As I was getting dressed I felt uninspired, I didn't really feel a pull towards going to the alien rave. I didn't bother to buy a costume, I didn't bother even researching a costume, I regretted buying tickets because all I really wanted was for it to be a typical rave - but I had them and it was too late to refund them, all I felt like doing was relaxing at home. That feeling was key, but it wouldn't occur to me until later.

It's 6-something PM, I walk out the door to catch the MAX into town.

The concierge greets me on my way in "going to the party?" he lets me into the elevator and sends me on my way. I walk into the auditorium-turned-pre-game, it's good to see my friends again. We catch up, drink, about two hours later the rest of our group arrives, we drop a tab of acid and 50 mg of molly - at this point I'm in two beers and half a glass of red wine. Some time later, we decide to take the elevator up to the the host's apartment, my name is said by this mass of interlocked flesh, I walk over to the girl in the middle and feel like our faces are an inch away from each other - we're staring into each other's eyes and the size of hers are incomprehensible to me, I am tripping balls and we haven't even gotten to the rave, I'm already struggling to parse reality. I don't remember what the conversation was about, other than sharing laughs.

We get to the apartment, suddenly she's on the floor with some others, everyone's crouched, again I am drawn to this scene by name and again I can't make sense of what I'm seeing. My friend fist bumps me, I don't know why. We're leaving for the rave, I've since changed into my friend's t-shirt and metallic shorts, green temporary hair dye, we walk outside and the rain lets up for the first time - we make our way towards the rave.

I don't remember how I got in, but I did, we're on the second floor, it's surprisingly sparse. Red lighting paints the room, other colors intermittently cutting through by laser: green, blue. I'm mesmerized, the molly is starting to kick in and ruins my otherwise calm demeanor, already out of my mind from the acid I am now euphoric even though the dose was half of what we usually take. My grip on reality was lost already at the auditorium, now I am carried by the music, wandering around the dimly lit room. I see my friend dressed in all green, a full body alien-suit, the green is seemingly effervescent as I dance with him, I turn to see my other friend and his green face and metallic clothing are likewise spellbinding, I'm giddy, wandering through the room - I'm in a dark corner pissing myself, I feel the warmth expanding from my shorts into my now piss-soaked white vans. I'm outside, the rain is pouring, everything I do is a struggle, it is almost impossible to talk, it is absolutely pouring, showering, the stimulation from it all is overwhelming. I'm separated from my friends, my phone is gone.

I'm at the station, it's showering worse than I've ever seen it in Portland, it bounces off the asphalt and back up to my waist, immense pressure, at first I stand thinking the MAX will show up, but as the crowds around the city fade away to be replaced with silence, broken only by the rare homeless silhouette, I begin to sit down, pulling my shirt over my legs and my arms inside the t-shirt. I'm fading in and out of consciousness, my awareness returns when someone is suddenly at my side, mumbling incoherently before laughing to himself as he walks away.

Had I been more conscious, I would have returned to the rave and waited there, but I had no idea what time it was, nor did I even realize I'd lost my phone. I was gone, with one foot in reality and the rest of me the equivalent of those ayahuasca videos sans vomit.

The homeless community of Portland take pity on the sight of me, at first someone comes to me offering me a trash bag to cover myself in, I thank him and struggle to put forth the words to turn down the offer. A group of three homeless individuals come over to me and ask me if I'm okay, where are my clothes? Did someone steal them? This time I am unable to string along a sentence beyond okay and no. A couple others come to check up on me, before the final group passes me by, a man splits off from this group and hobbles over to me, grunting, animalistic, he stands in front of me with his arm outreached, gently placing a pristine cigarette onto my shirt at the spot between my knees, he takes a step back, examining the scene, before he turns to rejoin the group. I pass out again.

I am awoken by the familiar sound of bells, the MAX is down the block signaling its departure to my station. Getting up I feel like a rusted automaton, it takes every muscle in my body to stand upright, the cigarette falls to the ground, my hands are practically glued to my pockets due to the rain, humidity, my rain-soaked body. The profound sense of relief, knowing I am about to step into warmth for the first time in five hours - that my apartment is less than a half hour ride, that although I lost my phone I had managed to grip my card, ID, and key in hand - probably instinctively to try and ground myself once the drugs kicked in - the drugs we didn't even bother testing.

I get on the MAX, and take a seat facing a wall, I am shivering and can't get warm, tense, can't relax. We get a couple of stops before someone from TriMet gets on and wanders through to check on people, he wakes a homeless man up, and as I watch it happen the scene stays with me, though I don't process it till later. Finally, my stop. I get off and walk back home, my heart races as I see a security vehicle driving through the complex, and I evade it on my way to my apartment. I'm in front of my door, the door I've been dreaming about for the past five hours, I turn the key and enter, throwing off my soaking wet shoes, I go into the bathroom to wash my hands - unprepared I look into the mirror at a face that isn't mine, that looks wrong, everything about it looks wrong, splotches of color, eyes the wrong shape, it's not me. I forget what I was doing, my hands are burning, I wipe off and avoid looking at the mirror as I walk to my bedroom, I turn the heat up, put on a sweater, pants, throw the other clothes in the basket. I sit down at my computer and turn on the screen and am blinded by the light of it, the sharpness, again just reading takes herculean effort, just understanding what I'm looking at. I go to twitter and delete the night's pictures and post the only thing I can think of as an update 'home'. I walk into the kitchen and grab for sourdough bread but there's nothing there except hamburger buns, I just start eating hamburger buns, I down an entire carton of orange juice, forgetting that my thirst is still affected by molly, I drink some water, I wander back into my bedroom with a half-eaten hamburger bun, I lay down still chewing and pass out.

Going out was fun, drinking was fun, for awhile, when things went right. But things go wrong so often. This is where types come into play, what are the things that I look back on so fondly? It's the house parties, intimate conversation from dusk till dawn, playing video games with my friends - the LAN parties. I didn't start clubbing until I met my first closest Portland friend, I had been to a club earlier with my coworkers from the sales job and I hated it. But when I pulled it off I saw myself aligning with the chads, the alphas, the cool - and this was good, this was the target, this was the goal, was it not? To be cool?

Force is neutral, apply too much force and you can break things, what happens when you try to fit yourself into a mould that has no resemblance to yourself? What happens when you try to become someone else? From the first drink till the most recent, the nights have been uneventful at best or dangerous at worst, and what do you make of it when the embarrassing starts to become the norm? There's a type that handles alcohol, there's such a thing as a funny drunk, there's also a type that can't handle alcohol, there's the sad drunk, the problematic drinker, the alcoholic. The functional alcoholic is just an alcoholic that people don't have negative associations towards - but I am not a functional alcoholic, I am not the funny drunk.

I am a loner, I've always been one, I love being alone, I'm never bored and can entertain myself endlessly - I'm always reading something, watching something, doing something. Some people need other people, they crave the social, attention, love - something, and the lack of this is maddening to them. Growing up I'd bail more often than not, I'd agree to parties and no one knew whether I'd actually show up. All I wanted to do was stay home, relax, play games, listen to music. Is it important to face your fears? I think so. Is it important to raise your tolerance for things? I think so. Was the sales job useful in me getting over the dislike of calling people? Yes. But these are fears or weaknesses, what have you, where this sort of thing stops being useful and becomes destructive is when you want to become someone you're not. I think the creatives, writers especially, are most susceptible to this - there's romance in transformation, in taking risks, to be a great writer you must first live greatly, in essence you have to be great yourself. But is that possible? I think you can become the greatest version of yourself, but that does not guarantee greatness. There's a tendency to simplify, to look at other types, archetypes, classes, professions, chads, athletes, and to only see a portion of them to miss the reality of them, the humanity, and so we pursue images, aesthetics, types, that do not exist, that are fiction in the sense that they are false.

A little over ten years ago, my life went off the rails. I had just finished high school and the freedom that came with that was overwhelming. You spend twelve or so years of your life in schooling, where each year is guaranteed in the sense of direction, you are going to go up a class, but I had no vision, I had no plan, I had no grand scheme, no thought as to who I was or where I'd go let alone what I wanted in life. I ended up in a high school specializing in media and communication only because I at the time wanted to go for the game dev degree and this was the prerequisite. I was in a daze then as I am now, life had not yet slapped me across the face and demanded my attention.

I've played to my weaknesses in every decision I've made since then, and though my weaknesses are becoming less in the sense that I'm becoming stronger in those areas, nonetheless I am pursuing things anathema to myself, my wants, my type, my amalgamation. I've just been flowing through life, in a way because I was avoiding the reality of myself.

All my worst traits come out in love, because I've spent an entire lifetime building defenses around myself, from the insincerity and humor to the mystique and pursuits down to the words I say and the things I use in order to associate myself with various identities, I am a poseur more often than not. I do not think what I like, I think only about what signals this or that, when I list off music it isn't necessarily what I like but what I know is associated with the best, same in film, same in literature, same in almost everything. Sometimes it's for effect, sometimes it's just a defense, that isn't to say I lie all the time, I usually omit instead of lying, and if I lie it's for humorous effect. Nonetheless, what is the purpose of all of this? It's because I am at my core, sore. There is a void inside of myself - I have spent years cultivating an image to cover up the fact that I do not feel secure in myself, my true self.

This comes out in love with malice, cruelty, any slight I return in kind reactively - because it reminds me of what I hide, the fact that I feel unloveable, but instead of analyzing this, instead of sorting through and identifying what is and is not lovable, I avoid it entirely, I distract myself from it, I hide away from it and so I bring this achilles heel with me and when something touches it I self-destruct, I revert to the hurt boy from all those decades ago and whatever facade I wear falls to the ground and shatters, revealing that the only thing I've changed in all these years was the wardrobe, all that I've gained going down this path were scars and the passing of time has only made my true self more vulnerable, raw.

We carry with us these definitions of ourselves, we associate ourselves with things, labels, classes, archetypes, personalities, introvert-extrovert, the list of mental illnesses. We say I have ADHD, I have autism, I have this or that but we forget that the phrase reveals two facts - that the I modifies the ADHD, modifies the autism. I think this is why education, textbooks, research - on a large scale - leads to such poor results on the human level. Why, when presented with potential solutions to our problems, we find that we don't know which will work for us, which will solve our problems and so we're told to pick that which ends up working - but is the solution that works for us in the list presented? I find that the only help a psychologist can bring you is awareness when you've missed something, providing you with a question to point you in the direction, but they're not in your head, no one can enter within your mind - you're the only one there - and so it is rare that they catch your slip up, especially if you're not verbalizing your thoughts as they come to you.

The conclusion is that only you can solve the puzzle of yourself, because you're the only one with access to yourself. The only way to solve your problems, let alone to know thyself, is to be in the present undistracted, this is why when you're slapped back into reality from the daze of mundane life, it affords you a window of time to analyze somewhat rationally, to see clearer than you usually do. It's similar to the catharsis that comes from crying, you're emotionally exhausted, calm but awake, and so the emotions are lessened and that window of rationality is open for the time being to introspection.

I've been circling the drain, I don't usually write unless I have an epiphany - and when I do I drop everything to write it down as it comes fully formed in my mind - but I knew when I was laying in bed that the epiphanies wouldn't be forgotten, they were too strong, I didn't need to note them - and at the time, so mentally and physically exhausted, I didn't have the heart nor the energy to write.

The point of all this is that though you can change certain things about yourself, there are things that are immutable, unchanging, there is a You in all those details, definitions, associations. There is a You behind it all. The solution to the Greek know thyself, is not in fact a journey, it is not a process, because this implies that you must do something, take action to come to yourself - the modern notion of leaving to find yourself. The truth is far more counter intuitive, as the psychological world usually is: to find yourself, to know yourself, you have to let go. To not-do. You have to watch all of the definitions you apply to yourself wash away to reveal the underlying layer - or like a cleansing fire, burn away the surface. To find yourself, is to be with yourself undistracted by the senses. However, modern life makes this almost impossible, especially now. The other way to find yourself to some degree - which is not recommended but certainly a thing that happens to us all - is to go so far away from yourself that you realize you are someone else entirely, and in that sadness, stress, depression - and exhaustion most likely - you will come to realize that you no longer do what you want to do, that things go wrong more often than not, that you are no longer in alignment with yourself.

Laying in bed, I came to realize that I had been in a daze for over a decade, running away from truths about myself that I did not want to consider let alone accept, I was wearing masks, I was being someone else, and in so doing straining myself, wearing myself out, trying to fit myself into moulds, shapes, and sizes that did not fit. I was engaging in things I did not seek out before, I was doing things that did not originate within me, I no longer resembled even a speck of the child I once was nor the teenager nor the young adult. I had applied new definitions to myself, new aesthetics, new personas, all of it a performance that I had sold to myself as real, sold to myself as me, I was performing unconsciously, an actor on stage believing it to be real life - and just like that, by seeing it as such, it all fell to the ground by my own doing and I laid there in bed face to face with myself again for the first time in years.