23:16 
I also feel like I betrayed a trust by not thinking clearly enough not to link to a good friend of mine, trusting a pseudonym to protect them, thinking only that it is interesting to see the ripples in neighbouring ponds when someone chucks a rock into this one. I feel terribly guilty about that. It is obvious I should not have with hindsight, but lots of things are obvious in hindsight. I hope I have got them all.
22:56
Sick, tired, sore and unhappy today.
For a run down on what we did, read Andy's telling. I don't have the energy in me to tell it again.
I can't think about it either. Because he's not the person I remember. I can't think about what we did because when I try it's like thinking about doing all that with a stranger and that appals and disgusts me, makes me feel violated, shameful. But it wasn't and my head knows that it wasn't. It's all heart vs intellect, but the wrong way round. The Rationalist is stuck arguing for a non-consensus viewpoint and it doesn't like it.
The deep connection was weird. Really weird. It did hurt, in places, when he pushed too hard before the shift was ready, or when he got the shakes and a spasm pushed him further in than there was tolerance for. But other than that, it should have hurt but didn't. I have a twenty inch waist, a small abdomen. There isn't room in there for Andy's hand, but it went in and seemed to vanish. When I felt round the edges with my fingers I could only feel his wrist, as if the rest of his hand was buried somewhere inside, with no discernible join between his skin and mine.
I remember the feeling of the organs moving. Not under pressure, but giving way so that there was more space. I can remember feeling as if layers of flesh within were separating and moving aside, peeling apart. I can remember the feeling of my body becoming taller so that there was more space for things to move aside.
I can also remember some pain, radiating around the pelvis, a dull ache, and in the lower back, right on the edge of tolerance, when it felt like his fingers were pressing against my spine from the inside. I don't want to go that far again. I don't think we have to. When we first tried the solar plexus connection we tried too much pressure. Now we have the technique right no pressure is required at all. Just a little nudge on the node now and again, which has system-wide effects but doesn't hurt, just to keep the response strong.
And after all that, it was better. He didn't look so wrong, he looked different but I could almost see the person I was looking for in there. When we were connected it was fine, the resonance came back. When we were not, it was as if there was some sort of layer between the conscious part of me and the part that felt the resonance, as if I were separated somehow from what we were doing. I kept thinking of it in terms of being in a plastic bag inside my body, so that most of me just tooled along quite happily but I was in this plastic bag, not really able to participate. Except when we were connected.
The way I tried to explain it was as if there was another parallel universe with another set of twins, another Sam and Andy, and the Sams had been exchanged. So I was looking for the Andy from over there, and this Andy isn't quite right, but it was only a little bit of the Sams that had been exchanged, the bit that feels and thinks and holds and recognises twins. So most of me, my body, my systems, all of that recognised him fine. We could still connect, still Work, but there was a bit, outside that connection, that belonged somewhere else.
It's getting worse. It became marginally better after he left. I actually relaxed a little, could think of him as being my twin without anomalies lighting up the alarm bells. But it started getting bad again Monday, and today I am having more feelings of not having a twin at all.
I miss my twin. I wish I could find him.
And I worry that I am playing involuntary mind games and that I am bad for him, both my twin, whoever and wherever he is, and Andy. I am pressed to give up on my twin, on the whole thing, by the worry that all of this is just simple psychosis and is hurting people.
But some things are just completely inexplicable without some nod to the non-consensus explanations. Completely inexplicable.
I knew my twin when we met eyes across that rickety wooden gate. I recognised him and said as much to K before we had even said hello. Why can't I recognise him now?
I am very tired.
My dreams have been filled with everyone I have ever met, everyone I have ever known, whether I have met them or not. Incessant, intense. I wake exhausted and sick. I sit at the Stones, in the cold, staring out at the rain and it is an effort to stay awake. I speak to the visitors, all smiles and helpful discussion, and inside I am cold and empty and longing to go to sleep. I rattle off information, make tour suggestions, answer questions and posit theories, give suggestions and try very hard to cover all sides and general viewpoints, and yet if they looked behind my sunglasses I think they would see that both my eyes are empty.
I feel like I have lost something and will never get it back. But the infection has gone. My ribs no longer seem to catch on things.
The fireworks have started already. I hate fireworks.
Oh Bling. I'm sorry, so sorry, that it came out worse for you than it did for me.
Monday, October 23, 2000