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Part II - The Shatter
Spring 1989.
The night before our first trip to Trestles.
I dropped a couple of tabs of acid and sat mesmerized by the weave of resin and fiberglass within Sawyer’s green surfboard—the crystalline pattern glittering like frozen light.
Later that evening, sitting on the couch mid-conversation with a roommate, something shifted in my universe.
Two tectonic plates ground past each other—slow and silent—until the fault gave way, and one world slipped beneath another.
More than my mind could hold.
Not because it was too vast—vastness still belongs to scale.
But in that moment, something broke open.
I saw what could not be unseen.
That beneath everything, I had never truly existed.
I didn’t know it then. Not fully.
It would take decades of practice before I could name what I had seen that night.
But the thread had already been pulled—one that would begin to unravel the mind I had spent a lifetime believing was mine.
That night, sleep never came. The light began to shift. I remembered I’d promised Mike I’d join him and some friends for a dawn run to Trestles.
The forecast was perfect.
I was frayed—wired and worn out—but I figured more acid might sharpen the edge.
So I took another tab. Maybe two.
By the time we reached the beach, I was wide open. Energized. Calm. The water shimmered. The world pulsed with connection.
Then I dropped in on someone.
It was a crowded peak. I thought the surfer to my left was going left. He wasn’t. I took off anyway. Midway down the wave, I saw him coming toward me.
I’d committed the cardinal sin of surfing.
I tried to get out. Pulled a hard bottom turn. Shot up the face to exit the wave. But I launched too far. Too fast. I flew past the lip and fell backwards into the wave’s collapsing arc.
I braced for the impact. It didn’t come.
Soft yellow light penetrating a liquid curtain—impossibly far away.
The water: warm, viscous, pressing gently against my skin.
Curious.
I had let go. Every muscle softened.
And the water held me like it had been waiting.
Somehow I was still riding.
Then I shot out of the wave and into daylight. I was lying down, my feet at the tip of my board.
Dazed, I sat up slowly.
Surfers were hooting and laughing. One paddled over, grinning. “Dude, did you just get barreled on your back?”
I had.
The surfer I dropped in on paddled over. I apologized profusely. He smiled. “No worries. That was incredible. I’m just glad I got to see it.”
I floated for the rest of the session. Didn’t even try to catch another wave. I just let the sunlight dance on the water and tried to hold onto whatever had just happened.
In the days that followed, life became increasingly dreamlike.
Colors brightened. Time expanded. Even passing strangers felt closer than the people I thought I knew.
Grocery store clerks. Baristas. People at bus stops—they all shimmered with some kind of presence.
I stopped wearing shoes. I told my friends I could talk to dolphins—and meant it.
I started surfing with almost no wax, claiming I no longer needed it. I called my friends to the beach to watch. I paddled out under moonlight.
I was euphoric. Enlightened. Unmoored.
My roommates were concerned.
Then alarmed.
The breaking point came when I ripped up a hundred-dollar bill in front of them, proclaiming I had no need for money anymore.
They staged an intervention. Gently, but clearly. They told me I needed help. That I should talk to someone.
I agreed. Not because I thought I was unraveling—but because I was sure someone needed to hear what I had seen.
I had touched something profound. And the world needed to know.
We walked across campus together. Entered the student health building. I was barefoot.
Inside, the psychologist and his assistant asked if I’d be comfortable answering some questions.
I was eager to share.
I told them about the dolphins. The colors. The interconnectedness.
I told them I could give the assistant an orgasm. Telepathically.
That’s when the session ended.
Two police officers entered the room. Calm. Professional.
They cuffed me, hands in front. Walked me outside. Placed me in the back of a cruiser.
That’s how I ended up at Mesa Vista Psychiatric Hospital.
Lockdown unit.
Hospital gown.
Steel cot.
Roommate shuffling in circles.
And the wave, still echoing somewhere inside me.
Many readers have told me they set aside time for each chapter, letting it echo into their own lives. If the bell rings in you, consider passing it on—someone else may be listening for the same tone. And if you’d like, leave your reflections below; your voice adds another note to the resonance.
I've read this before and it never gets old.
Your memory is ridiculous, the detail takes me to that moment.