Something very weird happened to me earlier this year. I did not realize when I wrote “the weirdest thing happened to me” in last year’s blog post that things were about to get even weirder. Apparently God was not finished answering my prayer to help me “to believe for real, like, really real. For real.”
Two weeks before Easter I began experiencing weird symptoms—difficulty falling asleep, strange dreams, hearing voices, “hallucinations,” and allergic reactions to synthetic fabrics, electricity, meat and dairy. The symptoms were so severe, I ended up with a prescription for Olanzapine (Zyprexa), an antipsychotic. Later, after describing my physical symptoms to someone (I did not mention the voices and hallucinations), I was told it could be something called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome. I called my primary care office to make an appointment and told them my symptoms—fatigue, shortness of breath. They told me to go to the hospital emergency room ASAP (I think they thought I was having a heart attack). I spent the rest of that afternoon in a hospital bed hooked up to wires and monitors. I got a chest X-ray, a 12-lead ECG, and blood drawn for a whole battery of tests (CBC w/ differential, COVID-19, comprehensive metabolic panel, influenza A/B, NT Pro-BNP, Troponin I).
The X-ray came back “negative” (lungs clear, heart and pulmonary vasculature normal, no infiltrates, no edema, no effusions). The lab tests showed I was perfectly healthy.
What triggered all this weirdness?
Well, dear reader, it just so happened that I experienced “bad luck” after selling some (very cool-looking) goth jewelry to a thrift store, jewelry I had kept in a jewelry box I inherited from the Chinese side of my family. I had the bright idea of pulling out that jewelry box from my wardrobe, sprinkling (Orthodox) holy water on it, and reading aloud two Catholic deliverance prayers (from www.catholicexorcism.org): “Disposing of Cursed Objects” and “Remove Generational Spirits Prayer.” Before I had gotten to the end of the second prayer, I felt pin pricks on the palm of my right hand, then on the back of my hand, then the pin pricks went up my right arm.
Everything went to “hell” (as the idiom goes) after that.
I am not kidding. I am not making this up.
My priest thinks I “fractured my spirit” by splitting my time and attention between Protestant, Orthodox, and Catholic prayers and services. I also believe I accidentally busted open the “veil” that separates our physical “material” world from the spiritual world by invoking a Catholic deliverance prayer when I’m not a baptized Catholic, and pissed off something in a big way.
The “weirdness” comes and goes. I can eat meat and dairy again (though I still follow the vegan fasting calendar of the Eastern Orthodox Church). I’m still sensitive to polyester and other synthetic fabrics and feel better when I wear clothing made from 100% cotton. The Olanzapine medication helps me fall asleep when I have nightmares, but it makes me groggy during the day, so I take it only when necessary. For some reason, pulling the cotton bedsheet completely over my head helps me fall asleep at night. What’s the most helpful to me are the ancient prayers and liturgical services of the Eastern Orthodox Church (they call the Church “a hospital for the soul”), and the spiritual advice of two Catholic priests who believed me.
I assume God is allowing me to experience what I’m going through for a good reason. What that reason is exactly, I don’t know.
God is real. But the reality of God also means the reality of angels and demons. If the misery I went through—bug-eyed people grinning at me in my dreams, voices and noises waking me up all night, intrusive thoughts, feelings of despair and hopelessness, the sensation of being bitten by invisible bugs—if those were demons harassing me, then demons have the maturity of middle school bullies, the moral arrogance of copyright trolls, and the sense of humor of psychopaths.
