When I was little, my mother got very, very sick. She was unconscious for three days and when she woke up she was paralyzed in her left arm and cound not swallow.

My twin brother and I were nine years old and we were launched into a position where we took care of ourselves and our mother. 

Shortly afterwards, my mother began talking to a man named Saint Germain, whom she could hear in her head. She talked to him almost constantly, and after a little while had my brother talk to him. They would sit in her room for hours, with her constant “Ask Saint Germain this” and “Ask Saint Germain that”, and it got to the point where I couldn’t talk to her with my brother in the room without her interrupting me to have him ask Saint Germain something, or if I was spending time with him, she would randomly walk into the room for a twenty minute barrage of questions for him to ’Ask Saint Germain’.

A couple of years went by with this, and we moved from our hometown Kansas City to a tiny town in Washington, to another tiny town in Washington, to Oregon, and finally to Portland.

In Portland a couple of things happened that i’ll get into in later posts, but during high school there was a period where my brother had been sent away. Now in the past I had been singled out to sit real still and ‘Listen’ to Saint Germain while my mother and I were alone. I always got out of it because I never could hear anything, and she sort of gave up on me.  But this time Alex was gone for a while, and we were in the car going to the store. I hadn’t eaten all day and I was starving. She asked me to ask Saint Germain a question, and I replied sharply that I couldn’t hear anything, and she looked at me and said “So you want me to die because you’re too selfish to listen to Saint Germain for me?” Then she pulled into a parking lot, began crying, and turned around.

“What about dinner?” I asked. She didn’t look at me as she replied “Why should I do anything for you when you can’t do a simple little thing for me?”  “I’m hungry! I haven’t eaten all day!” I yelled at her. ”Then buy your own food.” She replied in an odd voice. “I have no money.” I said. “I don’t have a job.” She shrugged. So, I growled fine, I would ‘listen to saint germain’ and she cheerfully pulled over.

So, for the next year and a half, I had to ’ask’ questions for Saint Germain whenever she wanted me to.  At any moment I had to drop everything I was doing, and go through twenty minute to hour long periods where I had to ask questions, and this usually resulted in my mother yelling at me because she didn’t like my answers, or because I got tired and asked her to leave me alone. 

Then, late in sophomore year, I was hospitalized for depression a second time and it was decided that going home with my mother was not the best thing for me to do. So I went to live with my best friend and her family, where I have spent a year sort of recovering, adapting to a family where i’m not woken up at two in the morning by screaming, and where I get fed, and where I know I will not be thrown out at any second.  

I have spent eight and a half years of my life with Saint Germain, and one year without, and it’s time to tell my story.