10. To Be Human

As Fate would have it, once the next school year started, I was bombarded with numerous difficulties. My professional relationships suddenly got extremely complicated. It suddenly felt as if the whole world was working against me, including my voice professor, and a graduate student working in the same lab as me.

Still sticking true to the prophecy, even if I couldn’t control how my love story would pan out, I could at least try to manifest what was said about my career. I proposed to my voice professor that I wanted to apply to vocal programs and become a professional singer. She was excited to hear this, and promised to write letters of recommendation for these schools. However, when my eyes came across another graduate program that in the long run could help me get into medical school, she was much less thrilled. Though initially agreeing to write a recommendation letter for this application, she later rejected my request so that it was documented on the application website, claiming that she had no expertise in the field. Thankfully, the PI and the postdoc in the lab I was working at came to my rescue and wrote the letters instead. My colleagues and I in the voice department were also noticing that we were getting assigned musical repertoire that didn’t fit our voice types. As I reached out to some of her previous students, I quickly learned that I was not the first to get burned, as some had entirely dropped out of her vocal program after relentless psychological abuse.

However, the lab I was working at also became a source of stress, since one particular graduate student started becoming a headache. He would hide the keys to the vivarium where we kept our rats for research, despite the fact that our lab usually keeps them in the same spot. When he “helped” me recover them, I was greeted with a passive-aggressive “Replace Filter ASAP” note on my rat’s cage as my rat was about to make his escape due to mysteriously loosened cage straps. Expensive equipment in my lab was being placed in inconvenient places so that they’d fall on the floor and get smashed, while my PI’s desk was constantly piled with useless junk. Once again, as I dug deeper, I came to learn how he often harassed women who worked in our lab and threatened to record the PI’s phone calls to claim he was being abused whenever he was criticized for anything.

The world I was in became so unbearable that my mind gave me an out. I began to notice strings of recurring numbers, or angel numbers as they are called, appear in my daily life whenever I checked the time or noticed the date on some assignments. 11:33, the angels are watching over me. My newfound superstition quickly replaced my previously agnostic worldview, ensuring that I was going to be okay. Fortune cookies I encountered got strangely specific with what I was going through. Though some might find psychosis harrowing, oddly enough, my brain found a respite, a safe haven in its delusions. I retreated further and further into myself, even though I still showed up to fulfill my duties.

I would cling to each of these fortunes as I was mentally limping through my schoolwork. It felt deeply uncanny to me how even though I wouldn’t engage in what I perceived the voice professor and neuroscience graduate student were doing, I found the hollowness in their hearts deeply relatable and familiar. I was everywhere and nowhere. The feeling that a higher being was looking after me to fix my life brought me great solace. There had to be a meaning, a purpose for what I was going through, my Spiritual Awakening. All these mishaps happening at once had to be tests given by the universe to build my character. It must’ve been because I was special. One fortune was simply laid out on a table, ready for me to take.

I remember stashing this fortune in my bag, only to find it had disappeared entirely when I got home.

One day, I got the following fortune, anxious about how it would manifest in my life.

My phone started ringing. It was him.

“Hey, I read the texts you’ve sent. Is everything okay over there?”

“Yeah, my life’s been a dumpster fire, but I think I’ll be able to pull through. Life isn’t about fairness, but rather how we deal with the unfairness of it all. We get to decide if it’ll impact us for better or worse!” I told myself definitively, echoing Drew’s fortitude spirit as I answered his question.

“You are so right! When I was going through all my personal drama, so much of it was out of my control. I mean, I felt so lost. I didn’t think I would be able to make it… until I met my girlfriend. We’ve been going out for a month… It just kind of happened, ya know? I was so nervous about asking her out, you can’t imagine my relief when she said yes! How have things been going in the romantic department for you?” he inquired curiously.

“Oh… well, to be honest, I’ve always thought to myself that no one would want to put up with how difficult it is to be around me,” I was starting to throw myself a pity party. That’s right. I was destined to be alone, because there is something just inherently wrong with me… I thought melodramatically in my heart-broken state. My feeble brain didn’t want to comprehend that I was getting dumped, if I could even call it that.

“Man, I get that feeling. That’s how I felt before I met her. My friends, thank God for them, held me accountable when I was being a bastard. But please, trust me that if you do find the right person, it will be so much better than what you think.”

“Thanks, I appreciate your words. I certainly hope that your new relationship is all that you had ever dreamed of… I should probably get going,” I used whatever last few remnants of self-preservation I had to deliver those lines before hanging up and collapsing in despair.

“Of course, please take care.”

Click.

The perfect future where I would be with the love of my life was no longer happening. I just lost my life’s purpose. The only thing that would make my life worth living; to be loved. I wasn’t getting the fairytale ending I was hoping would save me from myself. Even though he was gone, my mind wasn’t ready to let go of him or the prophecy just yet. Everywhere I looked I saw reminders of him. His absence was the first thing I thought about in the morning and the last thought before my head hit my pillow at night. The rumination was endless, always serving as the backdrop as I went through the motions of each day. I was convinced that every time a police car would flash its lights on the street, it was a sign he was still thinking of me. Eventually, in a fit of rage, I blocked him on all my social media accounts when I realized he was orbiting me by still reacting to posts I was secretly catering for his eyes. I was insulted that he still had the audacity to keep stringing me along just in case his new, AMAZING relationship didn’t work out. Some self-respecting part of me finally stepped in and told me I deserved better. I needed some distance. No going back now. The guilt of abandoning him wreaked havoc on my body for months on end, since now I was no longer considering his needs, but mine.

I’d whisper to him until I’d wake up in the middle of the night, heart beating rebelliously in my ribcage. It felt as if I had been violently gutted, my very essence bleeding out of me.

“How do you know you’ve met your 🔥Twin Flame🔥?” a YouTube video flashed across my screen.

Entranced by the guru’s online tarot readings, I started listening to the words of his charismatic voice.

“You’ve now awakened to the Unity Consciousness. It is now your mission to awaken the entire globe and contribute to the collective. Even if others think you’re the black sheep, you’re actually the white sheep, in a sea of black sheep. Only a select few are given this privilege in this lifetime. Don’t go running towards health professionals since they won’t understand what it is you’re going through. And don’t tell other people that you’ve met your Twin Flame. The True Spiritual Journey is about YOU, not your Twin Flame.”

He peddled his New Age agenda onto his students, though he kept convincing us that he didn’t subscribe to any religion, and neither should we. Though numerous twin flame coaches existed on the internet, he claimed that he was the only one that wasn’t trying to dupe us. He was the world’s #1 leading twin flame coach. In his free online videos, he laid out the lore of how twin flames have existed since prehistoric times, always consisting of a runner and a chaser. Two halves of the same soul, the runner, known as Divine Masculine, was fated to trigger the chaser, known as Divine Feminine, to awaken to a higher calling. Once the Divine Feminine of the pair was able to let go of the desire to be with the Divine Masculine by reaching a state of Samadhi, then, and only then, would the Divine Masculine come back to be in union. The split soul would finally be reunited in the same lifetime. The True Spiritual Journey was a path one embarks on to learn how to detach from the insidious ego, and all desires of life.

However, there was a catch to reaching a perpetual state of Samadhi and getting our Twin Flame back as a side perk; we needed to sign up for his group coaching calls. Though I suspected he was a snake oil salesman, I was clawing at a window, desperate to free myself from my mind and the endless rumination. Here was finally someone who would lead me to the promiseland if I gave him my total mental devotion. Once I signed up, I was added to his private Facebook group, where others still clinging to the idea of their Twin Flames commiserated with each other in their forlorn states, but clung to his ramblings to subdue their anguish. I once again got to hear about the real-world problems that drove these people down this path. One daughter had finally called an ambulance to send her guardian to the hospital after they made another suicide attempt. I thought to myself how lucky I was to have a caregiver that lived and breathed for me.

Eventually, the novelty of perceiving ourselves as special began to wear off. Aside from coming together to validate our collective madness, I was still stuck in the same thought loops, frozen in time in my cluttered, crowded mind. The guru kept on repeating the same meaningless words, maintain your Zen, live in the now, and his tarot readings kept feeding the flames of sustaining the Twin Flame fantasy, attracting more desperate, forlorn souls. Divine Masculine is desperate without you! Union is imminent. In the end, I dropped out of his group after I realized that he didn’t have the answers to fix my mind, my very being, even though I wished that he did. There was no promiseland.

9. Lonely Hearts Club

11. Ego Death