Abandonment

The most pivotal event in returning my gift to me was a situation that was to change me forever. I was 19 years old, and my alcoholism had progressed along with my self-centeredness–I was frozen in immaturity. I was managing my cross-dressing behavior by taking female hormones pills and drinking to temper their effects. By this time, I was also using street drugs on top of everything else. I was screaming inside for help, but none came.

After taking an overdose the day before final exams as a pre-law freshman in college, I went to summer school to make up for the year I’d sabotaged. I was depressed and didn’t know what to do: My intuition was blocked and muffled by all the poison I was taking into my body and my destructiveness made it impossible to hear the warnings of my soul.

My friends on campus cautioned me to stay away from a particular bar in a seedy part of town that was rumored to attract a wilder kind of crowd. Of course, that just intrigued me more, so I went there with a friend and started hanging around. Needless to say, as a young, rebellious, curious, and self-destructive transgender gal who was desperate for attention and not very experienced with men, literally I got into trouble. The place was frequented by all kinds of rough guys-drug dealers, gangster pimps, and bikers among them. I should have known better, but I’d never been exposed to this element of society before, except in the form of romanticized novels and movies.

My first taste of the dangers of that scene came one night I insulted one of the men in front of his gang of friends. For the first time in my life, I received a violent beating at the hands of a man. His first hit my face full-on, and I flew backward over a chair and landed on the floor. I heard a crack and a hollow thud, and I must have passed out for a few seconds.

I remember picking myself up off the floor…the room was spinning. I could taste the blood running into my mouth, and both the front and back of my head were pounding. I’d never been hit before – I was shocked, humiliated, and very scared. No one helped me up from the floor. I’d apparently done the unthinkable, although I wasn’t exactly sure what that was… However, it was what happened two weeks later that would change my life forever.

I was beginning to feel cooped up in my school’s dorm, where I’d remained since the incident at the bar. Still shocked by my experience, and with the bruise still evident on my face, I let my girlfriend convince me to go downtown for a beer. Later that evening we ran into a group of guys we’d seen around. I was ready to go home, but my friend wanted to stay longer, so I accepted a lift from the men. I didn’t know them very well, but they seemed nice, and they’d never bothered me before.

After what had occurred two weeks earlier, I was looking for protection, so I believed them when they offered to get me home safely. Little did I know that these men had other plans for me – an experience that showed me what it was like to lose power to choose what would happen to my own body, as well as making me truly understand the nature of shame. But the situation would also open the door to those abilities that I had previously pushed away.

The interesting thing was that the minute I accepted the ride, I knew something terrible was going to happen, but I just wasn’t able to listen. My intuition was there to show me the way, but I was drunk and couldn’t hear it. Although a sense of fearful expectation made my heart race, I hoped that what I anticipated was just my imagination…but it turned out to be all too real. Something important was indeed about to take place: I was going to be raped.

As these men violated me, I had an extraordinary and unforgettable experience. I remember it vividly as if it were only yesterday. I saw myself being lifted out of my body, floating up to the corner of the room. I looked down at the scene below, observing what was happening to me in a calm, detached, curious way. I remember feeling very old as if I had been a soul since the beginning of time.

At the same time, my intuitive gift began to reveal scenes to me from the lives of my assailants. I started to feel oddly sorry for them. I saw a child locked in the basement without food and water, left there by his fat, slovenly, alcoholic mother. I witnessed another small and skinny boy being shuffled in and out of foster homes. A third one had pale white skin and red hair and was part of a large family – I heard yelling and screaming in a kitchen, and I saw the father beating the mother to the floor and the little boy seething with rage. Then I saw someone in a grocery store stealing cans of soup and placing them in a big, unfamiliar purse.

These images swirled around me and were suspended in the room. I also experienced a split awareness: I was conscious of myself, and at the same time, I was able to “walk” beside my own mind, jumping back and forth at will. Later in life, I recognized that this is exactly the same “location” that I’m able to visit when I read for people.

What happened to me that night left me with two distinct legacies: The first was the shameful wound of rape that took many years to heal; the second and more important one was the dual awareness that I experienced. From that day forward, I was able to access this awareness at will, and it ultimately became the key to my hunger to know and understand the vastness of human consciousness and perception. But this change for the better wasn’t immediate.

Shame and Silence

For the next few years, I remained in situations that placed me in harm’s way. I was confused, and I prayed to God but believed He would ignore me. And my mother made me promise never to tell anyone about my experience, as she herself was a gang rape survivor. (During the war, she’d been assaulted by a group of Japanese soldiers while her father was forced to watch.)

I’d never wanted anyone to know about the rape. I kept it to myself until I collapsed a month later, hemorrhaging, with a super-high temperature. It took nine more years for me to hit bottom. The alcohol and drugs no longer provided escapes from my intuitive abilities, although messages and visions were distorted and filtered through my damaged ego. I wore the perception of myself as a victim like a badge.

My intuitive gift became increasingly difficult to suppress, so I stopped trying. With twenty-twenty hindsight, of course, I see that I had a strong six-sensory perspective on the people around me, what they were going through, and what was about to happen. But because I was never sober, I was unable to put this to good use.