Over the past three years, since I first began the "Motherhood" module, I have:
had my body metamorphosed into a shape distorted almost beyond recognition,
had my inner workings dominated by another living entity,
endured months and months of vertigo, nausea, and surreal dreams,
felt another living thing squirm within my being,
simultaneously understood being the center of the universe and utterly irrelevant,
been covered in nearly every bodily fluid imaginable,
fed another creature with my bodily fluids,
endured insatiable thirsts,
survived unimaginable hungers,
gone for nearly 14 months without a two hour block of continous sleep,
been charmed and drugged into adoring and worshipping the source of all my torments,
stared mindlessly into the gaze of my captor for hours at a time,
and sung nonsensical songs and read books without logic or syntax, over and over in endless repetitions,
But, I have also learned to:
hear the inaudible,
see that which is out of line of sight,
predict possible immediate futures,
parse incoherent babbling and pidgin speeches
argue inscrutable and whimsical logics,
lift up the fallen,
dispel fear,
comfort the grieving,
deceive,
misdirect,
coerce,
experience euphoric love,
resist tyranny,
and hold back chaos.
I have been in a state of sustained paranoid hypervigilance for approximately 30 months.
And, as with most things that make you wiser and more powerful, the accompanying inevitable SAN loss seems almost an irrelevance. This is, after all, how we mortals cope with the unimaginable horrors and delights of our existence.
That is one of the coolest yet most disturbing things I have ever read in my life.