How Rewatching ‘Charmed’ Helped Me Separate Magic From Mania

When palm trees swing in the soft breeze, I remind myself that my body is not an orchestra, and the trees are not dancing for me.

I trusted Dr. Robert’s office to keep me sane more than I trusted him. Sitting in the north wing of his house in Old San Juan, the square space was full of carved antique side tables and collectible Latin Bibles. The open shutters to the right of the sofa clapped against their frame in the ocean breeze. I was surrounded by enchanted relics of our history, sepia photographs and Spanish family shields. His office reminded me that I was in Puerto Rico, that my move there was real.

Dr. Robert aimed his pen tip at the notepad on his lap. It was our second session, and I had yet to mention the burning stars under my skin, the magic that had brought me here. “Have you ever felt watched? Or maybe far away?” He let the questions settle as his face balanced curiosity and concern.

“Yeah, both of those.” I propped my elbow on the sofa armrest, “I’ve always been able to leave my body.” Dr. Robert studied me expectantly. I continued, “It really kicked in when I moved to New York for college.”

In New York, I was visited by disembodied voices with persistent worries, questions and orders. They left poison in my head and their breath on my neck. The floating white orbs that once kept to my periphery now hopped from head to head in crowds, over cabs and under bridges. My spirit flung itself out of my body more frequently. This was the most constant manifestation of my powers—astral projection.

Dr. Robert didn’t jot down a single word while I explained what being bodiless was like. He nodded periodically, raised an eyebrow here and there, but otherwise sat motionless, either giving me space or letting me run out of air. I dropped my elbow from the armrest and let quiet rest between us.

He cleared his throat and put his pen down, “Have you ever doubted whether anything around you was real?”

“Oh yeah,” I answered matter-of-factly. We began discussing my magic, and continued to pick apart my experiences for the following three sessions.

Dr. Robert outlined a routine to help stabilize me until he determined what mode of treatment I would need. The daily plan included getting up early every morning, making coffee and having breakfast, despite not having any appetite or anywhere to go. On the third morning of my new routine, I turned on the small TV in my parents’ kitchen to find an episode of Charmed, already half over. It was from the fourth or fifth season, after oldest sister Prue dies and half-sister Paige is introduced.

The show, which ran from 1998 to 2006 on the WB network, centers around three Halliwell women, who discover they’re witches after the death of the grandmother who raised them. I recognized the women as past allies, and would have welcomed them into my parents’ kitchen had magic not betrayed me; had I not been transplanted to Puerto Rico specifically to be rid of it. I hovered with the remote pointed at the TV, my thumb over the channel up button. My own magic had corrupted me. To associate with the sisters now felt troubling, even dangerous.

Despite the hesitation lumping in my throat, I poured a cup of coffee and watched the episode to its end. Then a second episode began, and I watched that one too.

I first discovered Charmed when I was in ninth grade, a complicated time of crushes and cliques made treacherous by the quick development of my own magic powers. My surroundings reacted to me; walls breathed, faces appeared where there were no people, fuzzy balls of light floated near the corners of my eyes. I could see scrambling creatures that other people couldn’t see. I could hear ghosts that other people couldn’t hear. I shadowed Prue, Piper and Phoebe as they navigated their gifts. I was like them—seemingly normal and secretly valuable.

I could hear ghosts that other people couldn’t hear. I shadowed Prue, Piper and Phoebe as they navigated their gifts. I was like them—seemingly normal and secretly valuable.

When I was in high school, some days were packed with so much wonder I could barely keep steady breaths, let alone steady focus. Homework, teachers at the board, and meals fell out of priority. But I’d learned from the Charmed sisters that managing powers wasn’t supposed to be easy; magic complicated their lives, too, interfering with careers and relationships. Each day the world was too loud, I repeated to myself that magic was a gift that required maintenance. If the sisters didn’t care for themselves, their powers would distort. I repeated their mantra to myself, “Our power stems from our emotions.” I too would have to learn how to control my magic.

I tried to keep track of my powers’ growth by freewriting in a journal, the way mediums did when they channeled the dead. I did not want to write consciously; I wanted my powers to tell me what they needed from me. Perhaps if I understood them better, I could learn to focus, use, or suppress them. One night in senior year, I sat up on my bed with my back to the wall and pen to a notebook, eyes closed. My thoughts pushed against each other in surges until fury flushed my cheeks and filled my chest. I stabbed the page with my pen and ripped through the paper with a vengeful gash. A sentence appeared from the tip of my pen, “Tania, you have to calm down.” Then I heard from my own lips, “That’s not my name.” I threw the notebook and pen on the floor and clasped my hands over my mouth, holding something hostage.

It wasn’t the first time I’d wondered if I was who everyone said I was. I often practiced saying my name out loud, to the mirror. I tried to reclaim the only thing I thought I could be sure of, though it still didn’t feel like my own. I reminded myself daily that I was Tania. Because I had to be.

Tight lips and stiff shoulders carried me through my senior year. Against the odds, I managed to graduate with an offer of admission from NYU. I moved to New York, hopeful that I could continue suppressing my powers and build a new life.

But the city took over my body. The manifestations of magic were so heavy that I couldn’t focus on my school work, and I went from being on the Dean’s List to academic probation. I remembered the Halliwell sisters: As their powers grew, they had to emotionally recalibrate in order to better control them. But as the magic in me continued to brew, it drowned out my senses and I was unable to cap its effects. Sometimes I lay in bed for days, spirit voices berating me and urging me to drink my detergent. Other times I would leave my dorm in search of relief—alcohol or cocaine or anything that could distract and dull me from the constant visions and whispers. Despite my increasing erraticism and lack of focus, I managed to fulfill the bare minimum of my school responsibilities and graduated on fair academic standing. I remained in New York after completing my studies, tethered to the city by silver energy, until I was consumed by it.

One April night, as I shared a drink with friends at a Hoboken bar, I became consumed by the spirit of adventure. The voices, by now in full volume, yelled for me to go explore the night, to do something wild. I recognized them as the call of evil, a temptation that even the sister witches faced continuously during Charmed. Unlike the Halliwells, I was too enthralled by the false glow of indulgence and could not resist. Mid-conversation with one friend, I set my glass down and declared that I was going to California to visit another. “Now?” my friend asked, his tone of concern lost on me.

“Of course now!” I exclaimed. I left the bar without saying goodbye and hitched a ride to JFK with a group of guys loitering by their car. At the airport, I bought a one-way ticket to Cali and hopped a flight with only what I’d worn to the bar—glittered stilettos, skinny jeans, and a semi-sheer black top. I stayed in Los Angeles for a week with an uncharged phone, offering no communication to my lifelines in New York. After seven days, I finally managed to borrow a charger and the calls and messages I’d missed came flooding in. No one had heard from me since I’d slipped out of the Hoboken bar and my parents had flown to New York to file a missing person’s report. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed with the consequences of my actions. I called my father and we booked a flight back to New York, where both my parents were waiting for me once I landed. And so, three years after graduating, my parents moved me back to Puerto Rico to undermine the spell that had been cast on me.

At the end of my first week back in San Juan, Dr. Robert invited my parents and I into his office to report on what he’d gathered from me. With the three of us on the couch, he listed my symptoms—magical thinking, depressive episodes, erratic behavior. I had delusions and hallucinations, not powers. I was manic, not gifted. What had once been witchcraft was now a diagnosis: Bipolar Disorder.

I repeated their mantra to myself, ‘Our power stems from our emotions.’ I too would have to learn how to control my magic.

My parents asked what would come next, if it was treatable. As they discussed my schedule and medication plan, I traveled back in time. The moments of astral projection, of tuning into foreign incantations, of seeing alternate planes and beautiful ghosts—all of the memories my mind had disguised with silver and velvet were suddenly disrobed and bare. If magic was not real, then I was worth nothing. If magic was not real, then what was?

Dr. Robert prescribed Risperdal and Lithium, promising they would bind my symptoms and allow me to regain control. It only took a few weeks for the voices to lose volume, for the bouncy white lights to dim. With each conquered symptom, colors lost their texture and the wind lost its whisper. Nothing reacted to me, I reacted to nothing.

The Halliwell sisters repeated their adventures through the kitchen television for the duration of my three-year stay in Puerto Rico. They kept me company while I had breakfast and ingrained themselves into my routine. I’d pour a cup of coffee, scramble an egg over the electric stovetop, and watch the sisters play out their journey from beginning to end to beginning. I too had started over, but they still had powers while I’d been emptied of mine. The reality outside of the kitchen did not bend like the world of the sisters. Walls did not heave, light did not float solidly in fairy orbs.

I became afraid of my own brain, losing all trust in my gut feelings and reactions. Believing in magic had protected me, living without it left me exposed. In an attempt to regain some sense of self, I went back to school for a Master’s degree in English Literature. I attempted to reconnect with my past interests, to find a new way through the way I originally intended. I needed a future. During the two years of the program, I slowly recovered my ability to read through a book, analyze a text, form an argument. I remembered the things about me that existed before magic had taken over—my interests, my humor, my goals. My symptoms were ingrained in me, so much so that the diagnosis felt like an attack on who I was. But the longer I was sane, the more I came to terms with my normalcy.

On the days I miss feeling shiny, I willfully conjure memories of my tired body crumbled under my comforter. When palm trees swing in the soft breeze, I remind myself that my body is not an orchestra, and the trees are not dancing for me. My magic came at a cost. Without it, I am lonely, but I am safe.