The ghost is afraid of the house she haunts

It's frightening to realize that your parents are frightened.  Especially when you find out that you're what's scaring them.

Here's what I can't understand:  They always said not to worry about what other people thought.  Don't dress or act or be like everyone else.  My father kept saying that he didn't want a cookie-cutter kid. He said he'd rather I failed in school by being myself than got straight A's by just blindly repeating what was told to me.  My mother the lawyer said she wanted me to set precedent, not follow it.

They wanted me to be something new and different until they started figuring out that maybe I really was something new and different.

Here's the other thing.  When the evidence started rolling in that there were people who could do things that used to be the kind of thing that only happened in science fiction stories, my parents were interested.  They read the articles.  They talked about them.  

They listened when James Randi started giving the specs about what telepathy really was, and how it was the only psychic power out there that had any evidence to support it.  Thoughts have a tangible existence of their own, and the possibilities that opens up are interesting, but not endless.

My parents started being able to use the m-word, and talked about how glad they were that that nice young man who could touch things and tell something about the people who'd owned them was working with the police and not against them.

As long as the miracles and the mysteries were happening at a safe distance, my parents were fine with them.

Which wasn't at all the same thing as being able to cope with the idea of a real live telepath under their own roof.

They'd wanted me to be different, but not that different.

They started being less and less comfortable having me around.

I wanted to tell them that the thing they were most afraid of was exactly what they didn't have to worry about.  I was a sender, not a receiver.  I guess if I'd really tried, I might have been able to get into their heads, but it wasn't what I was good at and I wouldn't want to anyway.

But I couldn't tell them, because they kept making excuses not to be in the same room with me, and they certainly weren't going to have anything like a real conversation with me.  If they talked about this, it might make it real.  As long as we were all just kind of separately wondering and worrying, they were safe.  They'd rather have all the doubt in the world than the wrong kind of certainty.

They finally took me to the doctor, and that’s when it all started to fall apart.