A Past Life Healed: F. Scott Reunites with Zelda

NOTE FROM MATT BURNS:

The story below involves the spirits of several ex-writers from the 20th century, but this story never would have started had it not been for one spirit in particular: Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. 

Over the years, various legitimate psychic mediums (unrelated to each other) have informed me that Hunter S. Thompson is “with me” as a spirit guide and he helps me with my writing. I have written about this discovery in a previous article entitled "Meeting Hunter S. Thompson and Nathanael West". In the article, I talk about how Hunter and West are part of a close team of writers on the 'other side' and they both have assisted me with various writing projects over the recent years. Yes, I realize this all sounds very unbelievable so far and you may be raising your eyebrows. But there’s actually more…

Hunter’s spirit has recently reconnected me with an old friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen in about 15 years. My friend Amanda (name changed) had been experiencing ‘paranormal’ activity in her house and I suggested that she see a medium in order to obtain an explanation as to what was going on. To make a long story short, she ended up having a reading with a Los-Angeles-based medium named Tracey (name changed) whom neither of us had ever met or associated with before. Not only did Tracey reconfirm that Hunter was with me as a spirit guide, but she also said that Ernest Hemingway was with me as well. Both writers were making their presence known and trying to bring Amanda and I together because we had a very important past life together. See, I was (allegedly) one of Hunter’s favorite writers/Hemingway's former writing buddy F. Scott Fitzgerald while Amanda was F. Scott’s wife: Zelda Fitzgerald.

I do realize this sounds like an extremely wild story and you’re more than likely skeptical (believe me: I would be, too). However, I encourage you to have an open mind and read all the details below. Please feel free to visit my Amazon author page and hopefully this will show that I am a rational, logical and grounded individual. I have volumes of writing material there. 


Without further ado, here is the story:

...

A Past Life Healed: F. Scott Reunites with Zelda
by matt burns

The following story may sound rather unbelievable and, to be honest, I don't blame anyone who finds it far-fetched. There is unfortunately no way to conclusively prove the discoveries that you will hear about below. I did my best documenting the events as accurately as possible, but it's up to the reader to decide whether they believe in any of it. My hope is that - if nothing else - the discoveries will at least provoke thought and discussion.

First off, let me give you the back-story...

About two months ago, I was out at a local bar and I ran into a friend I hadn't really seen in about 15 years. Amanda (name changed) is about ten years older than me and she helped run the backstage at a theater troupe I used to be involved with when I was a teenager – she was in her twenties at the time. We started chatting and realized we both had an interest in writing and seemed to get along quite well. The encounter felt really strange, but in a good way. We both agreed that it seemed serendipitous and "meant to be".

Amanda and I started hanging out more and more to talk about writing. During this time, she learned that I had an interest in the paranormal and she informed me that she was experiencing paranormal activity in her home. She was hearing voices, names whispered and also seeing shadows. One night she even saw the full-bodied apparition of a big, burly man at the bottom of her attic steps and the man said aloud, "You have to keep moving". The paranormal activity itself was strange enough, but what Amanda found even more strange was that the activity seemed to intensify after hanging out with me, as if it were somehow linked to me. She had no idea what was going on and she wanted some sort of explanation for it all.

I suggested that Amanda see a medium to help shed some light on what was going on. She agreed that it was a good idea and I, of course, had participated in my fair share of psychic readings over the years (read about my various readings HERE), but none of the mediums I had crossed paths with seemed like the right fit for Amanda. There were one or two people that I thought MAYBE might be able to help, but I didn’t feel too strongly about them. The timing still didn’t feel quite right. So we kind of sat tight for a while.

Meanwhile, the paranormal activity kept happening and Amanda was really starting to get concerned about what was going on and she was even more concerned about her psychological wellbeing. She really needed somebody to shed some light on what was happening in her house or at least tell her she wasn’t insane, but the question was “WHO?”

A week or so later, an LA-based actress by the name of Tracey (name changed) contacted me out of the blue saying she had read some of my writing on my website - particularly the paranormal stories - rather interesting. We chatted back and forth and added each other on Facebook and it didn't take me long to notice that she was experienced in psychic and Tarot readings. In my gut, I thought it may have been serendipitous that Tracey contacted me when she did, right around the time that Amanda was experiencing the paranormal activity and was looking for a medium who could help explain what was happening.

I told Amanda about Tracey and that she was a medium and did psychic readings. Amanda checked out her web page and felt that she should drop her a line to get more details. To make a long story short, Amanda liked what she heard and, about a week or two later, she set up a time for a reading with Tracey that would take place over the phone. 

Amanda felt strongly that I should be present during the reading and I agreed that it felt right, too. So we met at 2pm on a Tuesday (July 15, 2014) at a peaceful park, sat at a picnic table and did the reading with Tracey by phone (Tracey was in Los Angeles). Amanda had her phone on speaker and I brought two different devices that could record the audio of the session: a Sony digital audio recorder and my video camera.

Amanda had only paid for a 30 minute reading so Tracey didn't waste any time delving into what Amanda was most interested in: the paranormal activity she was experiencing in her house. Tracey could see that there was a man in the house and she said, almost right away, that this man was a famous writer. Both Amanda and I were surprised to hear this, but at the same time we weren't completely shocked. We had actually suspected that either one or two of my (alleged) spirit guides were making their presence known to her, particularly Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski. (I never confirmed that the latter writer was a guide but have always suspected he was around me, especially ever since I started writing poetry about a year and a half ago. You can read more about Hunter as my spirit guide HERE.)

Tracey went on to describe the writer in greater detail. She said that he was an alcoholic, had a very dark side to his personality, and struggled with depression. There was a lot of trauma in his life and he died young, somewhat tragically. In fact, he may have even committed suicide. He had brown hair, wore reading spectacles, was very tall and was around during the earlier part of the twentieth century because Tracey kept seeing images in black and white...

I listened to the description of the writer and none of my spirit guides seemed to fit, but I have to admit that for some reason a name kept popping into my mind: F. Scott Fitzgerald. I didn't say anything about it at the time, mainly because the name seemed too far-fetched and very out of left field; plus, I never knew Fitzgerald to be one of my guides. I kept quiet and listened for more clues...

Tracey explained that this writer was "with me" but I brought him to Amanda and Amanda had a past-life connection to this man. She thought that they were likely lovers - maybe even married - and that there was some unfinished business at the time of the man's premature death; words left unsaid or confusion as to what happened because they weren't together at the time. The man was also apologizing to Amanda for something…

Tracey went on to address some other issues in Amanda’s life, but by the end of the reading, I felt compelled to ask some of my own questions, particularly regarding the writer who was trying to connect with Amanda. I told Tracey that I (allegedly) had some famous writers with me as spirit guides and I thought one of them may be this man she was trying to describe. The first two names I threw her way were the only two guides that I knew were alive during the time period Tracey was describing: Henry James and Nathanael West. But Tracey said that, according to her psychic sources, it wasn’t either one of them. I then told her that Hunter S. Thompson was also with me and I also believed Charles Bukowski to be with me - at least to some extent - but it wouldn’t really make sense that this mystery spirit haunting Amanda was any of them because both Thompson and Bukowski died fairly recently (Bukowski in 1994 and Hunter committed suicide in 2005). Tracey asked about Bukowski and Thompson and, for some reason, came up with a 'yes' for both of them. However, this didn’t necessarily mean that either Thompson or Bukowski was the male spirit Tracey was seeing in her psychic visions, though it still seemed like the two writers were making their presence known. 

As I mentioned before, both Amanda and especially myself had suspected that Bukowski and Thompson were around us, though we were still surprised to obtain outside confirmation from a neutral third party. We had suspected that Thompson may have been around when, one day, Amanda happened to mention to me that her mind seemed unusually haunted by Hunter S. Thompson’s writing and this was before she even knew that he was supposedly with me as a spirit guide. Then, about a week or two later, Bukowski popped into my head and I started thinking he could have been the apparition Amanda saw in her house, so I mentioned that to her and she was shocked because she had been talking to her husband about Bukowski and his poetry earlier that day. Amanda started reading a bunch of Bukowski’s poems and I re-read a lot of them myself. We were both obsessed with the poet for a good 24 hours.

So, yes, it made sense that both Hunter and Bukowski were around and Tracey seemed to confirm our suspicions of this. But, like I said, these writers were pretty contemporary and it wouldn't make sense that Amanda would have had a past life with them because she was currently in her early 40s and Thompson/Bukowski were alive so recently that it just didn't seem to add up, especially seeing that Amanda was supposedly married to this mysterious male writer spirit. Tracey seemed to feel that the link was more with Hunter than with Bukowski, but she couldn't necessarily explain why. Maybe it was possible that they had a past-life connection two lifetimes ago and - although that may have been true - I felt like there was more to it than just that.

The session with Tracey eventually ended with these questions unanswered, but Amanda, myself and (I think) Tracey were all pretty blown away that some amazing writers were revealing their presence to us. We all went our separate ways and I went to grab an iced coffee at my favorite café - mainly to clear my head - but I eventually made it home, sat at my computer and opened some new emails that had just come in from Tracey. She reiterated that the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson was definitely around, making his presence known, and somehow connected to Amanda through past lives. This still didn't seem to make too much sense to me but then I thought about the connection more deeply and that was when I remembered a name that had popped into my mind earlier in the reading but dismissed as irrelevant:

F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I remembered that Hunter S. Thompson idolized F. Scott Fitzgerald and he basically taught himself to write by copying out pages of The Great Gatsby, which was his favorite book. I looked up F. Scott Fitzgerald and all of a sudden everything started to come together. Almost on a telepathic level, I instantly realized that Fitzgerald really did sound a lot like the man Tracey was describing during her reading (brown hair, alcoholic, died young, tragic end to life) and then it immediately popped into my head that Amanda was Fitzgerald's wife: Zelda Fitzgerald. Yes, it just came to me, pretty quickly, like a spirit had telepathically implanted the information into my mind.

Zelda Fitzgerald

Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald had a very tumultuous marriage and Zelda didn't get to see her husband for the last year and a half of his life because he was in Hollywood writing movies, having affairs and drinking himself to death. During this time, Zelda had been committed to a mental institution and diagnosed (perhaps falsely) with schizophrenia. Zelda never had a chance to heal the damaged relationship she had with her husband because he had a fatal heart attack on December 21, 1940 in Hollywood while she was still a resident at a mental institution in Asheville, North Carolina. Zelda had a tough life after her husband's death - she was in and out of the hospital, a recipient of shock therapy - and she died eight years later when the Asheville hospital burned to the ground.

Although the history books have always considered Zelda to have been schizophrenic, there are new revisionist perspectives that see her as – if anything – a bipolar writer/artist. These revisionists also claim that Fitzgerald treated her very poorly, mentally abused her in the form of gaslighting (read about gaslighting HERE), stole ideas from her and even sometimes outright plagiarized some of her stories (read more about what the revisionists say HERE). Tracey said that the man haunting Amanda was desperate to apologize for something. Perhaps the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald wanted to apologize to Zelda for treating her so poorly while he was alive? This was very possible.

So, yes, all the pieces were starting to fit, but, hell, it seemed REALLY far-fetched. I mean, F. Scott Fitzgerald was one of the most famous modern American novelists of all time who had written one of the greatest American novels of all time: The Great Gatsby. And my friend Amanda, whom I had recently re-connected with, was...well…quite possibly Zelda Fitzgerald in her past life? This sounded pretty insane, but on a gut level it resonated as being the truth. The troubled relationship between Zelda and F. Scott sounded very similar to the one Tracey was describing between Amanda and the man in her past life.

I ran my theory by Tracey and it wasn't long before she got back to me. She had Googled F. Scott Fitzgerald and got intense chills. Then she looked up Zelda Fitzgerald and got even more chills. Not only did all of this information match up with what she had been feeling during the reading (especially in regards to the relationship between Zelda and her husband), but Tracey also pointed out that Amanda uncannily resembled Zelda in physical appearance. Tracey agreed that it was extremely possible that Amanda may have been Zelda Fitzgerald in her past life and now F. Scott Fitzgerald's spirit was visiting her to heal their damaged past-life relationship.

As I mulled the incredible discoveries over in my head, I remembered how, at one point during her reading, Tracey said that she saw a male spirit hugging Amanda and telling her he loves her. Tracey also said that there was so much this spirit wanted to tell Amanda about what happened to him leading up to his death and that she needed to understand. Not only did he want to set the record straight to Amanda but he also wanted to set it straight for the entire world as well. 

But if this spirit was, indeed, F. Scott Fitzgerald, then what did the world not yet know about him? What misconceptions do we have about his life? Well, I had already uncovered that Fitzgerald potentially had a much darker side to him than the history books would indicate, but I wanted to dig a little deeper. And while I didn’t learn anything too groundbreaking about Fitzgerald, I did end up making another shocking discovery:

The night after the reading with Tracey and Amanda, I started watching a documentary about Fitzgerald, something pretty simple that the "Arts and Entertainment" channel produced back in the 90s. At one point, it talked about Fitzgerald’s time as an expatriate in France and how he met/started hanging out with the writer Ernest Hemingway. Fitzgerald and Hemingway were solid friends but supposedly Zelda and Hemingway didn't get along (Hemingway told Fitzgerald he thought Zelda was crazy and Zelda thought Hemingway to be a 'bogus' phony). The documentary showed some photographs of Hemingway and it suddenly struck me that the writer strongly resembled Amanda’s description of the apparition she saw in her house. I immediately messaged Amanda and told her to look up pictures of Ernest Hemingway. Her response came only minutes later:

“Holy shit!”

She had Googled photos of the big, burly, overly-masculine Ernest Hemingway and he looked almost EXACTLY like the apparition she saw in her house, the one that told her to “keep moving”. She was dumbfounded. Without a doubt, Ernest Hemingway was the man she saw...

Ernest Hemingway

The next day we both messaged Tracey who said a chill ran up her arm when she looked up Hemingway. He definitely resembled the spirit she saw in her visions, but – then again – so didn’t Hunter S. Thompson and Fitzgerald. “It’s like we’re dealing with a whole posse of writers here,” she said. “Very strange.” All three writers seemed to be making their presence known to all of us.

So, yes, I do think Amanda saw Hemingway that night in her house and it's very possible that - like Fitzgerald - Hemingway's spirit was also trying to apologize to Amanda. The more I researched Hemingway and Zelda, the more I realized that Hemingway wasn't nice to her either and kept trying to convince his friend Fitzgerald that she was crazy. Both spirits seemed to be trying to heal some rough past-life relations and they both seemed to feel sorry for calling Zelda crazy, mentally abusing her, gaslighting her and contributing to her tragic downfall in and out of mental institutions. 

Now, do I really feel that Amanda was F. Scott Fitzgerald's wife Zelda? It still sounds pretty crazy, but the connections all seem to make sense, so, yes, I strongly do believe it's a good possibility. But Fitzgerald wasn't the only spirit around Amanda; it turned out that there were a handful of writers making their presence known and they are all linked somehow - Hunter with Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald with Hemingway. In fact, upon doing a little more research, I was shocked to learn that Hunter considered Hemingway one of his literary heroes as well. Just like he did with Gatsby, Hunter copied Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms, word-for-word, when he was trying to teach himself the craft of writing novels. I feel like all three of the writers are a closely-knit soul group hanging with one another in the spirit world, perhaps with Bukowski, too. They were all alcoholics and all great American writers writing about very similar things (the hollowness of the American Dream, essentially). I think all of them were making their presence known but Fitzgerald was the one who had the major past-life connection with Amanda. I also believe all four of the writers have been with me, off and on, through the years, because I basically write about the same subject matter as they do (the hollowness of the American dream). So maybe I was the bridge to connect them (especially Fitzgerald) with Amanda and that’s why we so serendipitously crossed paths that one night at the bar. 

Timing is everything and I feel like it was time for Amanda to open her eyes to these spirits, learn about her past as Zelda Fitzgerald and think about how those past issues relate to certain issues in her current life. I feel like I dropped into Amanda's life when I did because I was needed to help her make sense of everything, connect her with Tracey and also help pick up where Tracey left off and put more of the pieces together after the reading. 

In fact, I think that this entire experience was meaningful for both Amanda and myself. For me, it was nice to get so much more confirmation that Hunter S. Thompson was with me in spirit and it was even more awesome to know that Fitzgerald, Hemingway and maybe even Bukowski were also with me, most likely helping out with my writing on varying levels. I think - more than anything else - this experience was about giving both Amanda and myself confidence. Amanda and I needed to know that these awesome people were around us so we, in turn, felt more awesome about ourselves and - for a lot of reasons that I won’t get into - it was important for both of us to gain this type of confidence at this point in our lives so we could "keep moving", as the apparition of Ernest Hemingway stated aloud to Amanda that one eerie night in her house.

…

A few days after discovering that Hunter S. Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway were around, I was trying to document the whole experience while writing what you’ve read above. I printed out an early draft of what I had written so far and went onto my screened porch to go over it with a pen and make notes/changes. It wasn’t long before I looked down and saw a Boston Globe newspaper on the table with a headline looking up at me that said “Old Man and the Sea”. It took a moment to register in my brain, mainly because I wasn’t expecting anything of the sort, but then it hit me: 

“Wait! That’s the title of a Hemingway novel!”

This is the headline I saw...

Indeed, it WAS the title of a Hemingway novel…or novella, to be precise. It was the last significant piece of writing he published before his death in the early 1950s and it was this novella that heavily contributed to him winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1954. Was it a coincidence that I saw this headline? No way. I didn’t think so. Hemingway seemed to be saying hello.

About an hour after seeing the Hemingway headline, I needed to go out and grab something at the Whole Foods supermarket a few towns away. There are actually two Whole Foods stores nearby - one in Dedham, MA. and one in Bellingham, MA. - but I felt something pulling me to go to the one in Bellingham because I knew there was a Newbury Comics record store in the same plaza as the Bellingham store and I had the urge to browse through some CDs and DVDs. So I went to get what I needed at Whole Foods and then proceeded to Newbury Comics as planned. As soon as I walked into the store, I found myself looking at a display right in the front-end of the store – immediately inside the entrance - and on this display there were copies of both THE GREAT GATSBY and FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS as well as other merchandise for each book and there was a TON of it. It was staring right at me, thrown in my face (see pictures below).

It was after my experience at Newbury Comics that there was no doubt in my mind. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Thompson…they were all saying hello and confirming that they were, indeed, with both Amanda and I in spirit. It wasn’t all in our imagination. It was all as real as can be.



THREE WEEKS LATER…

Yes, almost three weeks had passed since we had made the discovery that Amanda most likely had a past life as Zelda Fitzgerald. What we didn’t know was that there was one more shocking discovery we were going to make… 

It was early on a Friday morning that I got a message from Amanda saying that it sounded crazy, but she thought I might have possibly been F. Scott Fitzgerald in a past life. She said she was in bed the night before – trying to sleep – and the thought kept haunting her, almost as if a spirit were implanting the information into her head. F. Scott Fitzgerald was not a separate spirit guide helping us. I was F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Although I never thought too much about it, the idea of me having been Fitzgerald had definitely crossed my mind during the weeks following Tracey’s reading. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe because Hemingway was the only spirit to make his presence known while Fitzgerald never really seemed to manifest himself. It always felt like Fitzgerald was reaching Amanda through me and, when I wasn’t around, he didn’t seem to be around her either. I always thought I was simply channeling him, but maybe there was more to it than just that…

I borrowed the recent Great Gatsby movie from the library (the one starring Leonardo DiCaprio) and also started reading the novel. I hadn’t read Gatsby since college and had forgotten much of what the story was about, but what struck me this time around was how familiar it seemed. Watching the movie was a very bizarre trip to say the least. I admit I was a little buzzed on beer while I was watching, but it wasn’t just the booze messing with my mind. I couldn’t believe the kind of stuff that was coming into my head and I felt compelled to write anything and everything down as it came to me. It wasn’t a thought or two – it was a FLOOD of thoughts and feelings. Either the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald was right there with me telling his story (sort of like how Gatsby does to Nick at one point in the story) or maybe I was tapping into a very deep part of my soul where past-life memories are stored. Either way, I was getting all these crazy thoughts and I wrote them all down. Here they all are. You will notice that they’re in the first person, as if I’m channeling Scott... 

I harbored some passive aggression towards Zelda.
She only likes me now that I’m successful.
She came back when I got my first novel published.
Otherwise she'd be with that other guy.
I have no respect for her.
I love her, but deep down I harbor disgust towards her.

Think Johnny Cruise (Note: at this point during the “channeling”, I wanted to take note of the parallels between The Great Gatsby and my first novel JOHNNY CRUISE. They were totally different novels with different characters and settings and time periods, but the theme/subtext/tragic characters were all eerily similar).

Johnny’s hang-up with Heather in JOHNNY CRUISE strongly resembles Gatsby’s hang-up with Daisy.

Johnny thinks Heather will only like him if he’s successful. This is what Gatsby thought about Daisy.

Heather haunts Johnny just like Daisy haunts Gatsby. Both characters are haunted by lost (potential) love. It’s the girl that drives them to create a life/persona for them that is hollow and phony.

Johnny/Fitzgerald harbor deep misogyny, a hatred towards the woman that only comes back after success.

I have deep disgust and hatred and disrespect for women who only like you when you have success, money and security. You take them and you have sex with them but you NEVER lose the disrespect and disgust and hatred towards them...

This MISOGYNY was Fitzgerald’s “dark side”...
Women like Zelda gravitate to the success...
You (Zelda) were a product of the times.
You lived for the world, not for yourself.
Easily swayed and tickled by the success devil.
Her downfall was her karma.
But I still feel guilt and I still feel sorry for what happened to her.

Part of me is also mad that I still feel sorry and guilty for something she brought on herself. But I can’t shake the guilt. Part of me knows I shouldn’t be guilty, but another part of me is haunted by the guilt. I’m mad that I’m guilty. My mind has been messed with. Maybe I was gaslighted and I gaslighted back. Maybe it was an endless cycle of gaslighting...

This is where I’m coming from. It doesn’t excuse any of my actions but it at least shows where I was coming from and where my head was at. Being mean or being an asshole sometimes has a complex foundation to it...

When Gatsby tanked you (Zelda) seemed to love me less, or maybe I thought that in my head because you only seemed to love me when my first book was published, so I assumed that once I became a failure, you wouldn’t love me anymore. (NOTE: The Gatsby novel was not successful when it was first published. It only became as popular as it is today well after Fitzgerald's death).

Your love for me was conditional, or that’s what I thought in my head.
I thought everybody’s love for me was conditional.

See BLOWTORTURE: the main theme is conditional love. (Note: BLOWTORTURE, my most recent novel, has parallels with Gatsby and also Fitzgerald’s life. The novel is very much concerned with the idea of conditional love in America, particularly Hollywood).

I never felt like I had unconditional love.
I felt like I needed to be a success in order to have love.
When Gatsby tanked, I felt I lost love.
I went to Hollywood to be a success again, thinking maybe I could win back love.

Hollywood was even worse. The town is America run through a film projector at triple-speed. The conditional love was three times as worse there than in general America. 
In Hollywood, they only love you if you are successful. If you’re a failure, the love disappears.

My drinking became three times worse in Hollywood.
And then I died.
In the end, who’s at fault? Who’s the victim here?
Nobody is to blame, nobody is at fault.
It’s just one big American tragedy.
Both of us put our priorities in the wrong place.
Both of us cared about the wrong things.

Both of us replaced our God with success - we worshiped the latter when we should have been more concerned with the former.

The world was our God. We lived for the world and not for God.
I need to release this from my soul.
This has been tormenting my soul.
The world needs to know this tragedy.
And this tragedy is in JOHNNY CRUISE.
I subconsciously expressed the tragedy in all the stuff I have written.
This isn’t just my karma, but Amanda's karma, too.
We’re currently both picking up the pieces of the aftermath to a tragedy.
Many pieces have been picked up, finally, just about every last one.
It’s time to move on.
Nobody is the victim here, nobody is the perpetrator.
Each of us are merely characters in one big tragedy.
Nobody is ever just a victim.
Nobody is ever just a perpetrator.

The world doesn’t need to know that Fitzgerald was bad guy and Zelda was an angel or vice versa.

We don’t need to know who’s crazy and who’s not crazy, who did the gaslighting and who didn't, who mentally abused who.

We need to know the tragedy.
That’s the truth that needs to be told.

This isn’t necessarily “karma”, but just something we both needed to go through to grow into a better soul. Zelda was no more a victim than Fitzgerald and no more a perpetrator. Both figures were equally a tragic character who made tragic errors. 

…

The night after I had all of the above revelations, I met up with Amanda at the bar and read aloud to her everything I had written down. She wasn’t upset or insulted or offended. In fact, she felt it was rather illuminating to listen to “Fitzgerald’s side of the story”. Up until then, she had mostly been viewing Zelda as the sole victim of a mentally abusive relationship. She never stopped to think that maybe Scott was a “victim” too, or maybe she was just as much of a “perpetrator” as Scott was. Maybe there was no good guy and bad guy– it wasn’t that black and white of a situation. Both Fitzgerald and Zelda were two tragic characters who each made certain tragic errors in their lives. In the great scheme of things, there is no victim and villain, just complex souls. We go through several different incarnations – some as the victim and some as the perpetrator – and, in the end, we’re all the more spiritually evolved because of it. Pointing fingers at each other isn’t important. But pinpointing certain tragic errors and learning from them IS important. That’s all that is worthwhile to do in life…

After I read Fitzgerald’s perspective to Amanda in the bar, I noticed how much lighter I seemed to feel, like something had been released from my soul that I’d been carrying around with me for a long time. Surprised by the noticeable catharsis, I really started to wonder whether I was, indeed, Fitzgerald in my recent past life. I realized it would be nice to have some definitive outside confirmation so I wasn't always wondering if it were true. While I didn’t want to bother Tracey about it because she had already done so much for Amanda and myself, after about a week of wondering, I felt compelled to bother her just one more time and ask the big question. Was I F. Scott Fitzgerald in a past life? Here is how she responded to the message I sent to her over Facebook:

“Well I asked the universe and record keepers if you were in fact the soul of F. Scott Fitzgerald. I got yes 3 times very strongly. So that feels right to me. And now I got other body sensation confirmations. Yup. I do believe you are him.”

So there it was. The last piece of the puzzle had potentially fallen into place. It looked like I was quite possibly F. Scott Fitzgerald and Amanda (formerly Zelda) and I had crossed paths at the bar that night in order to heal our troubled past-life relationship. Perhaps we both needed to expunge the negativity that was trapped deep in our souls because it was this negativity that was preventing us from “moving forward” (Hemingway’s words) with our current lives.