I moved into a bedsit in Poinciana Street in Nightcliff on 1st June in 2005. It was one room with a toilet and shower attached. It was only a street away from the beach, but also in an area of Darwin that was known for its high crime rate. I thought that by reducing my physical living space, I would be able to focus on getting through my grief and recovering from the worst aspects of the CFIDS. I was told to keep the blinds closed. The estate agent had said, "Don't let them see what you have inside."
While at Poinciana Street I went into a six month period of intense grieving regarding the loss of Binda and Kindi. Just behind them was the loss of my father, my health and the retreat. I hadn't had a chance to properly process any of these things. Once the dogs had died, I didn't seem to be able to move forward into my life. I still felt like a ghost, in the company of other ghosts. When people used the term 'walking between the worlds', I now knew what they meant. I had been living on the edge of that unseen world calling out to my dogs with my soul.
They were my family and the love that had kept me going for almost sixteen years. I had lived in poverty a lot of that time as a result of my physical disability, but they had always been by my side. Through Binda and Kindi I had been able to come out of my autism shell in order to experience the world around me, both beside them and through them. Even when my own dysfunctional neurological processing, ongoing physical symptoms and human society let me down, their love was unwavering and unconditional. Our consciousnesses were entangled. Without them I floundered miserably and I felt as if I was only alive in a physical sense, while spiritually I remained somewhere else. I did not want to face the day without them. The bedsit blinds remained closed and the lamps were left on.
As I unpacked my carload of belongings at the Poinciana Street bedsit, the fluorescent light in the kitchen flickered on and off every few minutes. Sitting in a corner on the king single bed that I had brought with me from Ridgehaven Circuit, I looked around the room. I felt secure in this tiny space after my losses. I also felt that if any more 'phenomena' or 'visitations' were to occur here, then, aside from the bathroom, I would have full view of it all. And continue to occur, they most certainly did.
When I arrived at the new premises the touch lamp that was similar to the ones at Ridgehaven Circuit flickered gently all night for the first nights. The fluorescent light in the kitchen went on and off twice. Then the bathroom fluorescent light gently flickered for the whole night and the kitchen refrigerator made 'banging' sounds along with the continual flickering of all the lights for the first three days of me being there. Sometimes the lights were flickering so much, that it created a strobe effect.
The day I moved in I'd noticed a young woman called Karen living in the end unit, also on the ground floor. She was later to tell me how lost and distressed I'd looked when I first arrived, as if I was 'afraid of the world'. She and her partner Clayton and a friend were all getting drunk on their front patio and I decided to join in on the conversation for a while. This led to Karen and I having talks and cups of chai tea while her partner Clayton was at work. Before moving into the building, they had both been living out of an old car and working at McDonalds.
Karen listened to what I had to say about the 'phenomena' with interest and when she felt that it was safe enough, she began to share a few stories of her own. She said, "You can't share this kind of thing with everyone, you know." She went on to say that she had been verbally attacked by people in the past.
