Your Normal is My Mask

⚠️ Content Note: This story contains themes of terminal illness, death of a parent, grief, and spiritual experiences surrounding loss.

YOUR NORMAL IS MY MASK

Confessions from a Life Lived in the In-Between

Have you ever wished you could be normal? Not normal in the sense of working a nine-to-five or eating peanut butter without your body staging a protest, but normal in the sense that if you told someone the truth, they wouldn’t look at you like you’d lost your mind. Like that night when I was six and woke to my great-grandfather walking the hallway—three days after he’d died. He sat on the edge of my bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, unshed tears shining in eyes that should’ve been closed forever.

Wait—maybe I should give you my definition of what is normal for me. For me, normal meant a little girl named Emily lived in your closet. I had nicknamed her Ghostie because I learned early that calling her an imaginary friend was easier for everyone to accept than the truth. Normal also meant that a translucent man with a stern face wearing a black suit marched up and down the hallway outside of my childhood bedroom as if he was always on watch. And sometimes, for some odd reason, other entities use our house like Ellis Island waiting for the ferry to the underworld, or what I called The Veil and—sometimes—the In-Between.

I know, I sound ridiculous. Next thing you know, I’ll be strapping on a plague mask, blowing smoke, and claiming I can lead ghost tours into The Further. But honestly, I can’t touch what belonged to the dead without turning it into a hotline straight through The Veil, like a fiber optic cable humming with signals no one else can hear.

At one point, I did want to be ‘normal’. No whispers, no chills, no more pretending that what I saw was a hallucination brought on by the salt in the humid air of Virginia Beach.

Regardless of faith, I reached a point where I found myself on my knees, begging for my masked senses to be taken away. It was about two years after my son was born and we were both living in my childhood home with my parents. One night, when I couldn’t sleep, I stepped out onto the front porch and sat down the cool cement. Tears streaked my cheeks, sobs shook my body. I wanted to be normal. A normal mom. One that didn’t hear, see, or feel entities—energies—of non-corporeal beings. I told the air surrounding me that I was done. That I was giving it back. That my son, being present and attentive to him, was my only priority and I begged that I’d be allowed to wake up the next morning without so much as a shadow figure or whisper.

And I did. I felt lighter. I’ll admit that. I felt free of whatever had been tied with the masked senses. I suppose I felt what most people consider to be normal. But then—because the universe, but in respect to this narrative, God—did exactly what I should have expected. You see, I’d been told my entire life by my parents, by various family members, that certain gifts had been held by different ancestors from both sides of our family, making it appear as if the extra senses were inherited. Even if, for some reason, the senses seemed to accumulate and amplify in me. I know what you’re thinking. Spiritual Gifts aren’t like the genetic toss up between brown or hazel eyes. I thought that, too. And that’s sort of correct.

You see when I begged for my gifts to be taken from me, they went to someone else. Someone too young to understand.

My son.

He had night terrors every night. Screaming for me in his sleep. Crying and shaking once he was awake. Especially the little girl that lived in his closet. Refusing to go back to sleep as I lay next to him in his big boy bed. He was terrified of the people and monsters in his dreams. One day in the family room, I asked him to draw me a picture of the little girl that lived in his closet, the one from his dream. He was two, so I wasn’t expecting much. But when he sketched her white shoes, her flowing dress, her dark hair—I felt ice crawl down my spine. It was Emily.

Ghostie.

It was official. I had to crawl back and plead until my son was no longer taking my place in the line of succession of genetic spiritual gifts.

I’ll spare you the back and forth of that night, but let’s just say, it was like an audible click resounded off of the walls. Everything came back with a vengeance. And that free feeling? It didn’t compare to the rush that filled me and the sight that cleared. To this day, I haven’t felt anything purer than that night. And as time has gone on, my gift of living a life in the in-between has only gotten stronger because now, normal means never walking into a funeral home without gloves. People assume I’m a germaphobe, but if that were true, wouldn’t I wear latex or nitrile? Instead, I wear lace—a thin, useless barrier against germs, but just enough to keep me from lighting up like a lantern in a world no one else sees. They call it paranoia. I call it survival because to the dead, I’m not a person. I’m a beacon.

Normal for me includes seeing someone’s impending death before it happens. (No, not like Final Destination—though that franchise did get one thing right. You can’t escape Death. Try to cheat it and you’ll only delay the inevitable; it always collects its due.) When it hits me, it’s not dramatic. I just see a shift—skin that loses its light, like the glow has been switched off from beneath. Vibrancy fades to something dull and brittle, like fruit left too long in the sun. And that’s how I know: no matter what I do or say, that person will be gone within the year. I don’t know when, or where, or how. I just know they won’t be here when the year ends.

Morbid, I know. But it’s not new. My father carried the same gift, and he told me stories my whole life about what it was like to live with it. He always called it a blessing. I wasn’t so sure.

Then one night, during a video call, I watched the color drain from his face. His warm caramel skin dulled into something stale, air-dried, already halfway to dust. And in that moment, before he even opened his mouth, I knew. When he gathered us all and said his cancer had returned, I pulled him aside later and told him I’d already seen it.

He died six months later. While family and friends cried and clung to hope, I didn’t—because I knew there was nothing that could be done. I know how that sounds. Cold. Cruel. Maybe even monstrous. But the truth of it was laid bare in small, quiet moments.

One afternoon, my father lay in bed on heating pads, my brother at his side. For an hour, my brother prayed, my father promised, and tears streaked down my brother’s face as he finally left the room. I went in next. I sat down, took my father’s hand. He whispered the same thing—I’m going to beat this—but just as he drew breath to say my brother’s name, I cut in softly.

“Dad, it’s me. You don’t have to do that right now.”

He squeezed my hand, eyes flooding, and with a shuddering breath whispered back, “Thank you.”

He had always called this ability a gift. For years, I thought it was a curse. But in that moment, I understood what he meant. It wasn’t about death at all—it was about stripping away the masks we wear for each other. With me, he could stop pretending. He could be honest. And when my family and I left to drive back to our home in Georgia that May, the hue of my Dad’s skin had looked almost black to me. Not anyone else. Just me. So the day we drove back to Georgia, I hugged him tight because we both knew it would be the last time he’d ever be able to hug me back.

It was only two weeks later that my family and I were back on the road. After I had gotten my husband and son settled at my parents house, my mother drove from the hospital to get me. When I got there, my brother was waiting and said that when he’d told our Dad that I was on the road earlier in the day that he’d cried a sigh of relief.

A week later, he lay between machines with a tube down his throat, reduced to nods and hand squeezes beneath the steady beep of the EKG.

On the day of his death, my brother and mother asked me to speak with him, to make sure he understood what would happen if he chose to remove it. I took his hand and asked if he was ready. He nodded.

“You told them you’d beat this again,” I said, my voice breaking. “But every fighter has the right to bow out of the ring.”

Another nod. Another squeeze.

I leaned closer. “When you cross over, you’ll see things you weren’t told. Especially about me. Don’t cry for that girl. I survived because of you. Because you made sure I would.”

His eyes brimmed and a single tear slipped free. I smiled weakly and whispered, “When you’re ready, find my light. I’ll be here.”

He did. My husband, son and I had returned to the home my parents had shared but my mother had decided to stay at the hotel with his first cousin. My husband and I were staying in the master bedroom and had put our son to bed in one of the guest rooms. While my husband showered and I turned down the bed, a hum whispered through the air—followed by the distinct tap tap of my father’s steps in the foyer just outside the master bedroom door that we’d kept ajar. Dad had found my light and followed it home and I told him where to find my Mom. According to her, he found her and stayed with her that entire night. When she came home the next day, during the quiet hours of early morning, he told her he was sorry for leaving so much sooner than they’d thought.

The gift I inherited during his last few months allowed me to bear witness and carry our family through his funeral. By June, when he was rushed to the hospital, I’d already passed through the hardest stages of grief. I could carry my family through theirs.

The acceptance started and ended the night before the funeral. The night before the funeral, I woke to the sound of wet, struggling gasps behind my eyelids. I screamed until a vessel burst in my nose, thrashing in the same bed where I’d once told my father he didn’t need to pretend with me.

Safe to say that at his funeral, wearing all black and with my lace gloves hugging the skin of my hands, I didn’t cry. I couldn’t. If I did, I’d pop another blood vessel.

The day of his cremation, though my husband and son were in the car, I was the only one who attended. Our mother couldn’t bring herself to go. My sister didn’t go and our brothers didn’t go. Well, the one who lived in Florida and had been taking turns with our mom and I staying at the hospital asked me to call him while he stayed at the house with our mom and extended family.

When I stepped into the cremation room where our father’s body lay in a box, I did the thing I don’t do—I took off a glove. Yeah, I took off my left glove and touched his hand as I whispered goodbye. It took a scalding hot shower and secluded meditation to melt the icy grasp of hollowed depths from the forefront of my mind until it was a dull chill. Coincidentally, I have a scar on my left wrist to commemorate the day I went against my own rules. I’m pretty sure that it’s from a spider or something I came in contact with in that cremation room because that spot itched, burned, turned red and raised during the drive back to my parent’s house. I guess something thought I needed a physical reminder.

I say all this to say why I don’t wish I was the expected definition of normal. My life is lived existing between two worlds: one the general population can see and one that, if admitted, can get you admitted.

What I see, feel, hear, is more than reading people and energies. It’s engrained in my essence from birth. And no, guiding spirits to meet their reapers isn’t limited to just my family. I’ve helped others, too.

But just like everyone else, I can’t outrun Death. I work in the same building and go where I’m whispered to be needed.

Now, you know my secret and my version of normal. So, what’s your definition of normal?

I promise, I’ll carry it to the grave.