Acceptance

I always bare my heart on this blog. Sometimes I wish I knew why, and others I don't bother to question it. I'm afraid of what the answer may be. It's sometimes scarier to know the truth than to create your own lies. The following is something that I didn't know if I was going to share at all, far more mass share. I think five people in my life know about this, and only because one has abilities much like mine and figured it out, the other person has shared this journey with me on a more personal level, I went to my logical friend for advice, the other for a shoulder to cry on from a girl who is just like me in this world of paranormal things, and the other was a new friend who I felt in my heart was someone who I could tell this to and should. Basically, I didn't tell anyone without a specific reason, and now here I am telling everyone.

But the truth is, although I don't know that this belongs on a public forum full of personalities, opinions and friendships that create my little space, I'm going to share it for exactly two reasons. One: I don't know how to get this out of me, and I don't know how to deal with it. I don't think that I ever will know how to deal with something like this correctly, whether it be true or just a mirage. I have tried everything to deal with this, but I feel like something inside of me is closed off, and this is the only way that I know how to open that door. Two: You all have been with me through this saga as well, so I'm going to put this out there for you and trust that I know my readers and my friends as well as I think I do.

I don't know if I've talked about this before, but I have dreams, very vivid ones, that usually end up being precursors to something that is going to happen, if not a window to what is happening while I sleep. When I get these "dreams," they're very different from everything else, and I know without a doubt what they are and know what to expect.

I once had a dream that I was another woman who was jogging through the woods, when I was attacked by someone and killed. The details were very specific. I was her. I knew everything about her, right down to what she was wearing and exactly how she died. Four days later I saw her face on a news source, and I knew who she was before I had even heard the reason for her face being plastered there. Then they said how she died and when. She died while I lay asleep, having gone to bed very early, in a time zone three hours ahead of hers. It was still light where she was when she died. She had gone for a late evening jog. She had died during the same time, on the same day that I had the dream. She died while I was having the dream. I know this because I woke up flustered, sweating, looking at the clock for answers, just fifteen minutes after they had estimated her time of death to be. That wasn't a coincidence.

Another time I had a dream about children dying, seven of them, in a fire. I was in there with them, an adult, but not myself, helpless to save them. At first I thought they were in a school, being that there were so many kids of different ages. They were all dressed Amish, so it wasn't weird to me that small kids to teenagers were in the same, two floor building. When I woke up I could still feel the heat on my skin. I rolled over. It was half past six in the morning. When I watched the evening news, there had been a house fire that had killed seven children, ages ranging from toddler to teenager, all Amish, in their home that morning. The fire had happened at quarter past six.

There's been many other "dreams," too many for me to dismiss them, in my life. If I tried to recount them all, I'd spend the next five years of my life doing so right here, writing about them. Those are just two examples. I know the difference between these "dreams" and regular dreams. I never feel like I've slept when I have these "dreams." I don't know what else to call them, though, when they're not really dreams, not traditional ones, at least.

I hadn't had one in awhile, nor had I thought about them. I was sleeping soundly and enjoying it far too much to waste my time thinking of the horror that could await me one night when I shut my eyes, and the newscast that would inevitably follow and prove me right. I don't anticipate them and I don't enjoy them, but I know there's a reason that I'm the one to get one. I always accepted them, I was always okay with it happening to me, because I knew there was a purpose. And then last Tuesday happened, and I don't feel like I know anything anymore. My world crashed down around me and left me reeling in confusion, trying to figure out what's truth and what's a mirage.

The night had been a hard one. I hadn't slept well; I woke up over everything. I tossed, I turned, I kicked, and I didn't know why, because that's not particularly normal for me anymore. When I woke up at just past seven to let Greta out, I decided to go back to sleep since I felt like my legs had run a marathon and my brain a fast sprint, all while I was attempting to sleep. I shouldn't have gone back to sleep. I should have waited it out. I should have stayed up anyway. But I didn't. I regret that now.

When I laid back down, I was quickly swept under, drifting into a heavy, almost coma like sleep, and this is how my dreams always start. My dream felt real, as they always do. There was nothing about it that made me feel like I was sleeping. Sometimes I was subconsciously unsure that I was.

Please bear with me, because this is difficult for me to talk about. I may tell this badly, it may be confusing. The truth is, I won't know how this is going to come out until I'm done writing it, something that I'm not used to. I plot, I design, I plan my stories and my posts so that I know what to expect, and it settles my heart. This time that's not the case.

It was mid morning. There was a chill in the air, but not enough of one that I had to put long sleeves on, though I was wearing pants. I threw on my boots, the only shoes that don't have to be tied, just like I always do and walked to the mailbox. I opened it and pulled out a letter, one single letter was all that was in there. The envelope wasn't white, yet a slight cream color, although I could tell it wasn't an old letter. The name on the front was mine; there was no return address. I flipped it over and opened it up. Immediately, I wished I wouldn't have.

When I put my hands on the letter, pulling it out and exposing the writing, my finger sliding over some of the words, images rushed through my head, an entire scene playing out in less than five seconds, but too vivid for me to ever forget. In those images, that scene, I saw Friend kill himself. I won't go into details, I can't. When I came to, I was still standing on the side of the road at the mailbox. I knew what I saw. I knew how I felt.

Confused, scared, humbled, upset, and ready to explode at a second's notice, I raced up to the house, letter in hand, shaking. Home alone, I put the dogs outside, leaving only Greta Hayley in so that I wouldn't be bothered. She sniffed around the letter, and then took a place on the couch next to me while I read it. The letter was specific, highly personal, containing things no one but he and I would know. I wept my way through it; I was a mess. I couldn't get over just how personal the letter was, how detailed, how much it sounded like him. How much it was him. It was, for all intents and purposes, a goodbye letter. It didn't explain a lot, it just revealed things to me, things I knew, some I didn't, and left me knowing, wishing, that I would have said the things I should have said.

I woke up in a panic, but I wasn't done panicking. I was trying to breathe. Somewhere within this state I was in, Greta, who had previously not been in my room, having been let outside and my mom waking up for the day when I let her out. She usually doesn't come back in with me in the morning, but she was there. I took a few deep breathes, told myself it was just a dream, and then flipped over. He was sitting at the edge of my bed.

I was awake, I knew I was. He didn't really say anything, but it was the way he reached over and touched me that let me know that what I hadn't told him, he knew, and it was okay. Just as he touched me, Greta woke up and started flipping out in the direction of where he was, not looking at me, but instead at him. He stayed for awhile; she had always really liked him. When I heard my mom come back the hallway to see what all the chatter was about, I got up, letting Greta out of my room, which is what she decided she had wanted when he didn't go away immediately. She didn't understand. My mom asked me if everything was fine, I told her it was, went to the bathroom, and went back to sleep. I slept until later in the afternoon. I couldn't function or understand what had just happened.

To this very moment on this very day, I remain confused about what happened. I spent until Friday barely able to function, holding back tears so no one asked me what was going on, and faking smiles. I clocked out. I didn't want to know what had happened and if what I had seen was true. I didn't want to think of Friend like that. I pulled myself together around Friday and decided I had to know, but that's been a journey with no answers. I keep hitting walls like they were built there specifically to keep me out.

I don't know if I'll ever fully accept that I may never know what happened to Friend, or if what happened to me that morning in my room was something much darker, much more sinister playing with me, tapping into my worst fears and playing on them. I've never had that happen before, but I guess there's a first time for everything.

The people I've discussed this with have been helpful. One told me she was sorry about my friend killing himself, and was there if I needed to talk, before I was even sure if he had or not, which brings up a lot of issues for me, a lot of fear. She's a lot like me. Another assured me that she had a feeling I knew the answer to my own dream, because she knows how accurate they are, and so do I. The list of things that were said to me goes on, but none bring me comfort.

Friend may still be out there alive and fine, and I'm over here practically having a coronary and diving into episodes of Breakout Kings like I dove into Criminal Minds when my grandma died. I watch them on repeat and pretend the world doesn't exist. I build up my own little world of magic. I block everything else out. It keeps me going until I can start making it without faking it, until I can move on. I just wish I knew the truth.

I haven't talked to friend in months, nor had I thought of him in awhile, not because I don't care about him, but because I'm still in love with him and handled it how I had to. I don't think I ever won't be, but that's my problem, not his. I have a big mouth and a big heart, but that mouth gets me in trouble. In order to keep from telling him how I feel, which is unfair to both him and his girlfriend, and foolish and rude on my part, I had to stop talking to him and delete him on Facebook. This makes me a hypocrite, I know, but every time I saw his status updates, I was jealous. I was jealous because he had someone and I couldn't have him. I was angry because I had missed my chance to be with him. I hated myself for not telling him how I felt. But mostly, I just knew that no matter how much I loved him, or he me, we would never work out because our lifestyles were too different.

None of us are wrong in the way we live our lives, but there's a large gap in the way we do it, too much for us not to end in heartache. I had to do what I had to do in order to not continue to salt my own wounds and confused and upset him. Because of that, I couldn't give him a reason for why I was bowing out of his life again. I had done it too many times because I was scared, and frankly, he deserves better. But if I gave him a reason, I'd be admitting my feelings, which would only make me feel better, and this isn't about me. Doing what I need to do in order to be able to breathe without feeling like my heart was falling out of my chest was one thing, but taking down him with me was another.

So I guess my message to you in all of this is one that you hear on TV and it sounds cliche. I can assure you as a girl who has lived, loved and learned, but will keep learning and being confused until I'm 93, say what you have to say, no matter how afraid you are. That way, you'll have no regrets. You'll know the truth and you'll learn how to deal with it. It's always better to know than not to know.

There's a lot of things I should have said to Friend, and I have a feeling that's going to haunt me, literally or not so much, forever. I should have told him I loved him, but had enough guts to either try with him, or know that it would never work and be mature enough to just be friends. I didn't. I kissed him and ran like a scared little girl in the school yard. But I was scared. It still didn't make it right. Because of the decisions I've made, things snowballed out of control. I keep thinking of the what-ifs. I know if I wouldn't have been scared and we would have been together, his life especially could have gone in a totally different direction. A lot of really bad things happened to him, and I do blame myself for some of them. I had my chance with him, and if I would have taken it, he wouldn't have met the same people he had, had the life he had, done what he had done to himself because of things that had happened to him. But it is what it is now. Decisions have been made, but I will never forget things he said to me, things that chilled me to the core, but let me know that I loved him. Things that let me know I could love, because I always wondered about that.

I don't really know the real reason why I felt I had to post this. Maybe it's because I wanted to let you all know what happens when you don't say the things you're afraid to say. To let you know what fear can do to you; that it can turn into more fear and land you in an unending circle of it. Maybe I just needed to get things out. Or maybe, just maybe, somewhere down inside I'm hoping that someone who knows Friend will see this and confirm or deny if he's alright. But under no circumstances do I want him to know about the dream if he is fine, because he knows about my gift and it will ultimately do no good. So I guess in the long haul, it's better that someone he knows doesn't find this, doesn't see and run back and tell him. I guess it's better if I find a way to move on without ever knowing, and always wondering if it happened or if it will and I simply knew something ahead of time. I've never been able to stop what I've seen before, and I guess the lesson here is to learn that God is in control and nature will take its course, and there's nothing I can do. I just have to sit back and accept life as it is.