As hard as I try, I cannot pinpoint, the exact time and place the voices started. I’m inclined to believe I’ve had them all my life. The voices haven’t always been “bad” though. Sometimes, especially when I was young, the voices would re-assure me that everything would be alright, and that I was loved.

For as long as I’ve heard the voices, I’ve heard people say that those that hear voices are “crazy”, and those who talk back to the voices are really crazy! I don’t think hearing or even responding to voices is really what makes you crazy. I think we probably all hear “voices”. What starts to happen sometimes though is that we begin to separate the voices from ourselves..our own personality…

Of course as a kid our imaginations can often get the best of us, and I was no exception to this rule. My voices became imaginary friends, companions. I spent a lot of time alone, talking to myself. This is not really considered strange in society. Boys five, six, or seven are often seen talking outloud playing with toy trucks and cars, or other toys (usually bashing them into one another). I would spend hours drawing knobs and buttons on cardboard boxes, chairs, and walls. These would be my secret spy computer, or my rocket to the moon. I would hear the grown-ups talking, about how great a chlids imagination was and how sad we loose our imagination as adults. I vowed to myself to practice using my imagination every day, I didnt’ wan’t too loose it, maybe that’s part of the reason I still hear the voices today.

I spent a lot of time in my uncle’s closet with a lamp, a cardboard box,crayons, and a tape recorder. It was quiet in there, no outside noise, no one telling you what to do, or what not to do! I am told I would frequently be talking in the closet to my grandfather, and I even pointed the man out in a picture, which would be fine except for the fact that my grandfather had died several years before I was even born..so perhaps one of the voices was his, or at least I imagined it was I guess.

My first experience “knowing” death came a few years later, when my mom’s mother died. I remember thinking how strange it was, everyone was crying so much all the time, and I didn’t understand why.  Now, I was not raised with a lot of religion, I was told their was a God, and that you had to be good to get into heaven. I never questioned for a minute that life existed after death though. The whole idea that when someone dies that you would never see or hear from them again, seemed silly. People that died would still talk to us, we could still see them, why was everyone so sad?

Now I’m not saying I’m psychic, or a medium, or have any “special” powers. It’s not like Ghost Whisperer where dead people just walk around talking to me (though I think that would be kinda cool). It’s more like every person that you meet (especially those you care about) leave an impression on you, leave a part of themselves with you, where-ever you go. Whether they live 1000 miles away, or even if they die, part of their “personality” stays with you, and helps guide you through your life. I call this keeping someone in your heart/mind. When someone is there, they can stay with your forever, and they will always be “alive” in some sense of the word at least. Alive in our minds, in our memories.