We're used to knowing our "normal selves" so you do take it for granted that your person is, like, transparent to yourself, that my normal thinking, feeling me is one with me. That makes it disconcerting and weird when you face that it isn't just so simple.

I recall one time, years ago, when I was tossed into something that was - not subspace, because it wasn't a bdsm thing, but a similar feel of "waking up on the other side of yourself". I'd been out inter-railing for two weeks - around on the glorious European rail pass - and one night I'd passed the border into Germany and arrived, alone for a few days, at Trier, an amazing city with Roman ruins and buildings I wanted to see. Too late to get a hotel, plus I didn't really know where to find 'em and was a little short of money.
It was early November and I decided to spend two nights on a sideways rebuilding lot, the day en between taking a look at this city that I really wanted to see. The second night, around midnight I arrived at this chosen spot and I was a bit more tired and hungry than it seemed nice to admit to myself, but in spite of the unusual situation I managed to get some sleep.

Then after a few hours, I woke up, and I had almost no idea where this place was. My watch had stopped, I didn't know the time. I knew the name of the city, but I'd lost all sense of direction. I got up and looked at the houses: didn't recognize them. Looked at the bushes and greens along the street: they seemed animate, alive and frightening. I suddenly thought some crooks were after me, my mind raced and read signs into what i saw around me - it was all totally irrational, like waking up and hearing the animals talk, like your rational mind has been lifted off you.

After maybe fifteen minutes I decided to walk down the street and toward the railway station (although it was in the middle of the night) but I had only a vague memory of how to get there, although it was really simple - and no, that wasn't drug-induced in any way. It felt smashed, it was as if something had been lifted out, like having gone through a glass window (by sunrise I had recovered) and looking back, that night must have been in some sense close to the "wiped-clean" feeling that is subspace.