2021 broke me. In addition to the Pandemic and mom’s terminal diagnosis, I was starting to feel energy in tangible, loud, undeniable ways. Most of the friends I shared my experiences with were supportive. But a few made it clear I “shouldn’t talk about such things” and I should keep my oddness to myself.
No one I had chosen to share with had experiences similar to mine. I felt very alone.
Most of that year I didn’t write publicly. I published one essay though, An Energetic Scavenger Hunt. That piece is a framework essay with a nicely organized open and close; the middle is a stream of consciousness, creative, non-fiction version of what had happened to me over 2021.
I’m proud of that piece. It’s the closest I can get to putting someone through that year’s onslaught. I got a few very concerned phone calls after I published it— an even split between people who thought I was losing my mind and people who thought I was evolving into some new level of consciousness.
Today, nineteen months after I published that essay—I’m ready to dissect the creative part to help you to understand what happened in real time.
Tuesday, June 29, 2021– I had a call with my agent; she couldn’t sell Color Eater and was going to shelve it. I was upset, but more than that I was confused. My intuition had told me that book was already sold. Not that it was going to happen. But it was already published, and out in the world impacting people in a way I never could have imagined. Journaling after the call with my agent, I wrote, “The last time my intuition was this wrong about something it was Energy Besty.”
Energy Besty and I had parted ways in 2009. It was rare for me to let myself think of them, but in former versions of my life my intuition had been certain Energy Besty and I were permanently linked for eternity. But since 2009, my mind knew that intuitive feeling was wrong, because I hadn’t heard from, and never expected to be in contact with, Energy Besty again. With the lessons of Energy Besty on my mind, that night I said goodbye to Color Eater and accepted my intuition was catastrophically wrong for a second time.
Wednesday, June 30th, 2021 – Energy Besty showed up in my email inbox. As I re-read the message over-and-over, incomprehension morphed to shocked laughter because when a nuclear bomb detonates you can cry or laugh—and I was fresh out of tears. I laced up my tennis-shoes and headed out the door because my mind was imploding and I didn’t want to risk bringing my house down with me.
My mind had known my intuition was wrong. Energy Besty’s absence in my life had been the proof. But, as I walked around my neighborhood, my mind struggled to accept the possibility that perhaps my intuition was right—and maybe my intuition was just waaaaaay ahead on the timeline. As I went back and forth between my mind and my intuition, the only thing they both agreed on was that I knew absolutely nothing and was supposed to be learning something.
Energy Besty and I texted a little after my walk. Immediately following the exchange, I stood up and a barrage of energy pummeled my chest as if I was at a rock show standing in front of ten-foot-tall speakers—but I was in my living room in total silence. Energy poured and rolled over me, bringing me to my knees there in front of my fireplace. Wave after wave, like a tsunami physically hitting me again, and again, and again. I wondered it would ever stop. I wondered if I was losing my mind.
I pulled out my 2020 predictions, and there was the name of the city where Energy Besty lived in 2021. There was an entire paragraph outlining what had happened over the past few days and what’s to come. For the next four days I rode that energy storm, until I bolted upright during meditation. I understood why Energy Besty had come back. Their back-in-contact email had told me my writing was good. I wasn’t supposed to give up on my career. I was supposed to have patience. Now that I understood, surely this energetic confusion would stop.
It didn’t.
Monday, July 5, 2021 – An advertisement appeared in my Instagram feed for a class called Duality. The teacher, Jeffrey Allen, said, “releasing energy blocks.”
With those three words I understood what had happened.
Energy Besty coming back had broken an invisible dam. Energetically, I’d been in a sensory deprivation chamber for twelve years, and all of the sudden I was released back into the world. After all those years of being cut off, my senses were going haywire at the slightest of stimulation. Everything was too bright. Too loud. Too intense.
It felt like Jeffrey Allen could at least help me turn down the volume so I could get back to functioning.
I signed up for Duality the first week of July 2021. It was an online pre-recorded program. Even though I didn’t have live access to Jeffrey, his calm demeanor, logical teaching style, and engineering background gave me reassurance. There was an entire class about this. Thousands of people had taken it. I wasn’t losing my mind.
August 2021 – Halfway through Duality I found a rip in reality. Jeffrey said something about our ability to find anyone with our mind. I decided to try and find Energy Besty through energy alone. I closed my eyes went into my imagination and started poking around. I thought I’d found Energy Besty through space and time, but surely that was madness, because we hadn’t had contact in months. I giggled myself to sleep because it was fun to feel a bit mad—the next morning I woke up to a text message and confirm it was not madness. At the exact moments I’d been running my exploratory energy experiment Energy Besty had texted.
September 2021, I finally understood. I was learning the language I’d been speaking my whole life, but I never knew it was a language until now. The writing on the wall was coming into focus, and it was re-teaching me the language I was born with—the language I’d trained out of myself because others couldn’t feel the invisible ink on their skin. The language that knew how to skip time and follow energy, the language that was everything at once, because at once is all there was in the very moment of right now.
I had a feeling the learning was just getting started.
2 Comments. Leave new
Inspiring! I enjoy the realm of intuition too. Great for creative writing.
Thank you for making time to read, Paula! I’m encouraged to know you find this interesting and look forward to sharing the additional posts in the series with you.