Guides started appearing in my dreams. I think my grandmother was the first guide that appeared. She died when I was seven, and she stayed with me until I was 15. The day she died, I still remember my parents went to the hospital, but my brother and I stayed in the car. My dad said that she would not have wanted us to see her so sick. I really didn’t care about it, I wanted the chance to say goodbye to her and I felt very strongly about it. And so, we were left in the parking lot. After about 20 minutes, I felt an overwhelming sense of loss. I felt my grandmother’s presence and a kiss on my left cheek.
My world collapsed, I couldn’t conceive of a world in which she wasn’t there. We were very close, as my mother and father worked together and were gone a lot of the time. Most of my memories from that time are strange, as if I really wasn’t in my body… There was a lot of anger and loss and grief. I was doing strange things in school, all of my writings in notebooks and on the blackboards were inverted, as if I was on the other side, the upside-down ? You could see it all made sense if you used a mirror, but I wasn’t aware that I was doing that.
Of course, the biggest problem was that I could see and hear my grandmother. Every day we talked, sometimes she would pop up in my classroom, and at night, she continued to tell me stories and sing for me. It quickly became a problem for everyone else. So at 7 years old, I learned to lie, to make everybody else happy. I didn’t see anything, and I didn’t hear anything. I wonder now how many of us empaths or sensitives have had a similar experience?
Over time I kept these extra ordinary things to myself.
When I was 8 or so, my dad used to take the boat for a ride in winter to keep the engine running. My dad took just us kids, my brother and I for a ride in a lake, near the ocean. We had been gone for a few hours when dad noticed the gas tank had a leak in it. We had no radio and no lights. We had gone too far into the ocean. We had no gas to come back.
Our anchor wasn’t long enough to keep us from drifting farther into the sea and we had no way to call for help. It was an accident, and our only hope was that mom would realize that we were gone too long and start a search. That night, of course there was a storm! Dad tied us all to the boat and we clung for dear life as gigantic waves rocked us up and down. It was cold. It rained and stormed. We had no water and no food. We sang songs to comfort each other.
I saw my father cry on the second night. I remember looking into the beautiful night sky, the calm that comes over after the storm, and how huge all the stars seemed. I wondered if we were going to die, and I heard my grandmother loud and clear say, “You’ll be ok, tell your dad and brother. Mom will find you tomorrow”. I told dad, but of course, even then, he didn’t believe me…
Big ships passed, and no one could see or hear us. Some ships, a little too close. During the day, many boats could be seen, but we were invisible. On the third day, early morning, my mom came with another family’s boat and they found us, just like grandma had said.
When I saw the movie Life of Pi, I remembered that I knew the feeling of being lost at sea, the hunger and that beautiful calm sea after the storm. But thankfully, it was only three days for me!