Writer's Workshop : I'm Sensitive, but more so then you think...

A couple of things had to come into play for this post.  First it is Mama Kat's Writer Workshop and I'm soooooo happy to be doing it again. I truly missed doing this.  Second, I shared something in my last award post (a couple honest things) A Day Full of Needles: Ramble... and an Award!  and one reader, Christie O, wanted me to share more. 

So when I saw the prompt: 1.) Summer’s recent post “I’m Sensitive And I Want To Stay That Way” talks about how her sensitivity works for her and against her, but that she embraces herself for the way she is. What is your cross to bear?
(inspired by Summer from Le Musings Of Moi)

I truly debated........ seriously .... the words that jumped out at me were...

SENSITIVE

and

CROSS TO BEAR  

 A very young Annissa w/ Grandma

My Grandma, a very Spiritual person, taught me about things .. normal Grandma's don't.  She was Psychic, often using it only to predict what her next Grandchild would be, but there were other times.  She believed in the Zodiac and Signs...  and I'd often find her with her cards and her mat trying to find something out or just wanting to know what they said.  I think most everyone in the family just brushed this part of Grandma off but not me. 

LOL...... I like to think of myself as a very open and honest person.  But there are a couple of things that I tend to keep to myself.  My being a little more "sensitive" then most people is one of them....   It actually makes me quite nervous because I can hear the .... 

Ooooooh whatever!  That doesn't really exist

 type of comments.   Sure with the shows like Psychic Kids on A&E ... people can actually see that it's not the hoax type of thing that many people make it to me.  Oh yes there are tons of fakes out there and ... I can hear the "it's TV, everything can be fake" comments, but I tell you what.  I have been having psychic experiences since I was little  I have also felt/seen ghosts. 

Then come the "Your CRAZY" comments... 

Yeah, whatever...  LOL...  I am just who I am...  Things don't come to Psychic's on a whim, and you can't force it.  You can block it, which I tend to do, or encourage it, which at times I have tried. 

So what are some of these experiences?   

Well, the earliest experience I had was when I was about 8 or 9.  I have always had trouble sleeping.  I don't have trouble FALLING asleep, when I am tired and I lay down, I'm out with in a couple minutes, but I do suffer from pretty bad insomnia at times.   This particular night was one of them.  Now, in order to explain this story, I have to explain the house we build and were living in at the time.  It had 4 floors.  Basement has the laundry room w/ door and stairs to the garage, my Uncle *P's* room ..  the den, and my Grandpa's office. The Bi-Level was where there was a bathroom, my Uncle *R's" room... and my room.  The Main Floor was Kitchen, TV Nook, Dining Room, Living Room and they Foyer area.  Then the Upstairs was another Bathroom, My Mom's Room and My Grandparent's Room.   The Upstairs and Bi-Level (smaller floors) were on top of each other, and the Main floor was on top of the basement (larger floors).  So the stairs leading upstairs were right on top (floor plan wise) of the basement steps, and the steps for the bi-level were right next to but between floors of the other two.  So you could walk up the basement steps to the bi-level, turn to your left around the wall and walk up the bi-level steps, turn to your left on the main floor around the wall, and go up the stairs leading upstairs.

This particular night, I went to bed, and then woke up really late, everyone had gone to bed.  I was afraid of the dark still.  I had a large closet in my room, and would often prop the folding doors open a little and leave the closet light on... just so there was SOME light in my room.   I remember I was sitting in my bed, which was right across from my bed, with the door open and I could see straight into the bathroom from across the hall.  So i was sitting there reading a Care Bear book and I got this really creepy feeling.  I always got creepy feelings.  So I nervously looked up and I saw this little boy across the hall from me, standing in the bathroom doorway.  He smiled at me and he motioned me to come to him with his finger.  I sunk back into bed, under the covers. Scared out of my little mind.  Then I got the guts to uncover, and look, and he was still there.  Motioning to me.   NO NO NO NO NO .. I thought.  I was frozen with fear.  After what seemed like hours, I managed to get out of bed and put my back against my closet doors.  One slow step at a time I inched my way to my bedroom door.  Once I hit the door, I shot up the steps, then turned and shot up the steps and into my Grandparents room.  I often did this when I was scared.  My mom can sleep like the dead, and always said no.  At least with my Grandparents I knew I had a chance of at LEAST talking them into letting me sleep on their floor.  So I started blabbering about how there was a little boy in the bathroom trying to get me to come to him and I couldn't, I just couldn't.  My Grandpa wasn't waking up and my Grandma moaned at me and told me to go back to bed.  BUT GRANDMA, I had cried.  "Annissa Rae just go back to bed.  It's just your imagination getting the best of you, you were probably just dreaming"   Well I always HAVE had a great imagination, but I know what I saw!

So fine, I wasn't going to get anywhere, Grandma wasn't going to let me stay in there, and I knew my fight was over.  There was no point in trying again.  So I left their room, and as slow as I couple POSSIBLY make it, started taking steps to go downstairs.  All I knew is I didn't want to go back to my room.  I couldn't.   That little boy didn't seem scary at all, other then the fact that he wasn't suppose to be in my house, he was rather inviting, however.. I just knew something wasn't right.  Something wasn't right and I couldn't be in my room.  So a few minutes later, I managed to make it down the steps from the upstairs to the main floor, and I stood at that bottom step, not wanting to pivot around the corner and go down those steps to my room.  But I did, and I stood there, starring down the steps to my room in the darkness.  The big emptyness of the living room behind me to my left, and the big emptyness of the dining room to my right.  I couldn't move.  I just stood there, staring.  

Then I heard something, feet running as fast as possible up the basement steps.  I started screaming.  I saw this black shadow turn the corner and started screaming higher, and then it started running up the steps towards me, yet I was still frozen there.  As it passed me, this big black shadow, it brushed up against me and it was a hard form, I could feel it... and I started screaming at even a HIGHER pitch.  I then managed to get un-frozen, turned and ran as fast as I could up the stairs back to my grandparents room and just as I was reaching for the door knob to throw myself into their room and beg mercy and please let me stay in there I ran into something HARD right outside their door.  I started screaming even more.  But when the gentle hand of my Grandfather fell on my shoulder, I calmed, instantly and I started blubbering out what had happened and my Grandfather just said "It's okay, it's okay, I heard it too." 

He heard it too?  REALLY?   But I was in tears.  I couldn't stop them, I was so scared.  He told me to go lay down with my Grandmother in bed, in his spot, and he was going to check out the house.  Then my Uncle *P* had come upstairs and asked what was going on, no he hadn't heard anyone run up the stairs but he was awoken by my screams.  My Mom came out awhile later and asked what was going on too.  My Grandpa had checked the WHOLE house.  Every door and window was locked, he had said.  But HE clearly heard it it.. 

Apparently, that night, there was an intruder in our house, and if it weren't for that little boy in the bathroom warning me, or beckoning to me... who knows what would have happened.  I don't know if it was more of a ghostly experience or a psychic one, but either way, it was the first that I remember. 

The next thing I remember is equally as much of a ...  I don't know if it was a more a ghost or a psychic experience.   But whatever...  we had moved out of the big house where my Grandparents lived and back into the house we owned before that (my grandparents had rented it I believe until my mom wanted to move in) ... So I was in bed one night and I had a dream.  My Grandpa had basically flown from his house to mine (it was a couple miles, I watched him over the neighborhood) and he came into my room, through my window and stood at the foot of my bed, and he said ... "I just came to say Goodbye, I love you."  That morning when I woke up, completely forgetting about the dream.  I got dressed for school in my room, did my normal thing, and when I came out - I found my mom in the den on the phone, and she looked up at me, and she said "Oh no, someone just walked into the room who doesn't know yet."  Now I was Grandpa's Little Girl.  We were two peas in a pod and I'm sure my Mom was dreading telling me.  Out flew "What?  Grandpa died?" ... I didn't know where it came from, but it just flew out of my mouth.  My mom's mouth dropped and she said "How did you know that?" And I burst into tears.  I remembered the dream then.  She still made me go to school, thinking it might help me keep my mind off my grief, but it didn't...  I remember I had to run the mile that day, and I couldn't stop crying. 

The next one I remember was when I was in Jr. High.  I was about 13.  I was talking on the phone to a friend of mine, Cindy, from school .  We were just chatting and chatting away when all of a sudden I went into this trance of sorts and was perfectly aware of it.  Our of my mouth, through no control of mine, I said "Something bad is going to happen" and my friend Cindy said "what, to me??"  with panic in her voice.  And I said "No, here," still in that trance type feeling.  Then I snapped out of it and was like, "I don't know what all that was about."  We continued to talk for awhile but I had gotten this bad feeling.  I was living with my Mom and her Boyfriend at the time, out in the boondocks countryside.  Loved it there though, well, everything but the boyfriend, which you'll also hear a bit about, in a later part of this.  Anyway, when I got off the phone with her, I had walked into the front room to play some Nintendo (it was a new thing then) ... and happened to look out the window towards the garden when I saw this HUGE patch of black grass and flames!  It was moving kinda quickly too!   I screamed for my mom, and her boyfriend and yelled "THE YARD IS ON FIRE" ...  apparently, a few minutes before I got off the phone with my friend, my mom's boyfriend had emptied out the ashes from our wood burning stove, and dumped it in the garden like he always did, but this time, it was so close to the edge that the embers had caught the grass on fire.  Now, I hadn't heard him in the area where the stove was, or walk out of the house... or come back in, I thought he was still sleeping because it was early on a Saturday morning.  My mom and her boyfriend had raced through the house though and buckets were taken out, the hose turned on, the fire got put out but I was shaken.  

Later that year, once it got cold, I was on a field trip with my class - lasted very late that night - and I had told my Mom to pick me up at school.  We were half hour away from the town where I was born and live in now, and a half hour in the opposite direction from "home" was my school.  So it was an hour long drive (about) from town to the school.  Well once we passed through the "blink you miss it" tiny town where I lived, on the bus on the way back to school, I got this funny feeling I should get off with the kids who were getting off in town and just walk to the house (about a mile) ... I just couldn't shake the feeling and kept saying it to my friends.  They encouraged me to get off if I felt that way but I couldn't because if my mom WAS at the school waiting like I told her to, she would be PISSED at me if I didn't come on the bus.  So I didn't listen to the feeling and I stayed on the bus to the school.   She wasn't there when we got there.  My friends all left, the people who weren't my friends all left, and I was the last one there.  I went back into the school and to the phone they had set up for student use and I dialed our home number, but it wouldn't go through, long distance.  Damn county lines!  I couldn't call my best friends house, and I called my friend CIndy's house.  I was told she was already in bed, and I started to cry - told her parents what was going on, and her Dad came and got me, and took me home.  So nice of him.  So then once I got home, I called my Grandma, and my mom was searching for me.  Apparently she thought she was suppose to pick me up where we had the field trip.  So word got back to my mom (no cell phones in our family, actually I think this was even a little pre-cell phone) ...  and she came home.  I got hugged and yelled at - I kept telling her I told her to pick me up at the school and she said that I didn't.  

This same time in my life I started to get this crazy thought running through my head over and over and over again all the time that I was either going to die at 16 or get married at 18.  I blew it off, shook it off, ignored it...  wth?  But I told my best friends.  Crazyness I tell you.  A couple years later when I was 16, my mom was still living with her boyfriend out in the boondocks and I was going back and forth between her and family in town.  See, the boyfriend was an alcoholic and I couldn't stand to be around him for long, and apparently he couldn't stand to be around me much.  He was abusive to my mom, always putting me down ...  and I wished my mom would just stay but I also wanted her to be happy.  She did have happy times with him.   She left a couple of times before she left for good, finally.  One weekend I was staying out there, it was during the summer.  My mom was gone at work and her boyfriend was in a drunken stopper sleep in his room   So I walked out to get the mail, and that involved a LONG walk down the dirt drive-way to the main road.  As I was walking, I heard the door to the house open and him yell something, the gun went off, I shot my head around to see what was going on and saw the gun pointed at me and as I was seeing this I heard something whiz past me.  He had just SHOT at me.  I ducked into the woods and I stayed OUT in the woods walking around until my mom came home that night.  It took me a long time to even tell her about that.  And I did get married to my ex husband when I was 18, btw.  

It's just a lot of little stories like that through my life.  How when one of my best friends asked me if she was going to be able to do a VBAC or end up with another c-section, how I got a flash photo of my c-section scar when I closed my eyes, and I told her that... she was like, whatever you are wrong.. LOL...  she tried hard for that VBAC but she ended up with a c-section.  

The one thing I am fully horrible at is predicting genders of babies.  I swear, if I say something - it's going to be the opposite!   

I don't like those creepy feelings, feelings of something bad happening ...  those foreboding feelings ... but I have learned to listen to them.   Recently I was dreading driving one day, just didn't want to do it, but I did it.. took the kids to the appt that one of them had, and I came so close to being involved in an accident that it gave me this unshakable feeling.  If I hadn't been quick on my feet I'm not sure what would have happened but I don't think it would have been good.  Fact was, I was on edge and being over-cautious then normal because of that feeling.  

I don't willingly seek out these feelings....the just come when they want...This may not be what Mama Kat had in mind when she set the prompt ... but it's what I got :)