How Do I Cope?

For as long as I can remember, my life was never normal. My parents, wannabe hippies from the 80s that followed the Grateful Dead around the country were as weird as they got. I spent the majority of my young life denying that they had lived the life they did. As I got older, however, I realized that they were more than weird. I remember clearly the time that Mama declared that she'd seen Dad make a crystal glow just by closing it in his fist for a few seconds. Even though I knew such a thing must be impossible, I believed her. After she found the Lord, she began to tell me crazy things about making all manner of electronics short-circuit (which we all now know for a fact), how she tried to throw her tarot cards away and they kept coming back to her (I watched her throw them away one day and an hour later found the same pack under the bed) and when she burned them in our burn barrel they spit sparks at her no matter where she ran around the barrel to get away from them, and how she remembered events from what must have been her past life. She'd tell me about seeing and hearing things that she knew weren't there and how, even as kid, she'd have the strangest, most realistic dreams.

After she passed away, all heck broke loose in our family. Cars got into accidents, basements flooded, snow fell in sunny South Carolina, and every imaginable hardship befell us. Less than a month after she died, I heard that my father, whom I hadn't spoken to in years, had also died.

At 17, I should have a normal social life, with lots of friends, right? Wrong. I guess something about me keeps everyone but the warmest of adults at arm's length. I feel uncomfortable in large crowds, and sometimes even get sick to my stomach when I know I have to be in one. It's not normal. Neither are the things I see out of the corner of my eye on a daily basis, either. I see outlines of cats in the shadows of my room at night, flashes of shapes as I turn quickly from one place to another, one time, I thought I saw my Grandmother on the patio outside of her room. I thought nothing of it until I left the room, went to the kitchen, and she was immersed in making dinner and hadn't been outside in twenty minutes.

I hear things. I know that sounds as corny as "I see dead people", but it's true. I've heard everything from people calling me who know haven't called me, to music playing that isn't playing, to my stuffed dog barking at me. I used to hear footsteps and animals in the house we used to live in, in the middle of the night, when my mother left for work. We didn't have animals, and only my brother (who was much too young to be making the mature masculine laughter I'd heard) and I were in the house.

I suppose I should mention the ringing in my ears, the strange gut feelings about people that I get. Some people just give me the heebie-jeebies, even if someone I know says that they're a good person. Also, in certain places, at certain times, I get this uncontrollable urge to shiver my shoulders hard, like I'm trying to shake something off them. I got it once standing on the shore of a lake, by a lake house, and I even once got it in the middle of our Walmart. The only other thing worth mentioning is the De Ja Vu. I've gotten it a lot recently, sometimes just from hearing a particular song I'd never heard before, as I surfed an unknown website.

I know that I'm far from normal, but it's just so hard to cope with. I'm sure that, if I had any idea what was happening in my life, I could probably get some semblance of control over it, but I don't know. If anyone has any ideas about anything I've mentioned, could you help? Thank you!