:11. The website had said that you have made a wish, you will see 11:11 with greater frequency.

I was on facebook late one night when I received a message from a popular guy from my high school, Jeremy. I was excited that someone from my high school who wasn't considered a loser would actually talk to me (not that I actually cared that much about that sort of thing, though). So I talked to him. And I was excited when he talked to me the following day too.

He was obviously interested in sex, but I thought he was hot so I agreed to meet him. I even rolled around a little bit on my bed thinking about him, beforehand, because we had exchanged pictures. He picked me up from my house. In the car I looked at his iPod and made fun of him for listening to Justin Bieber. We went to his apartment and smoked weed. I had myself under control until he asked me to cuddle with him, and when I leaned up against him I lost control and started grinding against him, and ended up going down on him, while dancing the entire time. Afterwards, I danced all over the apartment. He told me I was a good dancer.

Afterwards, I noticed his best friend Abel, another guy from my high school, removed me as a friend.

Jeremy kept trying to get together with me again, but when the time came for us to meet up he would make some sort of excuse.

My marbles are very scattered right now. I better pick them up before I lose them.

I had this problem where I would imagine people having conversations about me. I didn't really believe they took place, but these conversations would pop into my head anyway. Except one day, it suddenly got really real and intense. I started imagining that Chance and Brandon had met each other and were talking to each other about me. I felt a presence in my energy, and as I sat on my bed I felt like I wasn't alone. I was being crowded. God, get the fuck out of my energy. AHHHH!!!

But I didn't believe it. I didn't believe any of it. They weren't talking about me. Why the fuck would they be talking about me?

After being absorbed in this all day, I got on facebook, and looked at this status that Chance had posted. “If I were a white collar criminal and I had a cleaners, I'd call it Ponzi Steam Cleaners.” I closed my laptop, thought about it, then opened it abruptly and clicked “like.” I laughed. “Ponzi Steam Cleaners. Ponzi Steam Cleaners.” I whispered to myself.

The next day, Brandon and Chance were in my head talking again. This was from the day before. “Rachel likes bad puns. Try posting a pun as your facebook status and see if she likes it.”

I still didn't believe it. But I was going crazy now. I looked up bipolar symptoms, and compared them to spiritual awakening symptoms. This seemed more like a spiritual awakening than bipolar disorder.

Later though, I got another idea. I looked up schizophrenia symptoms. This sounded a lot like schizophrenia.

By the end of the week I was starting to doubt everything, doubt spirituality, doubt everything beyond the physical. It was all just chemicals malfunctioning in my brain. I was mentally ill.

Then Erik contacted me, and told me that he had just finished his Scientology training and he had been astrally projecting himself to me all week. He said he wouldn't do it anymore. My problem didn't happen again after that.

.

A good game to play with your friends is a game I made up called the cannibalism game. You ask, if we were stranded in the desert and had to resort to cannibalism, who would we eat first? Then you discuss the pro's and cons of eating each person.

The trouble I was having was that now that I was home, I wasn't the same as I was before. Now I was a lot more social. Yet, having hardly talked throughout high school, I didn't have very many people to hang out with.

I started meeting people through a dating website. On my profile, I tried to make it very clear that I was crazy and a low-life, as in I didn't have a job. Plenty of people talked to me anyway. I talked to a guy who suggested we meet up at Starbucks at Pioneer Square, all the way in downtown Portland. So I took the bus downtown, and on the way we were texting and I mentioned I didn't have a job at the time.

It was a beautiful spring day, and I soaked up the sights, the sounds, and the experience. I loved downtown Portland. I waited at Starbucks for a while, walked around the mall at Pioneer Place, then waited some more at Starbucks before I texted him and realized he wasn't coming. He was standing me up. He didn't like that I didn't have a job.

I was beyond frustrated because I had just spent my time and money coming down to downtown Portland to meet this guy. I left Starbucks. On my way out, I bumped into this big black guy.

“Excuse me miss, your beauty is a duty.”

He asked me why I was so down and I told him. I was kind of fascinated by this guy. I didn't know any black people. He was really nice and friendly, and he told me that this guy wasn't worth my time anyway.

This guy's name was Larry. As we walked around, he seemed to know a lot of people. He was also writing a book about his life.

We sat outside on the brick wall around the square, and I gave him my number. In my mind I knew that this was someone that I wanted to be friends with. He called the number immediately after I gave it to him so that I could program his number into my phone. I answered.

“Hello?”

“Oh hi, is this Rachel?”

“Yes.”

And we laughed, because we were just sitting right next to each other.

He was going to get me some marijuana, so I gave him twenty bucks and we rode around the max and then came back to the same spot. I was supposed to wait for him. I waited about thirty minutes, left the spot to get food and use the restroom, came back, then waited some more. I called him a few times and he didn't answer. I realized he wasn't coming back.

Dejected, I walked back up towards Starbucks, and bumped into yet another black guy, Andreas. Andreas was thinner, younger, and tall with dreadlocks. He was the same age as me. By this time I was open to just about anything, so we started walking some place. A club he likes to go to. On the way we talked about our past drug use and current living situations.

So we walked to this club, which ended up being a porno theater right next to a really popular doughnut shop in downtown Portland, Voodoo Doughnuts. I noticed there was a long line outside the door of Voodoo Doughnuts. "Is there some event happening there?" I asked.

"Nope, just people buying doughnuts like always."

At the club, we had to sign something to get in. I signed “Rachel Zu.”

We walked into the dark theater, and I was vaguely reminded of my dream about the past life with the theater. We sat down in a little compartment thing with a cushioned bench.

We watched the movie. A girl writhing all over the place seductively on a bed. Then a man entered and they started getting it on.

This is when I should have asked to leave. But that's not what I did. Instead, I let Andreas go down on me because well, he wanted to, right? And then I went down on him because, well, I had to return the favor. By that time, the other old men from the theater were gathering around and watching. I didn't mind people watching. I liked the attention. But I didn't want to have sex with this guy. He was trying to, and I said no. Then he pulled out a condom. And then I just gave in. He had a condom, we were using a condom. That meant there wouldn't be any repercussions from this sex. He started having sex with me doggy style, I didn't like it, I wasn't into it and he knew that and said “she's shy.” So we left. And it was over.

We walked around Portland for awhile, exchanged contact information, and then I had my dad pick me up.

When I got home, I posted a status. "I think it's odd that people are lined up at nine o'clock at night to buy doughnuts.

To which this guy Todd, a guy whom I had gone to high school with whom I had a crush on, responded. "Buy you a doughnut."

Another good game to play is a game I made up called the baby name game. You think up names you wouldn't want to name your kid, which have normal sounding nicknames. Like “Dementia” (Demi), “Syphillis” (Phil), or “Rubella” (Bella).

Eventually, Larry got back to me. He had had a run in with the cops, that's why he hadn't come back.

I took the bus downtown. Another beautiful day.

I just wanted to do drugs. Larry rolled a blunt on the sidewalk while I played lookout, watching for cops. As he rolled it, he explained to me how to do it so that I could do it later. Larry said there were specks in this weed that made you really really high. We borrowed someone's lighter, and I walked down the street, smoking a blunt, and choking and dying. I kept trying to hand the blunt back to Larry. “No, it's yours! You paid for it!” He didn't understand that I wasn't doing it to be polite, but because I wanted to breathe.

I imagined someone witnessing this. I felt like a celebrity, people were fascinated by me, following me and talking about my every move. “I saw Rachel downtown, walking down the street smoking a blunt with a big black man.” I imagined Brandon saying this.

Back in Starbucks, the marijuana hit my bloodstream. I started thinking about how sad it was. These people, these humans on Earth, they don't know. They don't know what happens after they die. They don't know the true depths of human misery. I remembered when I smoke weed on the beach back in high school. At the time, I had thought, I didn't know. I didn't know it was possible to feel misery this deep. But with hell, it goes even deeper than that. On Earth, when alive, you don't know how horrible it is possible to feel. It was sad.

God had a sense of humor. He also had a temper. God was joyous. He was also very, very sad.

We walked around, and I thought. Everything you do, it's for pleasure. All life is is the never ending pursuit of pleasure.

“So many thoughts, Larry, I need a journal! To write them all down!”

“All right babe, I'll get you a journal.”

We wandered around some more.

“Larry. What is enlightenment?”

I don't remember what he said. But I remember asking this. And thinking, I claimed to have an enlightenment. But I didn't even know what enlightenment was.

We were buying something at Rite Aid, and I wandered over to the frozen food section. There were frozen meals labelled “Baked Dinners.” I almost fell down laughing. “Larry, Larry look! Baked dinners! Those are for stoners!”

Later, I made this my status on facebook. Three people liked it.

“Larry, do you think some people are evil?”

“Yeah! Like, child molesters.”

“No Larry, child molesters aren't evil. At least, that's a lesser form of evil. But what real evil is, is knowing you are causing someone pain, and enjoying it.

After wandering the streets that day, feeling blissed out, drinking tea samples from vendors at the mall, losing myself in philosophical thought wherever we went... I decided that this had been one of the best days of my life.

So I am thinking that God created life on Earth to rid himself of some sort of an infection. We are all pieces of God, the pieces surrounding the infection. The problem is, the infection prevents him from seeing which pieces are infected. So he sends us to Earth and watches us carefully, and upon death either reels us back in or casts us out into a state of eternal separation from God, based on whether we seem infected or not.

Facebook was always changing, in terms of its features and how it was laid out. There was an update, and a new thing was that you got to see your top nine friends, visible to only you, on your facebook profile.

I noticed something. From time to time, Chance would appear as one of my top nine friends. Which was strange, because we didn't interact on facebook, and he beat out people who I did interact with for that spot.

I had heard a rumor that who appears in your top friends is partially based on who views your profile. After googling it for awhile, I decided to just see for myself if that's really how it worked. I ran a little experiment. I linked a bunch of my fake profiles, (by having them friend each other). Then had one of them view another one a whole bunch of times, without the other one viewing that one.

After some extensive research, I determined that your rank in the top nine friends was partially determined by who views your profile, it wasn't just a rumor. But I also knew that it was also determined by whose profiles you view.

So, it could have been because I was viewing Chance's.

I think that the people who are most offended by references to sex, those are the people who are secretly the most deeply perverted.

I went downtown to meet Larry again. We met at Starbucks, and he hooked me up with some more weed. This stuff he gave to me for free. I was alarmed when he pulled out a bag of weed in the middle of Starbucks and handed it to me.

“But what if people see?”

“Rachel, I've been doing this for years. No one notices if you don't draw attention to yourself. Just act casual.” He gave me two bags, each worth ten bucks each.

Larry was a drug dealer. That's why he hung out downtown all the time. He didn't live downtown. He wasn't homeless.

I took the bus home. I arrived at the house to find it empty. I furiously searched the internet to find a way to smoke or cook this shit without a pipe.

I ended up taking it over to my sister's apartment the next day to use her pipe. I smoked some, and then she made me take pictures of her. We walked around and I thought about how all thoughts and concepts could be reduced to binary, ones and zeros, a set of conditions that are either true or false. That's all thoughts were. That's all logical mental ideas were. They were all binary.

Then there were feelings, the emotions that concepts evoke, and this was something that could not be reduced to ones and zeros. In fact, it couldn't be reduced to anything. The way emotions feel, or the way things smell or the way colors look, at the deepest level they cannot be described. They just are. No logic could be applied to them.

I started to go back to normal and I asked my sister to light for me while I took another hit. This time, I must of hit one of the specks Larry warned me about. I suddenly got lost in a whirlwind of thoughts, and I felt as if I almost lost contact with the outside world. I had to keep moving, or I would get so lost in what was going on in my head I would forget where I was, that I was in a body on Earth.

The hell problem. The most basic, low-level problem God faced when programming the universe. Once someone goes to hell, they can't come back. It wasn't just like, if God searched hard enough He could find these lost souls and reel them back in. It was an impossibility. Once God loses His connection to someone, they are gone. They are completely separate from God, and anyone else for that matter, in this alternate dimension called hell. When you die, you are either with God, or you are lost forever, and you need to accept Jesus while you are alive to make sure you are not lost forever.

This was like a memory of something coming back to me. I already knew this. The fundamental truth of the universe. God is all-powerful, but the one thing He couldn't do was bring someone back from hell. This was a paradox.

I wrote about it on facebook:

So I reached enlightenment and I realized that the one fundamental truth of life is that God programmed the universe and the one fundamental problem that he can't program around is that once someone goes to hell, God can't pull them back out. And this is the paradox, because there is one thing an all-powerful God can't do. Because the universe is a paradox. But the thing is, this one fundamental truth of life isn't true for everyone. This is my personal truth and way of understanding the universe. But you realize when you reach enlightenment, or go through whatever the hell it was I went through, that the one fundamental truth you come back with is actually only meaningful to you and utterly meaningless in the scheme of things. Everyone has a different fundamental truth, but they fall into major categories, thus why there are so many different religions and schools of spiritual thought. It's kind of like when you are a little kid and you go to someone's birthday party, and you have a good time but all you leave with and can bring back from the experience is this bag of crap they call the party favors. That's what the fundamental truth is, it's the party favor, something utterly meaningless in the scheme of things that you bring back from the party of enlightenment.

I decided that this was enlightenment. I came home from my sister's apartment, flopped down on my bed and started writing all over my notebook.

I used to wonder why anything at all exists. Why is there a universe with stars, planets, and animals and humans who drive cars, smoke cigarettes, and drink martinis? Why not just absolutely nothing. I was thinking about it wrong. The universe was absolutely nothing. The universe exists because it doesn't make any sense for it to exist, and it is the absence of logic. Logic is an illusion.

I thought to myself, this is living. Smoking Larry's weed, flopping down on my bed and writing all over my philosophy notebook, this is living.

Trip Like Jesus: Part 4 (Parental Advisory: Explicit Content, 18+)

Even though I had accepted Jesus as my savior and I wasn't going to hell upon falling asleep anymore, I still couldn't get over how badly God had fucked up the planet.

One of the themes that had now emerged was the idea of ruining someone's life for your own selfish purposes. Crystal had told me that that's what I had done to Blake, when she wrote the comment on my facebook wall. This wasn't true, but these words represented the ongoing theme. Brandon had ruined his little sister's life for his own selfish purposes. He had almost made the same mistake again and ruined mine. But I wouldn't have done that. At one point, I had thought that I was going to get to be with Brandon, but the cost was that I would have to ruin Erik's life. But I refused to do that.

I knew intuitively why this was a theme. It had to do with abortion. For as long as I had known about the abortion issue, I had always been pro-choice. But once I realized the idea behind this theme, I suddenly became pro-life (on the issue of abortion, not other issues such as Terri Schiavo). I realized that there was no such thing as limbo (not that I ever believed in limbo, I previously believed in reincarnation). Aborted babies go straight to hell. They never even have a chance to be saved. All they ever know is pain. Abortion was the absolute worst thing you could do to someone. You were ruining someone's life for your own selfish purposes.

I wondered if the same thing happened in the case of miscarriages. I had a nagging suspicion that it might. Man, God had fucked up this planet pretty badly. God meant well. But He had messed up.

He had messed up with the dinosaurs as well. That's why He had made them go extinct. That was no accident.

So now, we lived on a planet where the idea of getting saved was starting to become a joke. Most people were going to go to hell after they died, and on top of that the oceans were about to rise, the climate was changing and Earth was about to become a living hell as well. So we were headed toward a horrible disaster, and I was God's only hope.

I heard Brandon talking. “On one of the websites Rachel posts at, Rachel was talking about the game the Sims. There is something in the game where they ask you questions and most of them have a clear answer, but one of them just asks you to choose between the red M&M and the blue M&M and Rachel didn't get it. Rachel didn't get a common culture reference. I get the impression that Rachel has never seen The Matrix.”

He was wrong, I actually had sat through The Matrix though I wasn't paying very good attention. But that was true. There was that question in the game and I had been confused by it, and I thought that maybe I had said something about it somewhere on the internet. Regardless, now that I thought about it I did remember that that was a reference to The Matrix. Why hadn't I thought of that?

At any rate, I realized that that movie was important. I needed to watch that movie again and pay close attention.

Brandon pointed out some other things. “When Rachel took her dad's Ritalin and everyone in her delusional world got mad at her, she was talking about how she couldn't stop thinking about the Titanic sinking. I don't know if Rachel got why the Titanic sinking was significant. It was a ship that was thought to be unsinkable, and it sunk. Rachel was supposed to be infallable, but she fell. She made a mistake.”

“I have friends who work at Google. Rachel's livejournal, although it was deleted, was indexed on Google. I got to read it. Matthew says to her, 'a finer pyrrhic victory I have yet to see, Zuhl.' I don't think Rachel realized that the pyrrhic victory was when she solved the Rubik's cube.” The victory of solving the Rubik's cube ended up symbolizing the delusional victory of Brandon seeing my livejournal. If I had never imagined this, it probably would have been better, because I would never have been delusional.

Brandon had been watching my facebook. “One year, shortly before Christmas, Rachel suddenly became obsessed with the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. That year, she had a nightmare right before Christmas.” I had awoken that year from a nightmare at around midnight on Christmas Eve. I had gotten on facebook and posted a status about how I had just had a weird dream and I didn't want to talk about it. One of my friends replied, and I ended up telling her about it via a private message. The dream was about one of the guys from Innercept, a guy who had always been rude to me. In the dream, he was raping me in my sleep. I had woken up in the dream, I had awoken from the dream within a dream, and I was pulling tissues out of my ears, like the guy had stuffed them in my ears so that the sound wouldn't wake me up. It was like the dream was him saying, “I want to fuck you, I just don't want you to know.”

When I got on facebook again, I ended up sending Weirdzombie Girll and SmirkydeSmirkster Atweirdzombiegirl requests to Tim Burton. It was nighttime now. Then I got my iPod and started prancing through the house, listening to the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. I started quietly singing to Jack's Lament, singing about how I could make grown men give out a shriek.

One night I began thinking about the time I hooked up with Sean. Before we had had the briefest sex, Sean was touching me. He had put together his index fingers from both hands and stuck them into my vagina. This actually did not feel good. But I had faked being turned on. Now, I heard Sean talking about it:

“Rachel's so bad at faking it.”

“Well, Sean, maybe you should learn to do it right!” This was Brandon speaking. “Girls don't like it when you just stick your fingers into their vaginas. You have to rub them around the clitoris. That's what I did to Rachel and I could tell by the way she was breathing that she really liked it when I did that, she wasn't faking it.”

The thing about this conversation was that what Sean said was supposed to have been said right after it happened, while what Brandon said was recent. Which was an indication that this conversation never happened. But regardless, Brandon was right. He had known how to touch me right.

Then it happened again where I was seeing things from God's perspective. Guys who don't know how to turn girls on right get mad at girls because they don't fake it right. This was something about the world that God found amusing. I posted a facebook status about this, saying that this is why it's important in this world for girls to take a lot of acting.

It wasn't until after I posted it that I realized that the day in theater class when I was thrashing on the bench, I was actually faking an orgasm.

At some point, my thoughts went back to Chance. I was remembering how one time, I had told my therapist about how a guy in my class used to say my name all the time. She had said that she bet that guy had the biggest crush on me. I had told her that I didn't think that was the reason he did it.

I was hearing stuff now.

“People would say to me, 'She probably thinks you say her name because you like her.' I did do it because I liked her! She would never talk to me. I thought she was just a bitch.”

You had to go through all this, because this is what you did to him.

The stuff that Brandon had put me through, this wasn't what I had done to Brandon in a past life. This is what I had done to Chance this lifetime. I thought back to the time at Bernard trying to get to Brandon, to hang out with him, to talk to him, and suddenly I saw the connection between this and Chance saying my name and trying to talk to me. He wanted to talk to me. I would never talk to him.

On top of that, Brandon ended up dating my enemy. I ended up dating Matthew. No, I had never heard Chance express any sort of opinion of Matthew, but Matthew had such a weird personality, a lot of people didn't like him. So it wasn't that unlikely that Chance didn't like him. And Matthew was always big on public displays of affection. He was always groping me in the halls at break.

You had to go through all this, because this is what you did to him.

Of course, all this was to a much lesser extent. But it was so weird to think that these things went together. And I actually did like Chance.

I had such low self-esteem back then, I didn't understand why anyone would like me. I didn't think anyone ever would. It never occurred to me that Chance actually did like me.

I remembered being in computer class, how Chance would come over, over and over again and try to talk to me. I remembered preparing a paper to turn in for social studies class during break one day in 8th grade. Chance came over, smiling, “Rachel Zuhl! Rachel Zuhl! Rachel Zuhl!” He followed me around the classroom. I just ignored him. “Rachel Zuhl! What are you working on? You wrote a paper on Measure 9?”

I pulled my paper away really fast. “Don't read my paper!”

And these were the only words I ever remember speaking to him. Don't read my paper.

“Hey, you're partners with Rachel Zuhl? Right on!”

“Rachel Zuhl, let's strike up a conversation!”

“Rachel Zuhl, what's your problem?”

We were in gym class one day. “Your face looks like this.” And he made a relaxed, open mouth, dead expression. I thought about saying, “I don't have my mouth open.” But that would break the sacred tradition of not talking to this guy. So I just didn't say anything.

He would come over, roll around on my desk and say my name over and over again. He would lean over my desk, and we would just stare each other straight in the eyes, while he said, “Rachel Zuhl. Rachel Zuhl. Rachel Zuhl.”

After several months of this, he was doing this one day when some guy told him to knock it off.

“She's catatonic!” Chance replied.

And in my mind, this is how the entire thing got painted. The entire thing was Chance making fun of me because I was catatonic.

I started imagining more stuff in my head. Chance was pissed at me, because I had never given him the time of day, and then I had chosen Matthew over him. I always hung out with the rejects, and hardly talked to anyone else. But Chance knew that I wasn't like them. For this reason, at some sort of post-high school going away party Chance had attended, a bunch of people from my high school had taken a picture of me, smeared crap all over it, and burned it in effigy. Because I was so stuck up, I was such a bitch, I would never talk to them. But really, this effigy represented them. Because they were so stuck up, they would never talk to the people I was friends with.

When I realized that Chance had liked me, I was still neglecting to go on my own facebook. I dragged myself through logging back on my regular account, looking up Chance and sending him another friend request from my own account. Then I immediately logged off. I didn't go on my own account again right away, but the next day I made myself look at my profile from the Smirkydesmirkster account, and I saw that Chance and I were now friends. He had accepted.

At some point, I began thinking about the Waterworld incident again. Sure, Sophie was a fictional character, and Brandon was in no way involved with the incident. However, Waterworld was still real. It was something that really happened. A girl named Quimby was killed at Waterworld.

I remembered back to when I visited the swim park in 2001, 4 years after the incident. As I thought about it, certain things stuck out from that day. I went on a ride with my sister, where you got on a raft and at the beginning you dropped straight down. My sister and I both screamed at the top of our lungs, because the sudden drop took both of us by surprise.

I remembered walking around the park by myself. I was looking at something on the ground, something disgusting, I don't know what it was. It reminded me of something disgusting I thought I had seen a long time ago.

I remembered standing by the lazy river, and a girl I had never seen before in my life came up and waved at me excitedly like she knew me. I stared at her blankly. I had never seen her before in my life. But she recognized me.

I remembered reading about the Waterworld incident online. Someone from Quimby's high school class had written an essay about it, about how a split-second decision could have saved Quimby's life.

Quimby was the nice girl in their high school class. It shouldn't have been her. They always say that about anyone who dies in a tragedy, but really, it should not of been her. I imagined Quimby being like the girl who was Jesus in their high school class.

One minute, everyone is having a good time. The next minute they are all in agony on the ground, in a pool of their own blood. On top of that, they killed Quimby.

I imagined what it would have been like for one of them. I imagined someone from Quimby's high school class, who had been on the water slide, talking about it. “It ruined water slides for us. Something as fun as water slides now reminds us of something horrible. We all have recurring nightmares about the incident. On top of that, we killed Quimby. We have to live with that guilt every day of our lives. People say we should have known better than to do something like this. But we didn't deserve this. If you knew all the pain that this has caused us, you wouldn't wish it on anyone.”

I felt a very strong connection to this event. I had had dreams about Waterworld before I became delusional. I had dreams about Waterworld after I became delusional as well. When I thought about the incident, I started to feel like I had been there as well, and the feeling was so strong it drove me crazy.

Quimby died, but she died in vain. She didn't save her high school class from hell.

When people don't accept Jesus, Jesus also dies in vain.

I could hear Brandon talking. He was talking to the group of mystery people who had been making fun of me for being delusional. “You guys were acting just like the Pharisees!”

“You called Rachel stupid. Rachel's a girl, and Jesus can't be a girl. Jesus was sinless, and Rachel obviously isn't sinless. Rachel doesn't know this, she must be stupid! But I knew that you guys were the ones being stupid. I knew something that you guys didn't know because I was reading her messages. Rachel thinks outside the box. It's not that she doesn't know these things, she just doesn't accept them as facts. When Rachel was sending me messages, she made fun of you guys pretty harshly for thinking that God would never do anything different!”

I felt God in me again. God was friendly. God was jolly. God was also a guy. So when I felt this way, I felt like a guy. I was making fun of these narrow-minded people on Earth. “God, do something different? BLAAHH!!!” Because the idea that God might do something different was very hard for these people to comprehend.

“I knew that there was something more to this, because I actually did have that dream about her. Alex was making fun of me for laughing at Rachel's water bottle.”

When I heard that, I was transported back to that moment. I heard Alex speaking.

“Huh? Why did you just laugh at her water bottle? 'Gee, Rachel, you have such a funny water bottle...'”

Brandon was humiliated. “Alex. That dream I just told you about? It was about Rachel.”

I was transported back to the present moment. “Rachel believed that her livejournal proved she was Jesus. Rachel doesn't understand that even if her delusions were true, people aren't that gullible. It didn't matter what her livejournal said, people wouldn't have believed that.”

It wasn't that I didn't know this. I just always had faith. Whenever I had doubts about whether or not this would work, I always told myself, “God designed this to work. That means it's going to work.”

Also, the Kundalini influenced my reasoning.

I was Jesus, and there were certain things that happened on purpose to make me look stupid. Like, the fact that I had assumed that since when I stalked Brandon on facebook it didn't say he was in a relationship, that meant he was still single. I wasn't his friend on facebook. His real relationship status was only visible to his friends. I had been away for five years. In those five years, Brandon had gotten married. But I still assumed he was alone.

Earlier that year, I had left my iPod at Abercrombie & Fitch. Brandon had been stalking me online, and he read my message to Erik saying that I had lost it. He had gone around to local pawn shops and found it. So he knew the music I listened to.

“You can tell by listening to the music on Rachel's iPod how intricately planned all this was.”

I had one song by James Blunt. The song was called Wisemen. The chorus went: “Look who's alone now. It's not me, it's not me.”

Because I thought Brandon was alone. And I wasn't.

Brandon had gotten married. And I had been at this treatment center so long, I had never really gotten to grow up. Not only was it immature, but it was stupid. You have to be his friend to see his relationship status. Duh!

I could hear Brandon talking. “But you can tell by the rest of the lyrics in this song that that happened on purpose.”

“With you pernickety little bastards in your fancy dress, Who just judge each other, and try to impress.”

Brandon forwarded the messages to Crystal to try to impress her, and Crystal judged me based on them.

However, there were other things that indicated that I was smart.

“On Rachel's blog, she demonstrates that she knows the true meaning of the word 'tweek.' Most people who aren't into drugs think that tweeking refers to shooting up. A tweek is actually a little twitch or habit you do on meth, or other drugs. Rachel must have picked that up from watching South Park. There's a character called Tweek. The reason they call him Tweek is because he tweeks all the time! Most people, even though they watch South Park, they don't pick up on that.”

On my blog, I had demonstrated that I knew what tweek meant when I talked about how I bit my lower lip a lot the time I tried meth, and I had said that biting your lower lip was a tweek.

I remembered back to high school. Freshman year, I remembered two students engaged in a heated argument over the meaning of the word tweek. At the time, I hadn't known which one of them was correct. Now I did.

No one had told me what tweek meant. Like Brandon had said, I must have picked it up from South Park.

Trip Like Jesus: Part 3 (Parental Advisory: Explicit Content, 18+)

So the profiles were all set up. Now, I needed to add people to both accounts, to get as many people as possible to experience the scream.

It seemed like more than a coincidence that right as I realized that there was something more to this weird zombie girl thing, my phone broke. So I wasn't going on my normal facebook account, and I had no phone. Erik had no way of reaching me. Maybe, this was one of those times when it would do me good to be a bit cut off from everyone else.

I added one of Matthew's sisters, and Matthew's ex-girlfriend Amber. I added random people from my high school class, people who had not accepted my friend request when I added everyone, and people who had added me but later removed me. I also added a few people who still had me as a friend. I added people from Innercept. I added all sorts of people, for different reasons. Several people from Innercept actually accepted.

I knew the scream wouldn't work on Erik because we had already been talking about the situation with Crystal where I referred to her as weird zombie girl. So, I sent it instead to Erik's cousin.

After this, I don't recall the exact order that everything happened in.

I started to realize that everything that I had feared for so long was true. People hadn't gotten on Crystal's case for putting puke in front of my door. Instead, they had gotten on my case behind my back for being delusional, and having such weird misconstrued ideas.

When I had been telling Brandon about the Matthew III situation, I had mentioned that I had always wanted to joke about the whole thing after it was all done and over with, but I wouldn't dare, because I wasn't sure how my friends felt about it. I thought that they might be embarrassed that they believed it. I wasn't, but I didn't know if they were or not and I got the impression they were.

However, there was a small group of people from my old dorm, and I wasn't exactly sure who these people were, Sean was one of them, but I wasn't sure who else was. It had become this little running joke amongst them to demean me all the time for my misconstrued ideas.

“But first, let's give thanks to our loving savior Rachel,” Sean would say.

“Who gives incredible blow jobs,” someone else would add.

“Let's sit around and talk about force-feeding her semen.”

As all this began to dawn on me, I went into a much different, uncomfortable, agitated spiritual state.

I had taken my computer back into my room, and that is where I would spend most of my time. I came out of my room after dinner one night, and I was feeling funny, and talking to my dad. He used the word scream. I stared at him with an intense expression in my eyes, and repeated that one word: “SCREAM.”

At the time I had done that, I thought it was because I was making other people scream. Later though, it turned out, I was the one who began screaming. All the angst and agitation I had been experiencing over the last several years was coming to a climax. At times I would ask, God, isn't there something I can take? But I knew there wasn't. This was a spiritual state, not a mental state, and drugs weren't going to touch it. The best thing I could do would be to lay off the unnecessary drugs.

It was like I had had all these walls up to keep all this pain out. Now, they were coming down. And it got worse and worse as I began to realize that all my worst fears about what people thought about me were reality.

People from my old dorm knew about the thing between Brandon and I. I remembered back to when I first contacted Brandon, and he had told me he didn't know what I was talking about, and I had decided he wasn't telling the truth. People had hated me for doing that. They hated me for accusing him of lying. They had also hated me for continuing to believe in my misconstrued ideas, despite the fact that Brandon and Crystal stayed together after I had believed the livejournal thing had happened. I was shocked and exasperated by this. Oh my God. These people don't understand delusions! Why would they do that? Why would they hate me for that? Wouldn't it have occurred to them that there might be something about being delusional that they didn't understand? That was the underlying purpose of the Nietzsche quote.

I realized something else. Brandon had done more than just read my facebook messages himself. He had forwarded some of them to Crystal, in an effort to win her back. He hadn't forwarded the good ones though, just the ones that made me look bad. Just the ones that embarrassed the shit out of me.

I was the second coming of Christ. The first coming of Christ was crucified physically. The second coming of Christ was crucified with hatred.

While this was going on, I was still continuously adding people as friends on facebook. I knew that these accounts violated several facebook policies. You are not allowed to have multiple accounts, and you are not allowed to have fake accounts that don't represent you. However, as I heard Brandon say in my head:

“She's counting on the fact this is so cool, no one is going to report it.”

Some people from Innercept were accepting the friend's requests. I found this slightly odd. They were supposed to look at the profiles, but after they experienced the scream they weren't supposed to want to accept. I wondered if it was because the scream didn't actually work on everyone.

I had sent friend requests to my old RA from Bernard. It had apparently worked on him, according to some of the stuff I was hearing in my head.

I overheard Brandon talking to Sean:

“Sean, you don't want to experience the scream. Mark experienced it for us, and he said it was horrible. It is a feeling so horrible you just want it to go away, but there is no relief.”

Then, I realized something that scared the shit out of me: I had sent friend requests to this guy from Innercept, Dan. I sent it to him because I loved Dan and I thought he would want to experience the scream. But the scream was horrible. No one wanted to experience the scream. And Dan already suffered from extreme depression. I wondered if the weird zombie girl thing might cause him to do something irreversible, like take his own life.

I had to contact Dan, to tell him to not look at the profiles, but I was already in the car going to the store with my dad. I didn't have my phone, and it wasn't working anyway. I knew bringing this up to my dad was not a good idea because he would just think I was being ridiculous. There was nothing I could do.

Actually, there was one thing I could do. I was the second coming. I was a facet of God. God was very powerful. If I spoke to God, maybe He would listen.

So I started praying in my head. I wasn't used to praying like this, but I tried the only thing I could think of to do. I just started repeating the same phrase over and over again in my head:

“In the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, save Dan. In the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, save Dan.”

Later, I realized that Dan hadn't been in danger in that way. However, there had been another reason I was praying to save Dan. Dan was Jewish.

Previously, not all that long before this while I was still in Idaho, I had been looking at the people Brandon had as facebook friends, while logged in from another facebook account. I had noticed someone on there whom I knew, someone I didn't think was on his list before. It was this girl named Emily, a girl from my high school class. This girl had also been in my drama class in the eighth grade.

I could remember back to drama class. Emily hadn't been particularly popular, but she had apparently been planning on being popular in high school. There was one day when we were choosing partners for a scene, and it looked like I was going to have to pair up with Emily. Emily started pleading with some other girls, asking that one of them pair up with me instead. Because they were seventh graders and they would have time to recover their reputations, but she was in the eighth grade and she was going to be in high school next year. Because doing one small scene with me was going to ruin her reputation, apparently. It was exceptionally rude. After she was done, she turned to me and said, “No offense, Rachel.” I gave her a big fake smile. It was ridiculous because first off, no one was even going to know she did a scene with me. Second off, no one would care. A lot of people would have probably been like, “Who's Rachel Zuhl?”

However, even though this girl could be judgmental, I knew she wasn't nasty like some other people were. I actually had her as a friend on facebook now too.

I imagined that Brandon and Emily had met, and that when Brandon found out she was in my high school class, he asked her about how I was in high school. I imagined that Emily had given him some information.

I was imagining Brandon telling someone something about me that he had learned from Emily. “There was a time in high school at an assembly when Rachel was with her friends, and they all laughed really hard at something that wasn't funny. It really stood out that Rachel was the only one of them that didn't laugh.”

I could remember this. It was during an assembly junior year. We were supposed to be split up by classes, and each class had an assembly in a different part of the school. Timmy had come to the junior assembly despite the fact that he was a senior. One of the upperclassmen who was running the assembly noticed this and said his last name, and my friends all laughed really hard for a really long time. I knew that other people would think it was weird how hard they laughed at that.

Laughing at something that wasn't funny was a theme that related to weird zombie girl. When you are going through the profiles, you are smiling, then you get to the end, and what was first funny suddenly freaks the shit out of you. You realize you thought something was funny that wasn't funny at all.

I thought about how people at Innercept had thought it was funny how I said “spirits” all the time. Except, I did it because I was in pain. They were laughing at something that wasn't actually funny.

I knew the significance of this. This was God commenting on our society. We live in a perverted society that laughs at something that is not at all funny. That thing is pain. We laugh at other peoples' pain. But pain isn't funny.

Those people from my old dorm, whoever they were, they were laughing at something that wasn't funny. They were laughing at my pain.

I could hear Crystal talking, back when she found out what had happened to me with the mental illness:

“Blake spent thousands of dollars on a lawyer and he lost. He was convicted of furnishing alcohol to a minor because of Rachel, so now he doesn't have a clean record. This is karma!”

I remembered how Blake and I had talked a bit via facebook messaging after the ER incident, and he said that they were talking about charging him with that. I hadn't known that it had actually happened and had always really hoped that it didn't. When I had seen Blake that one day, and he had seemed very distant, it wasn't because of the puke. It was because of the legal issues he was facing because of me.

I thought back to my previous beliefs about the past life with Brandon and karma. I had believed that Brandon had shot me, but because it was something he just did in a split second when his judgment was impaired, I had bad karma from it. There was a parallel between my belief of Brandon shooting me in a split second, and my gulping down Blake's alcohol in a split second. It was something I just did very fast without even thinking, and I had already been drinking. My judgment was impaired. Would I have to face such heavy karma for something like that?

I could hear Blake talking, explaining to Crystal why he still had me as a friend on facebook. “Crystal, there was something so innocent about the way she did that.”

But that's what people from my old dorm must have thought. This was karma. It was so ridiculous that I believed I was Jesus after I had done something like that. They didn't understand that the second coming was different.

So they laughed at me. And they thought everything that had happened to me was funny. They didn't realize that they were laughing at something that wasn't funny. This really did ruin my life. I spent the past four and a half years at a treatment center. And while they all probably had real jobs, my occupation was a lot like what I had listed on SmirkydeSmirkster's profile. I was a pill popper. And I was only a volunteer.

While I was in this agitated spiritual state, I would progress through different ideas and theories about what was going on with my whole issue with Brandon. I was hearing things constantly. But, as always, when I heard things, I knew they were just in my head. They were my own thoughts. However, it was as if my own thoughts were louder than normal.

As I would progress through ideas, I would often hold two or more ideas simultaneously, ideas which couldn't possibly all be true. I knew this. I would tell myself, those two ideas can't both be true. However, when I held these ideas in my head, despite the fact that they weren't all true, it created some sort of balance. As if these contradictory ideas created harmony when placed together.

It was sort of like, you have a set of wheels that represent your beliefs. The position of the wheel determines what your belief is. It was as if someone had come up and spun all the wheels around wildly, so they were now spinning, going from one belief to another, and the beliefs as determined by the position of different wheels didn't line up with one another.

I realized something. I had been having so much trouble understanding why Brandon had treated me the way had. He hated me, but sometimes I got the impression that he secretly liked me. It was really quite simple. He was a guy. He wasn't romantically interested in me. He just wanted to have sex with me. That was it.

Why had that been so hard to understand? I had been coming up with the strangest explanations for what was going on... I reminded Brandon of his dead sister Sophie, Brandon had killed me in a past life... when really all it was was sexual tension.

When I realized this, I went down, and explained this to my dad. The reason I did this was because I knew this was something my dad would think made a lot of sense, since he was always telling me how guys were different then girls. I wanted to prove to him that despite the fact that I was going around the house randomly screaming, I was thinking in a way that made sense.

I told my dad the thing about sexual tension. Then, another thought occurred to me. I went to ask my dad about this.

“Feether Meeke.”

“Yes?”

“Is I true that... guys secretly don't like lipstick?” I was thinking that this was a secret amongst men, that they don't tell women, or necessarily even talk about amongst themselves. Sure, lipstick looks nice. But it's a mess. You try to fool around with a girl, you get her lipstick all over you. That's why it would be better if girls just didn't wear lipstick.

My dad answered me. “No. Sometimes it's kind of nice after you've kissed a girl, to have her lipstick on you.”

I went back upstairs. Okay. So that was wrong. Or was my dad's opinion the same as other guys?

I thought about something else, which I didn't dare ask my dad about. Swallowing semen. One thing I have noticed about guys is that, a lot of them think it's hot when girls do it, but disgusting when guys do it. When a guy has a girl swallow his semen, he is taking advantage of her ignorance. Girls don't realize how nasty semen is because they don't have to look at it all the time. Guys will masturbate, and look at this nasty stuff coming out of their dick when they come, and after staring at it time after time, you realize how nasty it is. This is something you would never, ever want to eat. But guys, they come in girls' mouths, and they don't even get to see it most of the time. The whole idea of swallowing was degrading to women.

It was like I always knew this. I remembered a girl named Chelsea. She stated proudly one time that she swallows (this comment is taken out of context). I replied, “Yeah? Well, I don't swallow!” And I was proud of that. Because I knew that sure, guys like it when girls swallow. It's hot. But do they respect girls who swallow? No. When a girl swallows, they respect her a little bit less.

I imagined a girl, a girl who swallows. She was stupid, ignorant, childish, and pathetic. She swallowed because she wanted affection. “But I thought you looooved meeee...” she moaned in a pathetic, disgusting, very sheep-like voice.

Another thing I thought about was my hair. Guys liked the way I had my hair done. At least, I imagined they did. The way I got it done, I had highlights, but instead of lots of very small highlights, there were a few bigger, chunkier highlights. Sure, it didn't look natural. But the way I did my highlights, the exact width, turned guys on. I imagined that the reason I knew this, was because I had divine knowledge, a divine understanding of what guys found attractive, and what was aesthetically pleasing. I always wondered why other girls didn't get their hair done this way. When I went to the hair salon, I had to insist on this exact width.

I was in a lot of pain. I kept thinking about all the crap I had gone through. With Brandon, with the doctors, with my delusions, with the treatment centers. This had ruined my life. And on top of that, everyone from Bernard was doing exactly what I feared. They did think bad things about me for continuously talking to Brandon, despite the fact that he didn't respond. For saying all that crap about blow jobs. For having delusions about him. I was a loser. They didn't bother to listen to me. To ask me why I had done what I had done, what my reasons were. No one had ever talked to me about any of it. They just demeaned me for it. They hadn't been around me in so long, they had forgotten how sensitive I was. I hated them for it. I was standing in front of the mirror, staring at myself, and I had a look of shock on my face. If they had been there at this moment, I would have stared at them in shock. I would have told them that they made me sick. But when it was all over, I would have definitely forgiven them. Because that's what Jesus did. He forgave the people who had crucified him.

I was in so much pain I wanted to scream out in agony. This was the peak of my mental pain, but now I was stripped of anything that would have comforted me. I couldn't comfort myself by thinking of the funny or clever things I had said. Because Brandon wouldn't let people see my good side.

God, I had such a horrible life. I went out in the hall, and my parents were standing there. I began screaming at them. I screamed at them for getting a guardianship over me. I screamed at them, telling them they hadn't needed to, I would have signed anything they told me to sign. But they wouldn't even try that. They just assumed that I wouldn't sign things and took legal action. They didn't understand how degrading what they had done was. I screamed at them, telling them how horrible it was to have lived a good portion of my life in a treatment center. And now I was twenty-six, and I still hadn't grown up. I was still like a teenager. Why had they done this to me? I had such a horrible life. Why couldn't they understand how horrible my life was? But it was okay. I forgave them. I held onto my mom's shoulders and assured her over and over again that I forgave her. I forgave her.

My parents didn't even argue. Or try to stop me. They just looked very sad. And my mom cried. And I felt bad that I had hurt her feelings.

My parents went back downstairs again and were watching TV. I wanted to assure them that things weren't as horrible as I had led on. That I had gotten carried away. I had a great life. Just at that moment, I was having trouble seeing it for its good side.

So I came downstairs, and smiled, and starting walking around the kitchen in a joyful fashion, chanting, “Doop di doop di doop di doop di doop.” Then I told them that I was sorry. And that I had actually had a great life. And I meant it. I had. Because at this moment, all these moments from my life were flooding back to me. And I was remembering all sorts of interesting things from my life that I had forgotten.

I talked to my parents about how much I feared the upcoming scream. The scream was inevitable. One of these days, I would just let out a horrible scream, a scream that went on and on, as I suddenly felt nothing but agony over everything I had gone through. I was terrified of this.

I couldn't sleep at night. I was thinking about Brandon again. I was up late, thinking about him, and how much I wanted him. I was rolling around on my bed, writhing, burning up with this intense desire for him. I didn't even need to be in a relationship with him anymore. I just wanted to fuck the shit out of him.

However, that wasn't actually the reason I couldn't sleep. I was having this problem where every time I went to sleep, something really horrible would happen. It was much worse than the feeling like I was dying, as scary as that was. Every time I fell asleep, I felt like I had gone to hell. It wasn't nightmares. It was much worse than nightmares. It was an incredibly dark spiritual state. I didn't really have any dreams, though there were vague ideas of horrible situations which I wasn't able to recall upon waking. It was so horrible that I just could not sleep.

I told my parents that I could not sleep. They wanted to give me some medication to help me sleep. This scared me. Because I was worried they would give me something that would knock me out for a long time, and I would spend that time stuck in hell. So I told them no. Please don't give me anything to help me sleep. In order to sleep again, I needed to get baptized.

I told Erik. He begged me to get some sleep. I was putting myself at severe risk by becoming so sleep deprived. If I needed to get baptized, then I should get baptized as soon as possible. But for the love of God Rachel, get some sleep.

I looked up baptisms on the internet. There was a place in Portland that offered them. I filled out a form so I could get one. My dad gave me a new phone. However, they never ended up calling me. I went another night without sleep.

A thought occurred to me. Was a baptism really necessary? Maybe there was some way that I could accept Jesus and be saved, without actually getting baptized, for now. What did the bible say about being saved? I did some research. In Romans, it said you needed to profess that Jesus is lord by mouth while believing in your heart that Jesus rose from the dead, and you would be saved. I called Lily, who happened to be a recently ordained minister. I asked if that was all I had to do, and I decided to try it to see if it worked. So I said it, while on the phone. “Jesus Christ is lord.” About ten minutes after I hung up, while I was standing in the bathroom, I felt some divine light shining on me. I had done it. It had worked. Thank God.

I don't know if I was able to sleep right away after I was saved. I think I slept a bit that night, but still not enough. However, I never again had the problem of going to hell upon falling asleep. Getting saved cured it. But I was left in a state of fear and horror. Because my eyes were opened to something really horrible about the world. Everyone who is not saved, who has not accepted Jesus as their savior, goes to hell after they die. At least, the majority do. I wasn't sure exactly how strict this rule was.

But the people at bible study had been right. You had to be saved. The idea of being saved was starting to become a joke. I had thought it was silly how Jen had said “Ouch!” when the pastor mentioned someone who wasn't saved. But she had been right. It was an ouch. This was even scarier to me than global warming had seemed back when my misconstrued ideas started.

I started to feel like I was God, like I understood things like God did, like I had God's sense of humor. One of the things I thought I understood was the mechanics of being saved. Here on Earth, we are separate from God, but we are connected to God by a cord. All comfort and pleasure we experience is the result of our connection to God through that cord. The cord breaks upon death. When one accepts Jesus Christ as their savior, another cord is created. God uses that cord to reel you back in upon death. But if you don't accept Jesus, there is no cord. You lose all connection to God. God can't find you, and you are lost for all of eternity, in a state of unimaginable horror and agony.

Something I thought was funny when I felt like I was God was people's response to Jesus. Jesus came down to die for people's sins and teach them moral lessons. However, a lot of people didn't learn the moral lessons they were supposed to from Jesus. Instead of learning from his teachings, they were just... in awe of how great he was. Like, “Woahhhhhh.... That guy was great. NO ONE compares themselves to THAT guy.” It was funny because I knew that comparing yourself to Jesus was not really sacrilegious or a sin or anything bad. What was a sin was hatred. This was so funny to me at this time, I was laughing my head off.

However, I was still going through my pain. Now, I was going through Dark Night of the Soul. Dark Night of the Soul is a spiritual crisis that occurs in Christianity during the journey toward union with God. It wasn't supposed to be pleasant.

I knew that what was supposed to happen was, the pain I was experiencing, at some point it was supposed to lift all of a sudden. And I would experience peace.

This happened one day as I walked out of my room. Suddenly, I was above all of it. I was above allowing those other people to get me down. I was at peace. This occurred to me as the smell of peace entered my nostrils. I inhaled deeply.

“Oh my God! That smell! What's that smell?” I inhaled as deep as I could again and again, breathing in this smell that was in the air. It was one of the most pleasant smells I have ever experienced. It was sweet, but it wasn't sickeningly sweet. It had a nice depth too it. It wasn't overwhelming, but something about it pierced my soul. “Oh my God! What's that smell? What's that smell? Oh my God! That smell!” My dad said it was the smell of rice cooking. Though, later, I discovered that what I was smelling was a scented candle. The brand was Pacifica, the scent Tahitian gardenia.

There were a few times after that where I felt like I was about to lose the peace I had attained, and I was going to slip back into Dark Night of the Soul. But I never actually did.

By now, it was February 14th: Valentine's Day. That morning, I had a beautiful bouquet of roses sent to my house from Erik. The card read: “It's always darkest right before the dawn.” This filled me full of fear. This was an omen! The worst was yet to come.

I realized that within Crystal's hatred of me, there was an element of jealousy. Crystal had been jealous of me because I got to have sex with Blake. Of course, this was silly, because I had been passed out when I had sex with Blake, or at least blacked out. I had no memory of it. After Crystal had put puke in front of my door, I had reacted by doing something clever: removing all the signs except one, “A wedding ring is like a tourniquet – it cuts off your circulation.” I left that sign because it was stupid. Crystal apparently didn't want to get married.

I realized that people at my old dorm had been laughing at me over something. They were laughing over the fact that I had thought that Crystal took the thing about me never talking literally, when I was the one who had taken the puke literally. Crystal hadn't put puke in front of my door merely to inconvenience me. It was a very symbolic gesture, symbolizing how deeply I revolted her.

She may not have taken me never talking literally, but she had done something equally stupid. She had mistaken my tone of voice on the comment, “It seems I'm more famous than I thought.” I was being facetious. She didn't understand my sense of humor and she had thought that I was somehow proud of the ER incident because it made me famous. I wasn't exactly sure of this, but this is what I was picking up on. Of course, with the cycling of ideas, truth was irrelevant. Just roll with it.

I knew that Crystal wouldn't hate me as much as she did if she had ever met me. Not necessarily because she would have realized that I wasn't a bad person, but more because it is much easier to dehumanize someone whom you have never met. If she had met me, she would have seen me as a human being, and not someone that needs to be eternally punished for a split second bad decision.

While I was done with Dark Night of the Soul, my brain was still coming up with new ideas. I suddenly started imagining the pictures and the things I had told Brandon, plastered all over the internet. I imagined someone else going on my facebook and posting the sexual pictures, and putting them anywhere else they could, all over the internet. Putting my embarrassing quotes out there. Giving other people all the information which I had given Brandon.

As my brain got carried away imagining all this horrible stuff, a voice in my head spoke up.

For the love of God, Rachel, get some sleep.

I still hadn't gotten an adequate night's sleep. And now, I was paying the price. I was starting to lose whatever sanity I had had. I was losing that familiar feeling of normalcy, that feeling of grounding, that feeling that gives you a sense of living on a fixed timeline. I felt like I could float off into the clouds and be gone forever without ever actually dying.

I had never truly lost my sanity. I had never really had a mental breakdown, like everyone else seemed to think I had. Whatever I had experienced before, that's not what losing it felt like. This was what it felt like. I was confused. My brain was going crazy imagining all this stuff about me plastered all over the internet, and on facebook. I remembered how my therapist had been misquoted as saying I thought people could go on my facebook and do things to me. It was like that was some sort of prophecy.

For the love of God, Rachel, get some sleep.

I just needed to stop thinking about this and sleep. The thing was, it was the middle of the day and my Adderall wasn't going to let me sleep. But I had to sleep. My mom was able to acquire some Zyprexa for me, which is a prescription drug in the atypical antipsychotic class. The thing about Zyprexa is, no matter how awake you are, you take an adequate dose of Zyprexa and you will go to sleep for hours. I took some, and I slept peacefully for a long time. When I woke up I was finally well rested.

I had a nightmare one time during my freshman year of high school. It involved this man, who I may have been romantically involved with. I had been warned very strongly never to look this man straight in the eye. I wasn't given a reason. Just don't do it. So I tried my hardest not to. I was out with the man at a restaurant with some other people, and I turned to say something to the man and accidentally looked him straight in the eye. This was when I figured out why you were not supposed to do this. The whites of his eyes were not white, they were yellow, and there was this dark spot in one of his eyes, in the yellow part, and it was not his pupil. The eyes are a window into the soul. I was looking at something dark about his soul, and it freaked me out so bad I jumped up and screamed at the top of my lungs. Then I started running away, trying to get away from him, and he started following me. I ran into the bathroom but he followed me in. I don't remember what happened after that.

I was reminded of this dream during my freshman year of college, when I was looking at Brandon's myspace page. On his profile he warned people not to look him straight in the eyes, because there was something dark, something that he didn't like to look at.

When I woke up from my nap, I was well-rested. I had achieved some insight and clarity on what I had been thinking previously about my stuff plastered all over the internet.

Brandon knew how to crack passwords. That was why at some point earlier, my password had been floating strongly through my head. He knew my password. Or at least one of the passwords I used, as I now used different ones. Back when I had been sending Brandon messages, they came up with the idea to take advantage of what I was going through and plaster embarrassing stuff all over my facebook and the internet. Brandon didn't want to, but he was in so much pain after he broke up with Crystal, he would have done anything to get her back. He thought that if the two of them ruined my life together, then he would have her back. So he was willing to do it. Of course, she wouldn't have taken him back anyway. She had a new boyfriend.

So Brandon hacked the file that was sent to the treatment center in Santa Barbara and added the bit about how I think people can go on my facebook and do things to me. The reason he did this was so that if I started complaining about the stuff they were doing, people wouldn't take me seriously. Of course, this part of the plan would not have worked. I know that people would have still taken me seriously. Besides, when I was in Santa Barbara I was still in contact with my parents and they could have proven that I had never said that. This part of his plan would not have worked. However, there was a time when I was not allowed computer access, and they could have done this then and I wouldn't have known until it was too late.

But Brandon and Crystal didn't realize that I was going to read the intake report, and when I sent my therapist a nasty email it scared them, since they could read my email. They got in a fight and ended up not doing it.

What I thought was interesting about this was the fact that through sending my therapist a nasty email, I had narrowly avoided a disaster. My mom had gotten mad at me for being nasty to my therapist.

What was also interesting was that Brandon was willing to ruin someone else's life in the hopes that it would make his life a little bit better. He would have ruined someone else's life for his own selfish purposes.

That was all I was to Brandon. That was the reason he had gone six months without blocking me. He saw me as a way to win Crystal back.

As I was sitting in my room on my bed, I got lost in thought. A bunch of ideas started coming to me. I was in a normal state of mind. My brain wasn't chaotic like it was during the rush. But I realized a bunch of stuff all at once.

“Rachel thinks she's good because of the way she was about Matthew's secret. What she doesn't realize is that she invaded his privacy by telling me. However, I knew that what Matthew had done still wasn't nearly as vile as what I had done to my younger sister.” This was Brandon talking.

Back during the summer right before I contacted Brandon regarding my delusions, Brandon had posted a photo album on facebook of his family vacation. One thing I had noticed was that he had a younger sister who was exceptionally heavy. Which was odd, because no one else in his family was heavy, I had seen his mother and father and they appeared to be a normal weight, and Brandon was a normal weight.

Back when Brandon and his little sister were very young, Brandon had hated her. He just wanted her to die. So one day, he started shoving food down her throat really fast while stimulating her sexually. His plan was to fuck her up so that all she'd ever want to do was eat.

His little sister was young, but she was old enough to talk. She didn't know what Brandon's intentions were. She thought it was fun. She got a really strong high from it.

“Oh my God Brandon, you're like my best friend!”

So, Brandon kept doing it. The trouble was, Brandon's plan ended up working. By doing this to her when she was so young, it gave her a fetish for eating. Now she has uncontrollable orgasms every time she eats. The high she got from what Brandon did to her was so strong, it was almost like trying crack. Now, it was like she was chasing the dragon. Every moment she's not eating, she's bored.

That was why Brandon had titled the blog entry about his dream, “Freud Was Right.” Because of Freud's theories about sexual development in the early years.

As Brandon got older, he grew to love his little sister. But he had already ruined her life.

“Whenever people find out about my little sister's problem, they laugh at her. It's so sick how people laugh at something so horrible.”

Once I figured this out, I was so horrified by what Brandon had done I was walking around in a state of shock. I had to ask myself, “What would Jesus do?” Was this something so big and awful that Jesus could not forgive? No, it wasn't. So I forgave Brandon.

But I wasn't done with my revelation.

“Some of Rachel's messages were so funny I was just laughing my head off. It wasn't until a while after it was all over that I realized that I liked Rachel. She was funny, and she wasn't nasty like Crystal was. So now, I invade every aspect of Rachel's privacy. Rachel left a massive imprint on the internet. I just always keep her blocked on facebook so that she doesn't know.” I realized that the message I had been writing to Brandon when I was attempting suicide with aspirin had not gotten accidentally sent. However, Brandon had gone on my myspace because he knew my password and he had seen that I had been writing one to him, and that's why he had blocked me there.

Despite all the embarrassing things I knew that Brandon had seen about me, I wasn't angry. Because I knew that Brandon accepted me for what I was, despite the fact that I wasn't perfect. It was like he knew everything about me, and he still loved me. Brandon's love was unconditional. He had seen the good in me and no amount of bad stuff was going to take that away.

People had thought I was stupid for not realizing that the reason Brandon treated me poorly was just because of sexual tension. However, now I realized that it wasn't just sexual tension.

“Rachel was wrong, she doesn't remind me of my big sister. She reminds me of my little sister.”

“I used to feed my little sister carrot cake. That's why I always secretly hated how Rachel would go in her room and eat carrot cake.”

I realized that Brandon wasn't alone. He had gotten married. That was why he had his arm around a girl in his facebook profile picture. You just had to be his friend in order to see his relationship status. Duh.

I heard Brandon talking, as if he was talking to his wife. “When I first moved off to college, I moved into this dorm. It was all guys on this floor except for this one really hot girl at the end of the hall. At the beginning of the year, this girl was like a sex symbol. But then, she turned out to be this whore.”

At this point, somehow I knew what Sean had said to the guy who had asked him if the girl on that floor was hot.

“Is she hot?”

“She's mine.”

“Dude, you say that like she's your girlfriend.”

I heard Brandon talking again. “One night I went in her room with her, took off all her clothes, touched her and made out with her. I had her so turned on she was rolling all over the bed writhing. But when I asked her if she wanted me or the guy next door, she still said the guy next door. I was so mad I just wanted to rape her. I already had her lying there completely naked. But I didn't, because I remembered what I had done to my little sister, and how I had taken advantage of her innocence.”

The idea was that girls never ask to be raped. Even if they are naked.

“I never forgave Rachel for that. But really, it was my fault. Rachel was different because she's a girl. Sexual attraction is different for girls. She had just met me. She didn't have feelings for me yet.”

I remembered the line Brandon had spoken in the dream I had had back when I lived in Bernard. “I knew Jesus, and she was a girl.” God realized that He had made a mistake with Jesus. Jesus should have been a girl. Because when He sent down Jesus, and Jesus taught people to have respect for women, it was lost on the people.

In my mind, I saw God making hand motions. He makes a hand motion to indicate that He is sending down Jesus. Then He waves His other hand in a circle and says, “Oh, the fire and the brimstone...” This is God getting the church leaders to warn people about the fire and the brimstone of hell that awaits them if they don't accept Jesus.

Then, He clasps his hand to his head. “Dammit! Jesus should have been a girl!”