“But you have to sleep in your room, Kristy,” she warned.
Of course! There was no way I was going to let on that I was ten years old and sleeping on my living room couch! Yes, my room scared me, but I rationalized that it was because the entity liked to terrorize me. And for sure there had to be safety in numbers—even when it came to the paranormal.
I invited four girls and they all agreed to come. I was thrilled. I cleaned my room, was all dressed up, and was ready for the party. It was within hours of the girls’ arrival that one by one each of them became ill and had to go home. I called them later that night to see how they were, and they all sounded fine and said they felt better. I felt so completely depressed. My mom held me as I cried, wondering why nobody liked me. My mom cried too, feeling my pain, wishing she could remove it.
What I didn’t know, and wouldn’t until years later when reuniting with my classmates, was that it wasn’t me they didn’t want to be with, it was that my house made them sick. They too saw the shadows, heard the footsteps, and felt the swirling, unstable energy within the house. I wish they would’ve let me in on it then and wonder if feeling validated would have changed anything for me.
Visions, nightmares, sickness, demons, ghosts: it wasn’t a dreamy childhood, but later on it would help me help others enduring the same or similar torments.
[contents]
nine
Sensitive
I was excited to go to high school and even more excited that my so-called curse was at a gentle hum instead of the roar. It could’ve been that I was so busy with activities and was so rarely home that I just couldn’t be affected by it, or it was simply hormones. Any which way, life was starting to be as normal as I could wish for. Even though I was once again enrolled in a Lutheran facility, there was a sense of independence. After being stuck for nine years at the grade school (kindergarten through eighth grade), the change was very much needed. We were given the choice of going to two high schools, Lutheran West or Lutheran Northwest. West was more sports oriented and Northwest more artistic. I chose Northwest. A new start, a new beginning.
It was the middle of my sophomore year when we received word that Lutheran West would be closing, Lutheran Northwest would be relocating its campuses, and a new building would open in Westland, which was nearer to me than either school. It was hard to say goodbye to the classmates I thought I would be graduating with and even harder to say goodbye to my best friend who decided to go to public school. So, junior year was another chance for new beginnings and I set out to make it the best ever. I decided that even though I felt that I was uncoordinated, I was going to try out for everything from cheerleading to basketball to drama, and seemed to be hitting the jackpot as I became captain of both cheerleading and basketball teams and received roles in the drama productions. The school was small, though, and it was determined that the junior class (my class) would be top dogs for two years straight as they didn’t want to transfer a senior class. This provided lots of opportunities to build close relationships. Just a week into the first semester, a boy kept trying to catch my eye. He was outgoing, flirtatious, and gave no apologies for his aggressiveness. He was also a star football player and all-state wrestler, and I wasn’t at all interested, and yet I was drawn to him for some reason. One of my teachers who had come over from my previous school pulled me aside after school and asked me if I had known that boy beforehand. I shook my head no. He gave me a puzzled look and said that the moment he met me he felt that he had known me all his life, maybe even lifetimes before, and he had the same feeling with my suitor. I laughed at him. Past lifetimes? What was a Lutheran teacher talking about past lifetimes for? Nonsense! He gave me a sideways look as if trying to see into the past and perhaps even the future, and warned me to be careful. He shook his head as if trying to remove the memory and went on his way. Just a few weeks after, that boy and I were inseparable, with only one problem—my boyfriend’s mother didn’t much like me. She pretended she did, but her smiles seemed forced, her smirks not as hidden as she thought. I came from the wrong side of the tracks, so to speak. My dad worked for Ford Motor Company (in the factory) and we lived in Detroit. Although I was motivated to become something, I knew I wasn’t what she thought her boy should have. I should’ve taken her disapproval as a sign.
Along with having a boyfriend and my constant after-school activities, I also started working at Kmart. It wasn’t too far from home, they paid well, and they were flexible with my school schedule, but the problem was that every time I had an exchange with a customer, I would get the feelings or images in my head and I wasn’t sure how to handle it.
One of my most powerful experiences came when a family, two children and their parents, went through my line. They had somber looks on their faces and, as I rang up their items, I kept smelling smoke. The mom handed me her credit card and I got an image of an older lady choking, smoke swirling all around her, and then death. I tried to suppress it, but began to cough uncontrollably. I grabbed my water to try to take a sip, but that only made it worse. My manager came over, told me to go back to the break room, and completed the transaction. When I returned to my register, I noticed that the family had left, but the mom was waiting for me. She pulled me aside and asked if I was okay. I just nodded, tears in my eyes, but playing it off as if it was just my choking. She asked me if I saw things, and, again, I just nodded. I was only sixteen years old and still confused about this so-called gift. The lady informed me that they were on their way to her mother’s funeral. Two days previous, her mom had fallen asleep with a cigarette and died in the fire. I had relived her mother’s passing. We exchanged hugs and she left. The manager looked at me as if I had grown an extra ear, and I figured that it wasn’t much use to attempt to explain. After all, I wasn’t quite certain how to explain it anyhow.
My mom was sensitive in emotion also and she could feel my emotion without me vocalizing it, or even being in the same room. Instead of comforting me, she’d get wrapped up in the depression of a passed-on family member, or in mysterious health issues that would pop up. Her health issues ranged from aching everywhere to stomach issues and finally to complete blindness. It wasn’t until much later that I understood that the sensitivity had a name. Mom was an empath. I was an empath.
Being an empath has to be one of the most misunderstood and underacknowledged gifts under the psychic ability umbrellas. It’s feeling others’ pain and not quite knowing how to assist. Have you ever walked into a room and just felt this overpowering anger, or sadness, or even happiness and didn’t have a clue why your mood changed so quickly? We could call it Psychic Bipolarism.
Empaths weren’t mainstreamed until the science fiction TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation introduced the character Deanna Troi, who had the ability to sense emotion. Although a fictional program, it helped those experiencing similar abilities to feel a sense of acceptance.
Empaths are also called Sensitive, as those with this ability are more sensitive in all aspects—emotional and physical, conscious and subconscious—and can pick up on everything around them, everything from disapproval to sadness to happiness.
I continued to work retail, but would often go home in tears. My boyfriend, who didn’t know how to handle my sadness, stood by my side, and I was thrilled when, at nineteen years old, he got on bended knee and asked me to marry him.
[contents]
ten
Illusions
It was just a few weeks after my twenty-first birthday when we said our vows in a beautiful church wedding on December 7. (Yes, we married on Pearl Harbor Day—a prediction for what our marriage would turn out to be.) It was a very happy day and we danced the night away, glowing in the romance of it all.
My husband didn’t understand what I was, and as time continued his tolerance of my sensitivity made him angrier and angrier. If he looked at me the wrong way, I’d sob. Instead of reassuring me, he’d let his anger boil and I’d sulk
in the fairy tale that I so badly wanted and had possibly written in my head. High school sweethearts. Captain of the football team with the captain of the cheerleading squad. Sickening sweet, but with a hidden, darker side.
I lay in a bed in the emergency room when a pastor, doctor, and social worker came in. I was having horrible abdominal pain and had just been put through the wringer of numerous medical tests.
“Is your husband beating you, Kristy?” the minister asked.
“What? No!”
“Explain the three fractured ribs then,” the doctor said, holding up the X-ray.
I burst into laughter. I had completely forgotten about that morning at Aikido class when my husband playfully football-tackled me. They didn’t believe me, but they released me to him anyhow. A few days later I became violently ill, only to receive a call from the hospital that I was pregnant. The morning sickness became all-day sickness and incapacitated me most of my pregnancy. My husband wasn’t thrilled with the pregnancy coming so soon after our marriage, but there was no way that I was going to get rid of the baby. The constant illness didn’t help our relationship. I developed preeclampsia in the second trimester of my pregnancy, which resulted in either making the trip down to the hospital in Detroit to be monitored or bed rest at home—all while trying to stay employed.
I was five months pregnant with my firstborn when my grandmother, who was hospitalized and dying, called and left me a voice mail. She was sobbing and asking for my forgiveness. She asked that I call her so we could reconcile. I felt perhaps it was her way of looking for the golden ticket to the Other Side, so I decided to hold off on a reply. She passed away that same night. She was buried with many secrets—except for one. On her deathbed, she informed my dad that she had not been raped at all, and offered my dad his father’s name.
There are many days that I regret not getting back to her, giving her one last chance to explain herself, to explain why she treated me with such discord, but too much hurt had built up. I believe I grew resentful and bitter for not having a typical warm and loving grandmother. At the wedding to my children’s father, she bad-mouthed me to my boss and anybody else who would listen, claiming that I was the most spoiled person she had ever met. Maybe I was, but I just wanted to be loved, and maybe she did, too.
It was August 10 and I was eight months pregnant when I developed a terrible headache—every time my head pounded I saw different colored lights, as if angels of all different colors were singing a message to me. I called the doctor’s office and left a message with the answering service. After an hour and no return call, I decided to take a shower and sleep it off. The next morning was my check-up and since I was still feeling lousy, my husband came along. My blood pressure was slightly elevated, but that wasn’t unusual—I had gained almost one hundred pounds during the pregnancy, and it was an excruciatingly hot and humid summer. Although Micaela wasn’t due until the second week of September, the obstetrician said that if she didn’t come before August 23, he would induce on that date. The problem was she was breach and facing backward. I’d had enough of being pregnant and was near tears as I climbed down from the table. “Oh, by the way, why did you call yesterday?” the doctor inquired. He said he tried calling back, but nobody answered. When I told him about the headache, the blood in his face drained and he asked me to take another urine test. In the thirty minutes since I’d come into the office, my protein had doubled. He immediately sent us to the hospital, where I was given a drug that made me feel like water from hell was boiling inside of me and then had an emergency C-section.
On August 11, 1994, we welcomed a baby girl named Micaela. The pregnancy had been awful, as was the delivery. I can now joke that she was truly trying to kill me.
I didn’t get the normal bonding time with my baby girl, as I was taken from recovery into the intensive care unit and heavily medicated with what the nurses referred to as hell water, an anticonvulsant medication, magnesium sulfate. I awoke the next day to my husband bringing friends in and making fun of me for talking nonsense, only to fall asleep and wake an hour later to immediately rejoin the conversation as if nothing had happened. My husband thought it was hysterical and kept inviting his friends to the hospital. I became a sideshow as I fell in and out of a medical-induced stupor. I didn’t think it was funny and instead it made me sad and hurt.
The second night in intensive care, the heart monitors started to go off. Doctors rushed in to give me an EKG and I passed out. I heard a priest praying over me when I woke up. I surprised him when I asked who he was and informed him that I was Lutheran. When my doctor came to check on me, I asked him what had happened. He told me I didn’t need to know, and that I should just rest. I joked that I was probably receiving my last rites. My doctor didn’t laugh.
Recovery was slow, but coming home with that baby girl in my arms made everything worth it.
Nine months later I was pregnant again and I had a sinking feeling as I told my husband, who was still adjusting to having Micaela. Intuitively, I was right on the mark. Instead of being excited and passing out cigars, he told me to get rid of the baby or else he was leaving. Now, the signs were right there, but in my head he was still my high school sweetheart, and I wanted the happy family with the two-point-five kids and the picket fence. The problem was that we were young and I was smothering him. Each time I had a feeling he was thinking of straying, I’d panic, which just pushed him away even more. A few days after sharing the news with him (but not the rest of the family), I was at work when I developed awful cramps. I called my doctor’s office and was told to get to the hospital quickly because they feared it was an ectopic pregnancy—a case where the embryo develops outside of the uterine cavity. The doctor’s staff also told me to call our parents, who only scolded me for not telling them. It wouldn’t have made any difference. I lost the babies—twins. I woke up from the anesthesia to see my husband flirting with the recovery room nurse and laughing at me. I was torn up inside, emotionally and physically.
And once again, that should have been a strong sign to leave, but instead I wanted to add to the family with hopes that if our family was complete, we could move on with our lives and rediscover the love. Naïve or a hopeless romantic? Probably more naïvety. I did indeed get pregnant, but just a few weeks after the positive pregnancy test I again developed cramps. This time my doctor sent me for an ultrasound. The look on the technician’s face spoke volumes as she excused herself to get a doctor. The doctor patted my hand and told me that I was losing the baby, and I would probably have the miscarriage that night. I did. I shed gallons of tears of frustration because something that was supposed to be natural was so difficult for my body. But for the following three weeks, I continued to have morning sickness and nausea and then had a visit from my grandfather.
We stood in an all-white room. In his arms was a baby wrapped in a blue blanket, and he stretched his arms out for me to take him. I looked into my grandfather’s eyes and he telepathically reassured me that everything would unfold the way it was supposed to and that the baby was a gift from him. The next morning I called the doctor.
“I really think I’m still pregnant,” I blurted out as soon he came on the phone, without mentioning the visit from my grandpa.
“Kristy, we drew your blood and the levels went down, indicating the loss.” His compassion came through in his voice. He had been my OB/GYN since before Micaela and had witnessed the miscarriages, seen the marital issues, and knew that I had a lot of stress in my life.
“Did it go to zero, though?” I inquired. His silence was telling. “Well, did it?”
“No,” he sighed. “Tell you what. You get another ultrasound, and if you aren’t pregnant, you’ll make a deal with me to get some therapy.”
“Deal,” I said, smiling, certain that I wouldn’t have to be sitting on a therapist’s couch—at least not for that.
The next day I was back in the same examining room, with the sam
e doctor and technician who had told me I was going to lose the baby. I held my breath and asked my guides, grandparents, and angels to help with the miracle.
“This can’t be,” the doctor exclaimed. “There’s a baby. Not only that, the baby is the same gestational age as the one you lost.”
“A twin?” the technician asked.
“We may never know, but there is for sure what looks like a healthy developing baby.”
The pregnancy, although it started out rocky, was pretty much normal. The news that it was a boy was also exciting, and I thought perhaps I could win over my husband by giving him a son. It wasn’t until I was being wheeled into the operating room for a C-section that we decided on his name: Connor Drake.
I had a premonition awaiting the prep for the C-section and was told by my guides to ask for another. They didn’t expand, and I hadn’t a clue what “another” was. It wasn’t until I was already in the surgery room that I knew exactly what they meant. I was having contractions and was bent over the table as the anesthetist began to insert the needle above my spinal cord, but he missed and tried again, only to miss the second time. The operating room erupted in angry confrontations as I tried to stay still while having contractions and feeling only partially numb. My mind wandered to the fear of feeling the surgery. Finally, the third attempt was a charm.
As I lay in the recovery room, my husband and nurse came to give me the news. Connor was healthy, but he had a cleft palate in the soft palate and was born without a uvula. The hospital wasn’t sure what to do with him, and I hadn’t a clue what a cleft palate or a uvula even was. Holding my baby boy, he looked as perfect as could be, but once I started to feed him, I realized that he wasn’t getting any milk out of the bottle and his frustration was making me teary, which was only compounded by a resident who came in with my chart a couple hours after giving birth.
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