Saturday Soliloquy #3

Part 3: Australia

What I mean by giving up is that I had tried speaking directly to the dorm full of kids partying who made lots of racket and they would be quiet for a few minutes, but then they would become loud once again.  Some nights, before I “gave up,” I would yell across the courtyard at them to shut up.  When I gave up, I gave up fighting to try to get some sleep.  I just accepted what was and tried to occupy my time productively… sometimes more so than others.

 

So things proceeded until the evening of September 11, 2001.  I do not remember anything particularly about the day, but that evening I started to feel super sick to my stomach and fuzzy-headed pretty much all of the sudden.  These feelings and sensations set in sometime before 8pm.  In Australia it is 12 hours different from the east coast of the USA.  My roommates, by this time, knew not to bother me if I was trying to sleep.  Surprisingly, this time I was able to fall quickly to sleep.  I slept well, in a way… well compared to the sleep I had been getting.  But I was dreaming amazingly strange dreams.  In my dreams I was viewing two realities at once.  One was what it was… the other was me trying to interpret it in real time… trying to make it my own when, in fact, it was not my experience at all. 

Around 10:30pm someone came rapping roughly on my door, calling out to me.  I guess it was rather difficult to rouse me, that’s how deeply I was sleeping (totally uncharacteristic of my month there!).  Felicia, Josefine and Keefe were yelling that the Twin Towers had been bombed and I needed to wake up and come see. 

My dorm did not have a TV in it.  We didn’t buy one together and no one person had bought one for the apartment dorm.  So, my friends took me over to one of their dorms.  It was totally dark by this time, so I remember disjointed moments of walking with a flashlight bouncing ahead of us.  I also remember my friends talk to me, but feeling completely out of place… like I was in the wrong reality… almost like I didn’t really know where I was.  I woke up well enough, I suppose, by the time we arrived at my friend’s dorm apartment. 

My friends sat me down in front of the TV.  I was sitting on the floor.  The TV was already on playing and re-playing horrific scenes of devestation: the Twin Towers being bombed, a plane crash, an attack on the Pentagon.  My friends were upset, but they had seen these things a few times (for the most part), they were watching me (I realized later). 

At first the feeling of being in the wrong reality persisted and I felt only confusion.  I saw what was going on in the scenes on the news, but I felt so very strange because I felt like that was where I actually was, not where I was actually sitting.  And then it hit me like a ton of bricks!  I’d been dreaming the things I was now watching on the news.  I’d seen almost exactly the same things as the news was showing.  The only difference is that in the dreams, I’d actually BEEN there and felt the fear and concern and terror of a few different people.  In these dreams I was myself (interpreting the dream in real time) and I was also the person actually living the horror.  In one, I was a woman who ran from a Tower or a building that fell.  She/I was holding a baby.  She/I tripped and the baby flew forward out of her/my reach.  She called out, “Where is my baby?  Is she okay?”  I called out, “Where is my baby?  Is he okay?”  In another moment, I was a person standing a few blocks away when the first plane flew in to the Tower.  I saw it because I was walking in that direction.  I stopped walking and stood in abject horror as I realized what had just happened.  The true depravity of the situation finally sunk in and I called someone on my phone, but the phone would not work.  As myself, Tori, in Perth, I dreamed the exact same things, but the setting was the downtown area of Perth.  The exact same things transpired, just in the environment I was familiar with.  Although I’ve been to New York, I never saw the Twin Towers in real life before.  There was another experience of split experience versus dream, but I cannot remember it at this time. 

I’ve come to understand, after these 11 years, that Heavenly Father accomplishes so much with and through us with each and every little experience of our lives.  For instance, the False Flag of September 11^th is a blight in the memory and experience of most people who know about it.  However, there were innumerable miracles and blessings that came about as a result of that devastating attack.  While I refer to miracles, I do refer to miracles in an overall sense.  But I also believe (have heard) that there were miracles wrought in the lives of many individuals as a result of this experience. 

Before I made the trip to Oz, I’d begun guided imagery meditation.  I wanted to become more in tune with the universe and develop my psychic abilities (please remember I was not going to church at all at this time of my life, so referring to psychic abilities as Spiritual Gifts was beyond my ken).  I did my meditation a few times once I was there, but nothing really regular.  However, I do realize that it was those meditation experiences that enabled me to be the tool I was for Heavenly Father on the 11^th of September 2001.  I believe Heavenly Father used my spiritual strength to help others who physically lived within the attack zone to endure what they went through. 

I was not as strong as I needed to me, though.  I was ill equipped to deal with having a psychic experience!  I felt like I was going absolutely NUTS.  Seriously.  I know now, what I know about God using me, but I had not frame of reference for such a consideration back then! 

My Mom pulled me back from the brink a few times.  Her calm, soothing voice, sometimes stern and forceful… other times sweet and uplifting… I know that my Mom is the biggest reason I’m still able to function today.  Jessie helped, too.  But he wasn’t really able to call often and I certainly wasn’t able to call him.  My creative writing class and painting class helped tremendously as well.  Having those two outlets by which to purge the “crazies” helped me process through the feelings, reactions and dreams I had for months after the attacks.