I awoke terrified today.
Later in the morning, I could not remember if it was real. Banging. Overheard conversation. Something about my ex wife. Someone trying to collect her debt. My divorce settlement absolved me of any responsibility for her debts. Especially this kind. A man in the dark banging on my door. At 4 am.
I should not speak if her in a public forum. Legal issues. Perhaps it was a dream. We Schizophrenics are terribly easy to gaslight, aren’t we. My family did love telling me my fears would never happen. Were delusions. In the before times.
All too many of my Cassandra Complex fears have come true. To my detriment. In the years that followed.
I trust myself. Instead of other people. They do not live in my skin. With my scars and memories.
Histories, rumors, truth and lies. I tell the truth of my experience. Others say what they want. I don’t really talk to other people. Part of why I’m reviving this Substack now.
Reading essays of other culture creators for pleasure. My mind finally neuroplasticized so that I could finish one. Garth Greenwell from To a Green Thought, “Passionate Ambivalence.”
Music and art in New York.
It made me remember. Museums are all I miss about the outside.
Outside is danger. Reno, 2023. No comprehension of this new dimension. A world changed so fast and far while I lay sick and dying, dying, dead. Then. Revived. Reaching, reaching back to my life. A life. This life.
Wishing I knew anything about neuroscience. To explain. this strange condition. Long COVID. A psych med withdrawal coma. An absence from my body. October 2021.
Two traumatic brain injuries. 2020. 2021. My grandfather, who lived in this house before me, also had a history of these. Was also mentally ill.
.
I understand that sleeping in their former bed.Within these walls. Formerly encasing those emotions and events, I am marinating in para electro magnetic energy. A medium for magic. If one knows how to work within it. I used to try.
I wait. And learn. To learn.
If this Substack “I’m Dead” has a theme and purpose? It is that. Understanding the unravelling of the last few years. Relearning how to write. As Andrea Lambert 1.0 did.
I am AKL 2.0. I don’t know.
I/We/She/Me have another book out. Hollywood Hedgewitch. Los Angeles, 2015. Where fun and pleasure were for AKL 1.0.
I feel like her detached literary executor.
Hollywood Hedgewitch is available here on Amazon, anyway. Read it or don’t.
Andrea Lambert 