the other side

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Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the way things used to be, the life I used to live.

For the first time in my entire life, I am what I would consider to be successful.  I live in a town I love, close to the ocean, and I don’t worry about money even a little.  I am luckier than I feel I’ve ever been in my life at this very moment.

It took me three years just to get over what happened to me, and I am very cautious to let anything that is “overly” supernatural back into my life.  I nearly lost my entire mind, and maybe even my soul, and the idea of even putting myself that close to risk again is too much to bear.

With that being said, I lost a part of myself I deeply loved.  The little homes I lived in on the other side were all so valuable to me.  I miss my beach house most of all, but of course, he is still there.  Every time I even try to think about it, it’s from very very far away, and I don’t attempt to get any closer.  He still tries to find ways to lure me in, and I imagine he always will.

I guess the thing that feels difficult is that so much of my life is a secret.  I live in an entirely new area with people who don’t know me or my family or people I went to high school with, so I don’t talk about my past.  I don’t say much about who I am at all, to be honest.  There is no one left on this earth who knows who I am right now.

And yet, this part of me feels like the most important thing I’ve ever done, or will ever do.

I have all of these questions about that period of time that no one can really answer, because my ex-husband’s experience was so much different.  The other day I wondered if I only stayed with him because I knew that he was my plug to the other side.  He was my channel.  In some ways, it feels like he owed me a debt that I collected on in this lifetime.  Not to mention that we know that my ex is much closer to “Alex’s” crew than he is to mine.

I never get over the irony of Alex having this ‘angelic’ legacy, of having a voice like a church choir, of having a personality like a slightly wounded but enthusiastic puppy dog.  And then you look at his face, really look at it, and you can see the truth about who he is.  Razor sharp teeth, overly pronounced cheekbones, dark black eyes deep in the socket.  When things were good, before they ever got ugly, I used to joke he had demon teeth.  Now when I see pictures of him, the darkness is all I can see.

I worry that he’s not just after me, but that he’s after many people in the world.  Empaths and healers.  I know that he cannot leave the island but he also likely can be reached by his followers and cronies.  I worry about what he’s having them do.  I wonder if I should be the one who goes to see him and asks what the fuck he’s up to.  I’m the only person he ever listens to, apparently, but I don’t want to put myself in a position of that level of danger ever again.  I have spent centuries of work on him and I am so internally and privately furious at how much I have lost and sacrificed for him.

From what I understand, given my position over there, the work I do, the associates I have, I may have destroyed my reputation by being so heavily involved with him.  Furthermore, it’s evident to me that people think I’ve been brainwashed or manipulated or sickened by him, and it’s hard for me to know if that’s true or not.  The more the me I am now feels that may be the case, the more my inner selves feel adamant that it’s not.

I remember in the depths of my sickness, when I was first realizing what had happened to me, when the flashbacks of the assaults and rapes were first surfacing, when I meditated and found a part of myself locked inside a box in a basement, the other part of me, the part I refer to as Her/Me or Hermie, was utterly dismissive.  Uninterested.  Part of the cost of admission, she seemed to say.  This is what happens to girls who dance across the line.  And she was the one who looked all of these people in the face and shrugged coldly when they accused her, who raged and flared when they would dig inside my head to get answers.

She is monstrously powerful, and when I make jokes about being a witch, I don’t necessarily mean myself.  Whatever power she has is borderline terrifying.  I don’t say that as a boast about myself, because I continue to be bewildered by it.  I don’t think I’ve even begun to see exactly what she can do, because Alex stole so much from me in this lifetime.  Over and over I was told that the power he showed me, the things he could do, those were all things that he siphoned from my soul.  He attempted to quite literally drain me dry.  I remember the night we exorcised him, banished him to the island, how much energy I felt rushing back into my body.  I had no idea how much I had lost until I got it all back.  And I still feel like I have not utilized it properly.

Lately I can’t help but wonder if that’s exactly the type of power I should be attempting to harness.  Whatever is coming next- and so many of us feel it right now- we will need all the power we can get.  Especially if it has anything to do with him.

 

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Lately I’ve been testing out various YouTube guided meditations to see if any of them help me to balance out some of the spiritual unease I’ve been experiencing lately.  Most of the ones I like don’t have any speech in them because I usually find the words to be distracting (especially if they make mistakes with grammar or pronunciation) and also- and this will sound impossibly arrogant I know- but I don’t need anyone’s help to be able to meditate.  I do it every single day in one form or another, and I did it intensely for hours at a time over a period of six years or so.  I think sometimes my larger concern is that I will meditate “too well” and get lost to this world all over again.

The other night I found a video that was supposed to help open or amplify the strength of your pineal gland, or your third eye.  Your third eye is how you see the dead- it’s the gateway between worlds.  Whenever I talk about “seeing” dead people (I don’t see ghosts, I made a rule long ago that the dead are never ever to show themselves to me, and they’ve always held up their end of the agreement), I always mean with my third eye.  When I meditate with the express purpose of speaking to someone, my eyes immediately roll up towards the middle of my forehead as if they’re staring at where all the power has gone.  I know that doesn’t make sense.  If you can do it, you know what I mean.

In the middle of this meditation video, there is a sudden and strange clicking noise, like a slowly turning prize wheel at a carnival.  I wasn’t prepared for it in the midst of plinking acoustic guitar and ethereal wind chimes and it shocked and frightened me.  Once it passed, I felt my entire mind was drifting away.  Part of me felt like a little girl trying to hold onto a large balloon in a gust of wind.

The second time it clicked through the music, I saw dark-eyed, distorted faces rushing at me from behind a fluttering, gauzy curtain and I immediately turned it off.  One of the things I somehow forgot about “charging up” my third eye is that it will remind me of just how close those that constantly pursue me really are.  If there’s one thing I am certain I can never survive again, it’s battling the darkness face to face.  I’m also more than a little surprised that they’re still so close to me, waiting for a chance to strike.

After escaping the situation I was in from 2003-2010 and then dealing with the trauma of it all for the next three years after that, I distanced myself a great deal from the spiritual and the supernatural.  I lived a life that allowed me to forget about what I’d been through.  I became very immersed in the world of materialism and consumerism, as I finally had a career that allowed me to spend money on whatever I wanted.  I didn’t think much about the dead, and I honestly did everything I could to try to avoid and ignore it.

The only way I survived last summer was through the kind and gentle guidance and support of my unliving friends, and in the last month or two, I’ve found myself unable to think of little else.  My only real issue with that it creates a sense of almost unbearable longing, one that is hard to describe or assuage.  I want to be Home, I want to solve all the mysteries, I want to help others to know what I know, I want to protect people from ever feeling the way I have and often do, I want to be closer closer closer to a thing I can never really touch.

I also find myself thinking often and inexplicably of “Alex” (ugh) and his influence on my life.  I have thought often of his imprisonment, worrying that he is stirring up trouble in some way, that he is involved in all the ugliness going on in the world right now somehow.  I worry that if I allow my guard down, if I open myself back up to this world that he will get back in.

It’s a dangerous dance, and while I’m glad to hear the music again, I need to know that I’m using my own choreography.  I need to know I have a partner and not a puppeteer.

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I feel a little guilty acting as if I’m alone when it is incredibly apparent that I am not.

Ever since things happened with… “Alex,” (and oh boy is censoring the name for the sake of safety most unpleasant to me) I have had this friendship with someone else, as those of you who read the entire story (“Begin at the Beginning”) may recall.  He disappeared shortly before I got divorced, and then romantically reappeared once I moved out on my own again in 2013.  Even then, he took a patient backseat to the love I shared with someone else for three entire years.

Last summer, the only reason I survived the constant nightmare of my life was because of his presence.  Every time I started to re-re-re-recalculate my bills or plan for my own ending, he’d whisper, Everything is going to be okay.  I promise.  I promise.  Please trust me.

And he was correct.

Lately, we have been much more involved than we were before- talking all the time, smiling at each other (I often wonder what someone might think if they catch me peeking off to my right with a sly grin), and being intensely intimate.

In 2010, I remember telling my (now ex)husband that I no longer wanted to have physical contact with anyone, because I had mastered the ability to have orgasms without ever being touched.  There’s an energy in sexuality that is apparently capable of being harnessed, and I somehow found a way to lasso it for my own ends.

Because of what I had to go through with Alex, I needed someone to cure me of my physical revulsion to sexuality.  I was lucky enough to be in a transformative relationship for several years after the end of my marriage that healed so much of what was broken inside of me.

Now I have the best of both worlds, and it’s so good that I’d be embarrassed to describe it to you.

I live entirely alone, with no real life friends (aside from a thriving internet family), but I’m also deep, deep in the depths of the most profound and clandestine relationship I’ve ever had.  Maybe what I thrive on is having something no one else can see.

I love a whisper, an illusion, a premonition, a gift.

My boyfriend is a long-dead ghost.

Don’t tell anyone.

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Q: Are you glad that you can perceive and communicate with the dead? I don’t know if you can (or are comfortable) answering this question, but would you give the ability back, if you had the choice?

 

A: I am glad, now.
When it first started in 2003, I was so arrogant about my experiences.  I was better than everyone.  I saw the real world, the way things actually were.  Things became entirely new- time, sleep, nature, the early morning, the deepest night.  Everything.  Part of me misses that time, though, where it all felt so pure and powerful and I felt so deeply connected to the Universe.  But boy, was I insufferable.  Everyone hates the self-important spiritualist.

By 2010, I was deep in regret.  My life was destroyed, I was mentally emotionally and spiritually shattered, my marriage was in ruins, and my (ex)husband had been used like a puppet for so many years he was essentially not a person anymore, so my son had parents who were really barely functional.  I was so ill in 2011 and 2012 that I don’t think I’d recognize that girl if I met her now.  It was the darkest, most frightening, most difficult time in my life, and almost no one knows it even happened.

Right now, my interaction with the dead is very narrowed.  I’m careful about how much I will filter in, who I will talk to, and how much of That Side I will let enter my mind and heart.  I wouldn’t want to go back because now I have the heard-earned “luxury” of knowing what happens when we die, how deeply I am protected and loved, and what sorts of storms I am able to survive.  I have a deep peace about death, about eternity, even about what might happen next.  I am never alone, and I am always going to be safe.  Without what I’ve been through, I could never know that with the level of certainty I have right now.  Nothing will ever be as scary or dangerous as that time in my life, and it’s what gets me through the hard times now.

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Q: Do you consider yourself a medium? Are you able to like, give readings to people, tell them about their people that have crossed over?

A: I mean, I guess I would be considered a medium in the sense that I am a person who is in constant communication with the dead, and I do give people my thoughts and advice about ghosts and the other side, but I do not do readings, because there isn’t a reason for it.

Here’s what you need to know about people you love who have crossed:

They are the person you loved but also, they are everyone they used to be as well.  They love you very much, but their priorities have changed.  Their ‘lives’ go on, just as yours should.  It’s also highly likely they’ve already come back to Earth as someone else, so they might not even be around anymore.

If not- they’re okay, okay?  They’re safe.  They’re Home.  Whatever pain and regret and sadness you feel about however you left things with them, it’s okay.  They forgive you.  They’re not worried about it.  Nothing of this world has any significance to them anymore.  Please go on with your life.  The greatest honor and gift you could give them is to live a happy, fulfilling, contented life of gratitude and love.

You have someone (probably more than one, really) who watches over you, who is your guardian.  I encourage you to find that person.  To learn to meditate and embrace the protection you’ve been given.  That’s your person.

This life is so short, tiny seconds in the infinity of time.  What feels so important now is so meaningless over there.  That’s the great joke of humanity.  All the things that keep us awake at night are things that won’t even matter when we’re finally truly at rest.