This is what happened when Rosie Waterland sat down with a psychic.

I didn’t realise how stressful it would be going to a psychic.

In hindsight, that seems naive on my part. I’m socially awkward at the best of times, so sitting face to face with someone I don’t know while they hold my hand and stare straight into my eyes was bound to be unpleasant for me.

But it wasn’t so much the close proximity with an elderly woman dressed like a mystical hippie that stressed me out. It was my innate need to avoid any kind of awkward confrontation ever that made things really, really hard.

Let me put it this way: When you’re sitting across from someone who’s essentially trying to guess things about our life and  you have trouble saying no, you’re going to end up confirming some crazy shit about yourself that is not even close to being true.

I just really didn’t want Mystical Hippie Lady to feel bad. So within five mintues of sitting down I had invented a dead grandmother called Melissa and got so caught up in web of well-meaning lies that I felt like I needed to take a nap afterwards.

Here’s how it happened.

I sat down at her little table (covered in crystals, but none of the ball-variety, which was disappointing), and waited in nervous silence while Mystical Hippie Lady lit a candle with a lighter that looked like it was purchased at a no-name service station. She rummaged through her bag, pulled out her iPhone and set the timer. So mystical.

She picked up on something immediately.

“There’s someone who’s crossed over. She’s here. Do you know a Melissa who’s passed?”

I don’t.

“Yes!” I whispered. “I do!”

She looked very pleased with that.

“I feel like it’s a maternal energy – like a… grandmother?”

I knew at this point she was fishing for clues, but I was not prepared to sit there in awkward silence while she attempted to figure my shit out. So, I took a deep breath and dove in head-first.

“Yes,” I said. “My grandma was called Melissa!”

She wasn’t.

“What did she do for a living?” Mystical Hippie Lady asked. “Was she… Was she…”

I think she was hoping I would finish her sentence, so I threw her a bone.

“A writer?” I said.

My actual grandma did have a book published back in the day, so this was technically correct.

“Yes!” she said. “A writer. That’s what I thought. Definitely a writer.”

Mystical Hippie Lady really felt like she was onto something now.

“She says that you wish you could be a writer,” she said.

“Um, well…” I replied, “I sort of am already.”

I was just about to say that I actually write for a living, but I think she was feeling cocky that for the first time ever she had lucked onto the right dead family member and their name on the first go. She cut me off before I could say anything.

“No!” she said. “Not just tinkering around with stuff. Not the way everybody with a blog just says they’re a writer. You actually want to be paid to write! You want it to be your career! What do you do for a living now?”

Oh god.

“Um. Well. I um…”

SAY SOMETHING ROSIE.

“I’m studying,” I stammered. “Marketing?”

Nailed it.

“You need to change courses right now,” she said. “You need to make a career out of writing just like your Grandma Melissa. That’s why she’s here today – to tell you that if you make a change now, you could end up a paid writer within a few years. Just like she was.”

Well, I guess I was in this now.

“That’s so weird!” I said. “My Grandma Melissa always told me to be a writer!”

I think I was starting to believe Grandma Melissa was real.

Then, satisfied she had enough information about me to wing it from that point on, Mystical Hippie Lady went on to tell me about my past life (she could see me sitting on a stool, carving into stone, which obviously meant I was an important advisor to Ramesses II), also that I want more affection out of my current relationship (I’m single), and that I’m going to move to Queensland because I love the sunshine (hate it, get burnt walking to bus stop, would never move to Queensland in a million years).

She finished up by reading some of my cards, which all had to do with my Grandma Melissa giving me certain pieces of advice (mostly to do with giving up marketing to become a writer).

Then, probably feeling more confident about a reading than she ever has in her life, Mystical Hippie Lady decided to try one more guess, but by this point I was so exhausted by all the lies I couldn’t keep it up anymore.

“Grandma Melissa is giving me some numbers… Do ‘7’ and ’10’ mean something to you?”

“No.”

“How about 10 and 7?”

“No.”

“107?”

“No.”

“710?”

“No.”

“There’s no birthday on the 7th of October or the 10th of July?”

“No.”

There was an awkward silence. It was the first time in the iPhone-alotted half hour I had shot her down. I was just about to come to her rescue and make up something about my Grandma Melissa being born on the 7th of October 1917, when Mystical Hippie Lady had her final brainwave.

“Oh. I understand. Melissa is giving me those numbers because they’re important. So just make sure you watch out for them. 7 and 10.”

I nodded intently. And with that, we were done.

I think it’s pretty clear that this was yet another social interaction I did not exactly handle with finesse, but I can’t imagine sitting there and shooting down every word the woman said.

Would I have had a better experience if I had responded to the reading properly? Maybe. But it’s not like I didn’t get anything out of it. I can’t say I experienced any major paranormal insights during my brief time with Mystical Hippie Lady, but (and in what is a concerning bit of self-reflection) I did realise that all it takes for me to turn into a pathological liar is 30 minutes alone with a well-meaning elderly woman.

So that’s something I guess.

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