I have investigated many dark places, mostly the ones inside myself. As for crowds, I couldn’t agree more.
Before you know you’re in a lynch mob.
4 Likes
Well the internal ones can be rather irksome. I hope they didn’t take too much of a toll on you.
5 Likes
No, more like a lightening of the load. Dealing with it is so much easier than hiding from it.
4 Likes
You’re a very sweet person, actually.
7 Likes
Thx, natbone. I don’t hear that often from people. But you know the old saying, “You always hurt the ones you love”.
5 Likes
Interesting conversation, if I may join in. I’ve never “seen” one either but people close to me have. I did have some strange experiences with my parents’ passing, though. I had missed my mother’s death by a day due to my sister’s procrastination (long story). I was feeling terrible that she passed in a room of strangers, without us. I was laying in bed reading at my mom’s house, a couple days after she died. Her house was in Florida and the windows and doors were always closed because she used AC. There was no way a breeze let alone a strong wind could enter the house, yet the bedroom door flung wide open as I was reading. I didn’t see anything but her presence/energy was in the doorway. There was no doubt in my mind that she was there, so much so that I jumped up and threw my arms around “nothing” telling her how sorry that I wasn’t there for her and how much I loved and appreciated everything she did for me. If that spirit wasn’t my mother I would have been petrified by it’s force.
6 Likes
Sounds like a reassuring bye for now to me. Crisis apparitions are the annoying ones - impossible to study with modern ethics.
I had something after my grandmother died. I was there at her end (and made the final prayers with her: the ancient history of me being a preacher). A few days later, when still completely drained, I walked into the living room to see a column of smoke with a distinct scent. As my mother was there (and her being a reasonably liberal Franciscan) I asked her to join me. We both observed it and the scent for a few minutes.
This scent was a stewed pressed tobacco with tonquin beans. I made a mental note of it and weeks later, while sorting her possessions, I found a box of items related to my great grandfather: He died before my time and was never mentioned in my family.
When it came to opening the box, I found a number metal tins full of trinkets: these tins were all the empty tobacco tins for 1792 Flake - a very traditional and potent Tanzanian tobacco with tonquin.
6 Likes
I was kind of shocked awake one morning, looked at the clock and saw it was 7:00. That’s no decent time to wake up IMO, so I turned over and went back to sleep.
Got a phone call about an hour later. My mother had died at 7:00.
Weird.
My whole life is weird. It really makes me smile.
7 Likes
Whoa! Would that have been the tins of your grandmother’s father? Scent is such a strong stimulus. I still have my father’s English Leather roll on deodorant stick 
When I sniff it he’s there!
4 Likes
It was probably her telling you to get the hell outta bed
5 Likes
Most likely. The woman was a dictator. I could never explain to people what it was like in our home.
It was just too strange, it’s hard to picture something you don’t know. Now I can explain it perfectly.
It’s was just like what happened in 2020 with the lockdowns and restrictions. Especially when it came to the things people enjoyed most. Those things were extremely dangerous.
That was my home life in a nutshell. The social distancing included. Don’t talk to your sister, don’t be in a room alone with your sister.
It was suffocating. I ran away when I was 14.
Anyway, she died, something else to smile about.
4 Likes
Oh man, I’m sorry it was like that. Don’t be in a room alone with your sister? Wtf? Maybe she was afraid you would plot her demise.
5 Likes
Too many lies after a messy divorce. Nothing was ever talked about. My sister was older, she might have known more than me, maybe together we could figure out the lies.
I used to sneak into her room and wait for her to go to bed so we could talk. One time I was so fast asleep that she couldn’t wake me and couldn’t get into bed. She went downstairs to say that and my stepfather stormed up the stairs, grabbed me by the arm while I was asleep, dragged me out of bed and started to drag me down the stairs.
I remember I bit his hand and hit him in the nuts. It was completely insane in our house.
When we had adjacent bedrooms we used to wisper to each other through the wall socket.
We didn’t know that could be dangerous
Again, just like it is now in the whole society. No way I’m going to cooperate with this bullshit ever.
When this whole thing started it was like I was thrown back into the past.
Difference is that there is no magical age to look forward to and no option to run away, it’s everywhere.
4 Likes
I seem to have regressed. Next month it will be 8 years since I joined this forum.
Guess what I got today?
Regular
This badge is granted when you reach trust level 3. Thanks for being a regular part of our community over a period of months. You’re now one of the most active readers, and a reliable contributor that makes our community great. You can now recategorize and rename topics, take advantage of more powerful spam flags, access a private lounge area, and you’ll also get lots more likes per day.
I wonder what I’m going to get after another 8 years
3 Likes
It is amazing how much more powerful olfactory memory is compared to triggers from the other senses.
I have used it as part of my exam prep classes: Telling to students to use the same perfume or aftershave for all lessons on one subject, when they revise it, and on the exam day itself.
Then that one scent makes the mind recall related material areas better.
5 Likes
You will be appointed Junior Executive.
3 Likes
SOB, what a jerk! I am so sorry you had to endure such a childhood with abusive adults around you. I was a little bit luckier, my parents reserved most of their anger for each other.
3 Likes
Don’t worry about it girl. It has given me the perfect preparation for the shit that’s going on today.
I’ve been to a psychotherapist in the distant past. Not because I wanted to, but because I was sick of people telling me that it was unbelievable that I never had therapy because I must be severely traumatised etc. It was not what I felt like but anyway.
I went and was told after two talks that he couldn’t help me. Therapy was a tool to help you sort out where your problems came from, why do you behave the way you do, those kind of things.
He said I had sorted all that out already. There wasn’t a lot else he could do, so I asked him if he could explain to me what exactly a traumatic experience was.
He said that if you view your life as a series of pictures, you have all the normal day to day pictures, and then all of a sudden something completely off happens, a warped picture.
That is a traumatic experience that you somehow have to integrate in the rest of your pictures.
My problem was, he told me, that my entire life is a series of abnormal pictures.
In that light it is not so very strange that I don’t feel traumatised. My warped picture would be that of something normal
3 Likes
