{"id":6793,"date":"2014-03-21T00:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-03-21T04:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=6793"},"modified":"2014-03-21T10:16:36","modified_gmt":"2014-03-21T14:16:36","slug":"the-trouble-with-past-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/the-trouble-with-past-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"The Trouble With Past Lives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TheTroubleWithPastLives\"<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was a child, I was afraid of the closet.\u00a0 It didn\u2019t help watching movies like the first Poltergeist or that American Ninja movie, where another girl gets sucked into the closet and then gets possessed by a ninja.\u00a0 The Horror movie, House scared the ever living crap out of me, but the one scene that I will never forget is when that thing erupts out of the closet.\u00a0 And I was done, but I still watched the rest of it.\u00a0 And the closet continued to haunt me even with Cat\u2019s Eye when James Woods peered inside, realizing that someone was indeed in there, watching him.\u00a0 It would take years to get over this phobia.\u00a0 Thank you, Hollywood, but the stuff of nightmares had yet to come.<\/p>\n

When I was eight-years-old, my mother thought it would be a great idea to take the kids to the movies.\u00a0 Her movie of choice was Ghostbusters.\u00a0 Either she didn\u2019t realize that this movie was no Comedy or she didn\u2019t realize that this movie would not only scare the crap out of her kids, but it would also scare the crap out of her.\u00a0 I spent half the movie with her hand glued over my face, and when did she stop covering my eyes?\u00a0 It was when Sigourney Weaver\u2019s character gets trapped in the chair by the demon dog and hurled into\u2026\u00a0 You guessed it.\u00a0 The closet!<\/p>\n

Around the same year, I was also introduced to The NeverEnding Story.\u00a0 This was supposed to be a warm, fuzzy kid\u2019s movie.\u00a0 While I was at camp, we were taking on a trip to the movies, and I was excited.\u00a0 I sipped my soda and popped my popcorn, and the movie began.\u00a0 And so did the Nothing, and that was it.\u00a0 I slid down in my chair, wanting nothing more than to leave, but I was stuck.\u00a0 I was trapped, and just as I got interested in Atreyu\u2019s quest, we meet G\u2019mork.\u00a0 And that scene, where the thunder roars and the lightning flashes, scared the ever living crap out of me, and for years afterward, that one scene haunted my dreams.\u00a0 It was only years later that I could shake it off and truly appreciate this story.<\/p>\n

And then the next summer, I was sent to sleep away camp.\u00a0 It was my father\u2019s idea, and my mother went along with it.\u00a0 It had its moments, and then it didn\u2019t.\u00a0 During my time there, we went to the movies, and again, the movie of choice was supposed to be a warm, fuzzy kid\u2019s movie called Follow That Bird.\u00a0 It was a Sesame Street movie.\u00a0 How bad could it be?<\/p>\n

Shortly after seeing that movie, I returned home.\u00a0 I felt cold, sick.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know why.\u00a0 Maybe, I missed home more than I thought, but it was something else, something that was just beginning to scratch at the surface.\u00a0 And when I went to sleep that night in my bed, the nightmares began, and I found myself trapped, held hostage by the same two men.\u00a0 The windows were covered up with newspaper.\u00a0 The wooden door was locked.\u00a0 The floor was dirty, and I was scared, cold.\u00a0 I begged them to let me out, let me return to my family, but it didn\u2019t matter what I said to them.\u00a0 They were never going to let me go, and I would remain with them until the end.<\/p>\n

When I was a child, there was no such thing as night terrors.\u00a0 At least, to my family, there was no such thing, and they thought I was acting out.\u00a0 But every night when I went to sleep, those nightmares waited to take hold, pull me in, and rip me apart.\u00a0 I was always trapped, locked in a room, and doomed to stay there until I died.\u00a0 I sometimes got out.\u00a0 I would run up to the storefront, peer inside, and see my family, but to my horror, they had moved on.\u00a0 They forgot about me, and as I focused on them, the two men took me again.\u00a0 I just couldn\u2019t escape, and these dreams, these nightmares started to poke at the seams during the day, unraveling me.\u00a0 And I just slipped away.<\/p>\n

It was only a year or so later when I stumbled across the creative writing class in the seventh grade.\u00a0 The two women there were convinced of my writing talent, but I was a mess.\u00a0 I knew I was a mess, and I thought they were crazy.\u00a0 But later, I started to write, and as I wrote, I pulled the darkness, the nightmares away from my mind and drowned them in pages and pages of white.\u00a0 I created horrible futuristic worlds, monstrous monsters, and darkness, the darkness that had held me for so long.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t realize then, but I realize now, that I was just beginning to pull myself back from the brink and struggle to regain what I had lost, myself.\u00a0 And it was all because of that damn movie, Follow That Bird.\u00a0 It had struck a chord in me, a chord so deep that it could have traced back to a past life, a horror that ended in tragedy, and then it surfaced, clawing its way to the top and drawing blood.\u00a0 It drew blood, doing its damage, but not anymore.\u00a0 Whatever ghost haunted me with its terror and tragedy was now laid to rest in the notebooks that I used to cling to for dear life, cutting that chord, and I would never forget.\u00a0 And I never have today, but maybe, that\u2019s just the trouble with past lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a child, I was afraid of the closet. It didn\u2019t help watching movies like the first Poltergeist or that American Ninja movie, where another girl gets sucked into the closet and then gets possessed by a ninja. The Horror movie, House scared the ever living crap out of me, but the one scene that I will never forget is when that thing erupts out of the closet. And I was done, but I still watched the rest of it. And the closet continued to haunt me even with Cat\u2019s Eye when James Woods peered inside, realizing that someone was indeed in there, watching him. It would take years to get over this phobia. Thank you, Hollywood, but the stuff of nightmares had yet to come.<\/p>\n

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