Not unlike all other such fleshen mortals, --- I was born.
And for many years I was loathe of the day.
Though it would take the better part of my first 10 year's of life to fully recognize it, there were elements in and of my life that separated me from the norm of my childhood companions by a very great distance.
Many of the details of my upbringing within my parents household are horribly unpleasant to tell. Suffice it to say, I had become acclimated to an environment filled with confusion, anxiety, loss and fear from a very early age.
I was nearly 20 when it became so perfectly clear to me that my Mother had suffered from some form of psychosis. She never sought nor received any manner of help for this damaging condition.
A cruel woman, my mother; she was daily given to bouts of explosive rage, and seemed to enjoy tormenting me, often falsely accusing me and punishing me for things she knew full well my sister had done. While I was off at school she so regularly removed my most prized possessions from my room that we became locked in a loathsome game of hide-&-seek that went on for many years. She would ultimately find those hidden treasures and would punish me for "Hiding things from her," by throwing them away --- saying, "You never played with them anyway."
She had a coffer of such flippant phrases, her own common code she employed that, to her satisfaction, covered her every need for making a point and bringing an end to any matter. There would be no reasoning with her. Nothing ever came to an agreeable conclusion. I have never known her to possess even the thinnest concept of redemption, reconciliation or apology.
What I found most disconcerting was how she regular talked to herself as she went about her daily chores. I would often overhear her from another room, talking to me. Of course I had no idea what the topic of that lone conversation could be. Whenever I would ask her what she had said, she would snap back at me every time without fail, "You heard me!"
Her constant evasive intrusions into my thoughts, conduct and upon the things I cherished most, heaped upon years of her insistence that I was "...stupid, useless, and a waste of space" proved to be the catalyst for twenty five years of debilitating depression. On a near daily basis I contemplated suicide as a viable alternative to my immense unabating internal suffering. Her torment so haunted me that I turned to drugs for escape at age 18. By age 25, I would find myself homeless, penniless and entirely alone.
In contrast my Father was pretty easy to get along with for the first decade of my life. In fact, when Dad was home I felt relative safe from my Mother, as he took the brunt of her seething rage, and had on many occasions saved me from her attacks. But as I approached my teens his common casual beer drinking developed into full-blown alcoholism, which created a whole new set of problems for the whole family, and for me in particular.
Dad became chronically irritable and distant. A line of division had been drawn between us, and it seemed that daily his inexplicable hatred for me grew exponentially. --- Though he did stop drinking in the mid-80's, none of my efforts to reestablish a bond with my Father would prove to bear any fruit. To this day I have no idea why my once dear Dad turned from being a warm, loving Father to a cold, distant, careless man who applies himself to know about my life at all.
Growing up in an abusive household filled with anger, loud bitter arguments, fear and loss would have been enough to separate any child from the average, pleasant, love-filled life of their companions. But there was more going on in my life that widened the gap of separation to that of a great and mighty chasm.
From my earliest remembrance spiritual entities moved about in my world and interacted with me. At around the age of 15 they began to speak to me and share their secrets with me.
As I grew into my own age of reason, as I developed the capacity to articulate my thoughts, I attempted to share with my family and friends some of the amazing things I had been experiencing. Of course, being born in 1956, I was developing in an age of gross spiritual ignorance, bland superstition, dead and boring religious adherence and patent spiritual disbelief. A time when most Americans were more apt to believe that bad things happen to you if you break a mirror, or walk under a ladder, than they expressed any real knowledge of the true spiritual life.
My early attempts at communicating what I regularly witnessed, experienced and heard were greeted with laughter and ridicule. So, I gave up trying all together. It would not be until I reached the age of 19 that I would find any liberty to share my experiences with others, and that only in part.
(To be continued) --- Things are about to get really wild
--- Stay Tuned