#so our parents fed us “youre psychic and gifted” stuff

[schizospec-culture-is]

childhood-onset schizophrenia culture is feeling very weirded out that some people have a "before". i've always been like this, although at some points to a lesser degree--always having hallucinations, believing in "weird" but "apparently harmless" things. "true" schizophrenia prodrome started in sixth grade (so far as i know) and i have a lot of other stuff going on now, but there's never been a time in which i've been connected to the real world. where do you draw the line between "normal child imagination" and "atypical experiences"? because for me, that line... never existed.

(it almost certainly didn't help that when my mom heard about my hallucinations and my strong belief in ghosts, she agreed because she also believed in ghosts. but at a certain point there comes to be a difference between "ghosts are real" and "there are creatures beyond mortal ken who are watching me in my sleep, and very few of them are on my side, and very many of them are actively hunting for the right time to kill me, but the few who are on my side protect me so i'm safe" even as an 8/9 year old, yknow?)

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[peppurthehotone]

I’m propped up in bed, writing you from my AirBnB studio apartment in Brooklyn. A row of colorful shelved books face me. Some familiar, many not. On those shelves, I’ve noticed an award for writing; the owner is a writ-ah! I’ve been lead to the write place.

And so we begin.

After work each day in Mid-town, I arrive in the BK (Brooklyn) after a 45-minute subway ride on the C-train, wherein I people watch and people listen and sometimes meditate. With eyes closed, I’m rocked to and fro via the rhythm of the screechy train as it tunnels through the city. I stand in front of the closing doors and I try really hard to look for my third eye chakra that seems to be fading.

When I was around ten years old, there was a friend from school who would come over…her name was Tammy, or Paula or something. She was magical. Her adolescent teeth were caked and yellowed and she had a late ’70s pageboy cut to her pale blondish hair that framed her mesmerizing, light-blue eyes. I would sit with her, enthralled, outside on my wooden stairs, not quite cool enough to be a stoop, but private stairs, nonetheless. These were sky blue stairs to a 3-bedroom blue house at the end of a cul-de-sac in Kenosha where we moved to and became a disengaged family of four instead of full-on five after my parent’s divorce. Tammy (or Paula) and I would sit hunched on the stairs and she would tell me that I was psychic. She would tell me that all I needed to do to tap into my special powers was close my eyes and look to my third eye. She said it was in the middle of my forehead and that it was bright blue….I’d close my eyes tight. Chin lifted. I could see it. I believed her. I HAD the third eye! I was special.

The other day, I called mom and asked her if she remembered Paula (or Tammy). I described the teeth. And my third eye. Mom didn’t remember. I wonder now if magical Tammy was actually real at all.

On the C-train, I face the closing doors, no matter how crowded the train. I close my eyes and hold onto the seat rail for balance. And then, because I’m a trained dancer, I reprimand (ok, coax) myself to “Dude, find your center!” So I tuck in my butt, drop my shoulders, pull up my spine, suck in my gut and find my center. I slowly let go of the rail. I am free. I am balancing; I am. I look to my third eye. I see her. I breathe. I tell her I am powerful, I tell her I am an accomplished writer; I tell her these things so that she can guide me and I rinse and repeat until the interruption of the next stop. And, I’m not fully embarrassed to tell you all that more than once I have been banged out of the meditation moment and back to a Canal or 34th Street existence due to my forehead zonking on the window due to me losing my centered balance. (I only hope I’ve made someone else’s blog as “That Time I Saw a Girl Bang Her Head on The C-Train.) In spite of the zonks, I think I’ve been successful with my meditation, because, you know, I’m special like that.

When I was in Prague and spending all that time in November 2016 getting into baby manifesting mode, I would meditate in my flat. I’d put on the YouTube mediation sound-of-the-day and I would sit on my pink yoga mat and get into the z-o-n-e. My third eye was alive and kickin’! Sometimes I would zing out and get really light and like disappear into a worm hole of bright colors and stuff only to pull myself back because I wasn’t sure where I was cosmically going, and was afraid that like after a bad drug trip, I wouldn’t actually come back.

Back then, I was tapped into a specific purpose and outcome and that blue-eyed Anja chakra was giving me “Yasss honey” all day long. Right now? Not so much, exactly. I don’t hear her as loudly. I also feel different. Since I’m psychic, I think I know why.

Back in November, I asked for a birth. Maybe some signals got crossed because what I’ve been blessed with is a rebirth.

What I’m saying, friends, is that I’m (re-living) in New York because of a series of events that may or may not be directly related to my purely psychic abilities.

After my relationship ended awfully in October 2017, I found myself on the broke-down skids in Baltimore and on the doorstep of my dear friend, with whom I worked in New York. (This was a “coincidence”; when I moved to B’more, totally didn’t know she lived 15 minutes from me!) We’ll call her Xtacy, because she is. Back in the Sex & the City days, we WERE those girls. We would pre-party with vodka sodas at her cute Carrie Bradshaw apartment on the mid-upper west side. We would go out at 11p on weeknights in our half-tops and our early 2000s style-stilettos and dance and dance. We’d taxi or gypsy-cab home at the crack of dawn and roll into work the next day (mostly on time) with hangovers covered up due to Xtacy’s eye-creme fetish, loads of coffee, and energizing tofu, naturally. I loved her then, I love her now. She is a married mom of three now and thanks to my break up, I was able to spend healing moments at their huge family table in their homey craft home — 6 o’clock cocktails in hand, with children running amuck while she and her husband and I laughed and laughed and laughed about those Sex & the City days.

I wrote how back in October I also I spent some time in New York to visit my former work family and my blood family….including a cousin who used to also run with Xtacy, without me, thank you very much, as they became steadfast friends, too. During that fateful trip, my work family coaxed me into coming back in the new year to cover a maternity leave. At the time, in October, I wasn’t sure if my head was going in or coming out of my ass, so I didn’t know what to say, but I said ‘Yes’ to keep the door open, because I knew that they knew better than I at the time, because they loved me.

So, here I am. It is April. I’m working at my old company (where I met Xtacy), in my old office (like, my same actual office space that I left in 2004 for the lands of LA). The irony is not lost that I sit in an office chair once inhabited by a (lovely) pregnant woman who has since given birth to her first beautiful child. While she trained me prior to her leave, she was so generous with her belly and letting me feel those alien protrusions; it was magical.

While I love using my words, I really can’t find all of the ones that I want to use that fully explain how grateful I am that these people, these moments and this love have enveloped me, buoyed me and built a magical bridge that I’m walking on to what will be my next phase in life.

While all of this is a result of some crazy pain…my own loss, and my father recently “celebrating” the one-year wedding anniversary of his four-month-long marriage that will result in July being the one-year anniversary of his own loss…this “result” has been amazing. My father has landed on his two size 13 feet. His Plan B came around and he’s finding his way. I’m in New York trying to live my life like it’s Golden, Golden.

My rebirth has been showered with so many gifts, including many from Prague. While here, I spent some quality sisterly time with my BFF from college and her sister who is my sister.  I’ve gone to museums and art shows and writer’s groups and the movies and events and one very fantastic one on race and identity at the Brooklyn Historical Society. I’ve walked the streets pointing with head cocked at restaurants and corners I think I remember. Coincidentally, my Prague sister-friend is also here and she’s working her ass off to make 90 meetings in 90 days so that she can go back to Prague an entrepreneurial winner. Another Prague sister, a Prague Bettie, mind you, happened to be visiting and the three of us went to ChinaTown for some amazingness. More dynamic friends I met in Prague have breezed into town and as a result, I met a UN representative from Kenya who has my book and has journeyed back to her gorgeous land with it. (Le sigh!) I fed my dance soul and went to a Horton dance class at Alvin Ailey (first time!) with a friend from work. I went to a taping of an LA friend’s TV show, of which another LA friend coincidentally produces. (Surreal and so great to see these women in their element!) Witnessed another friend being honored for her amazing dedicated community service to Harlem. Listened to yet another friend speak on speaking up.  And spent mesmerizing time with another cousin of whom I haven’t seen since around 1984 or something. Turns out my cousin is a sizzling sax player and gigged at a burlesque bar here in NY, of which he took me to this past Friday. Whaaaaat? #runsinthefamily #BrownBetties #HarlemsAwakening. (I Ubered home to Brooklyn at 3am and I will tell you that no eye creme, tofu or coffee helped me Saturday and most of Sunday.)

And on top of it all, I’ll go back to LA after all of this. I truly thought I would stay in this city; that I would be nourished from it once again, full time. Alas, the Universe has given me another gift, (one that was sorta there all along) of which I will immediately open upon my return to LA. I’ll tell you all about that, soon.

Life is good. Life is grand. Life is crrrazzy. It’s a good thing I’m psychic or I wouldn’t have been able to see it all coming with eyes wide open. I’ll continue to work on my meditation manifestation for whatever is next. I’ve got a few things cookin’ but I think old blue eye is gonna put her foot in it, too. By the way, friends, whatever your C-Train, I encourage you to tap in and get zinging; no telling what life will bring.

I love you.

    Note: featured photo by my cousin, Henry Young.

  How being psychic lead me to New York I'm propped up in bed, writing you from my AirBnB studio apartment in Brooklyn. A row of colorful shelved books face me.