The first time it happened, I was only 11.  I had no fear of death or pain.  I was a very active little girl and my favorite places to play lay in the Ozark woodlands just outside of Springfield, Missouri.  The year was 1981, the month of August, and my mother had moved us south so she could attend classes at Central Bible College.  Without our mama around, we were adopted by a "babysitter" who became our Big Brother, Paul Doolin.  Paul was also a student at CBC and an aspiring Assembly of God pastor.  He taught me a lot about spirituality and was the first man I can honestly, sweetly say was my "father figure."  Ten years later Paul would come out of the closet and ditch his preaching for a teaching career, but that's another story for another time.  In August 1981, Paul took me and my brother on one of many camping trips.  For two city kids who've never experienced the great outdoors before, it was an adventure.  Paul took us through caves, we hiked, collected wildflowers, went fishing, and yes, we went swimming...

I used to swim out in the deep water, far away from everyone at the shore.  I hoped I'd become a mermaid or find sunk treasure.  When I wasn't swimming, I'd float in the water, close my eyes, and let the water pull me.  I loved the sensation of floating.  I imagined I'd drift off into another world.  I had read "The Chronicles of Narnia" by C.S. Lewis and so wanted to magically leave this world behind. On the day I first died, I was doing just that.  But then a shooting, searing pain hit me and the lower half of my body went cold and numb.  I suddenly felt very heavy and could not keep myself afloat on the water.  I opened my eyes and tried to scream for help.  I shifted my body to right myself and maybe somehow dog paddle back to shore, but I had floated too far out in the river.  When the paralysis continued, I began to panic and, to my horror, sink!

It was as if the river was swallowing me.  Paul, my brother Mark, and the other campers were too faraway from me to know if anything was wrong.  I tried to fight the water but it was no use, the current underneath me was strong and it wasn't long before I couldn't hold my breath.  I remember looking up at the surface of the water and there was a long moment of a burn tearing through my throat and chest, a feeling not too unlike the heartburn of acid reflux; this was the river water rushing into my lungs.  I couldn't close my eyes.  Sinking soon felt like floating and then another weird moment came with the feeling that I was no longer myself, that I was the river itself.  And there was the rubbery, metallic, dirt taste of the river water bubbling in and out of my mouth.

Have you ever heard the sound of someone's voice underwater?  Do you know the rushing roar of something large moving towards you while you're underwater?  Something that sounded like that broke through the surface above me and I was pulled.  I still can't forget what being underwater sounded like, like my ears all swelled up and fuzzy, like being full and empty at the same time.  As I was lifted up to the world of air again, the pain returned but none of the feeling.

The river didn't want me.  It belched me up.  Sent my body back into Paul's arms.  He tugged me unto a raft.  Panic surged through me again when I anticipated the return of pain and the terrible struggle to breathe.  Breaking the surface was dizzying, like being lifted out much higher than the surface of the water, and then spun back around again.  And I was feverish.  My lips two fat worms without sound, just spit.  I didn't want to die but at the moment of coming back to life, I would've liked being in a place where I couldn't feel anything anymore better.  Living is hard, dying is easy as the sailors say.

The next thing I remember was waking up and choking out water, lots of water.  My ears popped and my heart pounded.  My nose burned.  And I was embarassed.  It was the first time a grown man had his body and lips over mine and everyone was looking down on me, smiling.  I screamed into tears. 

I found out minutes later that I had been bitten by a Cottonmouth Water Moccasin, hence I was temporarily paralyzed and drowned.  I never saw the snake that bit me and I never developed a fear of snakes, only a fear of deep water and being too far from land.  There is nothing more terrorifying than not being able to feel what is underneath you!

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The next time I died, I had invited death into my body.  It happened seven years later, December 20th 1989, a few hours after I was brutally beaten and raped by an aquaintence, just ten days before my 19th birthday.  I was so sore, my nostrils caked with drying blood, and all I could think about was how broken I was, that no one would ever want me after this.  One of my roommates was a nurse, she kept numerous drugs in the bathroom and, even though I was largely ignorant of which ones would do me the most harm, I grabbed a glass of wine and just started swallowing as many pills as I could.  Then I flooded my system with as much rubbing alcohol as I could muster down my throat.  Why was I so much more brutal to myself than my rapist was?  I still can't answer that one.

The burning that I felt in my chest and throat when I had drowned, returned, but this time with it came the urge to purge.  I didn't expect my body to reject what I had put into it.  I thought I would just romantically fall over and die.  I ended up passing out over the toilet and was found with my head stuck in it.

I next found myself lying in the back seat of my friend Melissa's car.  The amber glow of street lights stung at my eyes and trails of whizzying lights stabbed at my skull and my stomach seemed to lurch forward with the car.  I begged to go home to sleep, but Melissa wouldn't dream of it.  I closed my eyes and drifted.  It was the drowsey exiting of my soul.

*BAM!* I'm slammed onto a table and people are yelling all around me.  I briefly feel everything.  The cold metal underneath the bedding underneath my back, the hospital light eating into my face, the hot breath of a male nurse cussing, and plastic crap shoved down my throat.  I gagg a little and force things back down.  Why were they fighting to make me live?

Some people who have died only to come back to life again will tell you that they see a bright light at the end of a tunnel.  Sounds cliche, right?  Well, it is, kind of, but it was a little different in my case.  I can't tell you much about the transition between the experience of dying and then drifting into that state of emptiness, I just felt "slammed" downward to find myself in a tunnel.  In the distance there was a light but it was unlike any light you'd see normally.  It was like having your eyes closed while standing in sunlight -- you feel the light more than you see it.  And this light underground was cold, more like moonlight seen down the barrell of a shotgun.

I remember it like I was alive, really, and that all I had to do was walk down the tunnel and get outside to walk home again.  I also remember being very hungry.  Which, now that I think of it, makes me no longer wonder why there are so many legends about the dead hungering after the living.  When I moved forward, I realized I had no legs.  The shock of this almost crushed me inside.  I leaned against the walls of the tunnel and couldn't move.  The walls were not made of stone, they were like flesh, wet and damp, and I could hear water dripping somewhere all around me.  Then, from out of the dark behind me, I was startled by a guy nicknamed "Cheesy" who had been a drinking buddy of mine since 10th grade.  Cheesy committed suicide by taking a shotgun blast to his forehead two months before and I was there at the party when he died.  I had watched him take his last breath, if you could call it that considering that he didn't have much of head left after he blew himself to kingdom come.  To see him again was a shock.  He pushed me away from the wall and scolded me.  "What are you doing here?!  Get out!" He cried.  Then he came at me with fists punching and his head exploding all over again.  His was a face shattered by fire and grief.  The blast of him shoved me upward.

Just as I was suddenly abused by Cheesy's anger, I was embraced by golden light.  This light was different than the one I experienced in the tunnel.  This was like the reflection of sunlight on polished gold and it was pulsing and breathing.  I was filled with outrageous joy as the golden light shimmered and seemed to inhale the air like someone about to speak.  Like an eyelid opening, an unearthly figure began to emerge.  It was definitely a She, her face compassion itself, and her body made up of many, many wings that were made up of many, many little unblinking eyes.  She was not human.  She was pure and loving.  She was a Goddess.  She said, "You are my Witch.  You have much work to do."  Her lips never moved, all of Her eyes kept staring at me, and I didn't want to leave, I wanted to be with Her forever.  All at once, I knew Her.  One magical name: ISIS.

I had been in a coma for two days and woke up in a Catholic hospital.  You can just imagine what sort of reaction I got when I claimed I experienced a Goddess and not the Virgin Mary.  My fundamentalist Christian mother considers what I experienced a miracle, that I was saved by an angel.  But only I can tell you the truth and I'm telling you that She is real.

Five weeks after surviving my suicide, I decided to become a Witch and have been ever since.  Isis was right.  I have a lot of work to do!  So, every now and then, when I get depressed and think I'm going to be killed by the grief of unrequited love, I remind myself that I've been through this, that I've gone through much harder obstacles and I'm back to tell the tale.  Call me a vampire, zombie, whatever.  You can even tell me that everything I experienced was a hallucination due to lack of oxygen to the brain, it doesn't matter.  What matters is that I survived and have something to live for.