Powerfully!
And with such an intensity that the core of my soul continues to vibrate from the "4th dimension sonic boom" that shattered its windows early Saturday morning.
That's the best way I can describe it. Some would say it was God at work. Others would say it was merely a coincidence and logically find a way to say I'm reading what I want to think into it.
I say, call it what you want. I KNOW what it was. I KNOW what I felt and what is still occurring from the aftershock that has continued in my soul since. And it was the moment that will forever change my life on a day I will never, ever forget.
My Zero Hour. The moment I made peace with the core of my pain and completely let it go. My moment of clarity.
I got sick Wednesday night. Became sicker Thursday. By Friday night I thought I needed to be hospitalized. My normal urination went from a normal hue to a lovely shade of dark brown, and then ceased altogether. My back was in so much pain I could barely stand, let alone walk. I started to feel delirious from what I would guess to be my kidneys taking a couple days off giving my body an abundant cocktail of unfiltered blood. After a 6:00am excruciatingly painful walk next door to Wal-Mart for cranberry juice and pain reliever I was ready to die. And after 3 days of witnessing crack cocaine being dealt in the parking lot of my "budget weekly stay" motel, and an endless revolving door of clientele seeking late Friday night service from the prostitutes on either side of my cozy room, I began welcoming it.
I began thinking about the reality of my now pathetic existence. I didn't work for 3 days because of my illness. I won't be able to pay for a room in this Hell Hole next week. How am I going to ever be able to afford a deposit/1st/last month rent on anything when I can't even pay for a night now in this shit hole? And how can I work to make & save the money I need to escape this Hell if I live in my car? And then how will I ever be able to focus on starting my life over with no escape from Hell? And with every moan, groan, and headboard banging into the walls in front and behind me hour after hour after hour, I thought of more simple expenses of life that have become barricades obstructing every avenue of escape. And when the thought of an uninsured hospitalization expense came to mind as I stared at the phone debating on whether or not to call 911, I surrendered.
It is said that when one is near death one can see both dimensions of existence simultaneously. I don't know if that is true or not. I DO know that I felt an increasingly unexplainable presence in my room Friday and Saturday. I saw shadows moving across the room out of the corner of my eye. Both in the daylight and at night with the lights in my rooms both on and off. As Friday turned into Saturday the shadows became more prominent. There were 2 figures I kept seeing in my periphery - one the size of a normal person and the other the size of a house cat. I felt tickling sensations across my body when I sat in bed. Even stranger yet, I felt the sensation of something sit down on the foot of bed and touch my leg when I was lying down. And when I would walk to the bathroom sink for water I heard the sound of someone behind me in the other room who was watching me. And then I would return to an empty room. At the time I chalked it up to being delusional because of becoming so Ill, which then prompted the self debate to call 911.
And in my darkness on a Saturday dawn I cried a pathetic and whimpering sob up to the ceiling saying that I've lost the strength I need to continue on this path that I am traveling on. That it now seemed a hopeless journey filled with emptiness. And with one last breath before I closed my overflowing eyes to surrender to whatever would be I cried into the dark, "Momma, if you are there and you can hear me - help me. I can't find the strength anymore that I know I need. I'm in so much emotional agony and physical pain now that I truly feel like I am dying. I don't want to die. I want to live again - to start over again. But I am so lost. Please help me." And that is the last thing I remember until I opened my eyes again around 11:00am Saturday morning.
There is great irony in that last admission. For part of the sworn testimony my Ex-Fiancé concocted and made to a Magistrate issuing the order to have me taken into custody, transported, and involuntarily committed into a state run mental health asylum said, "Individual has been witnessed for months by respondent having 'full conversations' with his dead mother." I also find it ironic that someone so mentally ill herself made up that claim to have me institutionalized for mentally illness.
But what gives me pause and is truly something that has, and will forever change the view from my prism of life is the message I woke up to on my phone from someone I have not spoken to in years.
"Are you OK?"
This, from a childhood friend I grew up with. I chalked it up to either my blog posts she had read or catching herself up on my 4 month drama via Facebook.
It was neither.
After she gave me a contact number She asked me to call her out of the blue. So, I picked up the phone. She told me that she woke up with a heavy heart for me. That she remembers the death of my Mother very well and that her brother had taken his life at age 45 just three years ago, and how she understands the fallout suicide leaves in its wake & how she's thought of me often after her own family loss.
But suicide is something we merely experienced in life which has attached us randomly together in the Universe; having it and its fallout in common like some bizarre "suicide fallout" club.
That wasn't what prompted her to reach out to me at 9:00am Saturday morning though. It was a dream she'd just had. About me. Saturday morning. Waking her up at right about the same time I closed my eyes:
We were all at a family fun center. Similar to a bowling alley with the arcade games, laser tag, bowling, bouncy rooms, and food. We were all happy and enjoying each other's company and having fun. Like high school but now all at our current ages and with our families. I was attending the gathering alone and without a family in tow. And then it came time to leave at closing time and everyone walked out the door except for me. And when she realized I hadn't followed everyone else out she turned and looked back inside. She saw me sitting alone inside the family fun center, and before she could ask me if I was coming along the lights all went out. And then she woke up.
Her dream...
She told me she sometimes picks up her bible to read passages. And after she woke up so abruptly from her dream when the lights went out on me, she couldn't shake the unnerving feeling it left in her. She went to her bible to seek some of its teachings to lessen the uneasy feeling from her dream. She randomly opened it up to a passage that read, "If you are walking in darkness, without a ray of light, trust in the Lord and rely on your God."
And that is when she sent me the message asking, "Are you OK?"
We talked for an hour when I called her. She hadn't read any of my blog posts. And she had no knowledge of the last 4 months of my life. She knew only I was back home in Texas recently. And at the conclusion of our conversation she said and then repeated, "Lamar, you are loved!"
After I hung up the phone I looked up and said, "Thank you Mom. I just found the strength I lost." And with that the pain in my back started fading, and I have surrendered to a new hope & a renewed faith on this journey.
