Most definitely. I've lost many after 3 big Awakenings in my life. In college, after college and then when my mother died.
In College
Unfortunately, in retrospect, I can see that the Awakening I had then, almost 20 years ago was cut off because I panicked which panicked my parents, which got me promptly medicated. What it did was illustrate not only me to myself but also showed me a lot about the world that I was seeing and what was available to be seen. What that did to me was it changed how I ignored my own spiritual insights. I had grown up aware of things, having dreams, seeing into people, knowing deeper things about people, places and things. My family was dysfunctional in many ways so they undermined me as an effect of their dysfunction, though some was directed at me.
A group of friends that I was to move in with, excluded me when I came back a couple of weeks later—-and their living together fell apart.
Having gotten sick, I moved out of the dorms. I got an apartment on my own, my first 1 bedroom about 15 blocks away from one of the campuses. I was deeply isolated and living on a nice budget (illness had its’ benefits) but that time alone gave me time to re-do myself, my engagements. I made different friends and was more ambitious in developing my writing work.
After College
Again, around 9/11, I was living in an all White town and got into an argument with a loud neighbor. We went back and forth for hours, the police coming back and forth five times, until I stepped over onto his property line, and got scooped into jail for trespassing. I didn’t know the county, Nassau was using its penal system to get $150 a day per prisoner so it behooved them to turn my foot faux pas into a felony and sitting in jail until they gradually lowered it.
Secondly what I didn’t know was they medicate everyone in the jail—-with anti-psychotics—-but anti-psychotics work on psychotics/mentally ill—-if you’re not, it literally blows your mind. I also had never taken drugs so I didn’t know the effects——-when I realized it—-you wake up in an LSD trip—-I refused the meds (I’d originally, in a very bourgeois way, thought they were like Advil PM)—-which, withdrawal makes reality go ka-blooey.
But to bring myself together I meditated, did T’ai Chi in my cell, and then got out after a couple of weeks.
However the drugs sort of unlocked me, opened my mind and spirit and I was able to look at myself and all of my relationships and understand them.
The first time in college, my parents had taken me to a great doctor who diagnosed that one of my problems was, what had led to my exhaustion was that I had given myself to “lesser” people. He said that the people I was engaged with were beneath me, less than, not aspiring for as much, not as intelligent or motivated——and the drag from them was what had sort of rubber band snapped me.
I was in my early 20s then and like I said I had come from a dysfunctional family so I had trouble with emotionally accepting judging others and eliminating those that didn’t fit my goals/personal self. That included friends and family.
Friend # 1-Aisha
She’d been a friend from undergraduate and we’d stayed friends for a total of 7 years. She’d counseled me through a break up and I’d counseled her to moving on her own to a new college in Pennsylvania and the upending of class and race that she faced. (She was half White and half Black.) For several Christmases in a row I would visit my family downstate then come back to Buffalo to maintain my work/apartments and her family would have me to dinner and events and church for the holidays—-as the town sort of emptied from everyone I knew.
It took me a little stumbling but I worked my way through Pennsylvania. Philadelphia and finally back to NYC after undergraduate and Aisha would visit regularly and I would visit her in PA. Back and forth, dinner parties, sleep overs, weekend getaways for years. Then the Nassau jail thing happened and I left my phone at home along with my wallet. The jail though provides phones—-but that was when the rush of collect call blocks happened. However they also gave you paper and stamps every week——so I write a frantic letter to Aisha. My mother and stepfather were in a pickle in Charlotte—-she’d been attacked by a man, he’d bene arrested but there was all kinds of drama and murder threats and then poof! I disappear two days after being told this hysterical tale by my mother.
I was terrified for myself in jail—-totally out my wheel house but I was deeply concerned as my parents were moving—-hence why I couldn’t phone them—-with this murderous drama happening and my mother falling apart over the phone.
Aisha got my letter, and ignored it, didn’t respond. She said that she thought it was “dark” and sad. She intended to try and visit me, she had a car, the day before I got out.
I mailed it to her two weeks in.
I was there for 46 days.
Friend # 2-Naj-Lah
I get out. I high tail out of Nassau to downtown Manhattan. Further freaking my mother out as I’m now in a new place blocks away from the burning cinders of the World Trade Center.
But I had a coworker friend who my mother knew of from prior to Nassau who she contacted trying to figure out how and why I’d suddenly disappeared. My mother had never met the roommates in Nassau so she was doubly concerned.
I let Naj-Lah know what happened and after describing my fast living situation with a slovenly friend of my cousin, to get me out of Nassau, Naj-Lah says she’s got a big, empty 3 bedroom. I took her out to dinner and kept the place spotless as I got back on my feet, finally getting an apartment after 6 months.
In talking to her, I realized how terrified I was of three things:
- one, the way I could be snatched out of the world and into jail world and all the drama that went on in there.
- two, when the drugs flipped me out—-it flipped me on. I could see and ask about everyone to the Universe/God—-life, death, children, everything. I’m having all of these visions and it doubly freaks me out. I’m enlightened on one hand but emotionally traumatized in jail, surrounded by real killers, rapists, professional criminals, on the other.
- third—-I have to accept as I was told in a vision—-something BIG was coming—-I was imprisoned to save me……yes, from 9/11 as I had not one, not two but three job interviews lined up right before then in the Towers. I would have been in the towers. And to further hammer it home, my mother—-so she triple freaks out a thousand miles away—-knew about the interviews. She put me on the missing person’s, presumed dead people list. of 9/11 for weeks.
Because of 9/11 all of the USA court systems shutdown and there was no communication—-I was sitting in a total black out.
Except for that letter that went to Aisha—-full of names and numbers, including my parents, to contact.
She sat on the letter. And I saw her, a young girl-adult in comparison to Naj-Lah, ten years her senior, who assured me adults at base, investigate cries for help.
Aisha always had issues with Naj-Lah having met her at my house at dinner parties, basically because Naj-Lah is a WOW-man. Self possessed, smart, attractive, not a girl, even when I think she was a young girl. She can be intimidating but we became fast friends at work.
The comparison—-and the minor friends—-those Nassau roommates who wouldn't’ tell my mother what happened when she called, and started divvying up my stuff—-that had to go, showed me that Aisha was on a thread too. She must’ve felt it, understood the depths of her betrayal—-she took me to Six Flags as a gift as I moved into my new place, and drove back to Pennsylvania—-to never respond to text, calls or notes again.
I wasn’t surprised. And as I discussed it with people and eventually a therapist, I didn’t feel loss. I saw what Dr. Persaud had told me about people in my own comparison of the maturity of the two female friends and I also had those visions from jail.
It flipped the switch so that I saw people clearly, saw pieces of the future, of my own responsibility and more importantly, the dangerous flaws in people.
Parental Death
Friend # 1-Chris
When my mother was entering terminal phase—-I’ll open here that it took several years for her to die——I moved from NY to Charlotte semi-permanently, having visited back and forth but my ne’er do well stepfather judged by my relatives there as deeply emotionally and problematic to the situation, so I was needed full time. I stayed in as much contact with friends in NY, as my intention was never a permanent move, but it scaled to months, which turned into almost 2 years. I brought her back to NY at her request and she soon died afterwards.
Several friends vanished or were dismissive or simply cruel during this time—-aware that in some ways I was “carrying”/dealing with Death.
I called one former co-worker, a Social Worker, Chris, from Charlotte, as I was trying to map out senior services—-he partially ran a seniors program. He called me back and left a voicemail message that I didn’t understand at first.
What it eventually summed to was that the job we’d been at together, I was laid off, but I had been interviewing before the lay off and landed at a non-profit, GMHC, 40x bigger, at double my salary and then Columbia a couple of years after that. I didn’t know that this had created hostility, envy, etc. as he’d visited several times at the first job at GMHC. I had cooled off our friendship because I was troubled at how he was enamored at one of the youth in my LGBT youth program (yes, over 18) in his 40s. I felt it was a dangerous problem with ethics and such, and that I was put into situations where the three of us went out, but I was being put in an enabling position for this messiness, the one time they stayed over at my apartment.
(Yes, there is a deeper issue and problem to LGBTSGL men, particularly of color sexualizing young men and/or taking advantage of the disadvantaged through agencies, authority roles, even this Social Worker as the young man’s counselor. It was one of the primary reasons, bad boundaries, that I was job hunting and was able to leave the first agency and so willingly go to GMHC—-I was looking for a way out—-the lay off just coincided with my accepting the GMHC position.)
But I kept it friendly/professional and said nothing and their relationship fizzled, the young man then until now, more than 7 years in a long-term, age appropriate relationship. I was reaching out to everyone and anyone in my database to deal with issues about bringing my mother to NY. Chris the Social Worker leaves this odd message, he sounded drunk, and he was mentioning about MS Access the software and such and laughing and such. I didn't understand it but I was distracted by my family issues/moving.
Later, months later, I realized he was insinuating that I use my skills at teaching MS Office—which was one of the classes I taught/program designed at GMHC—-to fix the mother problem. Essentially: “You teach Microsoft Access, use that to help your dying mother.” I think it came out so bluntly because he was drunk.
I later saw him on the train, several times in my travels after her death, but dodged him seeing me, until he did. He asked lots of impertinent questions—-essentially trying to get at how much money she had left me and then with my glossed over answers—-”Same old Kyle.”—-which I think underlying meant I was doing okay and taking care of myself—-which heralding back to the job we were at—-having gone through a myriad of drug, sex and money scandals from the top down since my departure—-I had avoided them and still succeeded, was doing well—-and that was problematic for him.
I retorted with questions about his being HIV+ and having seen on his Facebook page some hospital stays, brain infections, and had he spoken with John (the youth he was enamored with)?, etc.. (yes, I can take low shots too in public.) Don’t come for me.
What was this? I think my having walked out from the deeply toxic agency, doing well, and then continuing to do well, through a personal trial, was problematic in the sense that a lot of the agency’s clients and staff (there being very little psychological delineation) were deeply dysfunctional. I wasn’t and I had purposefully walked away and landed on my feet. Reaching out to him (and like I said dozens of others in my database of professional contacts that could help me/my mother) I think rankled him in that I was/am okay.
Friend # 2-Candace
She and I had met both teaching at Columbia, I’m travelling back and forth to Charlotte, she leaves Columbia, I eventually go to Charlotte and we mainly talk over the phone those 2 years. Her parents had died when she was a child/teenager so she was raised by her sisters—-the oldest, primarily. The oldest had died of MS and she had refused to go see her older sister, upset at parental-death.
I sort of dispersed talking to her and others while I was in Charlotte about what was going on, returned to NY and when my mother died, told her. Even though we had known each other about 7 years, I didn’t expect much of her when my mother died because she was constantly flaring up with anger, depression, bitterness, at her life, her missed goals, her lack of career direction in her early 60s. She was unfulfilled. When she abruptly cut me off—-”I gotta go.”—-when my mother died in the phone call, I wasn’t “surprised”.
Weeks and months go on and she’s sort of la-dee-dah going on about our friendship—-still including her flare ups, more and more. I leaned on other family and friends, telling her general or minimal stuff but not looking for deep sympathy from her.
I was able to immerse myself in the business of my writing, having published dozens of books (I did a lot of writing and publishing in Charlotte—-one of my mentors from Columbia had gone through the same terminal time with his parents while in graduate school and encouraged me to use it as a sabbatical to bring together all of my work in books, which I did. Dozens of large and small books and blogs and of course TV show episodes, filmed remotely). There of course had never been any veiling of the work I did in teaching workshops about sex, sexuality, LGBTSGL issues, relationships, my TV show predating my work/studies at Columbia University and occurring concurrently when I started working there—-and therefore quite a few of the non-fiction books and Special Reports (shorter books under 200 pages) being on race, sexuality, sex, etc..
(As a work aside, as I spiritually consider my work—-its’ integration to my life, knowing my Path/Destiny very explicitly through all of these experiences, dreams, meditations, etc. is that for me—-yes, I teach and discuss—-you can just Google me—-very intimate things in sex and sexuality to sometimes 50–200+ people in an audience/class/workshop and now tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands worldwide—-even doing interviews by video conference to other countries as far away as Japan.
YouTube also allowing me to see the breadth of where I’m viewed at and reposted (Ireland, South Africa, Brazil, India, Australia—-it blows my mind sometimes that people I have never met are watching me or email me about my effect upon their lives.) I am aware of being Kyle Phoenix and to some degree as I am recognized more and more in NYC, and elsewhere (yes, people have approached me in the street, while travelling, etc.—-the TV show helping immensely to popularize me.))
All of this was in effect before and during our friendship so her comment, while I was finishing class/work at Columbia and sitting on a bench on Riverside Drive on a pleasant day—-that my work was, at best “soft porn” really struck me.
If you look through my work—-books, videos, TV show—-you’ll see that it is intimate, educational, explicit but not salacious or overly sexualized—-I’ve made a conscious production effort to be a resource not a porn stop/addendum. This purpose has been to make the information available, valuable, educational but most importantly, informative and neutral, as a learning platform—-just as I teach about a host of other subjects. Sexuality education need not be salacious, so I was hurt when she said that. Previously she’d mentioned that she’d directly thrown things—-glasses at people, hit people and some of her discussions were biting, attacking, mean in the preceding months.
I talked about it with my godmother who pointed out how unfulfilled she was for a such an older woman and I cut off contact.
Friend # 3-Tyrell
Strolling up from Columbia University trying to deal with the grief of my mothers dying in my arms a few weeks before but at the same time keep pushing, pressing, taking classes, getting back into my work groove, so that I can move out of a temporary housing thing into a new apartment—-I’m crossing 125th street here in Manhattan.
A car keeps honking at me, and blocking my path. I finally look down and it’s Tyrell—-a friend I’ve known for a decade.
I met Tyrell right as I was leaving Naj-Lah’s, he actually helped me move. We’d met online, there was no chemistry but he, a bus driver and me doing paralegal work overnight—-had complementary schedules to get off of work and have breakfast. He lived with his parents a mile or so away from us in Queens. Over the years as I worked for LGBTSGL organizations, I regularly invited him to events, to workshops as he was inching his way out of the closet. He also had a friend, Carnell who was in his own sexuality and stabilization throes, so I regularly invited him to groups—-sharing the food, financial, job resources—-even getting Carnell, not one, but two jobs, and advanced computer training.
Tyrell and I often texted or talked on the phone or met for dinner—-I went out of my way to be his solid “out” friend as he was navigating first moving out on his own then dating more, hanging out more, finding himself.
In the car ten years later he was upset at my mothers' death, knowing I had dropped a lot of stuff to go to Charlotte, professionally. He’d moved to a new apartment and promptly announced my telephone number out loud—he had it memorized and it hadn’t changed in over a decade. We had to get together, what was I doing in a few days?, next week?, he was taking me to dinner!
He let me off at my sublet.
I never heard from him again.
That was 8 years ago.
Friend # 4- Maurice
This one tracked me down after 10 years JUST as I was designing the move to Charlotte, through LinkedIn. He had worked with Naj-Lah and I at the technology company years prior and moved back to California to take care of his ailing parents. His father had died and coincidentally his mother was in a medical rehab like my mother with some of the same diabetic and heart issues.
All the moving to Charlotte, family drama, moving her to NYC, her dying happens—-he was actually on the phone with me, when she died in front of me.
I was pressed to pull myself together, editing her out of all of the apartment search, resources, legal stuff and he was a great resource before, during and after, with a lot of the medical management stuff I didn’t know—-but he did, his mother like a few yeas into my mothers' ailments. It was nice to have him and several other friends that I could rotate through, plus new ones, that I made in the South and my family (the sane ones). I was also proud of the fact that I wasn’t leaning too heavily on any one person or friend throughout it all. I even went so far as to have several deep counseling sessions with Grief Counselors in the first few weeks of her death rather than burden my circle unnecessary with the wave of feelings you go through, repetitive even to yourself, when a parent dies.
I started working, Spring was in the air and I was months beyond her death, making plans, family helping me in NYC.
Maurice texted me out of the blue: I can’t be your friend anymore.
Now, interestingly enough, I’d been regulating my time with people, focusing on writing, journaling, working, pulling myself together, helping my godmother—-even staying with her as a night nurse as she’d recently gone blind—-to purposefully in the past months, not lean too heavily on friends and get my counseling from professionals, and older people (old people are comfortable talking about death, as my godmother was, as she too was dying at this time. She died a year later.)
I’d removed Candace from my life—-sure it was about to get ugly, I also had to cut off several students I’d been mentoring before I left NYC, because they weren’t in motion in their lives after years. I couldn’t spare the attention.
I was neither shocked nor hurt by his text. I’d had the Tyrell experience/ride. And my godmother had talked to me about my insights into people—-voicing them, admitting lesser people, people with less resilience—-who could and could not stay in a major life shift.
Without even a reply, I simply deleted and blocked all contact with Maurice. I accepted it in like 2 minutes. I’d had inklings from conversations that he was hiding something, going through something—-HIV+—- I sensed, but didn't know how to voice it. He also expressed some deep anxiety/mental illness stuff about his mother and then, unconsciously, his own self in regards to other friendships.
What Happened Afterward/Instead?
I got PEACE in several deep ways. I spent a lot of time at the beach—-about a year, twice there when it was snowing, meditating, going to work, designing my school return and then eventually, a few weeks after that call from Maurice, moving to my own place—-I’d originally been in line for a huge place with the expectation of my mother—-but everything changed when she died—-in many ways her request to leave Charlotte, leave her unfaithful husband, come to NYC, was about dying here. There’s this whole study where, if possible, humans try to get to where their parents are buried when they’re dying. A homing sense.
I got her here and within a couple of weeks—-I’d hopefully, but pragmatically, estimated 6 months to a year—-she died.
Ironically, I’d been worried for a decade about when she’d die—-all calls from Charlotte sending me into an anxious tizzy in my head—-because I’d had a vision of when her death time would be “from my perspective of walking on old cobblestones” all the way back in 2001 visions. I’d been walking on old cobblestones visiting Aisha at Swarthmore around then, before the visions, so I was further terrified while incommunicado in jail.
A decade later, walking on old cobblestones at Columbia—-I realized, the time was nigh, this was IT——which is why I shuttered my life in NYC and went to Charlotte, so completely.
Enlightenment—-Takeaways from Visions
While I wasn’t as crushed by my mothers' death as I’d anxiously expected for a decade, it was in fact both a relief, peaceful, good—-we’d also cleaned up all of our issues. I’d noted in my men’s groups the destructive influence upon men of color in not resolving parental stuff before death—-so the death alert and anxiety—-got me attentive to a major event.
What her death did was it was like a monsoon that swept through the forest of my life——and it blew away all of the leaves—-didn’t kill the trees, but I got to see EVERYONE clearly. The envy, the avarice, the bitterness, the foolishness, the small mindedness, the immaturity.
It was like people were hiding behind trees in my psyche and my mother took with her all of the barrier leaves—-so that I could see them clearly. I’m an only child so I am more conscious of the value of friendships, of being a good friend, of being present.
I’m currently working on a workshop series to televise about anxieties and I’ve been examining students, friends, lovers, etc. for anxiety categories.
What I see is that my parents had anxiety issues. They chose to deal with it dysfunctionally—-mainly with drugs and alcohol through my teen years, eventually getting sober until death—-at least 20+ years.
But, following Harville Hendrix’s Imago theory—-they were the template for my love/loving people.
All of these people, which is why this answer struck me to complete—-it had been in Draft Purgatory for awhile now—-there are 800+ other articles/blogs in Draft Purgatory too! lol——all of the above people, were on that Anxiety Examination list. I didn’t want to give that away in the beginning but a lot of my friendships with them, pre-mother death, was spent with my being the mainstay—the rock. What the events in my life above did was it shifted that dynamic—-suddenly Kyle needed—-from the historically needy, not always giving, people. When I needed to be given to—-they had very little capacity.
My enlightenments taught me that I was helping others in some big ways, helping them as a catalyst to their next point, and there was an awareness of my walking away, remoting myself, letting them go. The events sharpened that instinct in its’ attunement to the Universe, time, destiny, etc..
TD Jakes calls people like me 1 Gallon People who must learn they can’t depend upon 32 ounce people without rancor, resentment from them when you ask/need because in truth, they lack the capacity. I’ll offer that I have always known this, acted on this, dispersing my need for help, empathy, amongst them. I don't want to demonize them though I do want to point out why I was there with them. My deficit in choosing them for intimate friendships when they were not capable—-I had always been the one they brought their “stuff” too.
Part of what these 3 Events of Enlightenment have brought me, personally, how I am different—-is I release people so casually now, you might wonder if I ever truly cared? I do. I care/love deeply but I always recognize that this is transitory in many ways, this Life experience.
I wrestle with the past in the sense that as writing is part of my Life’s Purpose, my work—-articles, blogs, books, short stories, tv shows, films—-it is infused with bits and pieces (that I might be the only one to completely recognize-connect) of my past, the past, history. Also being the only child of the youngest child in my family, all but two or three of vastly older cousins, aunts and uncle, are dead, I’m nearly a generation away from them (which was another reason why I was basically the only one left to go to my mother’s side as she lay dying. I saw the difference—-the healthy family—-children, grandchildren, friends, etc. in my godmother’s coterie.) My family are therefore not perfectly time aligned to be maturely helpful to me, we’re nearly a generation apart.
My work often throws my past tidbits up at me and then I’ll have a dream about it or see a movie that reminds of something—- I’m finishing up a novel about dysfunctional parents now—-which makes me look at my own anxiety——blah blah blah. I am, my family is, the past is an endless goldmine for fertile tales.
My visions of people, the future, etc. has…changed. I have seen nearly all of my lifetime and some of my decedents. (No world wars or dystopian futures—-relax.) Now I see other worlds. I write about and explore deeper issues, read more, imagine more, and I see other worlds, parallel worlds, the multiverse.
We don't get there in space ships.
But I was promised several things about my writings—-including writing lots of books that people will know about. And here’s the hard motherfucking truth—-the work, my work, my writing, the thrill and peace and profit (past, present and future) its’ brought, was worth losing every single one of them sons of bitches.
I was fragments of myself, restraining myself, denying myself, and I am so glad they’re gone. To the wind, to death, even.
You know what I really revel in?—when the phone beeps and it’s someone I like, who likes me—when I don’t have it on Do Not Disturb—-which I frequently do—-actually it’s more infrequent for it to be on for calls and I rarely, rarely text——I really only pay my bill—-a micro bill—-sometimes as low as $20 a month, to receive messages, texts—-I see everyone I want to in person, over meals, at restaurants at networkers, at gatherings—-on purpose. Then I pull down the “shades” of my Self and go and muse and sex and play and read and write and occasionally—-much to someone’s chagrin —-eat—-in my king sized bed with this HUGE comforter I paid wayyyyyyyyy too much for, full of pillows and several big stuffed animals—-extra books lining my bedroom walls—-flickering candle light the brightest things in the room.
I live in a spiritual peace/presence in Manhattan…for now….very Guinan with a deep splash of Dax—-very, very very old—-with a deep, keen awareness of the fabric of space, time and spacetime.
Sometimes I savor going to sleep—-where will I travel tonight?
Where?
When?
To what world?
Sometimes I write about what I’ve seen, my travels.
Sometimes…….
#KylePhoenix
#TheKylePhoenixShow
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