Dancing with My Inner Genie

A golden light streamed in through my window beckoning me back to life. It’s one of the things I loved most about living in Florida, that warm, welcoming sun bringing with it the joyful promise of possibility every day. It was the perfect foil for the way I always looked at the world, through the lens of love. I turned to Hamilton, the man I loved, and smiled, completely forgetting about our late-night whisperings, and I immediately felt it. Something was off. This feeling wasn’t new to me. I had experienced it before, as a child, long ago. The uneasiness in my stomach, a feverish heat rising from within. Feeling as if I was going to be sick, but not really. And the most disturbing part of it was, both times I had experienced this, I had escaped almost certain death. Growing up, I had always been strongly attuned to my intuition. It is what guided me through a turbulent childhood living in the projects of Los Angeles. And with little in the way of parental guidance, these feelings served as my protection. The first time it overcame me, I was on my way to assist an elderly neighbor as I so often did. Helping her sort her groceries, keeping her company, and doing small chores around her house. I would sit with her, long into the evening, talking about everything under the sun. She was lonely, I could feel it. I was an empath after all. As our relationship blossomed, I began to spend more and more time with my neighbor, staying the night in her extra room at least once a week. Any way to avoid my emotionally abusive stepfather. But on this one occasion, my inner voice was screaming from within saying, “Stay away.” It manifested in me a feeling of dread and unease, so much so, that I felt physically sick to my stomach. I couldn’t help but listen. I stayed away. And sure enough, that night, my dear friend was attacked. I could never quite forgive myself for leaving her to her own defenses, she was old and helpless, but I was little more than a child myself. Authorities assured me that I had avoided great harm as the intruder had been watching the home and entered it through the window of the extra room, most likely expecting to find me there asleep. After that night, my neighbor went into an assisted living facility nearby to live out her final days, and I became acutely aware of the divine assistance that was being afforded me in that moment. My guardian angels were on the job, but their job was not over yet. It wasn’t even two years later when that feeling overtook me again. But this time, resistance rose in the form of my mother. She was from an era where men were the absolute authority; their word was to be heeded and they were to be revered at all costs. So, when I approached her about my uneasiness over my boss at the Wienerschnitzel where I worked, explaining to her how he made me uncomfortable and creeped me out, she dismissed my narrative and counseled me to show him respect, that there was nothing to worry about. He was an authority figure in her eyes. But that voice inside me was not to be silenced. The uneasiness that had kept me away from the intruder years before rose with a vengeance. It made me so sick to my stomach that I was physically unable to muster up the drive to go into work one day, and so, a replacement was called in. Tragedy unfolded at the restaurant that night. The same boss I had so desperately despised had picked that day to rob the Wienerschnitzel, and while doing so, he hit the girl who was covering for me over the head with part of the shake machine, killing her. When I heard the news, I was devastated. That should have been me. But I was saved. And my trust in my intuition was solidified. Now, nearly 30 years later, as those feelings washed over me again, I could hardly believe it, let alone ignore them. My intuition had saved me on more than one occasion. Miraculously, two times before I was even out of high school. After that, I vowed to constantly check in with it, especially in times of pure vulnerability. And it hadn’t failed me once. But never in a million years would I have expected to feel this way in the presence of Hamilton. Yet here I was, looking into the eyes of the man I had loved for over a decade, and I was petrified. I had gazed into the eyes of rapists and pedophiles and murderers in the course of my life, but I had never seen eyes so devoid of anything human as his in this moment. It chilled me to the bone.