Thanks Mom!

My mother Janet Leven died over 20 years ago. Every once in a while she comes to me in dreams just to reassure me that she's doing OK. This morning I was dreaming about cleaning out RV/trailer type things when she came to me and said "Everything is going to be fine." I didn't give it too much thought as the date of her death is the 30th of this month and that's the usual time she comes to me.

This afternoon my sister Jeanie called and told me that our sister Cathy was in the hospital and had had a heart attack. I started to panic until I remembered Mom's words from this morning. So Thanks Mom, I trust Cathy will be fine.

My family, my spirituality, and the weirdness that is my life.

This is a brief interlude from the gay side of my life. If i'm to be truthful in one aspect of my life I must be truthful in ALL aspects. You have been warned.

From an early age I was very different from the other kids. This has nothing to do with my homosexuality and all to do with my being a psychic intuitive.

My Mom used to tell me stories of when I was a little kid and would walk up to strangers and tell them things about themselves that I couldn’t possibly know. I remember one time where I told a woman at a department store that she had spots all over her chest. The lady started to cry as she had been diagnosed with lung cancer only days before. I never really gave it much thought until my kindergarten teacher asked me why I would draw all the colors around the people I drew. I told he it was the lights and she looked at me like I was nuts but it was the 60’s and people were starting to learn about auras and other psychic phenomena. That’s when I learned that others didn’t see the lights I could. I tried to keep it all back because I wanted to be normal, thinking if I was normal people would leave me alone.

I was never much of a prognosticator but when it did happen I would listen, The prime example of this was the day my Dad died.  Woke up with a bad feeling and couldn’t shake it. The feeling got worse as the day went on and I eventually knew I had to be away from the house that night. Something bad would happen and I wouldn’t ever recover if I was home. I called my Grandmom and begged to be allowed to sleep over her house, she relented after in started crying even though it was a school night. I couldn’t tell her what was making me so scared as I didn’t know myself, it was just a feeling of dread that I couldn’t shake although it was far less once I was out of the house. I awoke in the middle of the night to see my father and another man who I learned later was his father walking into my Grandmom’s studio apartment and wake her then vanish. She woke with a scream and maybe 15 minutes later my Mom and her brother, my uncle George, were at the door to tell us that my dad had died. He was watching a Phillies game on the TV while eating a hot dog, they scored a home run and he sucked the dog down his wind pipe. The only other person there was my sister Jean who was too small to do anything to help him but call an ambulance. Mom was working at the time and Cathy was at a friend’s house. Dad had died and I knew something bad would happen. I was blaming myself and was inconsolable. dad and I had always had a distant kind of love. He was much more comfortable around Cathy but we had started making headway when I started playing basketball, which I hated but I would have done anything for him.

I went up to my parish priest and asked him why my dad had to die and he gave the old boiler plate “God wanted him by his side” line. I refused to accept that and kept asking why that was, eventually father Brown said to me “To get away from you. Now leave me alone.” I have never hated anyone like I hated him. Needless to say that was the end of my time in the Catholic Church.

Time goes on though and wounds heal as much as they can. I shut my talents down. Refused to see or hear anything outside of the normal realm and felt some relief with that. Then I got hit upside the head when I was 17.

My Mother loved me and resented me I think. She was overly protective and really ran my life as much as she was able, although I found out many years later that she considered me her favorite and even told my sister that. When I was 17 she was diagnosed with colon cancer, something she had had for a long time without letting the family know about as she didn’t want to worry us. I was devastated by the news but thankfully had Eric and a few other friends to lean on. Mom held on for 8 years before she passed, it was not a pleasant experience those last few years.

When I was in my very early 20’s I met a girl named Annabelle and she helped me to reconnect with my gifts and how to better control them. Through her I learned to listen to the world in a very different way, she opened me up to so much and for that I will always be grateful, even if she betrayed me and abandoned me when I needed my friends the most. But that’s a tale for my next post.

In the interest of fairness and open dialog

I guess I'll start this out by telling you about myself.
The Early Years
I grew up in a lower middle class suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the USA. The youngest of three kids I have two older sisters, mom raised us as my father died when I was ten years old. Dad was a great guy and loved by everyone he met, He was raised Roman Catholic from a largish family who all loved each other very much. Mom was shy and very conservative having grown up privileged and Southern Baptist. Other important people in my live as a child and young adult were my paternal Grandmother who loved me dearly but seemed to know I would turn out gay. She actually told me once not to use the word pretty. "only girls use that word. Men don't even notice these things". I was describing a field of flowers at the time. My uncle "Brother" Richard a catholic brother and track coach for the Christian school he worked at, A great guy who I never really gave to much time to, mainly because I didn't want any other man in my life but my dad and he was already gone. The only other person who had a major impact on my life was my best friend Eric, and well get into that later.