Here's what I know about leaving your body: you can do it for a long time.
You can do it for so long that you no longer feel like a piece of yourself. Until you are two separate things—
what's happening, life
and
you, a collection of organs and appendages and hair and skin
I also know—I've seen—how your body will then, in desperation, become a voice in your head, a voice that says very specific, deliberate things as loud as it can. Something like a Cheshire Cat. Off the side of your shoulder or hovering somewhere behind you, appearing when it wants to, speaking cryptically in a line or two. Except this cat isn't grinning and mischievous, it's distressed and pleading.
I have a vague idea of when I left my body and a very, very clear understanding of when I told the Cheshire Cat to shut the fuck up.
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