March 2015

I trudged through the sand of Santa Monica Beach awaiting the celebration which was to ensue upon my arrival. The beach was filled with spectators as I went to the shore to set up shop. I laid out my beach towels and camouflaged workout gear. I scattered shells and crystals about with magic powers that only I was aware of… I threw my angel cards up in the air as they were whisked away by the breeze of moments yet unfolded. I took two rose quartz hearts and placed them in a dream box and hurled it into the roaring sea. This represented my one true love coming back to me. I knew that God had prepared me for this mission, but I didn’t know where I was going, who I was to become or who I was waiting for. All I knew was that God was everything and that I trusted Her with my heart and soul. I believed my day had come. I had arrived.

As I pranced down the Venice Beach Boardwalk, all of my senses were in overdrive. I could feel the warmth of the sunshine as it beamed down on my chest and roasted my shoulders to a deeper shade of bronze. My eyes glistened with the reflection of the waves as they danced in my imagination. My brain was preoccupied with every detail and its synchronicity. Life seemed to leap out of my heart, yet paralyzed in time and space. I felt the love and tenderness from a God I seemed to personally know in that moment. Over the crashing of the waves came the Pearl Jam song, “Alive.” I circled the dock, round and round, as if I was at the Mad Hatter’s birthday party in Alice in Wonderland. I tossed my passport into the ocean. Where I was going, I wouldn’t need it.

I ran to the beach and dove into the waves, standing precariously, I felt like a mermaid trying to balance on the shore. I tasted the salt in the back of my throat as I gulped and swallowed hard to the refreshing taste of losing your place in summer. I stared up at the sun through my manic mink eyelashes as I fell to my knees to pray. The sand and surf were soft. I clasped my hands together, knelt my head down and thanked God for every misstep, every perceived wrong that had gotten me to the point where I could know God the way no other could… for I was God… and I was profoundly grateful to have found Her deep within Myself. The love that I felt as nature nurtured me will be remembered forever as one of the greatest moments I have ever known… never was I to think that this excitement could be merely a symptom… was I really to know God the way no other human had before me? Was I really the reincarnation of Isis?

I was at the mall with my mom on Palm Sunday, yearning for the day to end. When would she find out that I was the Messiah? I had a theory… a well thought out and precisely measured theory, that I was not your average girl… I believed I was superhuman… born with an extra X chromosome… I was the next generation of feminism… the original tomboy…the Egyptian Goddess… Isis.

I told my mom that I had to go to the hospital. I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to let them test my DNA. I had to prove to the world that I was the person they were waiting for… I knew that UCLA was in on it. I knew they were waiting for me, so I asked my mom to pull over on 16th Street. She stopped the car and I walked with purpose into the emergency room. I knew the time had come for me to surrender to the feeling of panic. It was my turn to sacrifice myself the way that Jesus had done 2,500 years prior. I calmly asked for a DNA test when I was seated. The nurses in the hospital were not amenable to my request. They told me to sit down and the confusion began to sweep over me as if the waves I had frolicked in Santa Monica had followed me and suddenly crashed through the doors of the hospital to wash away my God consciousness. They said things like “mania” and “bipolar.” No, I thought, not now… how could this happen on my day to save humanity? I was there to check myself into a safe haven, to be guarded by the most important doctors in the world with my secret, not to be treated like a person with psychosis. I was a saint, not a sinner.

I remember being shown into a private room with my mother. The nurses were coming in and out and kept asking me to sit and stay calm. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t getting the DNA test. UCLA was supposed to be the center of intelligence for this enlightenment explosion, at least that was the truth according to my calculations… I began to feel restless as my mother’s face became increasingly disheartened and the women and men in their scrubs began to whisper about me from the office across the hall.

All of the sudden, the thought crossed my mind that if I were to cause a huge scene, I could get the attention of the higher-ups at UCLA. I decided to go for it. I leapt onto the nearest tech as he passed by my room. I knew that kind of display was sure to get some sort of reaction… I figured that the problem must be that I was at a lower level of security clearance, that the UCLA doctors that wanted to study me didn’t know I was there… if I did something drastic, I was sure to garner their attention. I was pulled off of the tech immediately, kicking and screaming and was held down by six hospital employees as the leather straps slithered around my arms and legs, tying me to the table. I screamed for drugs so I could evade the painful confusion. The commotion caused all of the faces staring down at me to blur into one. I caught my mom’s eyes as fright and tears rolled down her face. She could do nothing to help me. I was in too deep.

Brooke can be found on her website, Facebook, and Twitter.