How'd I get here?

A journey of a spirit messenger

After school at the local newspaper printing press

How’d I get here? How’d I find myself finally living a life that I was repeatedly led to believe wasn’t mine to have. Too big a wish to have.

Let’s start where it started - as child growing up in regional South Australia. The 4th of four children, the youngest by at least 8 years. Where older siblings had already left home & married or were away at boarding school so in essence I was an only child on a remote property. This probably opened the way for me to communicate more easily with the nature’s fairies & folk as I wondered for hours in the natural bushland surrounding the home. A gen X child growing up in a time where our generation were generally left to fend & tend to ourselves.

My only companion when not at school the family’s pet Labrador & long parade of pet & semi-feral cats that came & went from our lives. The Labrador was my constant. My familiar. I would rest my head on her belly as we both lay on the ground in our many long walks. She never strayed too far from me, a watchful keep.

Like many children I had ‘make-believe’ friends that I spoke at length with. These weren’t friends who I expected my mum to make space at the table for or we played pretend games. These were friends who would talk with me for hours, sharing with me ways of other worlds, stories of beings I didn’t know but felt great attachment to them through the stories told by my make-believe friends. Others joined them from time to time in the story telling. Not knowing it then, but knowing they were stories & messages of love from loved ones who’d crossed & from other lifeforms & spirit wanting me to know that even though physically I was alone, I wasn’t.

I can’t say my childhood was a particularly happy one, but peppered with moments of joy that I clung to. My maternal grandmother was my safety when my own mother, her daughter, wasn’t able to provide that for me. I spent days & weeks at a time with her. Watching her cook - learning how to make pastry from scratch. Being taught how to understand that food was witchcraft. Waking to the smell of toasted poppy & sesame seeds on homemade bread being toasted in the early hours of the morning. Drinking cups of strong black tea with lots of sugar with homemade cakes & biscuits for ‘smoko’. I learned to knit from her. I would crawl into her bed in the early hours of the morning as we told each other silly jokes & I did bad Basil Brush ‘boom boom’ impersonations or ‘are you freeee?’ a-la Mr Humphrey’s from Are You Being Served. Both of us squealing with delight at the silliness. The moments of joy peppering my life.

I did these impersonations with relative ease because it came naturally to me. I knew I was ‘different’ somehow. Not just my long & continued conversations with my ‘make-believe’ friends. These conversations were private. I never told anyone except occasionally my mother, where a cloud of worry passed her face, & she’d try to (un)convincingly tell me these were ‘just make-believe friends’ - we both knew that wasn’t the case, & now she’s passed she acknowledges that to me (that’s a story for another day).

At school I had very few friends. Two to be precise. Still friends some 50 odd years later. I also had tormentors. Several in particular that I remember who used to call me ‘poof’ or ‘poofter’ amongst many barbed words - viciously, said with such hate & disgust. Who would pin me to the ground & spit on me whilst calling me these names or throw punches at me so I flinched in fear as they laughed. I was maybe 8 or 9. So were they. No older, no wiser, very likely just mimicking what they saw from those older who should’ve known better, but this was a small town in a relatively isolated location. There were lots of tears from me. Coming home asking my mother what being a poofter meant? It was obviously bad because it was used as a weapon against me. She in turn hurt, sharing my tears as we hugged each other sobbing for each other & the lack of humanity we both experienced in our lives. Hers for being an artist & creative stuck in a loveless marriage as she silently loved another. Me for knowing I was different. For wanting to go ‘home’ to my make-believe friends (who I’ll now refer to as my guides - again another story for another time) & for not understanding why I was soooo hated for just being me.

So I got this far & survived. Now to how I survived my next chapter…