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Sub Category : Miscellaneous

    
      Believe it or not, but this story is true. It happened nine years ago...

    While in Washington, at my fifth rehab stay to get off of heroin, I lived on a ranch 2,000 miles away from home. It was a very spiritual place. I got the chance to have a Reiki session—energy work—with a real Shaman. 
      When I spoke to the Shaman lady, I had asked her a number of questions that I had been asking myself for the past three years… 
     Is there anything standing in the way of me and my sobriety? 
     Was there something I had to get over in order to be happy? 
     How did I end up this way after having such a great childhood? 
     Why, out of all the kids I partied with, did I become the alcoholic and drug addict? 
     Am I going to be this way forever?


     She was quiet at first—probably overwhelmed, I imagined. Lying on the table, I couldn't see her. She stood behind me with her hands hovering above my head. This was after our Reiki session so I wasn't quite sure what was happening. 
      I grew evermore impatient with each passing second ticking away in my head. The awkward feeling of speaking and having nobody respond started to make my heart quicken. I took a deep breath and blew it out. Right as I exhaled, I decided to speak up. I opened my mouth halfway to draw air in—
      "Ohh…" she spoke. 
      I'd heard that type of "O"-sound before, but it wasn't the one you heard when surprised. It was a sound you made when you had just heard some devastating news. That freaked me out. I had to say something but she had beaten me to it again. 
      "It's… really vague. Hazy. Like it's covered in a thick mist."
      "What does that mean?" I finally got my turn. 
      I closed my eyes and was ready to imagine everything she was going to say. 
      "You can't remember it happening. Either you were at a very young age when it happened… or, it's there in your memory, but you can't bring it up to the surface."
      I could feel the confused cringe in my face. What was she talking about? I had to ask what that meant, again. 
      She responded with something that had jolted me and kept me in a state of mild panic and worry throughout the day:
      "It's almost like its out of a horror or science fiction movie. A nightmare, almost. And your father keeps coming up. But again, it's too hazy and unclear for me to see."
      I laid there with eyes wide and mouth open. The confusion from before was still there but had grown almost into paranoia. My head was blank. I could only feel my heart pound and beads of sweat rolling down. There wasn't any memory of a science fiction, horror, movie that had given me nightmares. If I had seen anything that gave me bad nightmares as a kid, they would've told me. We were always trying to figure out what went wrong in my life that had traumatized me. 
      Every disorder and addiction stems from some kind of trauma that happens during childhood. But I had blocked it out. I guess it was pretty bad then. 
      It wasn't but a few months later when the fog had cleared. Yes, I had a great childhood. But I was a very scared child. My imagination was incredibly vivid back then. I had remembered everything and yes, what happened, truly was terrifying…