Suffocating My Sanity

This is gonna be a weird blog. Ok, weirder than usual for me.  I was checking out some things online related to that whole “what do I want to do now with my life” when I thought about some things from my past.  During our Womens Retreat, Mama Allen said God had shown her evil spirits before and she described them and what kind of spirit they were.  She even found a picture of one of her images in a textbook which confirmed she wasn’t crazy.  Growing up, my mom would always make me stay in my room when I was being bad.  I’d have to sit in the room with the door closed and the lights off.  Just sit there in the dark.  I remember this vividly but, for whatever reason, I can’t remember what the hell I’d done to deserve such a time-out.  First off, we didn’t do time-outs in my house….we did beat-downs.  Second, I was always a model child growing up to the point that I was everyone’s pet including my teacher.  Honestly, I think she probably didn’t want to see me due to some resentment towards my dad.  Anywho, during my times sitting alone in my room, I’d think about different things and just play as much as a little girl could as a child using the wonderful tool of imagination.  The weird thing is that I was always afraid of the dark so you’d think this would have cured it…..nope!  Well, I remember several times when I’d be sitting in my room alone with the lights out and I’d hear things….voices.  I heard my own voice when I’d say something aloud, I’d hear my sisters talking loudly from outside the door in the kitchen, and I might even neighborhood kids talking from outside but these voices were distinct and I knew with my whole being that they came from inside my room.  This is when I started to be afraid of the dark because, what was a moment to sit and think, became a moment of what-the-hell-was-that?!?!  I never told my mom.  I still don’t know why I was always in the room sitting.  But I do know I am crazy but not that freakin crazy.

Fast forward a few yrs to teen yrs, I still loved to sit along and spend time with me but, in addition to thinking, I’d write.  I’d write whatever I felt like writing and that is how I channeled my thoughts and started doing poems, essays, etc.  I have always shared a room until now.  As a child, it was with my sister, during college it was my roommate, then my boyfriend when we moved in together, followed by my husband.  I don’t know when it started but, occasionally during the night, I’d feel someone had sat on my side of the bed.  Not up near my head but down at the foot of the bed.  I have written about this before but I’m thinking about it again because as soon as I thought about what I wanted to do with my life these reminders came up and I wonder if it’s to scare me or to maybe I’m simply psycho.  So, during slumber, with someone else either in my bed with my or in the room with me….I’d feel the rear corner of my bed go down from the weight of something.  I’d rub my eyes and try to not let whatever it was know I was awake and I’d try to move a little bit check to make sure I was actually awake and, sure enough, I felt the weight still on my bed.  I never looked to see if I’d see something and I never moved the blanket to see if I’d see my mattress actually bent under from weight….I was too scared….but felt it I did.  During times when I felt someone/thing on the bed and heard sounds, I’d shake my ex-husband and wake him up which was like waking a dead person!  He’d wake up and I’d whisper “did you hear that??”  And he’d say “hear what?”  and I’d say “wait” and then he’d fall back asleep while waiting.  Totally pointless I tell ya!!  It seems that I was afraid of the bogey man as an adult.  Here I am an intelligent young woman at a well-known Big Ten University quite educated, of sound mind, and sociable to say I hear and feel things in the dark while I should be asleep.  There was one time when I swear this thing was shaking our bed as I sweat buckets trying not to die from the freight and my husband wakes up from it.  I didn’t wake him up.  I looked at him trying to see if he’d say something but he just rolled over and went back to sleep. Ugh!!

After my divorce, I had my moments of whoring (it was great! lol) and then I started going to church, Bible study, and reading my Bible in general.  I was like a different person almost that even I was amazed.  Well, I was offered this job I currently have which meant I’d have to move back home.  I was elated because it was in the field I’d been dying to break into and the salary was decent compared to the pennies I was making then.  While packing, I knew I’d start off attending the church back home I’d grew up in but eventually I’d have to find my own church which would be better suited for where I was right now in my “walk”.  As I was packing up my closet standing on a chair reaching for things off the top shelf in my closet, I heard someone said “you’re going to die by the end of the year” in my ear.  I turned around and stood there shaken because I heard it and it felt like someone had climbed on the chair with me to have said it so clear and right into my ear.  Not a whisper at all.  Actually spoke it into my ear.  A manly voice almost sinister.  I called out for my kids to see where they were and realized I was the only one upstairs.  Who had said that then?!  I went the rest of 2007 thinking I was going to die by New Yrs Eve but a lady from my church told me to not thinking about it and believe that I have a purpose which does not involve a 2007 expiration date.  So I did.  I’m still here.  But I heard that voice as clear as day.

As some of you know, I left my church home which is the 2nd time I’ve actually “left” although this time I like to say I’m on sabbatical….it sounds cooler.  Anywho, the first time I left I began to question my faith, what I grew up believing in, and who I believed in.  I began reading books about Christianity, Jesus, and other spirits.  It wasn’t until I grab the last book about some lady who knew the reason why we were here, that she sees and speaks to spirits, she communicates with the “other side”, and she has psychic abilities…it wasn’t until then that I experienced more things during the day.  At night, I’m caught off guard totally traumatized and most people are quick to dismiss it if it occurred at night.  During the day, what could even I say?!  I was hearing things?  Someone was playing tricks on me so much so that I spun away too slow to catch them jumping off my chair and running from my room?  That that bolt of bright light was a figment of my imagination?  That my bed wasn’t rattling…it’s the heater turning on and off although the vibrations under my hand have never happened again under normal circumstances?  That when I walked into my apartment, my spirit told me that my apartment was “different”.  That after I blessed my apartment as Mama Allen told me to, the next day walking into my apt from work, my spirit knowing it was back to normal was just all in my head?  That, from the time I was maybe 10, I’ve been playing a cute game of imagination?  That all of this has a good explanation somehow just not yet because I have yet to find it. 

My friend who I tell all this stuff to thinks I’m psycho.  She says I’m emotional.  True, I am quite emotional.  Emotional during all those times?  I’m not buying it.  If I’m not psycho and not nearly that emotional then what will explain it?  My fav gospel song is Smokey Norful ”I Understand”…there’s this line in the song where he says “in the time of trouble He promised He would always be there”.  Most of y’all probably think I’m crazy by now anyways but ponder this as the last huge question mark: I was in trouble.  I mean being interrogated beyond belief, I seriously felt like I was suffocating from the pressure I was up against, I was crying harder than I ever did during childbirth, and my soul was burning because I didn’t see any way to get myself out of this jam which was not at all my fault.  My head was hurting, I was sweating profusely from my armpits although I was wearing a sleeveless dress, and I seriously felt I couldn’t breathe.  Mama Allen was sitting next to me as my ally but I was surrounded by foes when I closed my eyes for a split second and said deep down inside “Lord help me!!” (in so many words)  for 3 seconds at the most and then Mama Allen spoke up and said something I was thinking.  In my head I had a thought but she spoke that thought.  How did she knw what I was thinking.  That was daybreak.  Someone had ripped a hole in the plastic over my mouth and I began to breathe again.  No one believes me and I doubt I’d probably believe myself if I hadn’t experienced it.  I’ll prb die knowing I need to figure this out and wrestling with the fact that some things of this world just don’t make sense.  Needed to get that out as I plan my next step.  Still think I’m crazy?  Maybe Mama Allen is crazy too since she talked about seeing an evil spirit on the side of someone’s neck but, for some reason, I believe her.  When my sis died (who I shared a room with), I heard her in our room a few times and I asked God to take her away because she was scaring me. I never heard her again although, growing up I asked God to send her back when I really missed her although I knew it was not what I truly meant so, instead, she visits me in my dreams sometimes.   I have countless stories and I’m sure I’ll have more later on.