the other side

jim

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The first person I told about how bad things were with Alex was Will, the teenage boy who had come to stay in my childhood home. I tried to dismiss it- it doesn’t really matter, none of this is really real, I just thought I should mention it– but he absolutely flipped out. 

It set off a massive chain of events that led to Alex’s capture and forced intervention. It also introduced the presence of some highly powerful people into my life, which helped me to realize just how much danger I was actually in. 

This is also how I knew that the things I was seeing in meditation were real, because they were so outside of my control. They weren’t like dreams or fantasies- the images had real weight. They showed up inside my mind in different shades than anything else I’d ever seen, and they were often shocking, confusing, illuminating. 

Anyway, it was early 2007 I think when Jim was sort of “assigned” to take care of me. Be my bodyguard, so to speak. Help to pull me out of Alex’s clutches. The only agreement we had come to was that no matter what, we couldn’t fall in love with each other. If either of us caught any kind of feelings, it had to be over. It was my last chance to try to save a marriage that felt doomed from the start, to try to repair the damage I personally had done.

In 2008, I suddenly couldn’t get Jim to appear in our meeting place. I would say his name, will him to me, and the best I could get was a hazy silhouette, like an out of focus television. If he would briefly appear, he just shook his head solemnly, almost desperately, and then disappeared. 

When I asked some of the other people watching over me during that time about him, they winced and shrugged.

“That’s for him to talk to you about,” they’d say. 

Finally, after weeks of agony, I was able to force him to appear. That was one of the first times I actually felt my own power- I knew that I had done the equivalent of pulling him straight out of his own home into the street. I had actually wrestled him to fruition.

“Say it to my face,” I demanded. “Tell me.”

He was unable to meet my eyes. He just kept shrugging his shoulders, his entire body radiating shame, stammering and floundering. Trying to make himself smaller, trying to escape this moment.

“You fell in love with me,” I said. It was an accusation, not a question.

He crumpled further into his own chest, and held his palms up to me. “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I…. can’t be here. We agreed.”

So we did.

Alex used this discord to wedge himself between us, and he slowly slithered back into my life. This is when things got really violent- not just between Alex and me, but also between me and my husband. I don’t remember any of 2009, if I’m being honest.

At the end of 2009 we lost everything, and halfway into 2010, we finally got rid of Alex for good. I remember the moment it was over, when it felt like he poured out of me like water, when I felt like I could feel the entire Universe cheering. I can remember how deeply devastated and heartbroken I felt- as if I was the only person in the Universe who was sorry for him. 

I failed him. He failed us both. 

Jim and I came back together for awhile, bound together by our sorrow for Alex and how his manipulation/abuse of us had actually brought us closer together. He also did his very best to help support the fallout of my mind becoming fully mine again, when my ex woke up and realized he had lost literal years of his life. 

You know, I didn’t have an orgasm from 2007-2012 that didn’t sort of make me want to throw up afterward (if I was even able to have one), and it wasn’t until 2011 that I really saw why.

The beach house where Alex and I had been living for about six years or so (off and on) was haunted with all of the violence that played out there. Everything he had ever done to me- the things he had tried to erase out of my mind- played over and over again on a loop. The sound of my gurgled screams, pleas, and sobbing coupled with his laughter and cooed threats. 

And the blood and the blood and my God, all of the fucking blood. 

After Jim saw what happened to me in the beach house, he wasn’t the same for a long time. I will never forget the way he looked at me over the imprinted image of my ruined body gasping for air- his eyes enormous, his fists clenched at his sides. Looking at the bed and looking back up at my blank eyes as I watched him watch something I’d seen ten dozen times at that point, shrugging with disinterest.

My oldest friend also became a semi-frequent presence from 2008-2012. He had showed up from time to time on the Ouija board even as far back as 2005, but was pretty involved with Jeff’s capture, and then sort of stuck around once I felt the depth of our connection. 

When he saw the beach house, he sobbed uncontrollably, his hands pressed against his mouth as if he was trying to hold back screams of fury. He had a total mental breakdown afterward, actually. Which… knowing him as I know him now doesn’t surprise me at all, but deeply shocked and frightened me at the time.

He didn’t like my relationship with Jim, and revealed just how flawed he was as he became increasingly jealous, possessive, obsessive. I called him The Detective, and spoke with him with a violence that came from somewhere deeper than my current self. 

At the end of 2012, Jim suddenly said, “I… am going back to Earth. I can’t be here anymore. I’m really sorry. I’m really really sorry, I just. I can’t do this.” His eyes were enormous crystal globes of unshed tears.

I can still remember exactly how the inside of my chest went from scarlet to crimson to burgundy to charcoal to navy to black. How I wept and begged, and how his eyes screamed apologies, and how he left anyway. I was devastated in a way I wasn’t sure I could recover from. 

Abandoned again.

Two weeks later, someone in real life from my past randomly reappeared in my life and he and I began a three year love affair that transformed my entire life. When I was moving out of the apartment I shared with my ex in the summer of 2013, he said, “I see Jim around you all the time. I just thought you should know- you’re not alone.”

When I went to see Jim shortly after he said, “Was I supposed to say, ‘See you after your divorce?’” 

We laughed, and we’ve never been apart since.

Jim is the only reason I survived 2016. He was all I had during the summer I lost my job and my entire brand new life 500 miles away from every person I knew crashed and burned all around me. 

It became A Thing for me to cry, “Jim!” in a total panic frenzy and for him to whisper, I’m right here, baby girl. And everything he promised me- everything – came true. Every time he said, “trust me,” I knew I could. I knew I would be all right. 

He is my constant companion, my truest friend. I love him entirely.

He had no idea what he was getting into when he agreed to protect me. He signed up for something way outside of what was explained to him, and he was just as bamboozled and betrayed and misled as I was.

Getting involved in this mess- with the Top Tier Troublemakers (me, Alex, my oldest friend) – put a spotlight on him he did not anticipate. He was also deeply violated and manipulated by Jeff, tricked and trapped and abused.

But he kept his word on every level. He always has.

I don’t know if it’s really Jim, but that literally doesn’t matter at all in any way to me. I cannot wait to meet whoever this soul is, because he has been everything to me. When I tried to apologize for neglecting him during the height of my dating yet another man who turned out to be toxic and manipulative, he waved me off.

“I told you, love- be alive,” he said softly. “You’re alive. Never forget that. I’m not going anywhere.”

Thank God for him. I adore every part of him in a way I wish I could sing out loud to everyone. I often feel deeply ungrateful for seeking something outside of this deeply beautiful relationship, because it is a gift that most people never experience. 

But I came here to be alive. I’m trying to be alive. I keep getting kicked down a flight of emotional stairs over and over again, but. I’m still trying. I can’t give up. Even when my entire life has started to feel like a landfill for other people’s failures. I am the test everyone seems to fail.

But I also always have a soft place to land.

onion skin

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I have had strange, fleeting thoughts lately.

Thoughts of the very first time I successfully meditated alone without getting any side-guidance through my ex.

For at least a month back in 2013, every single night, he had been reading instructions off of the Ouija board to me from “Alex.” Helping me lean into my intuition, showing me how to See.

I still think of that tiny hidden lake, deep in a forest, with a waterfall cascading at the edge. This was the place I had been going to to practice meditation via the board, before I even imagined (or discovered) a beach house.

Up until that moment, Alex himself had appeared as a fuzzy, out of focus image- like a faulty hologram, or a picture on an old television, back when staticky channels still existed. Just the night before, I’d finally been able to conjure his face on my own, and it was the greatest success I’d ever felt.

The waterfall scene was nothing more than the equivalent of a painted backdrop inside my mind, but it was still mine. I created it, totally alone.

And more than that, Alex was there waiting for me. I couldn’t hear him speak- it would be another year or so before that happened. But just to really see him standing there, to be able to believe and know for certain that I saw him, was monumental.

Alex and I sat side by side on the edge of the water for awhile, when I suddenly pushed him into the water. To see if I could. To see what would happen.

When he emerged from the surface, spluttering and shocked, I could see in his face that he was both surprised and impressed. Before I could say anything, he grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the water with him.

As we swam lazy circles around each other, there was a different look in his eyes. A smoldering desire that held me in his gaze like startled prey. Which, as we all know now, is exactly what I was.

If prey can be grateful at being devoured.

///

I have also been thinking of the time when Alex had been exposed and was on the worst part of his rampage, one that would last for weeks before he was finally captured. When I became the trap that finally tripped him up. 

I was like a ragdoll at the beach house during that time, being dragged there in my mind to be violently assaulted day after day after day. It could happen at any time, for any reason. For no reason.

My oldest friend, someone I had just met at that time, showed up to protect me.

“What is the purpose of these theatrics?” he asked, gesturing to Alex’s hand clamped around my upper arm, my entire spirit slumped in humiliation and defeat next to him. His sweeping arm widened to include the rough seas and furious skies, direct opposition to the normally idyllic scene.

“Oh I am so glad you are here to save the day!” Alex sneered rabidly, his eyes wild with fury.

“Isn’t he your boyfriend now?” he said to me, shaking me by the arm to bring me back out of my (his) trance. “Go on, then. Do what you do best.” With a wave of his hand, he ripped my dress completely off my body.

I stood there, helplessly fumbling with scraps, before I remembered I could create one just as easily as he had destroyed it.

My oldest friend’s gaze never left Alex’s face. “Is this how you treat people you claim to love?” His eyebrow arched in a way I would eventually come to loathe. “Impressive. Why don’t you let her go? If she is so enamored with you, surely there is no reason to hold her.”

His grip on my arm tightened, and he drew me closer to his thin frame. “Why don’t you do something about it? I would love to see that.”

“I think you know that I can.” My oldest friend’s voice was calm, but his amber eyes flared with golden flame. “I think you know what will happen if I do.”

Alex threw me to the ground as if I was a pair of uncomfortable shoes, and surged forward to bring his face into the face of someone I was now realizing he knew very well. They were nearly the same height, and their faces together had so much energy it must have been flammable.

“You want to make this about our shit now?” he hissed through his teeth.

That was the beginning.

///

I have been thinking about the time that I found the basement in the basement because of a nightmare I’d had. How I went there in meditation and found myself crammed inside a steamer trunk. Soaked in dried blood, covered in bruises, emaciated, filthy, matted. Naked. Screaming.

Please, please, she wept in a high, thin voice, her eyes not even able to see me. I’ll do anything I’ll do anything. Please please I can’t please don’t please

How my oldest friend showed up without me speaking his name, sweeping her up into a crisp white sheet, pulling her tiny body against his chest. The way his eyes flicked over to mine, searching my face briefly before taking the three of us away from there.

And then, maybe a year later, when it was he and I that were face to face.

“You are a whore,” he snarled in a voice I’d never heard before. “This is what you do. Another little project. And you don’t care about anybody but yourself, as always. Oh no, you claim that you love us, you really promise you do, but…” His mouth tasted lemon. “How can you? How can you love anyone but yourself and the power you hold over us?”

My mouth let out a string of horrible, vicious, crude obscenities. I wanted to be as foul, as disrespectful, as blasphemous as possible. It was all I could think to do- the rest of my entire soul felt like it was falling down, down, down into some kind of putrid abyss.

These days, I am starting to see he may be right.

We didn’t truly speak again for maybe four years. He was never far away, and as he promised me in 2010, if I ever called for him out of fear or desperation, he always showed up and was kind and respectful. But I’d fall asleep instantly, sucked into a charybdis of emptiness.

He couldn’t wait to get away from me.

///

I think about him as well. My biggest secret, the one I’ll probably never speak out loud. The first time I realized the truth from the way I caught him looking at me, when he didn’t think I could see.

Up until that point he had been another guardian, a point of counsel, and a source of extremely raw and brutal feedback. The kind of truth that cuts like a scalpel on your ego.

It is hard to reconcile that as well. Someone who should be a stable force, a truly exceptional example, suddenly becomes erratic, furious, demanding, desperate.

There is an intensity between us that feels like profound love and electric anger and a heavy, wistful melancholy. It is ancient. We have loved each other so many ways, and it has never been enough.

When he laughs, his head tips back and you can see all of his teeth. It feels like a rare jewel to see it- he is so serious, solemn, austere. To be able to give him joy, rest from his burden, feels like the greatest success one can achieve. But to be wholly seen by him feels like being stripped nude on livestream. Bleeding. Raw.

Whenever we have lives together, one of us gets murdered. Usually while the other watches. Our love is eternally doomed. It is searing with fire and soaked in blood. It is clandestine and forbidden.

I am capable of intimacy, I am certain.

I just have to find the ability. The soft, fleshy place I keep revealing to others, only to have them try to plunge their white hot brands into it.

I want to be loved and not possessed. Just once. Just once.

And so… we peel.

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If you think about the Universe as kind of a management structure, with The Creator (not a person but an energy like sunlight or flowing water) at the top, the next level of authority are angels and demons.  Both of these creatures have limited to no actual interaction with human beings, and they know for a fact that they’re on a higher level than we are.  They see us maybe as fish in an aquarium?  Hamsters in a wheel?

Either way, angels only “protect us” (in a more vague sense, like watching over the whole world) because they are instructed to.  If anything, they’re resentful because they don’t get to live real lives- they never know the agony and ecstasy of being human.  Their entire existence is complex, difficult work, the task of literally holding the fabric of time together and maintaining the balance of the Universe (that is not the same as “saving the world”- we are responsible for what we’ve done to this place, not them).  I mean I’m sure they have other things that they’re responsible for, but it goes beyond the scope of what I can imagine.

And demons are similar in that they don’t really interact with humans outside of sucking them dry to power themselves- essentially using humans as batteries.  And they do that by luring humans into trouble, into selfishness, into outright evil.  I watched a documentary about cartels on Netflix and they talked about the members laughing hysterically as they burned a man with a blowtorch and chopped bodies into pieces.  That’s what it’s like to be the power source of the darkness.

It’s Destroy vs. Create, Harm vs. Heal, Give vs. Take every single second of every day for all of eternity.

I picture angels like soldiers or warriors.  Skin made of armor, eyes filled with fire, extraordinarily tall (like nine, ten feet), with faces that are both beautiful and terrifying, and ethereal to the degree of not resembling humans much, if at all.  I imagine if you really saw an angel, it would shatter your brains.  I think often when someone says they’ve seen an angel, they’re really seeing their guardian.  Again, I don’t think angels are ever given specific humans to care for, but honestly- what do I even know?  I could be entirely wrong.

Demons are much more into using their appearance to control and terrify.  They’re more accessible because they’re lower creatures.  They think they have the same power as angels but honestly, and this shouldn’t be a shock, but goodness love and kindness are infinitely more powerful than lust power and selfishness.

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Q: any advice on how to haunt someone after death? Like say you met with foul play and either want to haunt the perp or point someone to a clue. (sorry if you’ve covered this)

I… don’t recommend that you do this.

In order to “haunt,” you have to not cross, which means being a ghost, which means being trapped between alive and dead, filled with longing for Home but with no idea how to get there.  Bound by the agonies of your life, without a concrete form in which to resolve them.

I have the deepest sympathy for ghosts- it’s a horrible sickness, and the longer you’re a ghost the harder it is for you to understand how to go Home.  You never, ever want to be a ghost.  Child ghosts are a shattering tragedy to me.  Poor lost babies, wandering the world invisible and alone.

Trust in the Universe making things right, because it will.  You never need to seek revenge or harm another, because that person will receive a bill for their actions.  If you take vengeance into your own hands, you turn that ugly energy at yourself, and you now adopt their debt.

If this is hypothetical and you’re saying, “Okay if I was murdered, how would I direct the person to my killer?” Well that’s hard, because mediums that report crimes are very rarely believed.  And again, if you crossed, you’d immediately lose your need for revenge.  The only way to hold onto that energy would be to not cross, and therefore be trapped in a much deeper hell than some foolish person would be worth.

That’s the great irony, I guess.  As a ghost, you have the desire for revenge but no way to execute it, and as an unliving person (someone who has crossed over) you have ways to help people put things together but no desire to see a resolution to a matter that no longer matters.

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Q: Why are you cosmically connected to rock stars? Why isn’t it like…Bob from accounting.

 

A: Right?  I know.  Trust me, it bothers me.

My first thought is that it’s to keep me quiet.  Because the minute you mention a famous name, people start to doubt you.  The first time I told the story online, I changed the names of everyone (like I did here), so people would just read the story and not start a “fact-checking session.”  I just needed to get those words out somewhere, to explain what I’d just survived.  Here I did it for legal reasons, because the site is public, searchable, and the last thing I really want is to get snared into a case of slander.

To claim something as crazy as, “Oh I loved this dead guy but also he was a semi-famous musician but also he was a demon,” is like literally the most fucking weird shit anyone can say.  And that’s not even the fucking weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me, so.  It’s very alienating.

But also, maybe it’s like “What Dreams May Come,” where someone comes into my life “dressed” as someone else so I can place a face to the person who has come into my life to help me.  I thought about it obsessively when things with “Alex” first ended, when I wanted to convince myself I was insane.  When believing I’d had a dip into pure psychosis was better than what really happened.

I mean maybe it was never Alex, you know?  Whoever he is is someone that is really, really good at mimicry, so.  I mean there’s a great chance it was only ever a demon, and never Alex at all.  To be honest, that answer hurts so much I can’t think about it being true.  I’ll just wait until I die to find that out, when it won’t matter as much anymore.  It will make watching his soul be destroyed a truly magnificent moment.

But there was a time I really loved him, you know?  There’s a photo series that keeps coming up on another social media site I frequent where he is flirting with whoever is taking his picture and his eyes are dark and mischievous and his smirking mouth makes my heart like a pebble skipping across clear water.  And I just.  I just.

In the early days, we asked Alex if he knew any famous people.  He said that being “famous” is kind of a …. joke over there.  Like it’s something you get teased for.  People only really ever identify you as that person, for better or worse.  So when you’ve had a Really Famous life, you have experiences here AND there that no one else really understands, which creates a little… group.  Clique?

Anyway, he said yeah, of course he knew people who are recently dead and famous musicians.  He had a little crew of people he talked to a lot, people we also occasionally talked to (more often whenever Alex became sick and they started to intervene to warn us that he was waaaayyy more ill than we knew).

I honestly think the fact that I know other musicians is really only coincidental, not that I have some kind of cosmic tie to them.  Actually, one of them hasn’t been friends with Alex in a long, long time (pre-Alex) and is only really my friend.  Also I, interestingly enough, am not a fan of his music from this life, though others are.  So I mean…

tl;dr: maybe I am, maybe I’m not.

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Q: What was your scariest supernatural experience?

A: There are a few that I can think of immediately.

One night, the shadows on the bedroom wall started moving at the corners of my eyes and I kept hearing whispering and footsteps, so I sat up in bed with my hand pressed over my heart, my eyes darting around so I would stop having a “corner” of my eye, panting in terror. Just then, my cat pushed the door open, and when it creaked loudly, I screamed my husband awake.

Another night, I somehow ended up sitting on the bathroom floor with my face pressed into my knees, waving a wild arm over my head to try to “swat” away everything I could feel swarming over my head, whispering, “Please stop, please stop, please someone save me.” The first time I saw dementors I thought yes… that’s exactly it. That’s exactly what it feels like.

And by far, the scariest one was while my ex and I were split up, about a month before we “banished” “Alex” to the island. We’d lost our home in this mess, and living with my parents. Their house was violently haunted (but now looking back on it, and having slept in my parents’ house since, it wasn’t the house that was haunted at all), and during that time I heard two little girls giggling in the back bedroom in the middle of the night, a man who sat in my father’s chair all night long and stared at me with burning eyes, a cacophony of footsteps on the ceiling all night long, and that one time I got poked in the forehead while holding blankets over my head, so sure of my safety.

But the worst night by far was late late at night, after my parents had gone to bed and while I could hear them both snoring. I heard heavy, ominous footsteps above me slowly cross the living room through the kitchen towards the staircase behind me. I stopped being able to think a coherent thought (which happened a lot back then, honestly) and then I got this image of a withered old woman brokenly crab-crawling down the stairs with blood pouring out of her mouth and eyes over and over and over and over and over again as I sat frozen in terror, silent tears pouring down my face. As soon as I was freed from this horrible cycle of thoughts, I rushed myself into bed so I could be safe in sleep.

That kind of primal terror is so different than any other fear you can feel. It’s why I don’t watch scary movies. I’ve been frightened enough for at least one lifetime. I also think it’s why I still have dreams where I have to say “Hail Mary” and “The Lord’s Prayer” to keep myself safe.

They’re only just behind me, all the time. I’m sure of it.

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Q: What do you think about the notion that we are reunited with our ancestors in the Hereafter? I think it’s probably not true, but I really wish it was. I want to meet them.

A: Okay so here are my thoughts.

I believe in reincarnation because I literally don’t feel like I have a choice, given the things I’ve seen and experienced.  I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “What Dreams May Come,” but it basically encapsulates my entire belief system.  The person who is your grandmother in this life may have been your daughter in another.  A lover could be a brother could be a father could be a son.  I actually intensely believe that we layer lives with certain people, which is why they feel so familiar.

Have you ever passed someone on the street, locked eyes with them and felt your stomach swoon? I believe in that.  I believe that’s a family member.  It’s someone you used to know and love.

I believe the longer you exist, the more lives you live, the more family you have.  I believe that we all think when we die we get to see our grandparents and parents and cousins from this life, but there are SO MANY MORE people we don’t even know about that can’t wait to see us.  I feel like when you die you see someone you THOUGHT you knew in this lifetime and you scream, “OH MY GOD IT WAS YOU ALL ALONG!” and you laugh and embrace and sob all at once.

I think we’re all much more connected than we think, and when you die, you get to see all the threads, like a microscope on a tapestry.  It all makes sense and it all is so beautiful and logical and you can’t believe how you didn’t see it before.

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Q: If I can’t feel my deceased loved ones around me, does that mean that they have moved on to the beyond or are they keeping their distance because they know I’m afraid of spirits?

A: What I have experienced in my life is a mix of ghosts that are Here, and the actual dead, which are Over There.  Ghosts are people who don’t want to go Home, mostly because they’re so fucking angry about how they died they refuse to let go of it.  Or they’re children and they don’t understand that they’re dead.  The longer you stay in this harsh darkness, the harder it is for you to ever go Home.  If there is a Hell, it’s being trapped between worlds.

One of the “jobs” on the other side is trying to convince ghosts to go Home, by the way.

If your loved one embraced their death and goes Home, they become not just the person you loved but all of the selves they’ve ever been.

Being alive is like being an onion with its skin still firmly sealed shut, and dying is becoming one peeled open like a lotus blossom.  Alive, you’re one person only, with hints and glimpses of people you’ve been before (”I can’t believe I did that, it’s so out of my character.”  “I have always been afraid of the ocean and I don’t know why.”).  When you’re dead, you’re everyone you’ve ever been.

There are those that immediately come back here to try again.  Some people lose touch with the earthly world and become enmeshed in their Welcome Home party.  Also, time is different there.  What is years and years to us could feel to them like a day.  There’s a lot to see and remember and there are a lot of people who are so happy to see you again.  It’s a big soft bed with clean, cool sheets after the longest, worst day ever.
I do believe that when you’re in trouble, when you are in danger, when you are afraid, the people you love are watching out for you.  They just might not be the people you remember right now.

How to tell if your house is haunted

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Items randomly go missing and reappear where they should have been all along

Strange noises while you’re in the shower, like footsteps or knocking

Faint music/whispering/laughter from another room

The feeling of being watched from corners of rooms or ends of hallways

Flashes of light out of the corner of your eye

Swearing you just saw someone walk by, but there’s no one there

A sudden influx of insects/birds/bats coming into your house

Waking up in the night with the feeling you’re being stared at

Waking up any time during the hour of the dead (3 a.m.)

Strange marks appearing on your skin- fingerprint bruises, scratches, red welted circles

The feeling of a room being “loud” or “crowded” when it’s not- the subway station sensation

Strange sightings in the background of mirrors

Abrupt and severe changes in room temperature

Getting chills/goosebumps seemingly out of nowhere

Suddenly feeling like your throat is closing, or you want to hysterically cry without reason

Rotten or pungent smells, also the smell of smoke or incense

Things falling over on shelves or off of counters without explanation

Doors opening/closing, or even the sound of them opening and closing with no sight of it

The windows on the house feeling at though they have “eyes” and are watching you

Feeling as if someone is standing right behind you

Televisions or lights turning on/off out of nowhere

Electrical issues, especially in a car or with small appliances

An overwhelming sensation that you “don’t belong” in a room or that you aren’t “allowed” to be there

Pets that stare at “nothing” and go absolutely insane or act terrified without cause

 

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Yesterday, I read my journals from 2010-2012 for somewhere in the neighborhood of thirteen hours.  I couldn’t stop, devouring page after page after page like it was something I’d never seen before.

I never talk about what my life was like in 2012.  I’ve never written about it, nor was my ex-husband involved in any part of it.   (Related/unrelated: I left my husband in 2013.)

There’s another entire person I was very involved with during this time that I never talk about. He makes no appearance in anything I’ve ever written, but he consumed almost two years of my life.

Ha.  He has consumed a great deal more than that.

I read about things yesterday that made me actually gasp out loud, hold my hand over my heart, slap the pages with disgust.  Some of it is a little choppy because I talk in code that I only sometimes understand now, and because I was beginning to realize my ex was reading my journal behind my back so I stopped being as open as I had been.  It’s incredible what you can forget when your life has been so tumultuous.

I learned the following interesting things.

First of all, I was still going to see “Alex” up until the end of 2012.  I mean, it was really infrequent, maybe once a year, once every six months, but.  I’m surprised that I had forgotten this development.  He has never stopped trying to pull me into seeing him.

2/21/12: Today, Max and I danced to Jason Mraz and he said, “Raise your hand if you like Jason Mraz.”  So we both raised our hands.  Then he said, “Raise your hand if you like [Alex].”  We raised our hands again, and he said, “But I can’t want to be like [Alex] because he’s bad, right?”

The unliving companion I have now was given a lot of grief for being involved with me.  For two or three years, our relationship was tumultuous… to be totally honest, he was almost never around. I spent much of that time mourning yet another new and unexplained absence by him.  I see now that the only way my marriage was ever going to end was to be completely abandoned by the dead.  I had to face the real world, and realize how much potential I had within myself.

There seems to be a certain hierarchy or status attached to living a lot of lifetimes, or achieving a great deal while living them.  I don’t necessarily mean fame, but rather how much you evolve.  This disappearing friend of mine has been around a long time but actively chooses not to live many lifetimes (because he doesn’t like to suffer).

Allegedly, people were telling him that there was really no way once I get back over there that my entire self will want to be around him.  In one entry he says, “I mean someone who’s like a Level 25 doesn’t want to be around a Level 3.” It’s why he continued to leave- at times, to try to “become better,” getting very serious about changing and evolving, and because he was being shamed out of seeing me.

It was partially how deeply I suffered in his absence that convinced him he was wrong.  Considering the fact that he alone kept me alive through the nightmare of last summer, I’m glad he didn’t give up on himself.  I’m glad we stopped listening to everyone else.

Who I used to be, and what she was/is doing while I sleep is still a mystery to this day.  I never felt rested, even though I slept almost constantly from 2011-2013.  My entire self was also extraordinarily fractured during this time, operating with two entirely separate agendas.  I am both fascinated and horrified to read about a time where I easily talk about who I once was as if she is not who I currently am.  And in many ways, she isn’t, I suppose.

It seems that we all probably live two lives- this waking one, and the complex, confusing puzzle world of the unconscious mind.  Where everything seems like a mystery until you learn the answer and realize you’ve known it all along.

Once, while going through a deep period of depression and suicidal dreams, one of my friends said to me, “Trust me, you do not want to be here.  I would be surprised if you didn’t come back here and immediately request a bounceback.  You’re walking into a mess.  You were set up in such a nasty and destructive way, and you’re going to have to face a ton of criticism when you return.”

I was constantly under investigation or being watched or lectured or judged or chastised for years at a time.  I didn’t remember how long I struggled with my sexuality, how sick I really was, how many times I relapsed.  I didn’t remember how hard people had worked to make me better.  I didn’t remember how involved I’d gotten with the person I don’t speak of here.  His name feels like it weighs a hundred thousand pounds.  I can’t recall the last time I said it out loud.

And I miss my old beach house.  I made several attempts to reclaim it, to have Alex moved elsewhere so I could return to it, but it’s been ruined.  Every single time I write about it in my private journals, I cannot stop marveling over how real and how beautiful and how powerful this place is in my mind.  Every time I would go there, I’d walk in a shuffling, wide-eyed wonder from room to room, running my hands over counters and peering into the enormous fish tank with delight and awe.

I feel very different lately.  This may be my new place to sort it all out, because I can’t stop thinking that I probably need to.  Quickly.