curious encounters

this morning i woke up and scrolled X as is a bad habit, but I read news, get updates, etc. there was a thread on Jinns from an account I follow, and a recollection of a time he and a friend called forth a jinn.

i was raised Catholic in rural Texas in the 1980s and 1990s, so my exposure to jinn was almost nonexistent. since childhood, I knew there were many other worlds, and some can see the spirit realm. i didn’t sleep much as a kid, as my nights were often haunted by nightmares and unseen terrors in the shadows of our hallways. i slept in a room in our house that I have never liked and have always felt was eerie. i would lay in bed under the covers, reciting the Lord’s prayer. my parents room was next to mine, and they never heard or saw anything. but I would stare into the hallway, feeling some shadow that watched me. it could never get to me though.

it didn’t help that I was obsessed with the supernatural either or that the window in my room faced the cemetery. of course I secretly watched the X-Files growing up. to this day, I am still terrified of aliens and alien discourse. my abuelita would tell us stories of ghosts, monsters, and odd things that happened to her and her siblings in Mexico. she was a devout Catholic, but my abuelita understood there were other creatures on this plane. whenever I stayed at her house, she stayed in the living room, in an armchair near the front door. she didn’t sleep. if I woke up for water or to go the bathroom, she would call to me from the dark, to make sure I was okay. i always felt protected, but also, that she was watching for something.

there are a lot of strange stories from my childhood, including an exorcism. perhaps one day I will write them. i have mostly always felt safe and protected. i’ve been told several times I have a shadow following me. a reader said it was several ancestors that stay with me. she described them to me. i didn’t recognize them. and at that moment, only my grandpa had passed. eventually, after my abuelita transitioned, I know she is always with me. whenever she was in the hospital, I would pray to god that he would take me instead of her. but she always recovered, until one day she didn’t.

sometimes I wondered if she was an angel. she would make us tea if we didn’t feel well, and spent her mornings and evenings working on her garden.

i brought up the jinn because I also encountered one, once. i have encountered death a few times. once, in the form of a man who appeared from a bush and followed me to my door and disappeared. and another, as a man at a bus stop. i know people are afraid of the spirit world, but we have to have a relationship to it. either through faith, belief, or practice. i remember a story an ex lover told me, that a rooster crows when its seen an angel.

when I returned to my childhood home, my parents offered me my old room. i opted to take a smaller one down the hall, with two large windows that face the plains. and now, I sleep better. i think my abuelita is here with me now, guarding the door. and nearly every morning, I hear a rooster crow in the distance.