Page Content (OCR)
uncontrollably. At work there were times when I would walk passed desks and paper documents would fly off and follow me, sticking to my back as though I carried a static. This would have seemed plausible had it happened only once or twice particularly as people are known to pick up static occasionally but this was different. The effects were quite dramatic, even poltergeist-like. Also it would only happen when I was unaware and if I tried to incite the effect deliberately, it never worked. My interaction with people also took a strange turn as I had become extra intuitive of how they felt and what their thoughts might be. These effects seemed to cause my emotions to mimic theirs and it left me wondering why I felt certain things without any reason. When they were down, I would feel that way also. It was as though their state of mind left an atmosphere in the room that I would unintentionally feed off of. 1 remember one particular work colleague during this time who had gone out of her way to avoid me ever since that phase had begun. She was a temp worker who like me was on contract at the theatrical management company where I worked. Long after I had left I learned that she was actually into psychic studies and possessed some sort “gift” from an early age. From another colleague I discovered that she had “sensed” something strange about me, ever since a particular given time which just happened to be the time of my new discovery. I was apparently giving her the creeps and she felt that I was looking right into her soul. During this period I was living with my fiancé and so many times we would have what’s known as mutual dreams. I would wake the following morning and recite the dreams I had which tallied 100% with hers. It was peculiar situations like these that took a toll on our relationship and even though I remained on this high, my old reserved self still kept the strange recent developments a secret. Like everyone else, she remained blissfully unaware. My lifelong tendencies were difficult enough to live with aside from the possibility that I might be involved with something unknown. I no longer brought up the subject of mutual dreaming because it obviously offended her, understandably so. It was this strangeness and the tendencies of a double life that eventually caused this relationship to crumble and others that followed. My loner instincts were causing bad social habits and I was starting to refer to this Otherness not just as a term for another existence but for my life also. There were so many undercurrents going on that I was losing track of who I actually was. A hidden life was desperately trying to remain that way because of intangible forces at work. 32