I don’t remember when my magic was shut down as a child, I assume that I was very, very, very young. But I do remember what it was like to be terrified of all things supernatural and how I slowly but surely started believing in “magic” (aka the mysterious things of the universe) again over time. 

However, before we can talk more about miracles and magic I need to explain a bit more about my childhood and my experiences with God. 

Welcome to Brookwood, Alabama

I grew up in Brookwood, Alabama and for those of you who are not familiar with that area (aka 99% of the people reading this book), it’s a small town between Birmingham and Tuscaloosa. The elementary school I went to was Kindergarten through 6th grade and the high school was 7th grade through 12th. I graduated in a class of a little over 100 people, and I was well into high school when Brookwood received its first traffic light. For the first decade of my life, we had to drive around 20 minutes to the nearest grocery store. 

There was very, very little diversity at my school, and we made the way to our friends’ houses either by bicycle, four-wheeler (ATVs), motorcycles, go-karts, or other sorts of similar somewhat kid-friendly transportation. Since it was the early 90s, we rarely wore helmets, and being such a small town we knew all the police officers by name. On the rare occasions when they would pull us over and tell us to wear a helmet we would roll our eyes and keep on going. The worst that would happen is they would tell our parents later and our parents would pretend to be upset for the lack of helmet wearing in front of the officers, but would continue to not enforce wearing one. I don’t know man, it was a different time to be living in compared to now. 

Given the small town in rural Alabama, it is likely not a surprise to anyone that the predominant religion of the area was basically some form of Southern Baptist. Although we did not go to church and I was not raised religious, I did attend some random vacation bible schools every now and then as a form of babysitting while my parents worked. But I only remember coloring pictures of a dude with long hair (Jesus) and eating snacks at these rare gatherings. 

However, none of the teachings were present in my household. We sure the hell didn’t pray before meals (which was very, very rarely eaten together) nor before bedtime. Reading was also not really a thing in my household, except when my mom read some romantic comedy-type books by Norah Roberts (I swear every mom in the 90s read this stuff). Being a kid, I had 0 interest in reading that crap so my access to life outside of the small community in which we lived was limited to whatever my parents were watching on television (9-1-1, Lifetime, and other TV shows not appropriate for kids and stressful for the nervous system) and cartoons. 

In essence, I basically knew nothing about God growing up. What I did know was that if I didn’t act a certain way then I was a bad person and therefore was likely going to hell. I also remembered one story from the Bible of Moses being talked to by a burning bush and I decided fuck that and told God as much. I made it clear that if there was a God I had absolutely no desire to have a bush talking to me or to experience any ghosts because well I was terrified. But the pressure (not the unconditional love) of the religion even when unspoken was alive and well all around me at school and within the community. 

I am sure when I was very young that I experienced some magic that I likely tried to share with my parents, and I’m pretty confident that due to their fear that stuff was quickly shut down. However, I can’t recall specific stories because quite frankly by the time I was four years old, I had a deep understanding that I was alone in this world and that feeling continued to deepen the older I got. 

Hello Traumatic Brain Injury

When I was 7 years old I got in a go-kart accident. I was casually going up the hill in my go-kart on the way to a friend’s house with the pedal completely down (aka as fast as this thing would go). Then I noticed something going on up the hill at another friend’s house and turned my head to the left to observe the commotion. 

The next thing I knew I hit what felt like a brick wall. In reality, I had run into a metal pole that was deep in the ground and the impact was so hard that a chunk of metal came out of the frame of the go-kart. I was in immense pain but knew I had to get the go-kart back home and had no idea what the hell I was going to tell my dad. You see, I wasn’t allowed to have accidents as a child. Imagine accidentally dropping a glass and it breaking and then having someone run into the room both terrified that the glass was going to kill you and also pissed off that you broke a glass. Well, that was my experience with “accidents” so I tried my best to be perfect in order to not disturb my parents. 

So here I am standing outside my broken go-kart, dizzy as fuck, hurting head to toe, and knowing I have to get this go-kart back home. Somehow I managed to drive it back home and immediately parked it outside of my house and went into the empty house to try to figure out what to do next. My dad had a shop just down the hill from our house and note that what I did not do was go to my dad for comfort. Instead, I found myself pacing inside my living room, trying not to cry, and terrified because I was actually very hurt. My right knee was killing me, the room was spinning, and the pain in my head was so intense I wanted to vomit. 

Then my dad came in the front door and said, “Is there something you need to tell me?” with a huge smirk on his face. I preceded to start bawling, explaining to him that I wrecked my go-kart, and telling him my head and knee hurt all while profusely apologizing. He told me that we were not going to tell my mom and then he enlisted my help to get the go-kart moved behind the house. 

Later that evening my mom came home from work and off we went to Georgia to visit her brother, my aunt, and my cousins. All I remember about the ride was feeling horrible the entire time and trying to remain as quiet as possible on the drive so as not to bring attention to myself.

The next morning I woke up in immense pain and incredibly sick to my stomach. I went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet and I could not bend my legs. So I sat there with my legs outstretched when my mom walked in and playfully tried to push my legs down and I told her not to that it hurt. She immediately went into freak-out mode (basically her default state) and was right in my face asking me if I was okay, all while I was sitting on the toilet. 

I then fainted. Although I was unconscious and my body was lying on the ground, I could hear my mom scream my dad’s name three times without taking a breath. I came back to and immediately went to the toilet to throw up and passed out again, then time shaking like I was having a seizure. 

My parents then, finally, understood something was wrong and put me in the car to drive me to the hospital. The doctors ran your typical labwork in situations like this which were basically checking my vital signs and blood sugar. Then they sent us back home. Note that at no point did anyone tell the doctor (or my mom) about the go-kart wreck; therefore, no scans were run of my head, which smacked the steering wheel pretty damn hard and of course, I wasn’t wearing a helmet because we simply didn’t do that. 

It was literally almost 30 years later when I realized that I obviously had a traumatic brain injury (TBI) that completely went untreated. Not to mention the pain in my right knee that never went away. 

Anxiety Suuuuuuucks

To be honest, I don’t remember much of anything from the age of 8 until around 11. But I remember 11 rather well because that’s when I officially met anxiety. One morning my mom and I were at home alone getting ready to go to The Galleria (aka drive to Birmingham, Alabama for a rare trip to the shopping mall) when we decided that I would wear earrings that day for the first time in years. 

We stood in her bedroom at the foot of her bed and in front of a large mirror on her dresser as I looked at myself and watched her try to push these earrings through the skin that had grown up over where the holes used to exist. It hurt. I fainted. 

This time when I was unconscious on the ground I did not hear a thing. I just woke up shaking head to toe (fear and trauma response) as I sat in my living room as paramedics checked my blood pressure and blood sugar. I wish I could say that this story simply became a blimp on the radar; however, it became a pivotal moment in my life. Why? Because from that moment forward, my mom would freak the hell out anytime she heard something drop on the ground and would come running in asking me if I was okay and telling me she thought I passed out again. She decided to call the two times I passed out my “episodes.”

Here I would be taking a shower and would accidentally drop the soap and in would rush my mom in a complete panic ripping back the shower curtain and asking me over and over again if I was okay. Over time this led to immense anxiety within me. I was afraid that I wasn’t okay. The anxiety taken on from my mom got so bad that it completely consumed my life. I developed an immense fear of passing out again and it showed up fucking everywhere. 

When I was in the cafeteria at school eating lunch and the noise in the lunchroom and the bright lights became too much for my system, I would start to feel insanely dizzy. That sensation would make me absolutely terrified I was going to pass out right there in the middle of the cafeteria in front of the entire school. My hands would get sweaty and my heart would race so hard that it felt like it was going to come completely out of my chest. I would then physically dig my fingers into my skin to try to feel something that could help me calm down. This went on day in and day out from the time I was 11 until 16 years old. 

It was so bad that I eventually couldn’t go out to eat at restaurants. I would avoid the pep rallies at school because it was too crowded and too loud and would leave me in a panic. Mandatory school assemblies were a nightmare, to say the least. My mom’s hypochondria around all things medical had infiltrated my own system so much that I tried reading The Christmas Spurs and when I read the kid in the book had Leukemia I went numb from head to toe and had to return it to the library. I was absolutely miserable, already did not have the parental support and nourishment that any kid needs, and here I was completely alone and desperate for help. 

The Attempt to Ask for Help

I was around 14 years old when I got up the courage to approach my mom and tell her what was going on and ask for help. She took me to a doctor who told her that it was all in my mind and that I just needed to get over it. I went to one therapy appointment and when the therapist asked me to close my eyes and imagine a happy and safe place my body went into a complete panic. I never went back. 

It took me many years into my healing journey to understand that the reason that terrified me is because I had truly never experienced a safe place since the moment I was born and I wasn’t sure it actually existed. It surely wasn’t in the four corners of my house nor was it with anyone in our community. It’s a terrifying experience for anyone at any age to feel like safety does not and has never existed, let alone in an anxiety-ridden, traumatized 14-year-old kid. 

So I suffered alone for another two years, turning to video games to help dissociate from the immense anxiety and doing what I could to survive each day at school. It’s hard to learn when you feel dizzy the entire time and are in an internal freak out that you’re going to faint and/or die right there in the classroom. 

At 16, I was fucking done. My parents at this point had gotten divorced (more on that in another chapter), my anxiety was worse than ever, and I couldn’t do it anymore. My mom had a pistol in the drawer beside her bed and I was seriously considering removing myself from existence. Ironically enough the anxiety kept me from doing so because I wasn’t sure what I was doing and my parents would kill me if I was unsuccessful, plus, it was apparent to me that it was my job to not make their lives harder and to take care of them and surely this would give them more things to deal with, so instead I turned to “God.” 

God, Are You Real?

I fell down on my knees one night in my bedroom and I begged, “God, if there even is a God, please come help. I cannot do this anymore. I don’t want to be alive. Please, I need help.” I cried for a very long time and eventually fell asleep alone in my bed. 

After this begging and asking for divine intervention from a God I didn’t even know existed, my anxiety started to slowly ebb, at least to the point where I felt like I could halfway function. I was also able to enroll in a co-op program, which meant I could go to school for the first two classes each day and then leave right before lunch (thank God! The cafeteria was not safe for me) in exchange for having a job. 

I would go to school for half the day, avoid the lunchroom, and then go home for a few hours before heading to work at the bowling alley. This was huge progress because a bowling alley in the 90s was loud as fuck, the fluorescent lights were blasting me from all directions, and the entire building was filled with cigarette smoke. Loud, bright, and constricted airways were a recipe for insane anxiety. Although the anxiety was still there and would peak at times, compared to before I hit my knees in prayer it was a massive shift in the right direction. 

And this was my reintroduction to the power of prayer, miracles, and magic. But I had no idea what was yet to come in the realm of working with the mystical.