Month: December 2020

a little light

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At 3am on the morning of Christmas Eve, I woke myself up out of a dream because I was praying. Out loud.

I know I was awake because I could hear myself trying to talk in that garbled sleep voice. My brain was on, my body was off. My sleep mask had shifted off my eyes, as it does, and I could see a yellowish flickering pinhole light coming from the corner of my room. Like a tiny Tinkerbell. Like a vintage lightbulb with one of those metal coils inside.

I finished the prayer and then I said, “You can’t be here, [Alex]. Get out. GET OUT.”

The second time I said it, I roared it in my head, and as I did, I felt the energy of my anger coursing through my entire body. The twinkling light became enormous, filling the corner of the room, bleeding towards the window.

Then I fully woke up.

I stared around my room in confusion, vaguely wondering if I should be afraid, if I was in danger. I fell right back to sleep before I could consider it for too long.

In the dream, I was telling my mom what just happened.

She said, “Don’t you remember what happened last night?”

She pulled out her phone and showed me a video of this ball of light spontaneously blooming in my living room, pushing over candles and other random objects. In the video, I reached out to touch it, and it danced around my hand like a tiny pet/fairy.

I looked up from the phone and the light appeared in front of me in the dream. I reached out for it, but it kept evading me or dancing straight through my palms.

Then I woke up again.

Last night in the bathtub, as I was running through the shuffle on my master Spotify playlist, Alex’s music kept coming up, to the degree that a song was popping up every other song. Songs that are of significance to us, that are tied to a particular memory. Even many of the songs I was skipping through were songs connected to the two of us.

He always finds a way to make sure I never forget.

Christmas was our anniversary for many, many years. We even had a tree at the beach house. One of our last Christmases together, he decorated it for me by surprise, and I wept at his frantic hope for repair. We slow-danced in front of it as he sang “Unchained Melody” into my hair, more promises that he never had any intention of keeping woven into the air.

This time, this time, a brand new start. I always wanted to believe him.

But what does this mean? I worry about how close he is to me, or how close he might be. What was the light in my bedroom? Am I safe?

Will I ever really be safe again?

solstice celebrations

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I saw my oldest friend a few nights ago for the first time in awhile, which was a relief. He has seemed to be avoiding me for the last few weeks, so it was good to finally be able to clarify some things face-to-face. Even if, to be honest- he still really avoided giving me a real answer to anything.

This time, he and I sat on opposite diagonal corners of the fully made bed at my beach house, which was both new and awkward. Our palms were resting flat on the on the smooth white comforter, both of us subtly trying to reach for the other without making it seem obvious. The flickering candle next to me in real life matched the setting sun at the beach house, lighting up his silhouette with fire behind my eyelids as I turned to look at him.

“So,” I said, my voice slightly bruised. “Where have you been?”

His mouth pulled to one side, and his golden brown eyes briefly flashed with defiance. “Well- and I know this is hard to believe- but I have other responsibilities, people who need my support and guidance and compassion, and also extremely difficult work I have to do for myself.” His voice is somehow both soft and strong, the sound of a summer breeze that carries the threat of a potential thunderstorm. It makes my blood light up with summer sparklers, even when he’s scolding me. Maybe especially then.

He gave me a look that had a tiny slice of that very energy. “You’re not the only person going into the solstice, you know.”

I gave him a hard side-eye. “Okay, but your distance with me kind of seemed to coincide with when Hermie told me that she treats you like a fuckboy. I was just kind of wondering if they were related at all.”

His mouth pulled again, harder. This time, his nostrils flared out as well. “No. They’re not.” His voice was flat and blunt, but then he sighed deeply, conceding a little of the granite in his body language.

“Listen. This is why it is going to be so hard for you to come Home,” he said, his eyes burning into mine. “There is very much a duality at play right now. Do you choose this life, what you have learned, this new perspective?” His eyes shifted away briefly, almost imperceptibly, before flicking back with more intensity than before. “Me? Jim?”

Then he shrugged a little, his entire body once again conceding to the possibility. “Or do you choose… him, and your crusade to save him? Which, to be fair, if you can accomplish it, would be a massive achievement for the entire Universe. But.”

He shook his head a little, laughing to himself. “What he has done to you already? What you have- what she has- allowed him to do to you just to prove that he is a vile and wretched being?” He shrugged again, a kind of angry admiration. “I can’t understand that. You are so much bolder than I could ever be.”

I held my palms to the sky. “But I don’t understand either. How could it even be a choice? It makes no sense.”

He exhaled through his nose, turning to look out at the surf. “I mean, she’s not wrong about me, you know? I have made a lot of mistakes, especially with you.” He turned back to look at me, his eyes swimming with electric fire. “Especially because of him, how you have always protected and defended him.”

“So what happens if I do choose him?” I whispered. “What happens then?”

He smiled wistfully, and his eyes went back to the sea. “It wouldn’t be the first time, my love. We’ll all find a way to move on.” He shrugged, returning his defeated gaze to me. “We all love you enough that we are willing to accept whatever amount of reciprocal love you are willing to…” His mouth twisted a little, his hand gesturing with a sarcastic benevolence. “…bestow upon us.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, okay. Please.”

He finally reached across the bed to slide his fingers between mine. It felt like plugging a cord into an outlet, an energy that is always somehow both brand new and ancient. Our eyes locked, and we just stared at each other for a long time, saying nothing and saying everything.

When he looks at me like that, I know better than to try to argue.

“But like… why did you leave me?” I asked quietly, searching his unbearably familiar face. “You were around so much last month, honestly to the degree that I felt like we were going to get into trouble, and then…?” I held my palms out to him in despair. “You just totally abandoned me.”

He sighed. “I’m sorry. There is just so much happening right now, and I’m stretched very thin. It’s the solstice for all of us. It is the Grand Conjunction for all of us. It is 2020 for all of us. Do you think only the living are struggling with this disaster of a year?” He laughed a little, his eyes going smoky amber. “We are all being pushed to our limits.”

Then he tipped his face to me again, and we gazed deeply at each other, searching the other’s face. For what, I’m not sure. Just looking at him for too long makes me feel impossibly nervous, excited, almost as if just sitting next to him is something forbidden. As we looked at each other, the air shooting lightning, he slid slowly across the bed until our hips kissed. My mouth is all he could seem to see.

“I am so in love with you,” he said softly, then immediately scowled with disgust and embarrassment. It was as if his words were aromatically repellent, and he began trying to scoot away to try to escape it. Escape himself.

I grabbed him around the waist, pulling him back to me. “Wait, wait. Say it again.” I coquettishly tipped my cheek towards my shoulder as I batted my eyes, reaching out to grab both his hands.

He laughed the all-teeth, head tipped back laugh that makes all my nerve endings sing with light. Then he reached over and his knuckles grazed across my jaw, his fingers curling around my ear. As his fingertips slid into my hair, sending tiny explosions through my brain, he said, “I am so in love with you. It makes me worry that I shouldn’t be here.” He pulled his hand back and peered into my face. Eyes like a lion, a falcon. “I don’t want to distract you from the life you’re living.”

“What life?” I scowled. “Please.”

“Stop it.” He grabbed my chin gently to pull my eyes back to his. Then he proceeded to pour out truth to me, things I agreed not to write publicly, things that I honestly wouldn’t even dream of sharing, because it all feels exceptionally foolish. To the point of delusion.

When I expressed this to him, he said, “You’ll listen to every other thing I say, but when I tell you about who you really are, suddenly you must not have any real ability to hear?” He smiled. “Okay. Let it just be your imagination, then. Let it be who you wish that you were, the person you would like to be. Let it be the dream that propels you into a new reality.”

It feels impossible to carry both of my lives at the same time anymore. It feels harder and harder to pretend. It also feels deeply terrifying to lean more fully into who I actually am. This blog is the most honest thing I’ve ever done, and the most visibility I’ve ever given to my actual reality. I don’t have to be ashamed here. I don’t have to lie. No one is watching. I’m free to just flourish in this strange, beautiful, divine Light.

Happy (almost)solstice, ya’ll.

May we all see ourselves with clarity, and may we also be able to speak upon it with bravery. xx

assassinated messenger

/ thehourofthedead / 1 Comment

Last night, my oldest friend came to me after he saw the panicked, feral state I was in, pulling me into his arms. Then he pressed his palms against my cheeks, tipping my face up so his golden eyes burned viscerally into mine.

“Can you wait for the solstice? Please?” He kissed my forehead like pouring cement into a cracked foundation, and disappeared before I could say a word.

12/21 is always the day my chrysalis opens, but I feel it especially vividly this year. I’m have no idea what it’s about to bring, and I’ve never felt this way before. That throbbing intensity, edged with increasing anxiety, is grating me into a feral state.

Final exams, to be sure.

I also didn’t realize until recently that I had an entire timeline that corresponded with the solstice. I’m not sure why it took me this long to connect the dots, to be honest. Maybe I have once before, and it’s just another thing I’ve lost over the years and found again this year.

/// The first time “Alex” came to visit through my fiancé was at the solstice (2004).

/// Then I had to try to process a surprise pregnancy at the solstice, feeling like I’d been trapped (2005).

/// We lost our house at the solstice (2009).

/// I started to finally leave my ex at the solstice (2012).

/// I put a spell on a former/forever lover at the solstice I’m not sure either one of us will ever heal from. I will never forget that night for the rest of my life… and actually think about it almost every day, even now (2013).

/// He finally closed a door on his own failure and weakness that destroyed my heart so badly it left a permanent, fatal scar. I think about that almost every day, too. I hope one day I can heal from it (2014).

/// All of that led into me realizing I had to leave him at the very next solstice. Both my calves were packed with wounds, I was drinking myself into real danger, and I could barely hold my heart any longer (2015).

/// After finally coming out of the ash from being abruptly fired, my brand new job completely restructured, sending me into the worst years of my professional life (2016).

The last two solstices have been masterwork explosions of energy, learning, growth, sensuality, past life ripples, integration into my Entire Self.

We are all locked onto this rollercoaster now.

Ready?

Click, click, click.

Here comes the crest.

I feel a little villainized all over my life? I’m trying to have grace about it and let other people’s reactions to me be entirely their own vibe, but it’s been harder than I expected lately. I really feel how alone I am these last few weeks. Not lonely, per se? But just really seeing how little real life intimacy I have, how people don’t trust me because I confide nothing in them.

“People hate you because you tell the truth,” someone said to me once. “Most people can’t handle being told exactly who they are. It’s not your fault, but people make you feel like it is.”

This is the life of a mirror, of the assassinated messenger.

It’s your own reflection you see, friend- take a hard look. I just show you the truth. It’s not my fault it aches so much to see it.

And don’t forget- Yeshua energy comes for you in the solstice as well.

Not Jesus, please understand. Jesus energy is kind and soft, holding your hand in the darkness, the Brightest Light, the Living Example, Footprints in the Sand, it was then I carried you, let the children come to me vibes.

Yeshua energy will tell you about yourself in a way that makes you feel exposed to the point of violation. Furious to be read so hard, to be seen to your deepest shadows.

How DARE you understand me better than I understand myself? And to come with very specific receipts, too? And honestly, if 2020 itself wasn’t just a constant mirror of every flaw we’ve ever had, I’m not sure what else it really was.

I pray for your clarity in the solstice. May you be shown exactly who you are. It is what I want most for everyone, including myself.

Let the Light shine upon you fully, so that you may gaze upon your entire shadow and be humbled.

a simple prayer

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May you always have the strength to properly see yourself, and to be brutally honest in all the ways you are flawed.

May you have the power to examine your flaws without harming yourself with shame and disgust. 

May you have the integrity to work on who you are without blaming someone else for who you are, even if they are responsible. Especially if they are responsible.

May you have the grace to forgive those who have harmed you, maligned you, sabotaged you, violated you. May your forgiveness bring you renewal and rest.

May you have the clarity to see those around you without letting your prior pain color their intentions.

May you have the fortitude to be a door, not a doormat. May you have the voice to stand up against those who mistake your kindness for weakness, your serenity for softness.

May you have the confidence to stop expecting anything you need in life to come from an outside source. May you always have the security of knowing that all you need is within yourself.

May your heart be open to hear the voice of the Universe in whatever form it takes for you. May you be mature enough to listen and to react, no matter how harsh the message.

May you pause in your flashes of emotion to question your first reaction, and allow yourself enough space to choose who you really want to be in that moment. May it give you the ability to do the least amount of harm to others.

May you never be content with who you are, always seeking to grow, to change, to blossom more fully and deeply. May you learn to be able to receive lessons from the Universe with grace and dignity. 

May you live a life of pure, profound gratitude, full of wonder and excitement, with a childlike innocence that inspires others into delight as often as you can.

May you do good quietly. May you love loudly. May you always go to sleep never wanting to be anyone else but yourself.

May you also have gratitude in knowing how far you still have to go.

pre-solstice reflections

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From 2003 to 2005, I was happy. In bliss. I thought I was at my peak spiritual power, that I was an elite creature. We used the Ouija board every night, and it hummed with enormous electric power. I was in a love affair with someone that I idolized, someone who was so much more my partner than my own living partner.

The Queen of the Dead.

From 2006 to 2009, I was a battery. I was trapped alone with a brand new baby and a demon who controlled my entire life, and every single day was some sort of self-flagellation or self-sacrifice. My husband barely existed, as he was an almost constant channel for the dead. Even he admits he doesn’t recall much of those years at all.

I’m not sure I do either.

When I think about that home, I think of hell. A few years ago when I was in Pennsylvania for the holidays, I drove by it on a whim and felt intense waves of horror and grief. There has been no darker period in my life, if I’m honest. Extreme poverty, extreme isolation, extreme violation.

I was a prisoner there. Solitary confinement.

Empty. Husked. Drained. Destroyed.

From 2010 to 2013, I was broken, sick. I realized all my spiritual arrogance didn’t mean dick in the “real” world, and perhaps was entirely unfounded. No one cared what (or who) I knew because no one really believed it. All of the psychological damage that had been done to me over the previous years came roaring back into my brain and soul, and my mental illness was on full display.

I didn’t know how to be a human anymore. All of the things we’d ignored- bills, student loans, housekeeping, social manners- were now things that mattered a great deal, things that rerouted everything I thought mattered.

You don’t have to believe in your credit score, but babe- it believes in you.

From 2013 to 2016, I was infatuated with a man I couldn’t have, an absolute twin flame soulmate, who resurrected me from the ghostly life I’d been living into a fully realized being. He gave me the strength to leave a man who had been emotionally abusing me for my entire adult life, and also built me into the powerhouse boss bitch that I have become.

But then that situation also became toxic, heartbreaking, a different kind of drain on my soul. I realized that in spite of what I was telling myself, I was waiting for something stable from a man who treated me as a convenience, and it was destroying me.

In 2016, I moved 500 miles away from everyone I knew and started all over by the sea. My entire life burned to ash, and I got a real, true fresh start. An entirely new identity, an entirely new life.

From 2016 to 2019, my life has been about rebuilding my identity. I often reference “Pennsylvania Kristyn” and “North Carolina Kristyn,” because they are such disparate entities. People that knew me before 2016 do not know me any longer. That girl died violently in May 2016 and was reborn into someone else entirely.

Each year, I have drawn closer to my own spirituality again. There is a part of me that so deeply wants to come back to what I feel is my truest self, and the Universe has been calling me home all year. Not in a quitting sense, but in a living my clearest Truth sort of way. I have been dancing around my spirituality for years, and I feel there is a power and a strength in being able to share what I know to be true with others, even if it ostracizes me.

This is also the fork in the road. Am I an extroverted leader, someone who helps others become their best professional selves? Or am I a witch preacher, someone who helps others see their deepest spiritual selves?

I think this year has been about showing me how I cannot be both, no matter how much I may want that to be possible and true. It’s just not. It’s not.

This is the year that I finally was able to achieve a measure of comfortable success at work. Confidence. Power. I am not always liked, but I am respected.

Recently I had a green (but high potential) associate say, “Wow- when you say something, people really listen. I want to have that kind of power someday. I love how you phrase things, too. Like, it’s not mean, but people know exactly what you’re saying and they do it without questioning you. That’s really cool.”

But I have also seen some of my spiritual honesty and guidance and- for lack of a better word, proselytizing- show up in others’ lives as well. I have seen my lessons on gratitude and self-awareness and brutal soul honesty resonate with people I love and help them grow into better people.

That’s what I want more than anything- to show you how to truly love your life and yourself and to be the catalyst for your own growth. To be grateful for your ass beatings from the Universe.

I have deep soul contentment. Do you?

If not, I can help you. I promise. It won’t be easy, and it won’t be fun.

But it will work.

Both of these paths would be ultimately gratifying to me… but I also know what I am really here on this planet for. It would be a disservice to avoid something because there is a layer of vulnerability and terror to it. In fact, that is an even stronger argument that that is the thing I should be doing.

Less than two weeks to the solstice. Still doing that work.

I hope it is enough.