Teaching one another

     When last we met, I was learning to tear down walls that shut off my "gifts" and had seen my first dead guy at his own funeral since my dear sister walked into my bedroom following her death.  Now that you and I are caught up, let's move on.  My dear young friend, bless her soul, insisted that I talk with her mind to mind.  "It keeps things private, really private", was one of her arguments in favor of such foolishness.  Another favorite was, "If your Dad can learn more about this stuff and use it (he was in a development class with the woman who became his mistress) you can use the gifts you already have and are better at!"  Since he wasn't high on my list of nice people by this time, that one always succeeded in goading me into using my gifts to "mind talk" with my friend K.  She is now and was then, genuine, loving, kind, ornery, fun to be with and above all else accepting of folks who might be just a bit "unusual".  That made her especially treasured in my eyes then, and now.  Whenever we got together, we would test each other's gifts in one way or another, talk about how weird it was to have such gifts when most everyone both of us knew doubted their existence, and just life in general in our individual skin suits.

It was nice to have someone I knew personally who was "gifted".  It made life less lonely, less awkward, less weird, because I had someone to talk to about hearing, seeing, smelling and tasting things that weren't physically present.  It was the same for her too.  Her parents didn't want to know about her gifts, mine either, even after I knew my Dad was taking development classes.  "What you don't know about can't hurt you" but it sure makes it hard on you when your family members don't know and think you crazy for what you know to be your own personal truth.  "Children of the Paranormal" is a wonderful show.  I'm tickled to pieces for those kids.  I had only 1 friend in all the people I knew who believed me, and, whom I believed.  The kids on those shows have folks to show them how to manage their gifts and they can bond with one another.  I also am jealous of those kids (teeny tiny jealous, not huge jealous) because they have help.  K and I did not.  We taught each other stuff.  We accepted each other's stuff as real, valid, and worth learning and listening to.  AND, we had to do it on the sly so that we would still fit into the world around us.  That was the tough part of it all then.  Having only one another to talk to and to learn from and to teach...  then having to pretend none of it existed so that we could get along with those around us with whom we lived and to whom we were married.  Not so much fun.  Like living an enormous lie.  It sucked the life right out of me, and K too.  It truly sucked the life right out!

"Hey!  Found a great book for us to read."  "Did you read (insert name of a book here) about (insert topic here)?  I'll let you know when I finally take it back to the library so you can check it out next."  "What do you think about (insert topic)?"  "Have you ever tried seeing ghosts on purpose?  Did it work?  What did you do when it worked to make it work?"  "Did you hear that? see that? smell that?"  Those were the types of conversations K and I had a lot of.  It was great.  It was educational.  It was a wonderful bonding experience that has kept us friends all these years later.  It was also sad because we so longed for guidance and had none.  We wanted "how to's" and could only find limited information in library books.  It was a great time and a sad one as well.  We were teaching one another how to be more who and what we were and were to become in our later adult lives.  Goodness knows that we may have had fools for teachers, but, we had a great time learning from one another, and, about one another.  Then, all too soon, we grew apart so we could grow back together later on.  The loneliness was unbearable, and so were the noises, voices, smells and tastes without someone to share them with.  I would later find out that she, like I felt similarly.................  Ahh, the wonderful beauty and pain of early adulthood.