It was around 3:00am and I wanted to work a little bit more. I took two, then just another caffeine pill. 3 cups of coffee. The equivalent. How in the hell can three cups of coffee change someone?

My hands shook slightly, brain did some odd things, but I felt fundamentally me, fundamentally awake. There were the oddest thoughts: I keep visiting Blacksun's new homepage and trying to find God in the new pictures she had set up. All the meanwhile Japan kept flashing through my head, this essay which had gained some strange paramount significance. It kept continuing, I didn't know what was wrong.

I laid down to sleep. I don't know if I've slept or if I've been awake this whole time. I feel like I was more conscious around 6:30.

My mind was still doing strange things. I saw an angel in my vision that seemed related to me somehow. We started having a conversation. I felt comforted in a strange way. Then some beast-like apparition flew by my mind.

I was startled. I started associating one with the other, feeling that something was tangible, present inside the room. All of the sudden I saw this other parts of me and accepted them, felt this strangely calming, soothing feeling wash inside and around me. It felt like...I can only describe it as true love, as looking at what had first shocked me and accepting it without resignation.

And the hours passed by.

Lying in bed I became consciously aware that I was still consciously aware. I can't describe what's going on in my brain. I should be tired...I should be exhausted, I was when I went to lie down. But for whatever reason or another, I feel wide awake and yet what my body is doing seems to be divorced from me. I'm typing, thinking...I'm here, but yet I am not here in some strange way.

I kept thinking...still thinking to myself if I've fundamentally done something wrong, finally failed myself in some way. I keep seein these visions of my brain, of organs inverting, being snipped away. It's horrific, I keep trying to stop it, but it's as if there's something else that's there, that's preventing me from returning to what I thought was normalcy.

I feel more like me the more I type this. I should continue for awhile. Yes, feeling more tired as I recognize whatever this is. Maybe it's the caffeine...but then again it's been 4 hours. I can't think of why it'd last this long.

Did my acceptance mean something else, like giving in? It felt right somehow, yet was I betraying myself? And then this book, this essay. I elevated work to the level of a God. I'm staring at the cover right now and I can't understand what I was possessed by. I don't understand. I don't understand any of this or why I feel detached.

Should I feel detached? Is this what happens with too much caffeine, too much thought? That's the problem: I keep thinking. I can't turn it off. I close my eyes and the thoughts keep coming continuously. Again and again. My mind is producing these sentences, finding some to navigate a labyrinth back to a familiar stretch of land.

I feel hungry. That's familiar. Yet it's morning, it's light out, and I've never felt more alone in my life. But it's not a horrified alone, or a sad alone...I feel like an island, divorced from everything.

Did my sadistic wish get granted? Just this morning someone told me that it was madness. I knew it was madness. I indulged. I indulged because it felt so good in such a painful way to push like that. The totality of what that means and the reasons why I did that are still coming. What does all this mean?

A confession perhaps. That might help. Maybe food. I'm locked into a white room, I have the keys. I'm sitting. I'm sitting here, though. There, there's a vestige. Maybe it is just the drugs. The process...where is the process...

I don't know why. I thought indulging in pain would somehow burn away, wash away what I didn't need. I kept thinking push a little more, a little farther, all the while knowing that in some odd way I'd receive attention for it. That's the sick part, yes? The idea that you become a representation to be praised or looked at as that representation. I wanted to destroy the human being and replace it with an ideal.

Have I succeeded? Even now I'm not sure about anything. Maybe it's another waking phase, the ones I've talked about before. This feels different. I've purposefully cut people off, lead them into illusions and false conclusions. I've led you into falsity itself...no, not falsity...a Japanese alcove obscuring light brush strokes, the shadows playing whatever tune comes to mind.

I don't know why the darkness or illusion is so integral for me. I used to be afraid of the dark when I was a kid. Now I don't feel fundamentally me unless I'm in it. Maybe it's a self-esteem thing, thinking that just being me wouldn't be in the least interesting or worthwhile. Not to say that I haven't been me, but left the vision up to you.

Am I making sense...am I understood...am I connecting...all of these things people must have given to them, that come to them. Have I been so successful, so self-involved that I truly can't touch anything else?

I wanted to cry into my pillow but the emotion was half-hearted. I felt in passing. I feel in-flux now, as if I've condemned myself to death...no, that I am dead...yet I'm still alive somehow. Is that possible? Is this some place in the afterlife? Or is it a taste of what I wanted, a taste that remains in the mouth like bad wine...

I can only hope that as the hours go by and I work more (I don't know what else to do) something will come back. There's just...nothing...I try to think of you...Daniel, Avia, Selene...others...but there's...absolutely nothing...just a plain, some place where the wind howls across grey blasted earth, where something else howls in the distance.

I may sound like a Christian saying this, but I feel as though I've sinned against God and condemned myself. Like I can't move back. But what have I moved to? I feel bewilderment...that's an emotion...and I can speak, talk, think...nothing seems physiologically different.

It doesn't feel like this is going away. What is this? What is this place?

It isn't for attention...I've sometimes purposefully pushed myself just for the sympathy it engenders. That may sound terrible, perhaps pitiable. My only defense is that I seem insular to many of you because it's a necessary control. Happiness doesn't seem to invoke attention, and so my mind moves to the logical set of variables that will elicit that response. Simple logic.

Maybe something woke up, hmm? To tell me that strategy is wrong. It's like some bizarre somatoform disorder. I move toward you, but is it really toward you?

It's all clear. Crisp. And yet nothing substantial bumps against my hand as I pass it over my mind.

What happened?

(5 minutes later)

Woken up...it's that feeling...not having fallen asleep. It's as if you've been asleep for years and then because of some strange noise, you finally come to. Dean, did what you say actually do something? Did I see that in some way you were right? Was it supposed to feel like this? Should I be thankful? Yes...in some odd way...my surroundings aren't what they used to be. Things seem more immediate, less abstract. Perhaps this is some way to tell me that I can be human again. I was human before, but that seems odd somehow. I'm making absolutely no coherent sense, I bet, so that's bothersome. I'll assume it was the caffeine pills and some good advice from a friend.

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