I Know What I saw

I Don’t “Think” This Happened — I Know What I Experienced People always try to translate experiences like mine into something softer. They turn it into metaphors, dreams, grief responses, psychology terms, coping mechanisms—anything that makes it easier to digest. But I need to be clear from the beginning: I am not talking about imagination. I am not talking about symbolism. I am talking about what I have seen, felt, and experienced in real time. And I’ve spent most of my life trying to decide whether I should say that out loud or keep pretending I don’t know what I know. The First Time Death Didn’t Feel Like an Ending The first experience I ever had that I can still clearly describe was with my aunt. She passed away after complications from weight loss surgery. In life, she was a big woman. That was part of how we knew her, how she moved through the world, how she filled a room with presence. After she passed, I had a dream. But in that dream, she was not the same. She was skinny. Extremely thin. And when I saw her, I remember the first thing I said without hesitation: “You look different.” And she looked at me like I had asked a question she had already prepared the answer for. She said: “You thought when I got up there, they wasn’t gonna take all that weight off me?” That moment didn’t feel like imagination. It didn’t feel like storytelling. It felt like interaction. And then there was my father. Or the man I believed to be my father at the time. He was there too. In the same space. Wearing all black. Quiet but present, like he was there for a purpose. He kept telling me about a car. Not in a vague way. In a direct way. He said the car he left was mine. That it belonged to me now. That I needed to take it. But when I tried to engage with it in the real world later, nothing made sense. The car would not start for anyone else. People tried. My sister tried. Other family members tried. Nothing. Then I got behind the wheel. It started immediately. I drove it around the block. And when I came back, it wouldn’t start again. Not because something was wrong with it mechanically—but because I wasn’t the one holding whatever “key” that moment required. I told him I didn’t want the car. I never wanted it. I didn’t understand what it meant. Eventually, my sister sold it. And I never forgot how specific and controlled that experience felt. Like it had structure. Like it was intentional. When It Wasn’t Sleep Anymore The second kind of experience didn’t happen in a dream. It happened while I was fully awake. I was sitting in my kitchen. This was after a man I was dating had died. He ran into a tree. Whether it was accident or intention, nobody ever fully agreed on what happened. And in that moment—sitting in my kitchen—I felt him. Not emotionally. Not as a memory. Present. And he spoke. He told me things about his family that I had no way of knowing at the time. Things that would later unfold exactly as he described. He told me about a baby boy that was going to be born into the family. That happened. He told me about a female cousin getting married. That happened too. There were other things he said—smaller details—that I can’t even fully reconstruct now because it has been years. But what stayed with me was not just what was said, but how specific it was. There was no vagueness. No symbolism. No guessing. It was direct communication tied to real outcomes. And I didn’t know what to do with that then either. The Burden of Seeing Before It Happens There are moments in my life where I have said things about people’s futures without understanding why I was saying them. One of those was about my nephew. He and my son are the same age. He was still a child when I said it—just a conversation, nothing dramatic, nothing performative. I told my mother: “That boy is going to be in and out of jail by the time he turns 14.” That was not something I wanted to say. It wasn’t something I was proud of. It just came out as certainty. And that is exactly what has played out. His life has been unstable in that exact way ever since. And when things like that happen enough times, you stop calling it coincidence in your own mind. You start recognizing a pattern you didn’t ask to have. The Energy Problem — Why I Don’t Like Leaving My House People talk about “energy” like it’s a metaphor. For me, it is not. When I walk into places like Walmart or crowded public spaces, I don’t just see people. I feel them. Not in a general emotional sense—but in waves. In shifts. In pressure changes I can’t always ignore. It’s overwhelming enough that I sometimes choose not to go out at all. Not because I’m afraid of people. Because I feel too much of them at once. And when you feel that much input all the time, your brain doesn’t get quiet. It stays active, scanning, interpreting, reacting. That kind of internal environment makes the outside world exhausting. The Messages Are Never “General” for Me One thing I need to make clear is this: Whatever this is for me, it has never been vague. I don’t get symbolic hints like “someone with the initials JM will come into your life.” That’s not my experience. If anything comes through, it feels direct, specific, and tied to a person in a way that leaves no room for guessing. It feels like: “This is for THIS person. You are the one who will deliver it.” And sometimes it feels like I am temporarily connected to someone’s emotional situation in order to pass something along. But here is the part that confuses everything: If the message is not received, the connection disappears. The emotional pull fades instantly. Not gradually. Not emotionally processed. Just gone. Like a door closing. The Most Difficult Experience: Seeing Him in My Car One of the most disturbing experiences I’ve ever had happened while I was driving. It was after that same man had passed away. There was a song we used to listen to together. A song I couldn’t hear anymore without changing the station immediately. It became too tied to him. On this particular day, I could not escape it. Every radio station played it. Every frequency I switched to landed back on it. Eventually I turned the radio off completely. And still— It kept playing in my mind like it was still in the car. When I looked up into my rearview mirror, I saw him in the backseat. Laughing. Clear as day. Not vague. Not emotional interpretation. Not symbolic memory overlay. Presence. And I need to say this part honestly too: This is the moment most people would assume I’m describing grief or trauma or imagination. But I was fully aware, fully awake, and fully functional in that moment. And I did not have language for it that made sense to other people. What It Feels Like to Live Like This The hardest part of all of this is not the experiences themselves. It is what happens afterward: When you try to explain it When people reduce it When you start doubting how much of your life you can say out loud When you begin isolating because it feels safer than being misunderstood Because once you say something like this out loud, people don’t ask questions to understand—you become a category. “Crazy.” “Traumatized.” “Delusional.” “Over-imaginative.” And none of those words actually explain what it feels like to live inside your own awareness. I Am Not Asking for Agreement I am not writing this to convince anyone. I am not writing it to prove anything. I am writing it because this is what my life has been. And whether people interpret it spiritually, psychologically, or dismiss it entirely, it does not change the fact that I experienced it as real. The only thing I have ever known for sure is this: I do not experience life the way most people describe it. And I have spent a long time trying to decide whether that makes me broken… or just different in a way I was never taught how to explain.