Monday, March 7, 2011

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

So, what was it that led me to come out to my counselor that I suffer from visual and auditory hallucinations? A spider.

One night I was laying on my pallet on the floor (I don't sleep in a bed) reading. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a rather large spider in the middle of the wall-to-wall carpet of my bedroom. As our house is old -- originally built in 1900 -- it's not odd in the least to see a spider on the floor or climbing on a wall.

I put the book down to watch the spider. It stood there unmoving for several seconds and then started scampering toward me. It came right across the floor and scurried under my book that was resting on the corner of my pallet. While I try to have a live and let live philosophy most of the time, I certainly didn't want to wake up the next morning with several painful spider bites. So, I decided to lift up the book to smash the little critter.

However, when I lifted the book, there was no spider underneath. I jumped off the floor and quickly examined myself to see if the spider was on me. It wasn't. I pulled off my sheets and blankets. I moved all my pillows. I looked under my pallet. I basically tore my room apart looking for the spider.

Then and only then did it begin to dawn on me -- there was no spider at all. I was experiencing one of my many hallucinations!

Had I recently only had this one experience, I might have simply sluffed it off like I had so many times before. But it wasn't an isolated thing. The week before I had been visited by "the shadow."

All throughout my life, I've seen a particular shadow that follows me around. It almost always presents itself at times in which it can't be explained away. The previous week fell into this category.

You need to understand that my bedroom is on the second floor and my bedroom window faces out into the forest. At night, it's usually pitch black out there with the exception of a vapor light over our back deck. There is no way possible for the silhouette of a person to appear on the wall opposite the window. Yet, for all this knowledge, I often see the shadow of a person on that very wall.

It tends to move across the wall like the shadow of a person walking by the window. (As indicated above, the only person who could accomplish this feat would need to be about 12 feet tall!) On this occasion, the shadow moved across the wall and then stopped for a moment -- as if it was looking at me -- then proceeded to move the rest of the way before leaving through the wall that forms the corner.

These two episodes convinced me that the time had come to deal with this issue out in the open and so, at my next appointment with my counselor, I came out.

1 comment:

  1. I have had terrifying moments in my life that you speak of. My brother and I shared one room during our childhood. One time I looked at where he was sleeping and I saw a green man standing next to him. I closed my eyes and tried desperately to wake up from this dream. Then I opened my eyes and the green man was still there. He wouldn't go away, the whole night.

    In he late sixties I experimented with LSD about sixty times. One time I woke up and I couldn't relate to ANYTHING. The whole world that I had been living within looked extremely abstract and untouchable. I couldn't even relate to my dear friends. I became very isolated trying desperately to come back to what was the norm.

    I think these testing times when we are frightening indifferent from the norm, is when another REAL passage opens up. I think maybe that you are in that passage. You seem to have a different view than the norm.

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