Hypervigilance

I have always been good at reading people. Call it instinct, pattern recognition, or the byproduct of growing up in an adult world where paying attention was not optional. If I had known as a kid that this was a legitimate superpower, maybe I would have leaned into it sooner. But what always got in the way was my chronic hope in people-this tendency to give second, third, and tenth chances. Even after I had been burned, I kept looking for the good. 

Is that empathy? Or emotional self-sabotage dressed up as forgiveness? What kind of psychological fuckery makes your brain know better and still leave the door open for vultures? 

I have read that whatever trauma you have not healed from, you will either run from or run straight into. The fear of it keeps you circling back to it-through people, situations, even choices that look different but feel the same. Rejection, abandonment, being misunderstood, judged, controlled, lied to-all the things that broke you in childhood find a way to show back up. Not because you want them to, but because some part of you is still afraid. And until you are no longer afraid-until you have healed-those patterns will keep repeating. But once you are healed, when those old dynamics show up again, they lose their power. They do not derail your life. They just pass through. 

I am still on that journey. 

A lot of that pattern recognition came from home. 
My father’s emotionally abusive episodes became more frequent as I got older and financial strain tightened its grip. My mother could sense them coming-warned us to walk on eggshells, told us explosions were on the way. She could read tension the way a dog senses an earthquake. I was learning to do the same. Hyper-awareness was not a skill-it was survival. There were stretches of time when I had to stay alert for rocks through the windows, fire-bombings, or ambushes from the neighborhood kids. Like the time they yanked our electric meter and left the whole house in darkness. 

My childhood was packed with chaos, but my father’s version of parenting was mostly about controlling the controllable-especially when it came to us. I grew up in the court system, but not in the way it sounds. By the time I came along, I was already being dragged to courtrooms where my dad was either suing someone or being sued. I am laying some of that foundation now because it threads through everything else-these reflections will make more sense with that context in place. 

Toys needed approval from my dad, Marvin. 
Family game night? Monopoly. 
I had dolls, but most were gifts. If money was spent, it was on Marvin-sanctioned options: picture puzzles, Bobby Hull table hockey, and the prized Coleco Hockey table game. Not air hockey-table, NO-NO! He took it seriously, and we followed suit. There was a league. Teams and players had made-up names. Games opened with the Star-Spangled Banner and paused for an intermission featuring the Boston Pops Orchestra & Organ Music. It was dramatic, regimented, and oddly sacred in its own way. 

 

 

 

At some point he became obsessed with chess, I'm guessing around the time of the Bobby Fischer phenomenon. This meant he bought a chess set and we learned to play.

Somewhere around fourth grade, my brother and I launched a homemade celebrity tabloid out of his bedroom called Chatterbox. We were obsessed with celebrity culture and ran our little publishing house with pride. He typed like he had a deadline-two fingers on a typewriter, hammering away. The real highlight was the press kits. We would send away for them and get glossy black-and-white headshots, bios, and full-color folders. My prized possession? A Donna Summer press kit. I brought it to school to show off, and it vanished. Poof. I told my teacher I knew who took it-not a hunch, just logic. I did not confront the girl, but I knew. My teacher made a call. A few days later, her older sister walked into class and handed it back. My teacher looked at me-I could tell she was both perplexed and impressed. 

 

 

Another time, some neighborhood kids-what we called the bad kids-destroyed the handmade sign my brother had created for our family’s Super 8 film company: Marcin Jefflo Productions. He was crushed. After I convinced him to search the neighborhood, he reluctantly agreed. He thought it was gone forever. I was not so sure, I was hopeful and felt an unconscious knowing that we would find it. What I did not realize-until we found the first piece-was that it had been broken up and scattered all over the neighborhood. Each rotten kid must have taken a piece and wandered off in a different direction. None of them were anywhere near each other. But somehow, it was not hard. It was like I was being led to each piece by some mystical power. We were out there for about an hour and came home with all four pieces of that sign-which my brother proudly taped back together and reattached to the front of the house like a billboard that said: not today. 

That kind of “knowing” followed me into adulthood. 

In my twenties, a friend swiped a CD from my collection. I had no proof-just that same gut certainty. It was not magic. It was behavioral math. I knew how she saw the world: she believed I had plenty, and she was entitled to take a little. It was the same pattern, just in new packaging. 

That is why I am drawn to stories of how people rise, how they succeed, the forks in the road. I have not reached the level of fame or financial success (yet), but I have had many milestones and achievements that I am proud of. Times I knew which direction to take, and if I had shifted focus or followed through harder, I might be in the same circles as the people I read about. Reading these stories is confirming. Like, yeah, I belong at the table with those smart, successful people. Deep down I've always known this, but others have made me feel like I don't belong, so I feel I need to prove it. I can feel eyes on me when I enter a room, even rooms where others think I have no business being.

An old friend, flamboyant, brilliant, and just the right kind of pretentious, once told me what he liked about me was that he could take me to dinner with his elite circle one night, not be embarrassed and the next we’d be on the phone with my Philly accent hitting hard. He said I was a chameleon like that. He meant it as a compliment, and I took it as one. 

But for someone who has always been searching for her place in the world, reading those behind-the-scenes stories of moguls and celebrities gave me something close to a sense of home. Entrepneuer author, speaker and internet influencer, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about how media evolves but human nature does not that while the platforms change, the fundamentals of content and connection stay the same. I understood that early on too. But while I was applying those tactics in my business, I was also sidetracked, busy chasing what I thought was the love of my life. I did not have the kind of support system Gary had in his father’s business, so I will not beat myself up too much. Still, reading his perspective and realizing I instinctively knew the same things? That is validating. 

Not feeling like I am weird by reading how former NYC Governor Andrew Cuomo wrote about wearing his late father’s shoes on tough days. I have done that too. I will never forget after she died, coming home from the hospital and seeing my mother’s shoes by her bed, how heavy that moment felt. It brought me comfort to wear them, to literally...walk in her shoes. 

Actress Molly Shannon’s stories about her father’s boundary-pushing antics? I relate. His moral grayness shaped her comedic edge. And RHONJ’s Margaret Josephs' stories of misogyny in the fashion industry? I have lived my version of that, too. 

These memories-these early brushes with intuition or knowing-are not just nostalgia. Whether it is instinct, survival, or my Aquarian brain rebelling against the scripted version of reality, that curiosity has always pushed me forward. Sometimes I listened to the signs. Sometimes I let my need to connect trip me up. That part is not very Aquarius, I know-but I have never been textbook anything.