Note: Names have been changed to protect the identity of the people in this story.

Everyone at work spoke a lot about Mesh and her abilities. I was always curious to find out more, as I was a firm believer of the spirit world and still am. It was 2010 and after a few years of running off the tracks, I needed something to put me back on them stably. Maybe seeing Mesh was a good idea. Maybe it was the guidance I needed. Nothing else was really working: partying, drinking, kissing boys; it all never really helped. People would tell me how she really opened doors for them, so why not?
Mesh is a clairvoyant slash medium. She sees the dead, echoes messages from them to the living and can see the future. She wasn’t too tall, blond, and thin and you can never avoid slightly taking a peek for a split second at her obviously fake boobs. Regardless, of her appearance, she is a beautiful soul always expressing positive energy.
Mesh always came in for her coffee and three small hot chocolates for each of her children. After hearing all the fuss about how good of a reader she was, I had to enquire myself. So, as she did most afternoons, she came in with her young daughter and two boys.
‘I just found out what you do for a living and was wondering whether you can fit me in for a reading?’ I asked her as I frothed the milk to the silky smoothest it had to be.
‘Definitely I can. I’m booked right through to June, but I’m pretty sure I can push you forward somewhere. Here is my number. Please don’t call me, I won’t answer. I respond to messages, but it might take me a while. I’ll check my diary and let you know when I can put you in,’ she assured me, as we exchanged digits.
I thanked her and explained to her how I have always wanted to get a reading done. I was always a bit paranoid and sceptical as to where to go, and from whom. You can’t really trust these people, I once thought. They work on general information and expand from that, but I knew Mesh and so did some of the girls at work, so I was secure about my decision to give her my $50; the discount price for all employees at this McDonald’s. I said to her, ‘I need it.’
‘Yeah, I know. I can see a lot of sadness around you. And your dad, he must have been sick because he’s very skinny.’
‘Can you see him right now?’
‘I see something. But I have a switch. You need to learn to switch off and on sometimes with this thing. My daughter is just starting to learn that. She’s only eight and she asks me what these people are doing in her room. Scary, I know, but I’m teaching her.’
My eyes wide open in amazement, I handed over her coffee and hot chocolates and waited for that day.

One other afternoon, Mesh walked through the automatic doors again. This time she wasn’t with her children. I had a very important question to ask her about a dream I had. Well, I thought it was a dream.
‘Mesh, I had a dream the other night that this solid black mass, which I had the vibe that she was a woman, walked into my room, sat at the end of my bed and told me ‘Stop, Stop.’ Is there anything you can tell me about that, because it almost felt as though it wasn’t in my sleep at all?’
She came up with an answer straight away, ‘your grandmother or your great grandmother. Which one is the one whose name you’ve got?’
I explained how I got my name from my dad’s mother.
‘Yeah, don’t worry she’s telling you, everything is going to be alright and she’s looking over you.’
As tears almost swelled in my eyes, the hairs on my body raised.
‘We’ll talk more in the reading when you come, okay?’ she said and again left with her coffee.

Arriving at her home amongst a quiet suburb on a sunny February afternoon, she showed me the way into a little room beside her garage. It was tiny; about two by three metres. It was full of mainly pink coloured objects from the curtains to crystal chimes. All types of crystals hung from the walls and ceiling. Each chair was positioned to face each other with backs towards a corner of the room. In between us, was a small, wooden and low round table with a stack of fortune telling cards on top. She picked them up and whilst shuffling them explained to me what she was about to do like an induction.
‘It’s not something you learn at school,’ she began. It’s something you’re born with. Please try not to make a big fuss about what you hear today. Also, I am able to see when and how you will pass away; however, I am not allowed to tell you.’
She described her visions as photo frames. They will appear before her as photographs.
‘Okay,’ I breathed out nervously waiting for her to begin the reading.
‘Here are some tissues,’ she said as she placed the box near me. ‘You will probably need them.’
‘Nah, I’ll be alright.’
‘Trust me, everyone says that, and they end up needing them.’
I giggled at her certainty that I will begin to cry.

She began suddenly, like the spirit world had just hit her like a bus and she spoke with little breaks in between. She started stressing the pain in her lungs and the smell of smoke around her.

My dad was a smoker.

She started to worry of an illness that took the life of my dad. He seemed skinny before her as he did when she saw him at work.

My father died of a brain tumour and due to chemotherapy, had lost much weight.

She explained that I had to shuffle the cards, she would place them on the table in three piles and I had to gather them in no particular order. I would have to do this three times, because the session was divided into three parts. This would determine my future.
Firstly, we looked into everything that surrounded my family.
She began to reveal all the cards on top of each other in a scattered way, as she would do for each part of the reading.
She said, ‘your dad isn’t happy with the plumbing or the gutters. He’s really concerned about them and you need to get them fixed as soon as possible.’

Only a week before the reading my brother climbed the ladder to have a look at the gutters that were leaking after a few rainy days. The pipes were pretty much finished as well. Our toilets had a tendency to over fill. There had also been a disturbing tremble in the pipes when the hot water was on through every sink of the house. Finance is still an issue and the main cause as to why we hadn’t fixed anything yet. My god father has fixed the tremble for now. It doesn’t sound like the pipes will burst and flood the house anymore.

‘You have a long hall way in your house.’

Yeah, but don’t most wog homes?’ I thought.

‘Your dad walks up and down the hall way a lot. He also visits the lemon tree outside.’

But doesn’t every wog have a lemon tree?’ I thought. ‘Is she just going on assumption?

‘He’s really worried about your brother. Not the older one, the younger one. Your first brother, there isn’t much coming up for him.’
Now she had my attention.

No one knew about my brother’s issues, but my family.

Whilst she was reading, I noticed her drift her eyes above my right shoulder as though someone was behind me. I did once attempt to look and see what was there and then realised, that’s where her visions are appearing.

‘Did he used to be on drugs?’

‘He has mentioned it before.’

‘Well, I believe there are still drugs around, like marijuana. Your dad is trying to look after him as much as he can, but he really needs help. It looks like he has an illness of some sort. Definitely a mental illness. And your dad is really worried about the children around him. He’s not going to hurt them. He just needs to get himself together.’

My nephews.

‘Why is he showing me this?’ She made a movement with her hand, as though holding onto an invisible ring on her left ring finger, putting it on and removing it again repeatedly.
‘Does your mum wear one of your dad’s rings?’
‘Yes,’ I admitted as tears begun to fill my eyes. I knew where this was going.
‘But she lost it recently,’ I revealed.
She smirked as though she finally proved that her abilities were genuine.
‘He’s not angry that she lost it.’

Getting home, I asked my mum whatever happened to the ring she lost. She had found it again only days before.

‘And there’s a piece of clothing that your mum still has and it still smells like your dad.’
I didn’t know about this but was certain that I would ask when I got home. I didn’t tell Mum where I was going and what I was doing. I know her views are bias about that sort of stuff. She believed that that world mustn’t been tampered with. All this and her Christian views.

Getting home, I found my mum in her room and revealed to her where I had been. I asked her about this piece of clothing. She denied it a few times. After begging her to tell me the truth, she finally admitted that there is a jacket, he’s taxi uniform jacket actually. Other than that, she has nothing else.

‘He’s holding onto a little baby now. Just a baby. Did you have a child die in your family?’
‘Two possibilities,’ I thought.
‘In 2000, my cousin Marie had to give birth to a stillborn, after the doctors refused to take her in when her waters had broken and her contractions were close. Her baby girl Veronica died in her body and she had to push her out.’
Mesh gasped in shock.
‘The other possibility could be the miscarriage my sister in-law had had around the same time Veronica died.’
‘Which one of you has a tattoo of your dad’s name?’ She asked as I smiled, because that was me.
‘It’s his initials on my back in Greek.’
‘Yeah he wasn’t very happy with you when you got it because it really upset your mum. Otherwise, he doesn’t mind it. And you will be getting another tattoo; around your stomach area.’

Always wanted a tattoo around my stomach, but that’s not where I got my next tattoo. I combined a treble clef and a bass clef together to make a love heart and tattooed it on my left foot.

After all this, she brought up my health. She mentioned how I needed to check my Vitamin D levels.

I got pretty tanned on my holiday in 2011.

She stressed how I really needed to look at monitoring my depression. ‘Speak to someone,’ she told me, ‘and look into fish-oil tablets; they really help as well. Otherwise, you hide it really well.’ I smiled to myself as though it was something to be proud about.

In November that year, I made the decision to seek help by seeing a psychologist. Our sessions only lasted 5 visits, but at least I did something like Mesh said I should and would.

‘I also see changes around your reproductive system. You’re having normal periods, right?’
‘Yeah pretty normal, I guess.’
‘Are you a virgin?’
‘Yes,’ I embarrassingly admitted.
‘That’s probably the change I’m seeing. Just don’t lose it to this guy tha’s around you.’

Anthony.

Eyes wide open now, and I was nervous about the ‘love’ section of the reading.
‘Someone’s pregnant in your family, by the way.’

Since this reading, my family has produced five more children and two are on their way. I have a pretty big family so kids are popping out all the time.

We moved on to the love section of my reading. As she revealed the fortune cards, on top popped up the card of three swords in the one heart.
‘Ooo, see. He has other girls. He is the sword in the middle and you and this other girl are the other two swords. If you lose your virginity to him, it won’t change how he feels about you. He is not going to get with you, ever! Period! But, don’t worry you’re not going to be alone. You have a lot of admires. You will move on and this guy will see that and be more open about what he wants.’

He ended up with the other girl as soon as I got with my current boyfriend. They’re engaged actually. He definitely made his decision then.

She kept flipping over the cards, and started seeing a future romance for me.
‘You’re going on a holiday next year?’

2011 and I had to get out of here. Paid $6000 plus and left my stresses behind for Europe.

‘Someone’s not going to go with you. You’re definitely going, but someone who is supposed to go with you will back out.’

Amanda made the promise to come with me to Europe. But, after getting together with her boyfriend decided that her grandfather’s illness was stopping her from going. See, what I did there?

‘And you will have a holiday romance.’

I did… with Florence. I think about Florence every day.

‘I see a really close connection with a tall, much taller than you, guy, with blue-green eyes. You haven’t met him yet. He might not be fully Greek either. Olive skin though and educated. Really into his work.’

I met a really tall guy probably a week before this reading. Never really thought much about where things would go with him. He was just another guy at the time. Exactly a year after this reading, He and I began to date. Oh, and he has blue eyes that sometimes turn green. He is a mechanic and a very intelligent person. He could have been an engineer if he kept going to school. He is Greek, but doesn’t speak it as fluently as I do. The shop he works at is a family business and he works long hours, 6 days a week. We have an amazing connection. I was with him while I was in Europe and he waited for me. That was my holiday romance I guess, if it wasn’t the romance I had with Italy.

‘You will travel a lot with your career. You’re not going to be stuck behind a desk all day. You will really struggle to get a job as a journalist. But, I see you out and about, maybe as an event manager.’
When she said this, she had pointed to the ‘card of celebration.’

Around the time festival season was beginning, my friend Pat, a photographer and editor of ClubsGuide.com.au., called me at 11pm one night to ask if I wanted to write for the website. This would mean going around to different events and clubs and writing all about them. She was partly right.

‘Your 21st is going to be amazing. You are going to have heaps of fun. Your dad is just concerned about one photo that you are going to use of you and him. It could get damaged. Other than that everything is going to go well.’

My 21st which was a month after the reading was one of the best nights of my life. That photo she spoke of was on a collage I taped on the wall. We left it outside overnight and some of the photos, including that one, flew off onto the ground during the windy parts of the night. It wasn’t damaged, but there’s that answer.

The reading was over and she highly recommended that I wrote down as much as I could from what she told me. She began the ending of the reading by placing her hands on my head, and prayed a spiritual prayer. After crying myself all the way back home, I got a pen and paper and marked the date at the top as 24/02/2010. I wrote everything I could remember.

Though, I believe I must have forgotten some of what she told me, I cannot believe how so much came to fruition.
Now, since some of it has come true, I now wonder about the next phase.
I have another appointment with her in September. I will keep you posted.