I had no idea what was to become of me in the months and years to follow. The woman I began dating and I were falling in love even though neither of us really wanted to. We saw more and more of each other and I began to want things to move in a more serious route. She was holding back and so I was still looking around at other options just in case. Her family is Russian from the Ukraine, so it was interesting being a non drinker hanging out with Russians. It took a bit before they realized why I didn’t drink so now it’s a non-issue. I was worried about how things would work with me not drinking since she liked to party a bit. Later she saw I had still been looking around online and told me she wanted to take a break for a bit, and I told her maybe we should just split. I didn’t want to waste time on something that wasn’t going anywhere. We were separated for at least a month or two, but we were still talking. Eventually we both figured out that we did love each other, and we should take the risk and go all the way with the relationship.
We were married a year later and had a nice pagan ceremony. Everything came together and we had help from the many people in our lives, friends and family. My wife’s parents and mine were all happy we found each other. It was a great wedding and then we were off to Aruba for our honeymoon. We spent the next couple of years doing everything we wanted to do. I was making better money at the college, and with her income from working in her families home health agency, we had nothing to worry about financially.
I was growing tired of the long hours and work load at the college though. I decided to try things out elsewhere when an agent contacted me online about a job opportunity. It was working for the city migrating all of their software, utilities, taxes, etc. over to a singular system. It looked to be a great opportunity with a big pay increase. After starting there we took a two week vacation to Costa Rica. It was the trip of a lifetime, seeing all the sites and sitting on empty beaches, just the two of us.
After coming back to work a while, I found out I was going to have to pass an FBI background check since I would be handling police information at work. I knew I wouldn’t pass that. So I talked to my old boss who was trying to get me back at the college. She got me my old job back and they even matched what I was getting paid at the city. It was good that I did, because the city job was contract work so there was no stability.
It was about this time we found out my wife was pregnant. The doctors had told her she wouldn’t be able to get pregnant, but here we were. We had talked about it and we were leaving things up to chance protection wise so if she got pregnant it was okay. We didn’t expect it to happen, but we were pleasantly surprised. We had a baby girl whom I named after my sister that passed so long ago. It was a difficult transition into parenthood and the responsibilities that entails. But we we worked through it and found our stride.
We purchased a house in preparation to make room for our family and get closer to the grandparents whom had been watching our daughter during the day while we were at work. Not long after we found out my wife was pregnant again. We weren’t sure we were ready for a second one. I knew I wanted a boy but was scared of having another girl and being outnumbered in the house. I was grateful to hear it when we found out it was a boy. With our daughter they had tried to induce labor since my wife’s diabetic. It took days before they finally decided to do a c-section. With my son, she went into labor the day before she was supposed to get induced and they did a c-section the next day. He wanted out quick fast and in a hurry. We didn’t plan it but he has the same birthday as my sister who passed. Coincidences abound and I was truly grateful.
The gratitude started to fade soon after as my son had colic. He was screaming all hours of the day and night and we still had our daughter to care for. It was the roughest ordeal I’ve had to deal with. Also during this time I realized I couldn’t afford everything, especially if my wife were to quit working, and things weren’t looking good at her job. I took a job with a local university making significantly more money with less responsibility. It was still a state job so I kept my retirement and benefits which was important for us. We finally learned that my son has a dairy allergy like me, and the colic was due to an allergic reaction in the intestines. We switched to soy and things finally calmed down, but this was after months of little to no sleep. We both have a bit of PTSD at this point and still flinch anytime he starts to cry.
After a period we finally found our stride and things were looking better. Things weren’t perfect, but we made them work. I’m a light sleeper and my wife snores pretty bad, so we were sleeping in separate beds. It worked out because we would alternate nights on who was getting up with the kids. There was a finished attic on the third floor so I put a bed up in there. I also had to cut back on meetings and the like to be home with the family, and I was finally able to get out more. I would stay home with the kids and let her go out to party or hit concerts with friends. Everything was finally calming down.
This is when things started changing for me. I was beginning to sense a presence when I would sleep in the attic. This was nothing new to me, but it was becoming consistent. I was having loud thoughts in my head and having intense feelings. The thoughts and interaction with this being were beginning to be sexual in nature, and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I figured it was all in my head, but wasn’t sure if it was a return of spirits I had interacted with before. I figured either way I needed to learn what this was about and what to do about it. I started researching things online and started learning about the Succubus since this appeared to be a sexual spirit. Things escalated and I was barely sleeping again. I wanted it to stop because I could barely function at this point.
I contacted multiple people online in the occult realm trying to figure out what was happening. Multiple spiritual readings said there was no Succubus there. At one point I thought I was going to lose it when I was trying to banish the spirit and it wasn’t working. I told my wife what was happening and that I was afraid of going back to the mental institutions. I needed to figure this thing out. I started working with a man online whom said it appeared to be more of a shadow self than a spirit. It was something inside me that I was ignoring. I began to look at my questions regarding my sexuality given my history of being molested and certain homosexual tendencies. I thought I had processed that when I was getting sober, but there are still remnants and issues to deal with. I had a dream one night where David Bowie came to me and said he understood my desires, for sure, but I was going to have to decide between those and my family. There was nothing wrong with my desires, but they could not coexist without causing pain. I chose the family. Combinations of realizations such as these and assistance from spirit conjurers seemed to do the trick and things improved.
I began to spend the next year delving into deep meditation, shamanic journey work, ceremonial magick and the like. I began reading everything I could get my hands on, listening to podcasts, and getting tarot readings from multiple sources. It all boiled down to what I was told so long ago. I need to find the magick in me, nobody can give it to me. The meditation was helping and the nightly interactions all but vanished when I had someone conjure up a protecting angel for me. I had a number of other spirits conjured for me during this time. I could never see or hear the spirits, nor could I discern one from the other, but my sense of the spirits increased more and more. Again, this could all be mental manifestations or even mental illness, but I was learning methods and ideologies that helped me to manage them as much as they could be. More so, how to manage myself to adjust to these experiences.
There was pressure in my head that was almost debilitating at times. Still not sure if this is a spiritual awakening or some physical ailment compounded by mental illness. Either way I can’t turn back now. I’ve been opened up to a whole new world and was beginning to grow in ways I didn’t know were possible. I began reading my own tarot and interpreting my dreams, whether it was spirit communication or just sub-conscious it didn’t matter. I was learning things about myself and my current situation that was helping me to accept things and make changes where possible. I was getting better and better at dealing with the kids and not getting so angry. I had more focus and was sleeping better than I had in a long time. I wasn’t perfect by any means, but I was starting to grow again. I had put the spiritual life on a shelf over the years for the family, but now I had to take it more seriously, it wouldn’t be silenced.
I was feeling good about things, but I found my life was beginning to crumble apart. I had two nights in particular where I sensed a presence in the room and it was my mother. Something was telling me she had passed away, so I woke up and cried myself back to sleep. I didn’t want to call her and wake her in the middle of the night if the message was false. The messages did prove to be false in a sense, but I found out then that my mother’s cancer was back. She had been through multiple rounds of chemo therapy and surgery already, and is now on the last round before having to take on clinical trials. The prognosis doesn’t look good. This was the woman that stood by me all these years and is an example of true motherly love. I had to come to grips with the fact that she will be leaving us sooner or later. So I am doing my best to spend as much time with her as I can and give her as much time with the kids as possible.
I also did a shamanic journey one day that gave me some disturbing truth. It said that I was closed off emotionally and that my marriage was just one of convenience. Later I did a tarot reading and another journey that indicated my wife was going to grow tired of things and leave me. I didn’t know what to think about that as there was no indication that things were bad between us. It wasn’t long after that my wife began distancing herself from me. She wanted to go out and party more and felt trapped. Initially she said it was issues she had, but it wasn’t long before she began blaming me. I wasn’t meeting her expectations and the time I was spending in meditation and going to bed early wasn’t leaving enough time for her. Unfortunately it was something I had to do. I held on to hope that we could work through it, but things grew increasingly difficult and resentment began to grow on both sides.
I’m holding on to hope that we can work through whatever this is together. I’m hoping that it’s something in my subconscious bringing these things to fruition and not some cosmic plan, because then it’s something I can control. But I know that’s delusion. All I can do is continue to be the best man I know how to be and work toward a resolution, but I may have to let her go if she is not happy being with me. I just want her to be happy regardless of if it’s with me or not. I also don’t want the kids to be caught in the crossfire if things go south. I fear losing her and failing at yet another relationship, but I’m also finding an odd acceptance and peace throughout it all.
The emotional turmoil has been devastating and I truly feel alone in this, yet I know I’m not alone. I’ve cried more tears than I have in over a decade. I’ve done my best to contain a rage that burned me to my core, one I haven’t felt in a long time and never successfully dealt with before. I still don’t show these feelings to others, good or bad, but in the times I’m alone I can no longer contain them. This has certainly been a trial by fire, in learning how to tackle the beasts that live within me, to accept the beasts that live within others, to find peace and contentment in the midst of chaos, to find that thing that utterly terrifies you and understand it as a part of yourself. When you move past the fear created by your misconceptions, you can find the truth, the great reality.
To be continued…
Evolving Psychosis 