Acid Helps

Karen doesn’t want them to be friends, doesn’t even want them to raise Ariana together. She says she doesn’t want to see him anymore and doesn’t feel family with him at all. She’s being very bitter and vindictive.
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After she finally leaves the apartment, taking herself and Ariana and all her things in Sam out to Deadwood, he drops acid and waits to come on. He’s glad she’s gone now and out of his life.

He’s doing his best acid today. He’s scared some of what he might feel when he comes on, but he needs to begin his life again. This time, he wants to find out who he is by being with people, not from diving into himself and his psychic depths. He did that once before, when Pamela and him separated.

Marriage with Karen has been a weird trip. It has kept him from being the kind of person he really is. He’s going to be himself now. It was a huge energy drain, always trying to please Karen. It was impossible really. He should have much more energy now. He has finally escaped from the needy trap of his marriage with Karen.

When the acid comes on, he begins to cry, hesitantly at first, but soon tears are gushing from his eyes and down his face as he feels the hurt and pain again. He tells himself that it’s okay to cry. This is real too and needs to be let out and felt. Someone he loved and whom he thought loved him has just left him, telling him that she never really loved him anyway.

He’s not losing a lover and wife. He’s becoming free of her hatred. He’s becoming free of a destructive and insecure attachment that has worn on him for years. Good riddance.
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Who is he now?

He is a father still. He has a son living with him who’s in school here. He still has Ariana, even if Karen wants him to stay away. Work turns him on, although he has lost most of his clients since Karen came back so closed off and angry. His clients must have felt that something was going on. He wants to fly now – alone, yet with others too.

He notices that the folks around him really want to give him love. He hasn’t notices before because he hasn’t been very open lately, what with Karen and her lack of love. God, how could she have been with him and not loved him? It’s incredible that he has accomplished anything at all here, living with Karen’s lack of love He really appreciates all his friends here who have understood somehow, even if he hasn’t.
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Suddenly a voice interrupts – “You’re letting go of this consciousness and this life forever. You are becoming free of it today – this is Acid Rescue speaking.”

He flashes back to that night at Doc’s when he was sure that he was being rescued by a secret acid organization called Acid Rescue. He flashes on how he was shown his future then and told that Karen wouldn’t be in his new life. Acid Rescue lets him see that rescue comes from being detached and from not structuring love – comes instead from letting love flow.

He also realizes that Jonathan wants and needs his love and is trying to find it in smoke. But he won’t find it in the smoke. He understands that he is Jonathan’s father, not matter how much he himself hurts. Jonathan’s living with him now. He has to take care of him. He has to be his father and best friend still. He has to love him without structuring it. He has to let love flow. He’s really sorry he ever shut out Jonathan for Karen. He feels like such a fool now.
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His trip continues. It is incredible. He’s coming to wholly new agreements with himself. He sees that he and acid can survive anything, even betrayal and death.

He feels himself opening up and knows that this opening is into maturity and into who he really is. He’s a late bloomer. He is ready to begin his new Acid Rescue assignment. He has done all this grieving before with Pamela. He can and will do it all again with Karen.

The main thing he feels from today is that he doesn’t want to be sucked back into being his old, closed off, and resentful self. He doesn’t want to come down from this trip and wake up tomorrow the same as he has been till now. He probably won’t – he certainly won’t be waking up next to Karen anymore.
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Aftershocks

He doesn’t feel that he has gotten all his hurt and anger out. He doesn’t feel that he has finished grieving.
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He dreams that he’s hitchhiking with another man. There’s a row of trees alongside the road and gasoline storage tanks behind them. There’s something scary about these tanks. When he wakes up, he wonders if they represent the explosive anger in himself, ready for almost anything to set it off.

He also dreams that this older man has a big bucket of whitewash that he’s going to pour over the records in these cabinets, as the anti-war protesters have been doing with blood at the draft boards around the country. The man tells him that he made it up special so that it would come off after awhile.
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Later when he’s awake, he realizes that he tried, using acid, to whitewash, so to speak, the seriousness of what has just happened to him – his wife of all these years has just betrayed him again and has left him forever, taking his daughter too. Maybe it is a new assignment for acid Rescue, but it still hurts and affects him deeply.
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He dreams that Sam is stalling out, and he’s trying to get him running again. He sees from this now that he’s not yet free of his attachment to Karen and their wandering trip together. He hasn’t realized yet on all levels that she’s never coming back. He’s still trying to fix it.

He dreams that some of them are defending their building against strong enemies who have the Nazis on their side. The enemy has attacked once already, and they were barely able to repulse them. Now the enemy is marshalling its forces again to launch a second attack.

When he wakes, he understands that he’s really being afraid and defensive, not wanting to feel what he really feels, especially the Nazi hate stuff that’s within him now.
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From all these dreams, he can see that he’s not free yet of his negative and destructive energy, stemming from Karen betraying and then leaving him. He’s very scared of this energy too. He may think he’s free of it when he’s tripping – he may even be free of it then – but it’s still here and wants into his consciousness, no matter how hard he may defend himself against it.

He would be helping himself immensely if he would let go of the fantasy of repairing Sam and what he represents – his and Karen’s trip together. It’s over. He can see this now when he’s not freaked out and scared. She really never loved him. Yesterday she even told him that she stayed with him all these years only to hurt him as much as she could before she left. She said that she stayed only to bring him down.
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His Folks Help

Yesterday, he cried while talking with his mom and his dad on the phone. They could feel his pain and his loss. They’re coming up here next week, coming to help him. Maybe they really do love him. They probably want to see Jonathan too, to see how this is affecting him.

He and Jonathan are close again. He’s still a bit closed off, but they both know that it’s going to take time for him to grieve. Jonathan’s actually helping him with it by living with him now, giving him a reason to keep it together.
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His dad sent him a thousand bucks, so he could buy a new van. He has found one already. He’s going to pick it up today. It’s an old 1960 model, with windows all around. It’s salmon colored, with a white top. Cecil says it’s in really good shape. He’s going to build a bed in it today. He needs to put up curtains too.
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His folks drive up, a few days later. The visit is really good for him and Jonathan. His folks stay at a nearby motel, and they all spend a lot of time together. His folks treat them to everything, like parents and grandparents often do. He may not be their favorite son, but Jonathan has always been their favorite grandson.

His mom is being all he needs – loving, compassionate, and understanding what he’s going through. He doesn’t know how she’s doing this, but she is. She tells him that she has always been opposed to his marriage with Karen because she knew that Karen didn’t love him. She knew this, even if he didn’t. She even tried to tell him once.

My dad can’t express his feeling easily, but he lets him know that he loves him. He tells his dad that he has saved him. He explains that when Karen took the van for herself and Ariana – although he had put a fair amount of money into it too – he was marooned. Without a van, he wouldn’t have been able to take care of Jonathan and himself. He shows his dad the bed he has built in his new van, and his dad admires his careful work, its simplicity.
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His folks are his folks, in spite of all the shit that has gone down between them. They responded this time, as they always have when he has really needed them. They saved him once again. He’s blessed to have this with them. He can’t imagine anyone out there with no resources at all, beyond themselves. He realizes though, that some day his mom and dad will be gone.