Hi Cynthia
Thanks so much...yes, I do believe I know the of this family. I haven't read the book, and now that you've told me of it I'll be looking for it. But I'm thinking this was probably a story I saw on Oprah many years ago on her regular show...I never forgot about that family. The girl is Janney maybe? At the time, the boy was a toddler and the parents had to have separate apartments in order to protect him...one with no knives or scissors or anything dangerous, that the girl and one parent would sleep in...the other for the boy and other parent...they had planned on doing this just until the boy was big enough to protect himself, all the while trying to give the girl some peace and joy. What a nightmare...and I remember, at the time, the girl was only 7 years old and on the highest dosage of adult medication already. I don't pray a lot, but for this family...
As for the book, it sure is taking a lot longer than I thought, but it keeps changing direction on me...I guess that's to be expected for a novice. When I started out, it was in the hopes of putting a vision I had into action...a three day vision, where "I" painted...nothing else, just painting...I don't paint...something else was definitely using my mind and body to create...when it was over, had all these beautiful paintings, and over some time I came to realize that they were meant to cards...kind of like Tarot cards, but much different in their simplicity, and non elitism. Not for fortune telling, but for finding personal balance in the now...assuming everything we need for that is already within.
Anyway, I knew I'd have to say more about me...why anyone should trust anything I have to say...the big fat mess that I am...so I'd have to stop hiding my psychic "gifts"...they're more curses, but...I've come to call them "symptoms"...because they're so broken and uncontrollable...not something I do, something that happens to me. Which all lead to my Dad as he was very psychic and passed it on to me...which all led to his suicide, why my gift is so broken...which all led to the guru and EPO, and here I am. The stories have gotten out of control...I've had more memories come through the process and the purpose of the book has shifted.
So far, the psychic stuff, like my Mother, has just been an ever present force in the background of the stories...and I can't remember which stories I've posted for you all, so I'll just tell you a bit here
I use term 'empath' when describing the 'feeling' aspect of psychic awareness. Just one of the many different symptoms I experience. A gifted empath can tell when they're experiencing the feelings of someone else, and how to separate that from their own experience. A broken empath, like me, feels everything in their field...the people all around...as though it's theirs...and sometimes even the sorrows happening across the globe. There's no distinguishing. Mass tragedies can put me in bed for days, feeling like I weigh a thousand pounds. This is why I can't join support groups for suicide survivors. I did a "Walk to Remember, Walk for Hope" last year for the first time in my life...it took me 35 years to get there...I so feared my inability to separate their grief from my own. It's the reason I had to change positions when I worked in an ER...at first I did registration and had first contact with every patient. I had to move to a position where I only had contact with staff.
I'm sure I've alluded to this here, but I don't know that I've laid it all out. A day or two before dad's suicide, I had my first precognitive event. Knowing what I know now, it was sparked by hormones...just before my very first period...as well as extreme emotional distress. At 12 years old I'd had no dealings with humiliation before, and at school that day my math teacher berated me in front of the class for being late, like, a minute. I panicked, held it all in, and after class in the hallway just started bawling, really hard. (And by the way, I blocked this part out...didn't remember the reason I was crying until I was almost 40...my whole life, being late whether it mattered or not was a sure panic attack waiting to happen). When the kids asked me what was wrong, "My Dad Died!" blurted out of me. It was my brain trying to match the emotional intensity...I thought. I thought I lied.
I panicked some more...WHY did I say that, and how was I gonna get out of my LIE?
The other running theme in the book...the guilt over the relief I felt, when I knew the Funeral would 'save me' from having to fess up...and I could keep my lie a secret...it was the funeral that made my lie come true.
This is another small piece, and I'm putting it here cause it only just happened. It came out of me the other day right after I posted to Inis on the beauty of Tears. It's called "Bad Daughter"...and I think just before that I'll include the end of my main story for a little more detail, from "Autumn."
I hope it's not too much. The title of the book has yet to reveal itself to me. I'm toying with "Beautiful Sorrow" and "Plant Life On Mars." You all will be the second to know!
Thank you Cynthia...and everyone...for giving me the space to share my weird weird self
, Genny
From "Autumn"...
******
My first experience with psychic awareness was soon after we all moved in together, around ten years old. It was like a little metaphysical tap on the shoulder. "Pssst, pay attention, he's here for you". I heard it. Dismissed it as fast as I could question it. Anyway, the little blue car drove on, so, whatever...keep walking, you're almost home. It was such a beautiful summer day and I was thoroughly enjoying my walk home from the pool, and my innocence. "Pssst, he's waiting for you...he only drove up one block...run!" Huh, he did stop again, it does seem like he's watching me...hard to tell...oh, there he goes...ok, well, you only have two more blocks, but this is weird. If he does it again, stops at the end of the block, then maybe I'll just turn right, and then you'll have to double back. Ok...see what he does...
I didn't know how to listen. It was too late, he was backing up to me already. In my state of innocence, I thought...maybe he's lost. When he called me over to the car I went. I thought I could help the nice old man with white hair and black horn rimed glasses. I knew I was in danger by my intuition, but I still didn't listen...why didn't I listen? I asked myself that question for years...I still ask it today sometimes. That has been my biggest challenge in coping with psychic awareness my entire life...knowing when to listen...when is it real, when is it not...how do you know? Well, this time it was real...my first experience of beating myself up for not listening...first of countless times.
As soon as I got close enough to see the display on the passenger seat, I knew he wasn't a nice old man. He was a sick fuck...with a bunch of porn, an exposed erection...and a gun. I was paralyzed with fear. Shaking and crying I still heard 'run, run...', but his gun pointing at me was louder. I stayed and watched him masturbate just as he ordered. I was completely shocked as he chipped away at my innocence one stroke at a time. Gave him exactly what he wanted. Why didn't you turn right, why didn't you turn right...why why why? Other than running home as fast as I could after he left without touching my little body, and calling my mom in hysterics, I don't remember much else...about that time. The second time it happened to me, I was a few months older and a thousand years wiser.
This time, I was riding my bike...again, only one or two blocks from home...in the other direction. I 'heard' the car pulling up next to me a moment or two before it actually did...my initial glance back saw nothing. Thought nothing of it. Suddenly the old brown station wagon was right there, driving alongside me on my left...same scenario, through the passenger side window. A young(er) man yelled out asking for directions to the library. His English was so broken that I had to stop and say 'what'? As he started to repeat himself, I saw the all too familiar motion of a sick fuck jerking off in front of a little girl. I shot him a look of disgust and rolled my eyes...seen it already asshole...and sped off on my bike as fast as a super hero. This time my mom and Chuck were home to pick up the pieces...a little more innocence shattered all around me...and I never saw a man more enraged. He demanded a description of the car and the man and the direction to go...and went flying out the door. Chuck was not an outwardly violent man, he was an emotional drunk...all of his violence was directed inward...but...I have no doubt that had he found that shit brown station wagon, we'd have been visiting him in jail for a time. Yeah, we moved.
*******
Listen
Little ones, lovely ones
Listen to you soul
Self preservation is your only goal
When it tells you there's danger
Don't waste time making sense
That will come later when it's not so intense
When it tells you to run
Don't listen to your doubt
Do what it says and just get out
Instead of looking back
To wonder, "Why did I stay?"
You can look forward, cause "Thank God I ran away!"
Little ones, lovely ones
Innocence is your role
Always always Listen...to your Beautiful Soul!
*******
It was a cruel summer for sure. But not without certain gifts. This would be the summer that my Dad "came back". Back from his mission with the Guru. I couldn't wait to hear all about it, and to welcome him back into my life with open arms. I could hardly contain my excitement as I waited for him the first time he came to pick me up on July 1, 1980 at 11am mountain standard time. It would be the first of several lunch dates, at 'our place', Mama Elena's. A popular little Mexican restaurant on Colfax Avenue...known as 'the longest commercial strip in America'...it's reputation ranges from skid row to hip Capital Hill on into gangland and back out into strip mall suburbia...east to west, ever changing and growing. He loved that place, I loved any place as long as I was with him. More than anything, I wish I could remember more of those dates...more of our conversations...more of him. I don't. Not yet. I can only recall one conversation, but I can recall it like it was yesterday, every word just about. It was the best conversation ever.
As we went to work getting to know each other, he wanted to know if I believed in aliens. I said sure, why not. (In our house, the line of thinking was that the Universe is so vast and unknowable, that to believe we are the only ones in it was incredibly arrogant...and, my mom saw a UFO up close in her backyard when she was very little). "Do you"? He explained to me that he knew for sure that they existed, and that some of them were already here...had been for a very long time...and many of them look just like we do...and he had seen two. "Wow, so how did you know they were aliens"? I only remember how he explained one of them...he was very tall and thin, taller than tall human. His clothing was from another time in the past, Victorian maybe, formal anyway, and he wore a tall black hat. He was walking toward my dad and as they passed each other, my dad turned his head to keep his gaze on the interesting being, who just vanished into thin air. Poof, gone. He thought and felt that it was beautiful...the experience and the being. He then told me of his gift. "Did you know that I am a psychic?"
In my very limited understanding of what that really means, I thought it was the coolest thing ever...to know the future and read minds and talk to ghosts and heal the sick. I was beaming with pride, so excited to know more, and smart enough to prepare for disappointment, just in case. "Wow! Really? Can you read my mind"? I was amazed and even more excited when he casually said, "Sure, think of something". I'm thinking, ok, it can't be too easy...something weird and specific...something from school...that's it!...we just learned about the possibility of life on Mars, plants from subsurface ice or something...so that was my thought, "Plant life on Mars". He looked deep into my eyes, the ones I got from him, and said, "Plant life on Mars"...verbatim...I was stunned and delighted and said, "Do it again Daddy"! Quickly racked my brain for something even weirder, and my goofy kid brain came up with "Clown life on Jupiter"...he smiled and said, "Now you're just being silly". We finished our Mexican food...it was the best day ever. It stung a little when I noticed that Mama Elena's had closed many years later.
There are a few more snapshot memories of our short time together in my brain's forefront, they're so fragmented...still. For my 11th birthday, he picked me up in a van he was driving for work, a bakery. It smelled so good, and there were almond croissants in the back...he said it would be fine if we had one...I can still taste it, so yummy. That was also the time he gave me my stuffed red lobster, and antique red hot holder...a cute, tiny glass candy holder in the shape of an elf riding a rocking horse. I wanted to die the day it broke. I had that broken glass in my life for twenty years...broken doesn't always mean trash.
Things were good, really good. We had a new house, I started Junior High in a new town, suburbia, and got to work making new friends. We had a full, happy home. Except for Roscoe. He died of heart failure when my mom and I were away on vacation. We came home to Chuck's sad heart, it failed a little too. That just meant we had plenty of room when we learned of another Great Dane who needed a home, Ace. He was papered, stunning, with cropped ears...poor baby! Shiny, sleek black with a white star on his chest...Ramshead Ebony Ace Star...big beautiful beautiful boy! He fit right into our 'zoo', that's what we called it on the box of personalized pencils we had made, "The Zoo. Charles, Rebecca, Genny, Rachel, Rhiannon, Tiger, Princess, and Ace". Heaven. And...AND...just to make sure it really couldn't get any better, my beautiful father had come back to me. Perfect...everything to look forward to...not even the stupid flasher on my way to school could break my spirit...seen it already asshole.
The day my life changed forever was a beautiful, perfect Colorado autumn day. I love autumn...the air smells so good...the changing leaves are so beautiful...what am I going to be for Halloween this year?...I'm not a kid anymore, I can't be a cute bunny again or a ballerina or a Genie...maybe a witch!...this year, in my new level of school where we get to have our first school dance...the Halloween Ball...maybe a boy will like me...maybe this is where I'll meet some more nice girls...the walk home was just beautiful...Sunny...all the decorations adding to the excitement of future planning...everything was perfect...except for one thing...what am I going to do about my LIE?...why did I say that?...how do I fix it?...why did I say that...you're such a baby...crying cause Mrs. Daugherty yelled at you for being late...why did I say that...why..."My Dad DIED"...Oh My God, how do I fix that?
As soon as I walked in my door I knew SOMETHING was terribly wrong. Besides the weight of the AIR...my Grandma was there with Chuck and his friend Larry. "Hi Gramma! What are you doing here"? "I just came over for a quick visit honey". Ok, now I know something's wrong...gramma just lied to me...right to my face...whoa, whatever it is, it's bad. My grandmother didn't drive, someone had to go get her, and it had to be planned. It's not like she ever just stopped by on her way home. She knew to not let me look at her for too long...I knew she was protecting me from whatever had the grown ups so weird...Chuck saves her...
"How was school, Sweet?"...that was his nickname for me...Sweet...
"Fine what's going on."
"I just need a few moments with grandma...mom's on the way home and Larry's gonna take you to run some errands...okay?"
Ok, this is bad...do they think I'm stupid?...I never go anywhere with Larry, they're trying too hard to be normal...ok...oh this is bad, but don't press Genny, let them have their secrets for now, mom will tell you...just play along...just play along..."Ok! Let's go!"
Poor Larry...he was just a sweet guy who's drinking buddy had a step daughter. He didn't know what to do with me, but he did his best to stay light and joking and silly for me. He took me to the store...the liquor store...for a Pepsi. Ok, this is bad...I thought we had errands...a Pepsi?...from a liquor store?...you better brace yourself Gen...what could it possibly be, this dark dark thing...what on earth are they gearing up to tell me? I kept trying to figure it out, to be prepared...the worst thing I could think of was divorce...that's it, oh my god, are they getting a divorce?...I thought everything was fine, they seem happy...oh no, my poor mom...I bet it's a divorce...but we love Chuck...oh no...
When we got home, Mom was there. Ok, this is it...this is it...she's gonna come to you in a sec...ok, just tell her how much you love her, that you want what's best for us too, that we'll be okay...can I still be friends with Chuck?...do we get to stay here?...she's probably so sad...it's going to be ok Mom...we have each other.
"Mommy?"
She reaches out for my hand..."Come on baby, let's talk..."
...Baby?...oh shit...this is bad...
Hand in hand we go to the downstairs living room next to my room, and we sit on the couch. The air is so sad and heavy, there are already tears building in my eyes..."What is it Mommy?...are you ok?" ...here it comes...here it comes...brace yourself...here it comes...ready for the D word to come out of her mouth...
"I need to talk to you about your Dad honey...um, he died yesterday..."
"What...WHAT...Daddy?...no...no no no no no no...no...what happened?"
"Oh my baby...I'm so so so sorry, he committed suicide baby...I'm so so so sorry..."
"What...WHAT...Daddy?...no no no no...no. No. No daddy...why...no no..."
...oh no...oh no...I'm psychic too...oh Daddy...no..no...
...and I ju s t sh a t te r e d
Blackness is all I have in my mind when I search for anything that happened after that. I have no idea about any of it until Halloween. They made me take Rachel trick or treating, they wanted so bad for me to have something normal...sweet...so I found my costume...and couldn't do it, I was just too sad...but Rachel is still so little, she shouldn't suffer just cause I do...I put my witch mask on and my black fur coat...maybe just a few houses...for her. I took her around for little while, I wish I could remember her costume. And then, just to seal the deal of innocence lost, I got my very first period. I thought it supposed to be a good thing. I used to love autumn.
Bad Daughter
If only I knew then what I know now, I could have been a good daughter. I'd have known that my outburst didn't come from me. I'd have known how bizarre it was and how to pay attention.
"My Dad died"!
'Oh my god, I lied'
I panicked. And I got stuck on the idea that I told a big fat lie, and I had to cover my ass...somehow. A lot of pressure for a 12 year old little girl. Lying was a big deal in my house. I'd been busted for it before, and I didn't want to be one anyway...a liar. And I also had that Granddad perfectionism drilled into my little soul, and it never occurred to me to just tell my mom and ask for help. Another pattern begins.
If only I knew then what I know now, I would have had it all figured out by the time I got home from school that day, and I would have called him right away. "Daddy, I said the weirdest thing today. Are you OK? Am I psychic too? What do I do"?
I didn't even think about him. Not for a split second did I even consider that it was about him. It was all about me, the bad selfish daughter...how was I gonna get out of my LIE? I was so relieved when the Funeral saved me from having to, and the weight of that guilt almost crushed(s) me.
If only I knew then what I know now, I'd have known that men who have to do really bad things in War, suffer a deep deep pain when they come home. I'd have paid attention. I'd have called him. We didn't even know he was in Vietnam until we saw it carved onto his headstone. Whatever he did there is a big secret, I learned from the best on how to keep them.
If only I knew then what I know now, I'd have known...how immensely difficult it is to leave a cult. Worse, to be abandoned by your God and Perfect Master. Forced to create a life vastly different than the one you knew. Lost. Ouch. I wish I could've been a good daughter, a grounding force for him. I just thought the "Mission" was over.
If I knew then what I know now, I'd've have memorized every moment with him. I have zero recall save for that one conversation where he told me he was a psychic and read my mind verbatim. "Plant life on Mars." How could I forget how his hug felt? His voice? How?
I wasn't a bad daughter. I was a bad psychic. I didn't have enough practice, I was 12 years old. I beg your forgiveness, Daddy. More than anything, I wish I called you, instead of keeping my LIE a secret, but I didn't. You have to forgive me. You have to forgive me. You have to forgive...I...I have to forgive me. I have to forgive me.
I have to forgive me.
Can I ever forgive me?
Why didn't I just call him? How did I make a such devastating statement all about me?
Because because BECAUSE my sweet little inner girl...because you were just a kid. It's that simple...I'm begging you to release the weight of guilt that you carry child, it doesn't belong to you.
If I knew then what I know now, I'd have known that no 12 year old is remotely responsible for any of it. I'd've known that a Scorpio Neptune in the 4th house would create black spots in my childhood memories, and maybe I did think of him...and maybe we did talk about psychic stuff or guru stuff during the lunch dates I still can't see. And maybe, just maybe, I'd've known that he actually did stay for me. I actually did save him for a time. He stayed a lot longer than he ever meant to...for me.
Until the day
New Moon came to play
With his bi-polar grey
And took him away.
I loved him so much and wish he could have stayed a little longer. I may be a bit greedy, but I'm no bad daughter.
I have to forgive me.
