reluctant medium at large

A long time ago, my friend Tina dragged me along to a psychic evaluation. It wasn't really for me. She wanted desperately to be psychic and bringing me gave her the courage to go inside.

Up until that day I had not realized there were actual organizations of people who believed they were not only psychic, but that they could "read" the abilities of others. I'm not saying I don't believe. I just had trouble believing them. Of course they would "read" Tina and tell her what she wanted to hear. But they didn't. They told her she had no psychic abilities. I would have left then, but she'd signed us both up and she insisted I go next. I was seated in a hard back chair in a semi lit room while three "psychics" sat at a table in front of me. They had three jobs. One laughed and laughed to keep the energy positive. One focused on the other world and the last one focused on me. Real or not, I did not want them in my head.

I told myself to block them from reading me. It didn't work, or it did, because they called me on it. I sat in that chair silently while they told me about my children. The one I had, the one I lost and the one I would give birth to. They told me about my childhood and my nightmares.They told me I was an open door and and there were blocks of spirits, good and bad, drawn to me. They told me I had to learn to shut that door. I left terrified. Tina was thrilled.

You don't have to believe me.
I probably wouldn't believe me.

If there was a door, I closed it, but not always. I talked with Gary who'd remodeled the house I owned. His boyfriend and he broke up but closed the house into two sections. Gary lived in the back which was Ben and my bedroom (his living room) and my daughter's room (his bedroom). He died of aids, or so he told me. He would not leave because it was his house. Ben's mom saw him in the kitchen one morning. We had not told her the house was haunted. I talked with my father off and on for a year after he passed and we grew closer than ever. And Tina, she was not happy when I held her wake at my house. She would show up in my car when I was driving. Ben saw her too. She was in the corner of our bedroom crying. She had not meant to kill herself, or so she said. It was exhausting. She wanted to drag me with her, so I closed the door to her.

But did I really talk to the dead? I wondered if it was just me thinking I was. It wasn't until I moved to Ohio that I learned I was  bipolar. Part of the crazy brain hear's voices and sees things. Been there...

I'd been medicated for over a year when I went with my girlfriends to a hot springs nudist retreat in the hills above Napa Valley, California. The resort was full of meditation and new age spirituality. I'm not a team player when it comes to spirituality. The night we'd arrived we were walking down a set of stairs toward the garden when I felt someone brush past me and my body turned cold. I though it was one of my friends until I turned to see them both at the top of the stairs.  It was April fools day.  The following day I took a break from pretending to be ok naked with a hundred strangers and got a massage. The therapists name was Deanne. (d-anne) and her room overlooked the property and the garden beyond. I was quietly letting my body relax under her touch when Dee appeared in the room. Dee would not shut up. No Deanne could not see or hear her because Dee was dead, and was thrilled to have found someone who could tell Deanne she was really here. For the entire hour, Dee told me how she lived at the resort for years, and decided to stay there.