"Crazy" Part 1 by John S LES

"Heart In My Throat" picture courtesy of The
Artist Antonella Mason
www.AntonellaMason.com

"Crazy" Part 1 by John S LES

Ever since I was a kid they called me crazy.  Sometimes I would hear voices or see images of people that weren't there.  My parents sent me to counselor, after counselor.  Each one would eventually prescribe me some form of medication, which I rejected.  One day during my mid-teens, while attending a carnival at a fair in New Jersey, my mother went to see a gypsy tarot card reader to find out more about the future of her marriage and her troubled son.  To my mother's surprise, the gypsy turned to me and began reading to her my fate and my future.  She then told my mother that I had the gift of light.  The gift to speak and see the undead souls.  Those are the souls or spirits who have died, but have not moved on into the great beyond.  She told me to learn to simply ignore the images and voices and that I would be able to live a happier life.  She was right.

Throughout my childhood, I remembered what the gypsy told me.  I did manage to ignore the voices and the whispers that came into my head during quiet times.  I learned to sing songs and hymns.  Learning how to focus helped me do well in school throughout my primary and secondary education.  After college I got my masters in education, graduated with the highest honors and became one of the youngest professors in New York University history.  Not long after, I met my wife, two years my senior, who was also a professor at NYU.  My wife traveled almost every summer for several weeks to help various humanitarian organizations.  She would use those experiences to help expand her teachings in her sociology classes.  While she spent time expanding her sensitivity and understanding to humanity, I had spent that same time dulling my sensitivities.  For you see as I got older some of those inner voices became louder.  It was all I could do at times to ignore them.


Then in February 2009, while on a routine flight to Buffalo, New York to attend a seminar, my wife was on board the ill fated Colgon Air Flight 3407.  It was after that flight that my "craziness" that I had suppressed for years went to another level. The voices and images that I had been able to suppress for years all started coming back to me as the pain and agony of losing my beloved wife was too much to bear.  I could hear people talking to me, asking me where they were, or telling me who around me was destined to join them in the near future.  It was upsetting.  If I had not suppressed those voices for all those years, then perhaps I could have used them and saved my wife?

Every time someone was named by those voices, if I saw that person, I could see the look of death about them.  It was like a dark aura that shined behind them while their faces seemed to blacken.  It was if their souls were already leaving their body and there was a light above them pulling that soul away.

I began seeing counselors and therapists again.  Every one of them eventually blamed my visions and hearings on my depression over my wife's death.  But that really wasn't the case.  They just couldn't see things my way.  I had to leave my teaching job at NYU.  I couldn't stay in the city anymore.  There were too many people, too many voices and noises in my head.  I had to get out.


TO BE CONTINUED,...