...while we were in the South.
She hadn't seen Jonathan Demme and Oprah Winfrey's "Beloved" or read the book by Toni Morrison so as I was telling her about Sethe and Paul D and how Beloved showed up as a manifestation of a horrific memory that is suppressed, I began thinking about my own past troubles and the traumas that have happened to loved ones that I find difficult to ignore and wondered how I have given them power when I was only trying to forcefully ignore them.
While I have faced demons from my past and suffered from them, I have found myself carrying the load of ghosts that have clung to me because others have refused the bad karma and being ill prepared to know how to fight them have had them enter my life and cause me damage.
I having talked about this woman before, I will call her, "Amanda" this time as to not upset her more than I already have from my previous mentions of her. However, I just received a card in the mail from her in angry handwriting stating that I am a "horrible fucking friend that should be dead for ignoring" her pleas for help.
Years ago when we were younger and working together we had fun. Always laughing and making fun of the stupid people we were forced to work with. Nothing got us down because after work we could blow off steam over the awful work conditions over drinks and new music we'd discovered.
She was living in a big old mansion that she had been house-sitting for an older man that was living overseas and we spent a lot of time there talking, dancing and eating, but mostly talking. When the old man returned she had no other place planned to move to and he let her stay. I began seeing less of her and it appeared she had begun a relationship with the older and much wealthier man. I missed our talks, but I would see her at work and we still had fun in those brief moments walking to her car after an awful day's job well done. We had survived.
One rainy night as I was entertaining a young and attractive waitress at my house who I had grown to know after putting in the hours as her best customer, "Amanda" showed up wet and looking frightened. Some weird and strange minutes later my date left in a huff and I poured some drinks.
She told me how she had been ritualistically abused by the old man and had been unable to leave him because she had grown to love the house and had no other place to live and he had something over her and that was she hadn't left and called the cops the first time it happened. He knew she wouldn't and continued abusing her sexually, physically and in other ways I'm not sure how to describe. Her personality had completely changed in the time I had known her.
She stayed with me two nights over the weekend. I had tried to get her to talk to the police, but gave up and let her rest. She slept one entire day.
Then she returned to the house and the old man but not to work ever again.
Months later I ran into her mother at Whole Food Market. I always loved her mom and we talked in an aisle and she told me "Amanda" had been in a car crash. In asking around and then finally just sucking it up and driving over to the mansion to see her, I talked to her through a closed wrought iron gate where she told me in a monotone voice that the night she came over, in escaping from the old man she had run over a young man not much younger than us, and killed him.
Witnesses had reported the guy had run out in front of her and other vehicles. The weird thing is, and I only learned this years later was I had known this kid and there were even photos of us together at a party at my place. I used to throw a lot of parties.
It looked like I wasn't ever to see her again. I moved on and left to move to Los Angeles, but in a strange twist of fate found myself working with her again. She had completely changed and I never bothered to ask her about what had happened to the old man, the accident or anything about our times together. But we did start hanging out and talking and drinking again and it was good.
Then as you may have guessed if you are a regular reader on my stuff, or a Facebook Friend who might remember me discussing at great length and seeking advice the case of an old friend who in the recent past, that would call me at night crying about being raped by her boss, doing nothing about it, then as she began dating her boss, how I was losing my mind...
Well, it's the same person!
Overwhelmingly, the feedback I received was for me to cease being her friend, to cut off contact, to have nothing to do with her ever again. Thinking she would never see this as she wasn't on Facebook, turned out she did by using a fake profile, she was devastated that I would talk about it and hurt by what she said was "a cold way to treat a best friend." I never have used her real name.
In the weeks when the latest events with her happened, I was approached by 3 other female friends admitting to me that they too had been raped and did nothing to stop the rapist. I was nauseated by all this news and how strangely it was all coming at me by people who thought for some odd reason I should know these horrifying details.
Something like an ulcer was growing inside me. I felt I might be developing some kind of tumor.
Ever see that David Cronenberg, Oliver Reed and Samantha Eggar film, "The Brood" where patients develops lymphatic cancer, welts and sores supposedly as a manifestation of self-hatred, anger, and rage? I felt that was happening to me!
It seemed to me "Amanda" in ignoring her stuff and including me in her traumas, I was carrying the weight of the crimes with no ability to release the burden. She could seemingly carry on with her merry way, her tormentors continued their successful lives while I was suffering.
Her boss even continue to rape young interns at the office. Weeks ago she called me to share the fact I was right all along about him when she discovered photos on his phone of the intern, asleep, nude in bed. Probably drugged. Did she leave him? Of course not, but I'm the one that gets the anger for being a horrible friend.
This was all before my get away. This is hopefully old news now. I try to move on, but I'm too sensitive. It's like I was the one raped. Why am I the one suffering? How can I deal with this? How can I deal with friends and even total strangers telling me horrible stories of crimes perpetrated upon them and how they did nothing, possibly welcomed it, maybe even encouraged it and thoroughly ignored it.
Over the trip, working on my ghost hunting documentary, I let it all simmer on a distant back burner, but I know these troubles, these noises in my mind, these poltergeists, these horrible ghosts won't be ignored. They'll drain your camera batteries, make the lights flicker, make you weak, so they can gain enough energy so they can become...
Become something you can't ignore.
My travel companion who was writing a book about our ghost hunting experiences and the history of the hauntings i the South wanted me to read her first draft, but I told her to read it to me... in bed.
Then I said I had a new game, "when you read it, every time you say "ghost" I kiss you, but I can never kiss you in the same place twice."
She smiled, thought, then said, "maybe I should try to lay off the synonyms like spirits and apparitions, then."
