I slipped into the rushing waters of the Bow River. My mind went blank. I hit zero.
It began eight weeks ago.
I was caught in the throes of yet another battle with my pre-teen stepson. I was trying to explain why he was being reprimanded yet again, and with every reply he became more dismissive and arrogant, which in turn raised my level of anger beyond the boiling point.
Eventually I gave up and marched out of his room with no resolution to the argument. That's when it stunned me: my heart. Beating in my chest like a thrash metal kick drum. It felt as if it were independent of my body, like it belonged to somebody else at the tail end of a full sprint, completely disconnected from the rest of me. I stopped dead in my tracks and took some deep breaths, attempting to bring my heart down to a normal pace, but it kept going, speeding along toward some unknown horizon, pounding away against my breast plate.
This is it, I thought to myself. This is how it ends. Right here in my home less than a week from my daughter's fifth birthday.
It was the most terrifying event I've experienced in my thirty nine years; my wife on the phone with 911 dispatch, me pacing my living room trying desperately to calm my erratic heart, certain I'm staring death square in the eye.
Then it stopped. My heart returned to a normal rhythm.
I spent the next few days contemplating what it all meant. I'm no stranger to heart issues. I've had an arrhythmia since my early twenties- the product of cigarettes and alcohol utilized to the point of abuse in an effort to curb my overwhelming anxiety. I've worn Holter monitors, done the stress tests, sat in cold cardiology wings waiting for answers from half-interested doctors. After all of the poking and prodding, and nights spent connected to ECG's, when I did finally get a diagnosis from a doctor who cared enough to actually respond to me, it was determined that I have a pre-atrial contraction. Nothing to worry about, they said. Scary but non-fatal.
Thanks doc, but my skipping heart is telling me otherwise.
I spent the first half of my life with the intensity dialed up to one hundred at all times. I was always driven by emotion. If I felt anything I felt it deeply or not at all. I didn't know how to simply like or dislike, I only know how to love or hate, and it was that tendency to live in the extremes that caused my mind to spiral out in fits of anxiety and depression for long stretches of time. It was a magic formula for creativity- I would totally and utterly lose myself in whatever I was creating at the moment- but it wreaked havoc on my mental health and personal life. My wife is the only person who was patient enough to not put our relationship on pause for months on end when I would suddenly slide into another period of inner turmoil.
But now I finally hit the stratosphere. I couldn't jettison myself up through the clouds of the hurricane any further. Something had to change, and if it didn't, I would die- soon.
Months ago my wife recommended I try meditation. It was the key component to her own liberation from a bad bout of anxiety brought on by a positive test for Covid-19, or rather, the impending doom hammered into her mind by an exhaustive propaganda effort via the legacy media. Naturally I shrugged it off. Meditation was a tool for weak people too cowardly to push back against the adversity that comes with existing in the physical world, I thought. Nevermind that I spent the better part of two decades using alcohol for the same exact purpose.
I had to admit to myself that I was out of options, which was the hardest part. I wasn't strong enough to traverse the mountain of fear and anxiety in front of me as I was. There was no doubt I would have to climb up those all too familiar rock faces as I always did, but now it felt like I was hanging from a ledge with a thousand pound boulder dangling from my legs. There's no way I could hoist myself up this time.
I downloaded a guided meditation app and reluctantly dove into the first session. It was only three minutes of my time so why not; three minutes to prove to myself once and for all this was hippy nonsense. This was crystals and sweetgrass and sage and incense. This was faux spirituality at its finest.
About one minute in I achieved something I had only ever felt after going a little too far with my nightly cannabis routine: I slid into a second layer beneath the surface of consciousness.
My thoughts sprung to life at the end of the session. My body felt warm and fluid. My mind felt clear. Unlike cannabis, I didn't have the sensation of the experience being somewhat artificial. This was completely and totally my own creation.
Every night I dedicated more time to delving deeper into my internal space. The further I went, the more space I found. The more space I found, the further I explored. It became a ritual, almost a game I would play with myself. How far could I sink? Was there a bottom? What would be waiting for me when I reached it?
Back to the river.
I closed my eyes and began my breathing exercises. I don't know what compelled me to do it but something was edging me toward that inner plane I had only ever surveyed in private. I could hear my wife and kids nearby. I could hear other people laughing and talking, soaking in the summer heat and cooling off in the shallows. I could hear the rushing water, people on inflatables riding along the river past me. I could feel the current pushing and pulling my body as I stood on slippery rocks, entirely immersed up to my shoulders. I could feel everything, all of it, all at once.
And then I disappeared.
Gone. Vanished from material reality. I was aware of everything, but not in a subjective sense. It was as if my own living experience had become objective, as if I was experiencing everything and nothing at the same time.
Nothing. Dark. Endless space. I found what appeared to be the bottom.
My hands waved through the water keeping me stable, but it felt less like water and more like something else; the molecules that made my physical being breaking apart and merging with the particles surrounding them. I disconnected from my perceived self and for a brief moment became part of the intangible; atoms blowing in a cosmic wind and scattered across the infinite universe.
Peace.
My eyes slowly opened and I returned to the present moment- my mind wiped clean, my concept of time temporarily suspended, muscles hanging from my heavy frame like slabs of gelatin.
I stepped out of the water and sat in a beach chair next to my wife. I smiled and she stared back with a hint of confusion in her eyes. She could sense something was missing. I too could sense it; years of anger, sadness, anxiety, pain; fractions of it all pulled into the vacuum of space and lost in the void.
It was beautiful.