A Review: Going to a Psychic

Sometimes we all do something a little uncharacteristic in an attempt to figure some things out.

Scott Muska
I THOUGHT THIS WAS WORTH SHARING

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As someone who has spent most of their life searching for answers to many confounding and sometimes painfully interesting questions, but refusing to entertain that I can find them in the mystical, I am not exactly the target audience for most psychics. Pretty much all I believe in is maybe luck or something vaguely similar (which is admittedly absurd in its own way).

But sometimes it’s pertinent to shake things up. And a craving to do so is how I ended up veering off a sidewalk and into a psychic’s office (for lack of a better term) one Friday night when I was going through something of a self-imposed crisis. When my friends proposed we do so, I just shrugged, figuring if nothing else it’d be a story to tell.

“I sense you’re entering this experience with a bit of skepticism,” said Jen the psychic.

Or alleged psychic. When it comes to certain vocations or defining characteristics, you can call yourself something even if you haven’t really proven you’re truly capable of proficiently doing the main things the title you’ve given yourself classically entails. It’s kinda like being an influencer, creative director or unselfish lover.

Also, writer. I mean, I’ve met plenty of people who call themselves writers who haven’t really written all that much, or at least anything that they’re willing to show or even attempt to disseminate to a bunch of people. I know this because for a long time I was one of them, and would probably have kept on calling myself a writer regardless of how fruitful my pursuits would eventually become. Because I have always believed I am. And belief is a very powerful thing.

You can believe in your head that you’re anything (to a very frightening degree, if you think about it), but at least if you’re going to give yourself the title of writer, it can literally be vouched for with a resume and/or body of work that people can buy into. Something tangible. Nobody is going to say you’re not an accountant if you’ve been cooking books and doing taxes for eons and have the educational background and cerfitications to qualify you to do so.

But if you’re going around publicly saying you’re able to somehow predict the fucking future, there is no proof, just claims that you did something like foretell that one day a solid decade before it premiered that there would be a show called American Idol and Kelly Clarkson would be the first winning contestant on said show. Then you can tack on that you also had a vivid vision that granted you knowledge of the impending events of 9/11 five years ahead of it occurring, despite the fact (which you should probably note if you’re espousing something that wild) that you had not had any contact with the people who had been planning it.

Now, if you had the forethought (which is I guess what being a psychic is supposed to be all about), you might think to record your Kelly Clarkson revelation when it comes to you, a sort of long non-con that would get some heads nodding along with your egregious claims once your pop culture prophecy was fulfilled — but interestingly I have never seen a cogent, verified example of something like this, and as such I remain unconvinced. And Jen sure hadn’t slidden me a CV rife with verified examples of clairvoyance.

I’m not saying she wasn’t a psychic. Because just like being a writer, you’re not made one by your track record. It’s more about it being a piece of who you are and what you do for passion, pay or just to pass the time. Brand yourself whatever you want. Who really cares? But don’t be surprised when a person chooses someone else for an assignment who has actually completed prior projects.

It is unclear how much time passed as these intrusive thoughts rapidly made their way through my brain. I was in an incredibly intoxicated and extremely stoned state. But eventually I snapped out of my revery, reminded myself that I only had a 10-minute session to work with and should at least try to get my money’s worth.

Buy the time slot, take the potential psychological beating.

“You could call it that,” I said, “Or, you know, complete disbelief in this whole thing.” I waved my hands around the tiny trip-ily decorated room we were sitting in, she behind a desk with me on the other side like we were doing a job interview. “But look at that, you’re one for one. Got me all figured out already!”

“Many who have sat in that chair have felt that way, and have begun our sessions with deflective sarcasm,” she said. I intuited this as her gentle way of letting me know that a lot of people greeted her with slight animosity thinly masked by snark, despite having willingly come into her place of business and agreeing to pay her money for her time and potential insights. And I did have to pay her via Venmo because she did not accept Discover or a pledge to do her a big favor in the next life if ever we were to meet.

“I do that with my therapist sometimes too. I fully believe in therapy, but I’m still abrasive with the dude. I apologize. I don’t mean to be a dick. It’s just, I’ve never done this before and my friends were like, ‘Hey, let’s give it a shot,’ and most nights I’d be like, ‘Absolutely not,’ but I’m in what you might call a ‘rebuilding season’ right now, so I’m trying to do some things that go against my instincts, do the opposite of what I normally would. Which is why I’m out after midnight on a Friday and sitting right here.”

“Have you gone through a breakup recently?”

“I have. How did you know that, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I’m reading your energy. Kind of. But that’s just more of an observation.”

“Do I look that haggard?”

“You look fine. It’s just that generally when someone comes in here at this time of night at your level of, um, being — “

“Ripped out of my gourd on whiskey and weed?”

“Right. A breakup is a pretty probable first guess.”

“Word.”

“Well, I hope you’re doing okay, and finding some peace.”

“Thanks. It’ll pass. Maybe.”

“Ah, Fleabag. Great show. Now, at this point in my sessions I like to ask if there is something you’d like to ask me — if there’s something on your mind you’ve been wondering about. It’ll help me focus my energies where they can have the most impact. Otherwise I will end up telling you something random and mostly unhelpful, like your rent will go up $200 a month next year.”

“Shit. Will it?”

“No, that was just an example.”

“That would be helpful information to know, though.”

“But is it why you came here?”

“No, but now that’s going to be on my mind until I talk to my landlord in a few months about whether or not I want to renew.”

“…”

I figured it was time to get into it, otherwise I was going to ask her if my apartment’s owner would or would not budge on allowing me to have a pet and then our time would be up.

“I guess I wanted to ask if I made a mistake. You know, with ending things.”

“Okay.”

Some time passed. Could have been five seconds. Could have been a year. I don’t know. Time stood still. It dawned on me that maybe I was too zooted to be even close to emotionally prepared for whatever I might be about to hear. And that my friends would have to come in and peel me off the floor once I had retreated to a corner to lie in the fetal position, unable to move. I wanted to be like, “So…” but didn’t want to get in the way of her tapping into my energy or doing her juju or communicating with Miss Cleo from beyond the grave or whatever the fuck was happening or not happening here.

After a while she sighed and nodded her head. “I can’t fully answer your question.”

“Do I get a refund, or?”

“I wasn’t finished. I can’t tell you whether or not what choice you made was a mistake, because it’s not as cut and dry as that.”

Provocative.

“I can say that when you want what she wants, and you are unsure if you could or would give it to her, it creates a void.”

“Void. Got it. Know the void. Yeah.”

“And one that in your case it seems you would not have been able to fill with something else.”

Yikes. Christ. She had me. I must have looked like a deer in headlights. How did she know that if you want to get my attention you’ve just got to mention some sort of void?

“But I’m also…it’s also apparent to me that regardless, it would not have worked out anyway. Not in the longterm. No matter what you chose to do or not do. Due to spiritual blockage.”

“What does ‘spiritual blockage’ mean?”

“It’s not exactly something you can define in words. It’s just that sometimes two people are not right for each other, even if they seem to be, or very much want to be.”

“Right on,” I said, making a mental note to google “spiritual blockage.” “Anything else you can tell me?”

“Well, we’re now beyond out of time, and I’ve still got two of your friends to see, and I’m already technically closed. But you can always come back.”

“I don’t come this far uptown so often.”

“Maybe you will. In the future.”

“We’ll see, I guess. But hey, thanks Jen. Gave me some stuff to think about.”

I got up to head out and tap my next friend in for their reading.

“One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“Someone very close to you is going to really, really need you in important ways, and it’s going to be soon.”

That’s a harrowing piece of information to get even if it’s so nebulous it could have been a goddamn fortune cookie. But also not all that surprising to me, given that this is a recurring theme in my life and the lives of an unfathomable number of people. It’s the kind of prophecy that can easily come true, because it’s so malleable to so many life situations.

“You come from a big family, yeah?” she said.

“I do.”

“It’s going to be your sister.”

Palpitations commenced.

“Which one?”

“You don’t have more than one, do you?”

There was no way she could have known this unless she’d done some sort of scouting report beforehand, which was not really possible because we had just waltzed in there and I was fairly certain she didn’t even know my last name. Unless she had known we were going to be coming in because psychic stuff is totally real and had decided to do a little google search to for information that would help bolster her assertions. Even then, it’d be tough to figure out how many siblings I had, and of what genders.

“Good talk, Psychic Jen. I’ll see ya out there.”

I left the room, properly shaken, and said, “Your ups” to the next in line. Then I sat in the waiting room contemplating how I really wanted Jen to be right about the one thing and completely incorrect about the other. But that it probably didn’t work that way if she was a psychic worth her salt lamps.

For a while I took comfort in what Psychic Jen had told me about not having made a mistake in making egress from one of the few serious relationships I’ve so far been in. I guess you’re more likely to take something to heart when someone tells you what you want to hear, regardless of the source.

She had, somehow, been correct in her analysis of the relationship ultimately coming to its demise when in some ways it felt like it was still just getting started. She hadn’t gone into specifics, and it’s not like what she said couldn’t be applied to like, I don’t know, a pretty high percentage of non-acrimonious breakups, but it fit the high-level summary to a T. We’d encountered a divide in what we wanted out of our respective lives that seemed insurmountable in the long run, and thought it best to call it quits.

As for the foreboding warning regarding my sister, I attempted not to contemplate it all that much, as it surely wasn’t convenient for me. But it stayed on my mind, made me anxious about what the future was to bring on an even higher level than I am generally all kinds of worried and agitated about what may or may not be coming down the line.

Unfortunately, a time came that didn’t necessarily prove that she was right, but that did fit with the warning she’d given me on my way out the door.

“She might be onto something,” I told my mom one night when we were catching up on what had been going on. She agreed that it was something tough to ignore, even though she didn’t often contemplate whether or not a psychic was or was not able to do what psychics promote themselves for, and that they do for monetary gain.

“You never really know,” she said. Which, honestly, might be what I get put on my headstone someday. Or embossed on the cannon from which they will shoot my ashes if people actually adhere to the desires stated in my last will and testament.

About a month after the Jen Session, I chose to follow my heart instead of paying credence to what she’d told me about my relationship. My ex and I got back together. It ended again. This time forever. I still can’t give you a legit definition of “spiritual blockage,” but in some ways it seems like an okay way to describe the ultimate reason, even if the phrase itself doesn’t do it full justice. (It boils down more to I really wanted to do something, but couldn’t bring myself to do it with a full heart. Something didn’t feel right at the time. Sometimes that happens.)

But so often, the reasons for things can’t be fully understood, let alone articulately explained.

“Guess you should have listened to the psychic,” Mom said.

It still weirds me out, this notion that people can potentially predict the future, because to me that means the future already exists, is mapped out, a series of stones lined up for you to skip across the river until maybe you reach a point when there are no more stones and you’re stuck until you dive in and see what happens next.

For some reason, I prefer to believe that it’s not all mapped out, that you’re gathering stones as you go to see which ones float, if they’re large enough for more than one to stand on, if you should toss them strategically toward one area over another.

I could be wrong, though, and if so, I can’t stop wondering that if what’s going to happen is going to happen one way or another and there’s really nothing you can do about it, is it better or worse to know?

Hell if I know, dude. And where will all this wondering ultimately get me anyway?

All I can do is see what happens.

Oh, and my rent did end up going up exactly $200 a month.

Going to a psychic: 2.5 stars (Mostly because I love a good mind-bending experience.)

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