Hello. Take from this what you will. This is the story of Jonah. A friend of mine.
Before we begin, I must mention two memories that Jonah claims have been with him his entire life. Two strange memories which I will describe to you now:
First Memory He is a Native American or a Mayan warrior, he isn't clear. What he is clear on is that he is wearing the traditional breechcloth and running full speed down a beaten path in the middle of a forest or a jungle. Again he isn't clear. He says he trips and falls into a pit, that was concealed by sticks and leaves and just waiting. Several wooden spikes lay at the bottom Two of which pierced through his flesh. One went through his right thigh, which made him hang kinda upside down. The second spike went through his chest, puncturing his left long. He remembers that at first he thought he still had some chance, any chance to escape and live. But he couldn't move. He was stuck on the spikes, hanging and bleeding out, choking on his blood. When his lungs began to fill with blood he realized this is it. There is absolutely nothing that he can do, this is how he dies. No matter what he wants or how badly he doesn't want to die, this is fucking it. And he remembers the darkness start to settle in. And he remembers not being able to breath and his lungs being full of blood. And then he remembers nothing and that's the end.
He said he remembered the whole dying thing feeling very dark, and terrifying but also familiar.
Second Memory He is an old woman walking along the beach with her husband at sunset. The sky is colored with pinks, deep purples, just about every shade on the blue spectrum from light to dark, and is streaming with white cloud scattered throughout. The air is crisp and smells of salt, in fact she can feel the salt on her skin. The sand is cool, soft, and sorta refreshing for her bare feet. Her husband's hand is held tightly in hers. They walk as though they were one. They are both in their 80's at least, Jonah can't remember he says those types of details are harder to see in these memories. She is happy. And so is her husband. They retreat back to a house that he assumes they either rented or owned. It's a small beach house with a screen door. Inside is a small kitchen with an old 60's style seafoam green refrigerator with rounded corners. He doesn't know why but this detail sticks out immensely.
She sits down at the small square table and her husband sits across from her. He tells me he distinctly remembers "Kokomo" by The Beach Boys playing on the radio. They interlock their arms and hands cross the table. They don't speak. Sometimes they gaze at each other. Sometimes they get lost in thought and look whereever they want, but it didn't matter. She feels so free. No worries. No attachments. No control of what should be. No tension. She was so at ease and she just felt so good inside, like an eternal warm sunrise existed within her soul and spread out through her being and into the world around her. And she felt so connected to him, her husband. Like they shared one mind at times. Like they shared one soul. They could feel each other. They loved and accepted each other on an entirely different level that they just lived in love and in bliss. No need to talk, they could just be and be happy. And they were.
And then they moved into the bedroom and they laid down to go to sleep. And then he says the memory ends.
He told me a lot of these stories when he was drunk. That was the only way to get them out of him. He seemed ashamed or embarrassed by it all but he claims it to be true. I felt bad getting him so drunk but I mean to be fair we were all drinking a lot then. We were all kinda fucked up. Every once and a while Jonah would tell me these things in secret like he had a burning desire to get them all off of his chest.
He claims to remember being in the hospital right after being born. He says that when he was really young he remembers always having this high pitched ringing in his ears like in the background of everything. Was he adjusted to it he wouldn't notice it. But he said that when people showed up to where he was, the pitch would change. He would know people were at his house before they knocked on the door because he heard the pitch of the ringing shift. And he was always right. Or so he says.
For a period during his youth, he said it felt like they were cameras in his mind, right behind his eyeballs, recording everything he did. Or at least everyone could hear his thoughts, or were monitoring them. He also felt as though he could send messages with his mind. And he would try and he would do it. And he said he was able to. But its just what he said. This phase didn't last long. Probably about 1 year from 5 - 6 or 6 - 7 something like that. He couldn't quite remember.
He remembers one time that he was at the grocery store with his mom, he was maybe 8 or so, maybe younger, and there was an old man. He was short, probably under five foot and very stout and wide like a troll he had bearded face and shaggy gray hair and when he saw Jonah, he hissed at Jonah. Then he began screeching and making animalistic noises at him. Jonah said he was terrified. The man was soon ushered away by his wife. He tells me that at the time, he thought the man was a demon but now he doesn't believe in demons.
He says he never saw anything that wasn't there or anything like that. He said he only heard voices "like 5 times but they were all in the same couple of days and they weren't in my head". Apparently for a few days when he was a kid, he remembers hearing his name being called and there was no one there actually doing it. He thinks he was around 9 maybe? He started hearing his name being called when he was in his room and he followed the sound to behind his bed. He says at first he thought his brother was doing it to fuck with him but when he search for his brother he found that he was in the shower. He claims that one of the times it happened later he actually got his brother to hear it as well. But I've never asked his brother if this is true.
He went through a really hard time from middle grade through high school. He lost touch with all of that weird stuff. Got numb to it I suppose. I don't really know. I don't really know what he was like in high school. I didn't go to school with him.
When I met him, he was living with a friend of mine in a big old house that he somehow acquired. I'm not really sure how. Maybe it was left to him? Maybe he was renting it? I'm not sure. What I do know is he got this house and he turned it into everyone's house. You gotta see as much as this guy was kinda anxious and scared around people, he also loved them and yearned to be loved by them. He accepted everyone and just wanted people to accept him as well. He invited everyone into his house. Several friends lived there for free. He had constant parties inviting tons of people by. And everything was everyone's. Whatever was in the fridge was there for whoever wanted it. All alcohol was shared. He would spend so much money on marijuana just to be able to smoke everyone up who wanted to smoke. Everyone had a really good time there. I spent a lot of time there.
I got to know Jonah pretty well. Once you spent some time around him, he became less anxious to be around you. It took a while for him to let his guard down around new people. He loved people, but he was terrified of them as well. What I found was an insanely smart, creative, and open minded young man. He had dreams of writing books that he had planned out, he wanted to make films, and he was trying to form a band. He was a painter and would often give his paintings as gifts. He was a really bright soul to be around once you got to know him. He was always nice to everyone but he definitely kept a lot of people at a distance. It was kinda an honor being able to get into the inner circle and really get to know him.
Jonah got into mushrooms and acid pretty heavily during this time. I guess it was his new found independence , his new found freedom from his family with whom he's alreadys had issues. There was always dysfunction there. But not here. This house was freedom. He wanted it to be freedom. And he wanted to find freedom. So he tried a lot of different things. Meditation. Exercise. Becoming a vegan. And taking acid and mushrooms quite frequently.
I remember one night at a party there, he shoved half an ounce of magic mushrooms into his mouth, and then immediately went to bed. I proceeded to drink and drink and drink and got way too drunk to drive home so I just crashed on the couch which was always totally cool and in fact encouraged. In the morning I awoke to Jonah, wide eyed and off the wall. He was pale, hair was messy, and he had big dug out dark circles under his blood shot eyes. His pupils were huge.
"Yo man. Wake up man. I need to talk to you. Come on man wake up." He repeated over and over again until I came to, still drunk from the night before. I got to my feet and he proceeded to have me follow him into the basement. He handed me a cigarette and took one himself. He lit both of them and then took a drag from his, a deep drag, with his eyes closed letting out a big relieving exhale when he was done. He just looked at me. I'll never forget what he said. He said
"You'll never believe what happened to me last night. But I need to tell someone. I need to just talk. I need to just get it out. And you'll probably think I'm crazy. And that's fine. Maybe I am. Or maybe it was all a hallucination. But. I ate a half an ounce of mushrooms last night. And then I just laid on my bed, in the dark, all night long. And suddenly, I wasn't here anymore. I was...somewhere else. I wasn't Jonah anymore. I lost my ego and personality. And I was outside of reality. And I could see my body laying on my bed, but I wasn't in it. I was outside of reality."
He kept repeating that phrase "outside of reality".
"I was beyond space and time in this eternal void where nothingness and pure infinite possibility exist as one in the same. And there was awareness. And that awareness was me. Who I really was. And my soul felt open and completely exposed, every little secret and everything I've ever tried to hide, just having a light shown on it, the light of pure awareness. And there was no judgment. Just pure acceptance. Pure unconditional love. And it was the most blissful thing I have ever felt. And I could direct awareness to anything, I could become aware of anything and I would become it and everything around me would become it so I'd experience it both subjectively and objectively and experienced it fully. I saw how reality was just a reflection of whatever I was choosing to become aware of. It was a manifestation of whatever state of being I chose to be aware of. I saw how my whole life was created through my conditioned thought cycles, thinking the same thing about myself and the world over and over again. That's what I was aware of. Until now I freed myself of all of that. I'm free from it."
I didn't really know what to say. I was still pretty drunk and that sounded like some of the craziest fucking shit I've ever heard in my life.
"You took a lot of drugs man. I mean you were definitely hallucinating." That was the only rational thing I could think of to say. He kinda off into space and stopped talking. He seemed disappointed.
Over the next few months whenever he would get drunk he would make little cryptic comments to everyone about how we all make our own reality. It creeped some people out but I mean there was always free booze at this house people didn't stop showing up or anything. His roommates found books and internet print outs on lots of really bizarre information. It was all about how we each create our own reality. It was about the law of attraction and subjective reality. His roommates didn't really know what to think but never questioned him about it. They just told me and other people about it behind his back.
You know in fact during those days, people were whispering about him behind his back quite a bit. And somehow he knew. And it bothered him and some times he would isolate himself in his bedroom for a few days at a time. He bought an xbox and would just get high and play that day in, day out until he felt like being around people again.
During this time, he was working at a local pizza restaurant. Several of the girls he worked with would later end up reporting that they would be able to feel him in their mind. He was fantasizing about them or mentally sending them sexual messages or something, I don't really know. That's just what they claimed. Jonah was eventually let go from that place for reasons unknown.
I heard a couple stories about people who tripped on shrooms with him after this point. The first one was he tripped with a friend Mike, Tom, and Tom's little cousin who had never tripped before. As soon as the mushrooms kicked in, Tom's little cousin started to freak out. For some reason he couldn't stop staring at Jonah. When Jonah stood up, Tom's little cousin stood up, almost automatically. Everyone looked confused, even Jonah. Jonah said it creeped him out to see that.
Tom's little cousin would later say that he in that moment fully believed that Jonah was God in human form.
The next tripping incident involves Tom, Jonah, and two other friends Jon and Chris. They all took mushrooms while on a camping trip. About an hour into the trip, everyone claims that they could feel Jonah in their mind and soul. They say it freed them to also have the ability to "go into someone's mind". Like he showed them how to do it while on shrooms. So they say. And of course they can't do it now they all say they forgot once they came down. But everyone who went on that camping trip said they all spoke telepathically the entire time they were tripping and it was all because Jonah showed them how. They said Jonah said that the mushrooms put you in a state where it's easier to understand how to do it because you're more aware of your being.
I didn't know what to think about that. All of this shit with Jonah was just so fucking weird.
And then he got a girlfriend. And he disappeared for a year. Nobody saw him. He moved out of the house and moved in with her after only like a month of knowing her. He got attached very easily and fell in love. And she loved him too. It was what he always wanted. And so he left.
And she would end up cheating on him. And breaking his heart. And leaving him. And it destroyed him. Like competely. He moved back into the house but kept to himself for the most part. It took a solid 8 months before he was even close to his old self. At this point in time, he decided to quit both college and whatever job he had at the time. Nobody really knew why. He just sorta stayed in his room.
Eventually he was his old self again. Well close to it. He was changed. He seemed a bit darker. Angrier. He would now get drunk and spit out crazy conspiracy theories about 9-11, and The Illuminati, and reptilian aliens, and all of this shit. He would say how fucked up the world was. How much he hated it. He no longer spoke of creating your own reality but later I would find out he definitely still believed it. He just kept it to himself. He did get really into numbers at this time, finding meaning in seeing repeating digits like 111 or 2222. He believed it meant something and he said he saw them constantly. He said it helps him to keep going forward.
And he didn't do anything anymore. He didn't work. He didn't go to school. He stopped writing. He stopped playing music. He would just get high and fuck around on his computer. Wasting time, day in and day out. And he stayed like this for 3 years.
3 whole years. And after those 3 years, he had to move back in with his mother because he ran out of money and couldn't rent that house anymore. I'm amazed he lasted three years.
And this pattern continued. He just stayed at his mother's house and did it. She supported him. It drained her finances. He did nothing. And he stayed like this for many more years.
He would come out on the weekends to see us from time to time, and he would always get way too drunk. But he spent his weekdays doing nothing. This guy who had so much fucking potential, was just wasting it, just doing nothing. It didn't fucking make sense to me! Did he just lose his fucking mind? What happened?
After another 5 years of this, he was starting to hang out with me a lot more often. I was one of the only ones still around. A lot of people got jobs in other states, had famliies, or just moved on from this area in general. Not me. Not yet at least. Jonah and I would go camping with some friends. Jonah would get wasted. He didn't seem to need to drink everyday or all the time, he wasn't an alcoholic in that sense but it was more in the sense where like once he got started he couldn't stop until he was black out drunk.
We played music together. He'd pitch dumb movie ideas at me. He'd talk about novels he was writing and planning out in his head. But there was this feeling like he knew it wasn't ever going to happen. He seemed so detached.
And one day he got black out drunk when he was with me at a local bar. He looked at me and started telling me a story about how he was just at the grocery store the other day, and this woman came up to him and she paid for all of his groceries for no reason at all. She kept calling him "the one" and saying she needed to pay for his groceries. He refused the money, but apparently she threw it at him and then ran off. He said that as he was leaving the store, a little boy whom he had never seen before looked up at him and called him by his name.
He looked at me and he said that he thinks he is God incarnate. He thinks that he is the second coming of Jesus.
I didn't really know what to think.
He kinda disappeared again for a while after that. He lost touch with a lot of us. The years passed. I'd see him a couple times a year. He was always in the same spot. Doing nothing. Seemingly waiting for something. Waiting for his life to start. Waiting for whatever I don't know. He was constantly broke and his friends all had to pay for him which we did willingly and gladly. But everytime we saw him he look more and more disconnected. Depressed. Detached. Just a little further gone.
After a while he started lashing out at everyone, basically kicking those closest to him out of his life. Saying horrible things to all of us. Cutting to the bone with his brutally honest and mean attacks. He wanted us to hate him. He wanted everyone to hate him. And he pushed everyone away. And soon even his mother kicked him out. She said he would scream at her about how much he hated her until she had enough and kicked him out. He then stayed briefly at another friends house.
Towards the end, he deleted all of his email accounts, facebook accounts, whatever. He threw his phone away and just nobody could get a hold of him.
One day I was at work and I got a text. It read: "Jonah's been missing for 2 days.". And some how I knew.
He was never technically found, but investigators are pretty sure they found his camp out in the middle of the woods. It was torn to pieces by what looked like bears, but the police believed Jonah was already dead before that happened. A charcoal grill was found inside of his tent, and all windows or vents on the tent were duct taped shut. Police believe he suffocated himself inside of the tent with charcoal smoke, a common suicide practice due to it being supposedly painless.
He left a note. I'll type it here now.
"Hello. I don't even know where to begin. I'm fucked up. I'm fucking crazy and I see that now. I always sorta thought I was but I also sorta thought that maybe I wasn't. Maybe I really had found some type of truth. I believed I create my own reality. I really believed deep down that the whole revolved around me. Like all of this was just here for me. Like this was my dream or all a product of my mind. The world seemed to give me signs that seemingly confirmed this, time and time again. I began envisioning creating a world where I was infinitely rich and could buy land and houses and support everyone I loved. I thought I could create this reality. So every day I would just picture me taking care off all of these great people who I love. And every day I would wait for this to happen. Everyday I thought it was going to happen tomorrow. I was sure of it. It felt so real. And I'd wake up and be disappointed for a minute that it didn't happen, but then part of me would feel like "OH WAIT, ITS GOING TO HAPPEN TOMORROW." So I'd sit. And do nothing except think about having all of this land and houses and taking care of everyone I loved. And I pictued myself being a successful filmmaker. And being in a successful band. And being in shape and healthy. And everyday I told myself "tomorrow". And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited. And I stopped playing the guitar. And I stopped coming up with book ideas or screenplay ideas. And I stopped seeing the people that I love. And every time I wanted to give up andd commit myself into a mental ward, I'd see "111" everywhere. It felt like a sign from God or the beyond or myself or whatever. So I'd keep waiting. And I grew to hate myself. and I grew to hate everyone else. And I was rude and mean and cruel and awful to all of these people that I love. And now I see how much time I wasted on me. Thinking that this world was all about me. I see know that's a lie. There is no me. There is no ego or identity. It's an illusion. I had it backwards. I should have made my reality all about other people. And in the end I just made them all hate me, when all I wanted was the best for everyone. I know see how fucking crazy I am. I know see how much time I've wasted. How I've only grown older and older. I see how I've hurt people and I feel guilt and shame. I fucked up my life with confusion and then I wasted th-"
The note cuts off there. It seemed like he was rambling towards the end. There were bottles of booze and sleeping pills around his camp so we figure he was probably fucked up.
Everyone was devastated. We all loved him so much. He had so much potential. Nobody really knew how fucked up he was. He knew but he was ashamed. He knew he was crazy but was ashamed and kept it to himself. Maybe he wasn't crazy. I don't know. All I know is some maybe people came to his wake. So many people were in tears. The world loved him. He never seemed to be able to see that. He ended up taking himself from us permanently and it has effected us all greatly. He has effected us all greatly. He was unique and one of a kind. And I'lll never really know what to think about the craziness.
Submitted August 18, 2015 at 10:12AM by SomeDirtyScoundrel http://ift.tt/1UQ84Pf nosleep
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