Father's Day 2007 – essay by David Sky

(My father's day tribute such as it is)

My ex wife is in Fairfax Hospital ICU and I am staying nearby at an extended stay with our dogs. We had sold our home a few weeks earlier and my wife had had a bad reaction to a surgery requiring her to have a pic-line placed into her to get nutrients since she had not been able to eat for over a month two months by that time. The pic-line had become infected requiring finally first tier antibiotics in an effort to keep this infection from reaching her heart so it had become a true life and death situation. While she was having a lengthy procedure, I had slipped over to the room to let the dogs out and take a shower. I was writing a quick note in my journal in the tiny hotel kitchen just before getting in the shower.

At this time I was still hearing voices after a high dose Psilocybin Mushroom experience back on February 25th. (The “voices” in the form of clearly alien train of thought within my own mind rather than an auditory hallucination, ended a few weeks later on July 12th 2007 at 6:12PM EST and since this has been the most significant event of my life and was a powerfully healing, transformational and positive experience, I do not forget these dates) The voice (or voices was never clear of any sex or whether or not – they – were singular or plural) often responded to some thought of my own and seemed to be training me among other things to love and support myself and knocking out most of my lifelong negative self talk during this four and a half month long period of time. As I finished making a quick note intending to jump in the shower and head back over to the hospital, my thought as usual on Father's Day came to me, “O well I never had a father and don't have any children” just rather a random, stray thought in my head. This voice in my head “responded”, “that is not true, David, you had a daughter named Dakota” in it's typical clipped, neutral “tone” as it were. (I should note here that I was not on these mushrooms at this time and this voice phenomenon was continuing regardless)

At this I felt myself going numb from the feet upwards sitting on a bar stool with this powerful numbness inching up my body, filling my legs and up through my torso and up into my chest and when it hit my chest, I thought that I was dying as it continued upward consuming my entire body finally. I slipped down off the chair as if melting landing on the hard, linoleum floor sobbing long, wracking, heaving sobs feeling it seemed all of the pain of my own failings, selfishness, fear, despair and this felt unbearable to me. I felt like I could not breath and feeling panic rolled onto my side onto the floor when the voice spoke again, calmly, deliberately, “get on your knees” it said. I did so and felt intuitively that I knew where the voice was going and assumed a position kneeling with my hands in front of me in full supplication I began slamming my fists against the floor sobbing still uncontrollably thinking, “please take this from me I can't stand this please” knowing (somehow?) that I was asking the earth itself to absorb this pain and resolve me of it when the voices again spoke saying, “not your fists, David, your open palms against the ground and touch your forehead as well”. I immediately obeyed still feeling as if I were not able to catch a breath my body wracked with this unbearable pain feeling as if I might pass out. When I placed the palms of my hands against the cool floor and touched my forehead to the floor as well, I felt a powerful electric shock where my forehead touched that snapped by head up and back from the floor so that I found myself in a daze a second later leaning back against the kitchen cabinet with the unbearable pain totally gone just feeling empty and spent still sobbing but able to catch my breath again so gulping air.

I sat for five or ten minutes then slowly calming down wondering what in the hell had just happened to me and wondering not for the first time in the last four months if I were going insane. I had forgotten about Dakota because I wanted to put this out of my mind. I had had an affair during our twenty five long very difficult marriage with a woman who I now realize that I did not fall in love with exactly because she was emotionally available to me and a very loving, compassionate and supportive woman. She had become pregnant with my child and I was going to marry her because I had always told myself that I would not allow my child to be fatherless as I had been. But then she had a miscarriage and I dropped her like a hot potato. Probably the worst thing I've ever done all around this whole affair and no wonder I had put it out of my mind. She later told me that she was going to name our baby, a girl, Dakota.

As terrifying and painful as this was, it was profoundly healing of me. It occurred to me only a few years later on another Father's Day, that this voice, the entity, whatever it was cohabitating my mind then, was perhaps in some metaphysical manner the father I never had and like a wise, loving father, it was capable of “tough love” I discovered that Father's Day.

17You, Pennie Stitt, Claudia Peterson and 14 others

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