I realised that I was in the world and this gave me a fright. I didn’t expect it, I never saw it coming. I got a bad fright. How was I supposed to know I wailed, full of panic and self-pity. My brain was firing off questions nine to the dozen. How am I supposed to deal with this? What am I expected to do? What is the correct procedure for such a situation? I started to dissociate – the world was making me dissociate. Reality was making me dissociate. I could see reality all around me and I didn’t know what it was. I can hear the people talking but as soon as I hear them my awareness runs off in the opposite direction. My awareness is fleeing as fast as it can – recoiling from the terrible unknown.  It ricochets like a bullet from a stainless steel wall. I realise that I am in the world and this gives me a terrible shock. How was I to know? How was I supposed to prepare myself? Things have an awful habit of creeping up on you when you aren’t prepared for them you know. An awful habit, an awful habit. There is no way to explain just what a shock it is to be caught unawares by something you didn’t see coming, something you haven’t had a chance to prepare yourself for. There’s no way to explain what a terrible feeling that is. I’d always promised myself that I’d never let that happen to me but I did. I’d set myself up for it unbeknownst to myself. I’d set myself up as the fall-guy; I’d taken myself for a patsy. But how was I to know? You have to ‘plan for the unexpected’ – isn’t that what people always say? I could never understand this. I can never understand why people say the stupid things they do. There’s no accounting for people. You can’t prepare yourself for something you don’t see coming – you just can’t. You want the thing to happen the thing that’s supposed to happen, but it just doesn’t. It won’t happen. And that’s taken you by surprise you see because you didn’t see it coming. There’s no sign of anything happening. You go through all the motions of course. You go through all the motions to try to get it to happen. What else can you do? What other choice do you have? I was trying to get the thing to happen the way it was supposed to happen, the way it always happens, but it wouldn’t. That was where my freak-out began. It began when the thing didn’t happen. I don’t even know what the thing was. What it was supposed to look like. Nothing bears too much scrutiny you see – it’s not good to look into things too much. When you look into things too much you discover that you don’t really know what they are anyway. You discover that you don’t know what they are and then where does that leave you? I’m trying to think some comforting thoughts but nothing comes. I’m grasping for security, grasping for a nice reassuring thought, but all I can hear is the void making nasty sucking noises all around me…