Underway

We must always start down in the earth,

The soft, yielding earth that our footprints sink into,

The obdurate earth that pick-axes strain to dent,

The trembling earth, like a heart annihilated,

The steady earth, a seismic flatline

The thirsty earth, the sodden earth--

The pendulum of deprivation & abundance. 

The aching earth that listens to our footsteps & 

holds their beat in its deep abiding quiet. 

Bated breath, then a gush of exhale. 

So much holding. The surprising flood of release. 

Everything is always underway. Under, our way. 

Leading us up these muddy rungs--and suddenly--- 

Sky. 

Near Drowning

The last day of 7th grade meant that the one girl in our class with a pool would be hosting a start-of-summer-vacation pool party.  There were a lot of girls in attendance, but by no means was every single student invited, so I felt happy and relieved to be included.  The pool was a medium-sized above-ground perfect circle.  A slippery plastic ladder was required to clamber in or out of the freezing four feet of water.  I was one of the few girls who was brave enough to submerge my entire body and head, pushing off the curved inside wall and taking one and a half breast strokes beneath the surface to the other side.  Although I was easily the best swimmer at the party, there wasn't enough room to showcase my amazing butterfly stroke skills, so I just did the occasional summersault and floated effortlessly on my back, eyeing the small cluster of girls with flat stomachs who had worn bikinis.  My lap swimming suit seemed foolish now, but remained preferable to revealing my negligible kid-paunch.  At some point water balloons made an appearance and I had to act like this was a really fun turn of events.  The exaggerated laughter and pretend-menacing looks as one took aim at a friend or acquaintance gave way to the giddy-wounded shrieks as one got nailed by the bursting latex.  I hated water balloons only slightly less than I hated snowballs.  The rubbery snap against my skin as it popped and burst hurt--not in a way that made me want to cry--but in a way that definitely made me want to yell, "Knock it the fuck off".  It was a little like when one of my friends gave me a "smurf bite"--a pinch accompanied by a twist to the most tender skin on my arm.  Who made the decision that we need to endure minor injuries inflicted by play with a smile on our face, lest we get the reputation of being a baby.  I definitely wasn't at the board meeting.

Slowly, everyone began leaving the pool with still-dry hair, shivering theatrically.  I took my time exiting the pool and toweling off, listening to the voices that had migrated to the front yard in an effort to get a sense of what new scene or activity I would be joining.  I couldn't piece it together from the audio clues, so I stepped out of the perfect shade that their big maple tree and awning and melded together and into the glaring sun out front.  The visual clues weren't much clearer.  There were towels spread across the lawn, but no one was sunbathing, exactly.  There were three sets of girls, each near a beach towel on the grass.  Each member of the set had a specific position and job, it appeared.  The girl in front, facing away from the girl behind her, would bend forward as if to touch her toes and then fling herself into a standing position while holding her own hands to her neck.  A couple of seconds later she would fall backward, into the waiting arms of the girl behind her who would ease her gently onto her back on the towel.  Five seconds would pass and then the fallen girl would open her eyes with a drowsy smile on her face and her friend would say, "Okay, my turn!"  They would switch and the strange sequence would begin again. 

"What are you guys doing?"  My voice was not cool or curious or impartial.  It was suspicious and a little scared.  A blond, leggy twelve year old excitedly told me that they were making themselves faint.  I thought they were definitely lying, and I wasn't about to look like a dummy by being taken in by this elaborate prank.  I'd had "friends" from a summer school theater program who would routinely tell me detailed, outlandish lies as some sort of experiment to see just how gullible I was.  Rather than being gullible, I was a nice kid who found their tales spectacularly unbelievable, but couldn't conceive of a reason why they'd lie to me.  My only lies up to that point had been to spare other's feelings, and I learned that sometimes people lie to do the exact opposite--to deliberately hurt feelings for their own amusement.  In any case, I wasn't going to look like a fool again, ever. 

"Yeah right." I scoffed.

The leggy blond was very friendly for a leggy blond, at least according to my experiences with them.  I liked her a lot, generally speaking.  But this was the age of middle school.  No one could be trusted.  But she seemed so genuinely excited and very keen on convincing me that this thing they were doing actually worked.  With a roll of my eyes I conceded to try it one time, just to prove that everybody was full of shit.  She took my shoulders and led me to the top of a towel.  She then gave me very explicit instructions about how to proceed.  "You have to do it exactly right, or it won't work," she cautioned.  I watched her mime the self-procedure a couple of times until I had it memorized.  Then I began.

I bent down toward the grass, my arms and wet hair dangling.  I could see the chain link fence through the small gap in my legs, and beyond that, the sidewalk and sizzling black street.  I began to hyperventilate, in and out, as fast as I could while the leggy blond counted aloud to thirty.  Then I launched myself vertical and squeezed my neck with the pressure she had demonstrated, while at the same time, pushing all of my air out hard, as if I were shitting like my life depended on it, or giving birth.

The next thing I remember were pinpricks of light blinking and fluttering behind my lids and my body awash with radiant tingling.  My eyes blinked open and I found myself lying on the towel, a bit of grass itching at my ankles.  Leggy blond was gazing down at me without a hint of smug satisfaction.  She just looked thrilled for me that I'd had this experience and that she'd been the one to facilitate it.  My head lolled as I sat up and I couldn't keep the groggy smile off my face.  All I could say was, "Again."  She was happy to oblige, pulling me up and steadying me on my feet before I had another go.  Over the course of the next hour I became proficient as both fainter and faintee, faller and catcher.  Ecstasy beyond measure had found me that blazingly hot summer day.  I hadn't known it was possible to feel nothing and then lurch into feeling everything.  If pressed to describe the experience I would have to say it felt like trillions of fireflies lifted and carried me upon their fluttery backs into outer space and then all zipped away, leaving me to parachute gauzily through the misty coolness of an eternity of creamy cloud-huddles.  And even that doesn't do it justice. 

It's difficult to believe that I didn't really understand what was happening, what I was doing.  I had no plans to smoke cigarettes or pot or drink alcohol.  At least at that time.  I understood the dangers inherent to those things.  But I didn't think of fainting as dangerous, not for a long time.  I thought of it as a parlor trick or a party game.  That's how it had been presented to me, after all.  But for a smart kid like myself to not understand that I was briefly cutting off the flow of blood and oxygen to my brain, and that the dreamy coming back to life feeling was a literal coming back to life, is a hard and terrible thing for me to fathom.  I was killing my brain and myself in short bursts for fleeting euphoria.  The very definition of drug abuse, of addiction.  And I was clueless.  I presented the fainting game to various friends at sleepovers, and I too felt like Leggy Blond had--like I was an ethereal mystic with a great gift to impart.  My friends and I put the fainting game into our regular rotation of Light-As-a-Feather-Stiff-as-a-Board, Truth or Dare, and the other surreal game we'd learned or invented where someone would lie on their stomach with their arms reaching straight ahead on the floor like Superman and someone else would bring their arms up as high as possible and hold them there for a full minute, finally lowering them back down so it felt like---Wait! my arms should be touching the floor my now!  What's happening?  They're falling through the floor!!!  It was similar to standing in a doorway and firmly pressing your arms outward into it until they ached, then stepping out to feel your arms lifting as if by magic.  Or cracking imaginary eggs on one another's heads--a sharp tap of fingernails on scalp and then fingers opening softly against hair, the illusion of warm, spreading yolk. 

Fainting was exactly like that to me, for a while. 

At some point in the thick of this season of fainting I discovered by total accident that my new prescription nasal allergy spray could get me high as the moon.  The first time it happened I was watching TV and everything got really fuzzy and far away and then when it came back into focus again I felt happier about it all.  I wonder if this nasal spray is still on the market.  It came in a clunky casing, like an albuterol inhaler-- nothing like the small, sleek Flonase-y version today.  That being said, I could still fit the inhaler in my pocket, which made me feel like I could experience a fainting sensation on-the-go, if need be.  It was doubly convenient because I wouldn't even need a spotter!

The day I had the darkly brilliant idea to combine the nasal spray with the self-fainting was probably inevitable.  I wonder what happened on that particular day that made this combination so self-evident.  I can't seem to access it in the deep outer-reaches of my mind.  Was it one horrible thing or a series of awful things that, added together, culminated in this good girl's desperate need to escape it all for just a few minutes.  I've no idea.  But after school one day in 8th grade, I climbed the stairs to my parent's bedroom and spent several minutes arranging pillows to soften my fall.  I didn't have a spotter, but that was okay because I needed to do this alone and immediately. I took a series of hits of my nasal inhaler and immediately went into the fainting launch code.

I don't know how much time elapsed before I came to.  I know that when I had gone upstairs to faint I was home alone and that when I surfaced from those depths my mom was calling to me from downstairs.  "Tracy!" she sang out, mercifully unaware of what I'd just done and what I'd been dabbling in.

"Coming!  Just a minute!" I called back in a voice that sounded like someone had tried to stuff cheer into my throat, choking and false.

As I struggled to stand up I realized that I'd fallen forward instead of backward, and that the pillow had only partially protected me from injury.  There was a blistery-feeling cut that would, in time, darken into a hickey-shaded bruise just below my left jawbone where I'd smacked the edge of my parent's wooden water bed frame.  I rubbed at it self-consciously.  It stung.  As did my eyes where the tears were welling up.  My head throbbed concussively.  I hurried to return my parent's bed to its normal appearance.  There didn't appear to be blood anywhere, thankfully.  Then I brushed my hair over the welt blooming on my upper neck and trotted downstairs with a smile.

That night I threw away my nasal spray and I vowed to never faint, purposely, again.  It was a promise that I kept, easily.  But I understood that uncomfortable or agonizing feelings were bound to surface again and I'd need to discover healthier escapes or construct more painstaking distractions.  At twelve years old I understood more firsthand about desperation and dangerous escapes and addiction on a gut and heart level than I would realize for a very long time.  I was bound to addicts of all faces and flavors.  I was inextricably tethered to all those who flail against their own suffering.  I was initiated into that airless darkness.  But I kept swimming, upstream most times, until occasionally I'd catch a current and relax into it.  Knowing a little better when to float and when to swim and in which direction and for how long.  Knowing that drowning becomes permanent in a hurry, and that my forays with it only brought mirages of bliss.  Near-drowning is a trembling mirror pressed to your face that shows you everything--all the searing pain housed in every single person.  But also the reflective beauty inside of yourself and inside of everyone.   
   


    

            

Invaders

Tomorrow is the day I receive my test results for Lyme disease and various co-infections.  It is an odd thing, I suppose, to be rooting to have a disease that is extremely difficult to both diagnose and treat, much less cure.  But that appears to be the place I've arrived at in my life--hoping to be incubating a particular illness because it will make sense of my symptoms and because there is a path, though fraught, to healing.  It is still possible to have Lyme and have negative test results.  And it is still possible to treat for Lyme, doctor willing, by symptoms alone.  But I'm hoping, not just for Lyme disease, but for solid proof of it.  I need the assurance; I long for the validation.  Of course life doesn't often give us the things we want or need during times of struggle.  It does sometimes, via harrowing and circuitous journeys, bring us to a place--kicking and screaming--where we ultimately needed to go, and where, only by virtue of adequate distance from the trauma and rose-tinted hindsight we may appreciate the tribulations that shaped ourselves and our lives.  But I'm hoping that in this instance I've already traversed the aforementioned tribulations and have arrived at a time of clear knowing and clear planning.

In my mind I've already penned several indignant letters to numerous healthcare providers who have misdiagnosed and dismissed me for the past 10 months or so.  This metal reflex is childish and serves only to hurt myself by perpetuating anger that solves nothing and may or may not even be justified.

And I've come to understand that I'll gladly take any disease of the body over a disease of the mind. Throughout my life I've suffered from long seasons of debilitating depression and anxiety that would lurch into full-blown panic attacks without warning, and I've always tried to be honest about my experiences so that I might be an ally and advocate for others suffering from mental illness. But while I strove to remove the stigma for others, I could never quite erase it from myself.  If depression is a black-out drunk bender of unrelenting sorrow, then surfacing from it is a hangover of glaring shame. Once it subsides your mind tricks you into believing that it was your choice in some way, or at least a failure of will.  No matter how many doctors or therapists have told me otherwise, I always suspected that I was in charge of my depression and therefore at fault.  So while Lyme causes neurological issues, including depression, anxiety, and insomnia, I find it deeply comforting that it comes from something outside.  If something has infiltrated and invaded my body and brain, then I can't be held responsible for it.  It was not my doing.  But if it comes from within....well then that's a different story.  Even though it shouldn't be.       

nascent philosophies

In my junior year of college I took a Moral Philosophy course for fun.  I was already a firmly established English and Communication double major and I didn't need the credit.  I had simply enjoyed the philosophy course I had taken the previous year and was itching for another one.  This was a 200 level course, so the majority of the class were freshmen and sophomores trying to get some general education requirement out of the way.  In a room of thirty students I was the only one interested in the subject matter.  I won't pretend to remember much of the curriculum specifics, but I remember chiming in on most of it.  The rest of the class drowsily doodled and took the occasional note while the professor and I had spirited discussions on normative ethics. 

The only philosopher I remember at all from that class is Immanuel Kant.  I was equal parts enamored of and made livid by his views.  He made me crazy, but he made me think, and every paper I wrote that semester was Kant related.  I doubt I fully understood the nuances of Kantian philosophy back then and I'm under no illusion that I understand or even remember any of it now.  I do remember being utterly exasperated with Kant (or with the professor's interpretation of a Kantian view) on one particular point: it had to do with the idea that feeling happy or satisfied or fulfilled by performing a good work should have no bearing on our decision to perform good works, and in fact, possibly undermined its merit in some way.  Some universal emotionless moral reasoning was supposed to prevail, evidently.  And I agreed that we should choose to do the right thing regardless of personal gains, even those of the harmless feel-good variety.  But it was somehow more noble to be good and decent absent a sense of joy?  I remember throwing my hands up and sputtering, "So Kant would prefer us all to be depressed martyrs, then?"  The professor, with his charming accent that defied placing it geographically, answered, "Yes, I think that is about the size of it."  Again, I don't know if this gets to the heart of Kant in any way, but it is my clearest memory of the class.

At the end of philosophy class one day, a boy with a shaved head who dressed exclusively in black handed me a note.  This fellow Moral Philosophy classmate was also the roommate of the guy I was dating at the time.  I had an inkling that he had a crush on me based on the not-so subtle messages he'd regularly scrawl on the white board above his desk.  One day there was a forest of dark, scraggly trees surrounding the words "The Only Girl Who Talks To Me".  The guy I was dating rolled his eyes when he saw that, which surprised me, because he was generally quite insecure, jealous, and angry.  He clearly didn't see his roommate as a threat.

The note he handed me was a long descriptive account of him trying to buy a soda from a vending machine.  In a nutshell, the soda got stuck and he had to pay an extra dollar to get it to dispense.  He included the wide range of emotions he felt throughout the experience--from mild annoyance to fury to an existential sense of betrayal.  It was an amusing story made hilarious in parts by his faux histrionics.  The letter concluded with a question that was an abrupt non sequitur: "So I'm wondering, do you use your hands to talk, even when you're on the phone?"

It took a few moments before I understood what he was saying.  And I felt my own extreme arc of emotions as it all registered.  I was suddenly hyper-aware of myself gesticulating as I spoke and sparred good-naturedly with the philosophy professor; it was something I'd never really noticed about myself--like the person who doesn't realize how much she says "Um" until it's pointed out.  Self-consciousness gave way to feeling ever-so-slightly flattered--(someone really notices me!)  Then came the all-around unsettled feeling; I felt studied like a specimen under glass.  And as much as I hadn't been aware of my own little mannerisms, I'd been even less aware of the hours I'd been under keen observation.  Only I hadn't, really.  I'd felt the soft burn of someone watching me, but I had ignored  and dismissed it.  Finally there was anger.  This letter was weirdly manipulative, designed to disorient me and force my hand in some way.  Would I tell my boyfriend?  Would I allow myself to feel awkward in his presence?  Would I reciprocate his bizarrely presented feelings.  I opted for none of the above. 

"What do you want me to say to this?  I'm not going to tell him about it, but you know he'd be pissed.  This needs to stop now."

He made a double-edged joke about my boyfriend's temper and about my boyfriend being overweight.

He knew right away that he had done the exact wrong thing.  The first point was fair, but I'd eventually get around to understanding how poisonous it was to date someone with so much self-loathing and jealousy.  I'd end it in time.  But taking such a shallow jab at someone to position yourself as the superior choice showed he hadn't really been paying attention at all.  I was, above all else, a nice person. 

Only he really had been paying attention, I saw, as he shriveled regretfully into himself, knowing that his knee-jerk cruelty had reduced his chance with me from miniscule to zero.

As I walked briskly away I felt the first flutters of being someone who people feel they can take advantage of emotionally.  Being kind to others had always been my moral imperative.  Being kind to myself was a much lower priority.  I felt the burn of tears as I wished I could talk to my professor or to Mr. Kant about the dangers of putting everyone else's happiness and well-being first.



          

The One Thing You Can't See

Songs have been lodging themselves in my brain for the past several months--deeply and insistently, as if they are clues that might help me solve some cold case murder.  Sometimes it's something I heard that day and other times the song bubbles up from some deep swamp of audio subconscious.  The latter is what greeted me as I surfaced from sleep today.  Vanessa Williams' "Save The Best for Last" is a song I haven't heard in decades, although in 1992 it was hard to get away from, which, at the time, was fine by me because it was my very favorite song. 

I remember going on a field trip to the zoo with my fourth grade class and listening to some soft rock radio station on my Walkman near the mountain goats, just hoping for the song to come on.  When it did, I watched the goats with a bit more contemplative melancholy as my heart soared and ached with the bittersweet mystery of love.  I don't know what struck such a deep chord in my 12-year-old heart when I heard this song.  The lyrics certainly didn't resonate with anything I had yet come close to experiencing.  In a nutshell, the song is about a woman who is friends with a man she loves and she remains by the man's side in a friendship capacity as the man goes through doomed relationship after doomed relationship without realizing that his female friend is actually his soulmate.  It finally dawns on him and the two get together. In hindsight "It's not the way I hoped or how I planned, but somehow it's enough" sounds like a pretty pathetic, or at the very least, underwhelming way to describe achieving true love.  Which isn't to say the lyric is unrealistic. 

The song made me feel exceedingly grown-up; it possessed secrets of what was to come in adult relationships and I filed all the details away so I'd be emotionally prepared.  In fourth grade after hearing this song it seemed a foregone conclusion that I'd someday meet a boy who would be perfect for me, but he'd be blind to that fact, and so of course I'd have to patiently and agonizingly wait until he came to his senses and recognized that I was his dream girl.  Knowing this exact inevitable scenario was looming just a decade or so ahead lent me an air of wistful forbearance.  And it made me feel mature and wise beyond my years to relate so deeply to a sentiment which I believed pervaded the adult experience.  In this one small, crucial regard I was right on the money.  A great deal of adulthood is about negotiating the unexpected sting of nostalgia while navigating the not-so rosy-hued rigors of grown-up reality.  There's still magic and joy to be had, but it doesn't look or feel anything like you imagined it would.  And this can be difficult to reconcile.

In any case, this song had a special place in my silly heart.  And while I traipsed about playfully in my dramatic, imagined world of unrequited love that gave way to soulmates, I was still basically a kid who was full of excitement and hope about pretty much everything.  At that time I was also fresh off the exhilarating high of playing The Magic Mirror in a summer school enrichment program production of Snow White.  It wasn't the leading role, but I had pretty significant stage time and I felt I had really knocked my performance out of the park.  So when a teacher suggested to my mom that I pursue drama at a children's theater in the big city (well, Milwaukee), I jumped at it.  I don't recall the name of the musical I was auditioning for, but I distinctly remember browsing the aisles of a local music shop for sheet music.  I was responsible for choosing a song to perform and bringing the corresponding sheet music to the audition.  When I came across "Save the Best for Last" it was a no-brainer.  My main concern was that the pianist might struggle to play such a difficult song. 

As it turned out, that was not the problem.  The problem was that I had selected a ridiculously long and dramatic song that my 12-year-old voice was in no position to execute and that my 12-year-oldness in general had no business trying to sell.  The pianist raised her eyebrow when I handed her the music, but she played the piece flawlessly.  I thought I did a decent job, and had I not stuck around to watch the other auditions I might have left secure in that belief.  But the girl who followed me was extraordinary.  When it was announced that she'd be singing "Tomorrow" from "Annie" I remember thinking, "What a boring and obvious choice."  Then I watched her put on a ball cap and sit backwards on a chair in a way that just screamed "sass" and "confidence" as she belted out the tune in a way that put that original little orphan to shame.  I understood I didn't have an ounce of the offhand charisma that these other kids did, much less their formidable pipes.  I left the audition hoping that my sophisticated song choice would help me get a call-back.  It did not.  But I remember the kind and amused gleam in the director's eye when we briefly spoke after my song, and I believe he thoroughly enjoyed the quaver of emotion in my voice and wince of pain in my eyes as I did my best impression of an adult who'd finally found love after years of turmoil and neglect.

"Isn't the world a crazy place?" Indeed, Vanessa Williams. 

Although the song is the epitome of maudlin, I think she made a solid point with: "Sometimes the very thing you're looking for is the one thing you can't see."

I see now that I was just a sweet kid who had a lot to learn about myself and the world, and who had no idea that my litany of foibles and fumbles would in time add up to the adult I am today-- an adult who still has a lot to learn, but who has quite a few amusing stories to share about how I came to be me. 

      

Mysterious Ways

I've been extremely leery of writing about the following because I prefer to have some degree of distance from things before I tackle them.  It allows me perspective, or the illusion of perspective.  It allows me to fancy myself wiser for having had the experience.  I get to humorously self-deprecate past folly, while acknowledging with gratitude that it has ultimately gifted me some sort of deeper understanding and clarity.  But for a variety of reasons that may or may not be true, I feel I don't have the luxury of time.  I also don't necessarily believe that time will provide me with insights deeper than what I've cobbled together so far.

While this piece is already annoyingly vague, I feel it needs further disclaimer before I get down to it.  I have a limited readership, but for those who read what I write regularly and for anyone who stumbles upon this particular blog entry I feel the need to declare the following:

I don't want to hear religious warnings or objections to what I'm about to write.
I'm not advocating for or soliciting anything.
I don't want to provide any "service" for free, even.
I don't want to hear from staunch atheists or scientists claiming there is a reasonable explanation for what I've experienced.
I don't want to be accused of making things up.

That being said, some or all of the following is bound to happen.  So be it.  Here we go.

A couple of  years back at my old apartment some strange things began to happen.  They began to happen shortly after I had an hours-long late night conversation with one of my best friends about almost everything.  One of the topics that was broached was my tentative longing to have an experience with a ghost-- one that was of the friendly, reassuring variety.  I thought such an experience might help alleviate some of my fear and grief over death that I carried day in and day out in a compact knot in the pit of my stomach.  Sometimes the knot would detonate and spray unimaginable darkness throughout my being, like the ink of a provoked squid.  Other times it would shrink to the size of a dime, so that, had it been in my pocket instead of my stomach, I might have tossed it good-naturedly into a wishing well so it could be surrounded with other coins that gleamed with easy hope.  Its manifestations varied in size and intensity, but its presence was constant.

A few days after this harmless little musing, our apartment thermostat began to creep up exactly 10 degrees, from a reasonable 70 to an oppressive 80.  It happened many times.  We tried to figure out how and why it was happening.  It was a twist knob in an out-of-the way location, not easy to be turned (and precisely 10 degrees) by brushing past it.  And for it to suddenly begin happening repeatedly after years without issue seemed doubly strange.  We spoke to our landlord about having our locks changed, and we were assured that they had been changed right after the previous tenant had moved out.  We scratched our heads and felt a general sense of being weirded out.  I told a friend about the experience and she said with confidence, "It's a ghost."  Thus began the process of learning about my friend's clairvoyant proclivities and of having her come over to do a reading.  My skepticism turned to anxious amazement as I watched her crystal pendulum come to life.  She'd get a feeling and ask a question;  the pendulum would swing forward and back to answer in the affirmative and side-to-side to answer no.  The wide, swooping circles also seemed to indicate an enthusiastic "yes" of some kind.  I was as fascinated as I was terrified.  I also asked my friend to facilitate conversations between me and some deceased relatives.  The experience made me cry with disbelief and joy.  They're still here, or there, or at least somewhere!

My friend ultimately determined the presence in my apartment to be a ghost of the kind and helpful variety who was trying to fulfill my request for confirmation of an "other side".  There are plenty more stories and details from this time, but I don't wish do delve into those.  Partially, it's because I find it speculative and a little tiresome to rehash something I still don't understand.  Partially it's because some of it was frightening and I don't want to dwell on that portion: like the time that Dion and I were out and my mom was watching Casper at the apartment and she called to tell us that the kitchen light had just loudly switched itself off and the Christmas lights had all begun to flash wildly.  My friend intuited the incident to be an old friend of my mom's who was so excited to see her that she got carried away trying to say hello.  Perhaps.  Who knows?

During this turbulent, invigorating, bewildering time I did crazy or totally reasonable things, depending on who you ask, like burning sage to flush out bad energy and having an elderly Buddhist nun come to bless the place.  But to the best of my ability I tried to compartmentalize things.  I stuffed the unknowable spiritual stuff in a box and put a lid on it and slid it into a dusty alcove in my brain; then I went about the business of caring for my new little baby and trying not to be overwhelmed with questions and curiosity and fear over the enormity of this otherworldly development.  I did so-so.  Dion was on the road for nights at a time and I was a new mom with rampaging post-partum hormones and a writer's imagination, so some days were better than others.  We more or less closed that chapter when we moved into our current home.

My reprieve was pretty brief.  While I now believe that much of the insomnia and anxiety stuff that began happening is due to the colloid cyst in my brain, at the time I had no leads, no explanation.  At one point a friend suggested I try Reiki to help release any stuck, negative energy.  I had always been wildly skeptical, about (a few times outright mocking) this particular alternative therapy technique, but I decided to give it a shot in an effort to get a handle on my life and mental health.  The Reiki practitioner I saw was patient and sweet and deeply kind.  She spoke to me at length about the treatment, answering all my questions before we began.  As I lay on the massage table feeling her hands hovering over me or gently making contact I definitely felt something, but that something was mainly discomfort.  There was no relaxation or gentle euphoria or glorious sense of release.  At one point it felt like something softly zinged open on the crown of my head, but the sensation was very subtle.  After the session I felt better, more open-hearted, less fearful.  And it seemed like the world took instant  notice.  Humans began inundating me with smiles and kind words or by confiding sad and deeply personal things to me.  To some extent I've always experienced this, but now it was as if the floodgates had been opened. There was a constant rush of people, mostly strangers, turning to me for comfort or speaking to me as if we were long time friends who needed to catch up.  I tried my best to take this all in stride, but it was quite overwhelming.

Not long after this began I visited a favorite bookstore on the Eastside of Milwaukee with one of my best friends.  I bought an armload of books, a decorative owl, a coin purse that said "Mo Money Mo Problems, and to my surprise, a necklace.  I've never really worn jewelry; it's just not my thing.  But this necklace called to me.  The pendant was oblong with a bubble of glass over these sketches of three trees drawn over unreadable text.  If held at just the right angle you could make out someof the words--"moon", "meow", & "music" being a few.  I loved it and I had my friend help me put it on as soon as we got back to my house.  A few minutes later I anxiously asked her to help me remove it.  I was feeling tugs on the pendant--not just one or two, but maybe a dozen, and they felt urgent.  I put the necklace in a drawer and tried not to think about it for several days.  But one day when I had a rare morning to myself, I fished out the necklace to see if I might be able to get it to move the way my friend had.  I recalled the way she held it and tried to do it the same way.  I carefully chose a deceased loved one to speak to and when I asked if she was there the necklace sprang to life, moving in expansive ovals.  There's a fine line between ecstasy and terror, I came to learn.  A finer line between interest and obsession.  I repeatedly tripped over these lines as I strove to understand this ability, or if it could be termed as such, this gift.  The way I came to construct and understand all of this in my head was as big-hearted as it was naïve, as generous as it was intrusive.  I came to believe that one of my new purposes in life was to comfort and reassure those who had lost their loved ones that they are still here in some real and observable way.  I began writing lists of family and friends who I felt were haunted by devastating losses and planned ways I could meet with them to perform this awesome testimony to their continued existence on some other plane.  Luckily I went through with precious few of these, and the people who witnessed my pendulum swinging independent of any manipulation on my end, were interested and appreciative, but certainly not weak at the knees with gratitude or awe.

I think my excitement over this ability was understandable and that my plan to bring comfort to others was adorable & well-intentioned.  But as I've come to learn, I don't really know what I'm doing or what this is.  I know that the bulk of the experiences I've had with the pendulum have been comforting and I like to believe that I've made real contact with my great grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins who have passed.  But I can't really know for sure what any of this means.  And it's more than a little presumptuous of me to think that other people want or need this in their life to help them heal or move on or find hope.  And I'm certainly a less-than-perfect vessel for this type of mediumship, if that's what this is.  I haven't attained grace or enlightenment or serenity through this.  I'm only slightly less scared of death than I've always been.  But all things being equal, I think this ability is one I'd rather have than not.  I think I'd like the option, even if I choose not to use it.  On one particularly devastating day when my health problems and this ability-with-no-roadmap converged in a place of exasperation and anger in my heart, I took my pendulum down to Lake Michigan on a sleety night and dramatically threw it into the frigid waters.  There, I thought.  Let's just be here and focus on what's right in front of me, on what's human and important: my Casper, my Dion, my parents and brother and grandmas and friends.  My LIFE.  The other side can wait, I breathed with conviction.

Then after the CT scan revealed the cyst in my head I went scrambling for some sort of necklace I must have lying around somewhere.  When it began rocking "yes" or "hello" or "still here" or "You're an idiot" or whatever it was trying to say I wept with confusion and relief.

All the old religions are rife with mystery and miracles, and if we are honest, faith is pretty much rooted in what amounts to the supernatural.  I'm not sure why something that is ancient and spiritual is automatically imbued with reverent faith, but something that is modern and spiritual is dismissed as bullshit, but I don't understand a lot of things, up to and including everything I just wrote about.

I've heard so many people mouth the words, "God works in mysterious way" in any combination of hushed reverent murmurs and smug I'm-in-a-special-God-club taunts.  In either case, my reply is: Understatement.




 

I Starred in a Real Life Lifetime Movie!

Sophomore year at UW-Parkside began with all the excitement and revelry that the previous year had lacked.  I  moved out of the cramped dorm room I had shared with a girl who was nice, but too straight-laced for my desired, under 21 college experience, and into a university apartment with 3 friends who were fun, debaucherous, and a devoted maker of very bad choices, respectively.  There would be 3 wild cards placed in our 7-person residence.  But how bad could they be? 

Well, they ran the gamut, as humans do.  One roommate was one of the most wonderful people I'd ever met and we became good friends.  One was as flat and unmemorable as a diner pancake.  And one was the most disturbed individual I've ever had the misfortune of crossing paths with.  College living went from drinking beer and watching the Daily Show to some heinous Lifetime Movie where the villainess seemed so over-the top evil you had a hard time suspending disbelief.  And it all began so innocently.

One night I awoke around 2 a.m. with an urgent need to pee.  One of my roommates was in the shower, which wasn't so odd as we were taking full advantage of our independence through binge drinking and adopting ludicrous sleep/wake schedules.  Without a second's thought I shuffled over to the bathroom on the other side of the apartment.  It was meant for the 3 roommates who resided on that side, but we weren't dictatorial about it.  If a bathroom was in use a roommate was welcome to pee in the one that was open.  Or at least that was the understanding that six of the seven roommates had.  When I finished peeing and washing my hands, Unstable One, poked her head out of her bedroom and hissed, "Why are you using our bathroom?!"  I explained the situation and with a suspicious look in her eye she ducked back into the dark of her room.  I shrugged it off and went back to bed. 

The following day the phone on our side of the apartment rang, and it was a call for Unstable One.  We had 2 landlines, one on each side of the apartment, so we had to share and be respectful of our phone time.  Unstable One had taken to using the internet in her room which used a dial-up connection and rendered their phone line unusable while she was online.  So she gave out our phone number to her one friend (who also happened to be her cousin) and we would deliver our cordless phone to her so that she could talk and browse the web at the same time.  Unstable One seemed heedless of common courtesy or of taking advantage of people's kindness, so it had surprised me when she seemed so ruffled by my quick potty break in a bathroom she shared with 2 other people.  In any case, I was the one who delivered the cordless phone to her that day, which is when I noticed the sign taped to her bathroom door.  She had used her computer to make a big stop sign image and typed below: "Unless your name is (here she listed her name and the names of the 2 other girls on that side of the apartment) you may not use this bathroom."  My jaw quite literally dropped. 

I talked to my friends and roommates about it.  They found it to be insane and somewhat hilarious and pretty hypocritical, considering her blatantly rude daily usage of our phone.  I talked to the other two girls who lived on that side of the apartment.  They told me they had nothing to do with the sign and didn't care at all if I ever used their bathroom.  While I suppose I should have talked the issue out with Unstable One, I decided to go a different route-- one that was somewhat immature, but extremely hilarious, in my opinion.  I didn't go so far as to design a fancy sign on the computer; I settled for torn notebook paper and a marker with my big, blocky handwriting that read:
"HALT! Unless your name is (I listed each roommate but Unstable One) You May Not Use This Microwave!!!" 

The microwave was my contribution to our communal living.  Unstable One used it liberally and I had no problem with it, until she made her strange bathroom sign.  Actually I had no problem with her using it after posting the sign; I just wanted to call attention to her ridiculous decree via an equally ridiculous decree.  I thought the sign would make a point and bring some levity to a ridiculous situation.  Instead, it set off a series of events so terrifying and deranged I still struggle to believe a human reacted this way. 

One night Unstable One had the apartment to herself.  I was working the late shift at the campus library and everyone else was out as well.  When I returned home Unstable One and her cousin were the only ones there.  They were in our bathroom, although there was clearly no one using theirs.  They were giggling hysterically.  When I asked what they were doing they giggled something unintelligible and left the apartment. 

Over the next several hours and days my roommates and I learned they had been tampering with as much of our stuff as they could get into.  And not in a "harmless prank" sort of way.  It was in a "very real potential to maim you, make you violently ill, or kill you" sort of way.  We all ended up throwing out combined hundreds of dollars worth of toiletries and food.  The only things we kept were canned goods, I believe, and even those felt suspect.  Of all the things I learned that Unstable One did, I'm sure there are countless more I'll never know about.  And maybe that's for the best.  But here is a list of things she and her cousin did that fateful night:

*Put dirty kitty litter in my cereal box (I ate a couple bites before I detected something was wrong)
*Put bleach in a roommate's contact lens case (she flushed her eye out and managed to keep her vision)
*Put Nair in a roommate's conditioner (she smelled it before using it, luckily)
*Emptied my brand new asthma inhaler (there were no puncture marks, so she literally pumped it 60 plus times to make sure I wouldn't have it available during an attack)
*Used all of our toothbrushes to scrub the toilet (we tossed them before using them, thankfully)

We filed police reports and had countless meetings to get her removed from our residence.  It was "our word against hers".  As if this were some very colorful conspiracy to alienate an innocent.  As if we were the bullies, the psychopaths.  She filed appeal after appeal and managed to stay in our apartment until the end of the year.  Meanwhile we kept all of our belongings locked in our individual rooms, taking them out long enough to use them and then immediately putting them back under lock and key.  All of us were equal parts terrified of this lunatic under our roof and furious with the university for not taking reasonable steps to remove her.

There were two times when I guess I "took the high road", times when I could have struck back and hurt Unstable One.  Once was when she had left for class, but forgot her keys on the kitchen table.  There were at least a dozen keys on that chain--the apartment, car keys etc.  At the very least it would have been a pain in the ass to replace them all.  My friend urged me to let her throw them in the dumpster.  I was tempted, but refused.  When Unstable One knocked sheepishly on the door 15 minutes later, I let her in.  Her eyes widened in surprise when she saw her keys sitting where she had left them.  Clearly that wouldn't have been her move had she been in my place.  She actually said, "Thank-you" to me for not fucking with her property. 

The other time was something my roommates and I joked and fantasized about all of the time.  After my facetious microwave sign was posted, Unstable One wasted no time in procuring her own microwave.  It was the largest microwave I've ever seen, almost a refrigerator.  It was sleek, spaceship-y silver and had dozens of buttons for any possible entrée you might wish to heat.  We dubbed it "The Millennium Microwave".  One of my friends and roommates wanted more than anything to snip the power cord with a pair of scissors on the very last day of school.  While that felt like some mild sort of justice, I couldn't let her go through with it. 

In both of these situations, I wasn't being noble; I was practicing self and group preservation.  I had no idea what Unstable One was capable of.  If posting a silly note poked her hornet's nest to this degree I didn't want to see what something malicious would provoke her to do.  I honestly believed she was capable of murder.  So she stayed to the bitter end, with her keys and gargantuan microwave in tact.

That summer I became extremely ill.  I had to take the following semester off to recover.  It took approximately a zillion tests, including a lymph node biopsy to rule out Lymphoma, to determine that I had Epstein Barr, CMV, and latent Tuberculosis.  My friend, who visited me at UW-Parkside every weekend, also got sick, even sicker than I.  She developed lesions on her brain and nearly died.  She was in ICU for months and had to relearn her motor skills.  Unstable one was supposedly a Microbiology major, although not much that came out of her mouth was truthful.  Still, I have no idea what she had access to and what she put in our food and toiletries.  I have no idea what my friends and I were exposed to.  Was she responsible for my illness or for my friend's?  I have no way of knowing for sure.  All I know is that we need better ways to help the severely mentally ill and the people they victimize.  And while it would be easy to say Unstable one was purely evil, it's more likely that she was damaged by horrors I can't even guess at--be they brain chemistry, home life atrocities, or more likely a combination of the two.  I hope someone helped her conquer, or at least tame, her demons somehow, and that they aren't still being unleashed on innocent people as we speak.