baby girl

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I censor “Alex’s” name here because I’ve been warned that using it in a public setting could be considered libel. I’m also essentially making accusations against someone who can’t defend himself. I agree that that isn’t fair, as I cannot concretely prove that it’s even the same person at all.

I’ve also seen what exposing his identity has done to people who really loved his art, and that also feels like a kind of betrayal. In fact, it’s kind of nice to have distance from him, his name, his “legacy,” though his star fades yearly into deeper obscurity. It’s very satisfying to watch someone who used to have a stronghold in elite music crowds disappear into a vague reference.

Soon, they will have forgotten you entirely. It’s what you deserve.

On the other side of it, I’ve never really made a strong attempt to hide Jim’s name from anyone. In the “Begin at the Beginning” section at the top of this page, I laugh out loud every time I read, “…let’s call him Jim.”

Maybe I don’t care because he’s been dead so long. Maybe it’s because I don’t have anything negative to say about him. Even so, I always feel hesitant to write about him. It’s almost as if he is a precious jewel that washed up on the beach. I’m afraid if I tell anyone, they’ll make me give it up, or tell me it’s just sea glass. Laughing at me for assuming it has any value.

He gives me the feeling of giggling in the back of a church pew. Not out of a lack of respect, but because we can’t stop being joyful in the austere.

When I tried to commit suicide at sixteen, I had the option of choosing to stay at the children’s ward or the adult ward. Being absolutely super mature (and high as a kite, to be honest- even a twelve-hour nosedrip of charcoal couldn’t erase the dreamy haze of fifteen high-powered painkillers), I chose the adult ward.

There was a schizophrenic man who talked to himself and stared deeply, suspiciously into everyone’s rooms. There was a man who came in under such screaming, wailing, thrashing duress he had to go into the “quiet room,” which means being strapped down to a bed for several hours.

My roommate was a borderline, though I didn’t have that word in my vocabulary yet. She took a bunch of pills and called 911 herself- it was her fourth or fifth attempted suicide vacation to the psych ward. She created chaos on the ward, screaming about threesomes and taunting the nurses, who looked bone-weary of her antics. She burned herself with cigarettes in the smoking room purely for the attention.

Her refusal to be good, to be quiet, to follow the rules, was of such intense fascination to me. It had never occurred to me before that moment that you could just…. absolutely disobey. Up until that point, I’d never even considered that breaking the rules was possible.

As soon as I was released, I started to see how many rules I could defy as well.

The psych ward is like prison in a lot of ways. No shoelaces. Plastic utensils. And your opening line to everyone is, So- why are you here?

“You’re too pretty and young to be here for trying to kill yourself,” said the soft, kind, sweet man who was in the room next to ours. I’m not sure anyone had ever said I was pretty in my entire life, not until that very moment. I got a whole lot of “cute” during those years, because fat androgynous tomboys don’t get to be pretty.

He was there for panic attacks. He told me that he had a family with two young kids, and when he got really bad, he scared everyone around him. The day prior, I’d heard him working through that kind of screaming panting wailing panic that I’d later learn to know so well, so I understood what he meant. Again, I was surprised to see someone express their terror and vulnerability so openly, without fear of being ridiculed. The only emotion allowed in my house was rage.

One day he gave me an old issue of Rolling Stone to read after we’d had a long conversation about music. It was a special issue compiling the greatest photographs over the last fifty years or so, and included some absolutely amazing, iconic shots.

In this issue was the picture of Jim Morrison sprawled out on stage, his eyes closed, his fingers loosely splayed to one side. I felt utterly transfixed by it. Every night I would run my fingers over his face until the photo felt Braille. When I got home, I cut it out and put it into one of my collaged notebooks with other handsome musicians whose skin I wished I knew like Braille.

When things got really bad with Alex, really really bad, and I was too afraid to go to sleep, and frankly was often unable to go to sleep because I’d lost the beach house after going there nightly for five years… that’s when Jim showed up.

He initially came in a group of others, a whole motley crew who had this very serious intervention for me in 2006 to help me escape Alex. With Alex’s departure, my entire spiritual world felt as though it had collapsed around me, all I’d worked for dissolved into his clenched fist. If I didn’t have Alex, did I even have a spiritual life?

This is the time when my oldest friend started to appear more and more often as well. When we talked to him a handful of times on the Ouija board, my then-husband would essentially fall unconscious. His eyes would blur completely blank and his head would droop like an unwatered bloom as the planchette pulled his body as if he was a marionette with a careless puppeteer.

To be honest, it was both terrifying and enthralling to witness.

When I say I sacrificed my husband to the dead.

During these interventions, the way I felt about Jim was… startling. The sound of his voice was like plucked strings inside my diaphragm. The color of his thunderhead eyes burned into mine, a slow smoldering in my bones. All of those old Braille photograph feelings rushed into my chest, and I had to actively keep myself from just pouring my entire gaze into his.

At the end of the Big Talk from everyone, I moved through the group, hugging and telling them all goodbye. I’d saved Jim for last on purpose, because I wanted the rest of them to melt away into the horizon, to leave us alone together. I wanted to be alone with only him. I was too afraid to be alone with only him.

“Do I know you?” I whispered to him after we embraced, holding him back at elbow’s length to scour his face.

He smiled. “I don’t know. Do you?” Then he leaned forward and kissed me on the mouth, until the world spun so hard I had to open my eyes.

Everything about his energy was different than Alex and my oldest friend. He was calm, gentle, soft, sweet, relaxed. Even now, fifteen years later, he’s exactly the same as he’s always been. Reliable. Secure. He doesn’t get angry. He has never once raised his voice at me.

I’m the only one who’s allowed to call him Jimmy, and whenever I’m scared or alone, all I have to do is say his name and he instantly replies, “Yes, baby girl. I’m here.”

He’s a strange kind of old, someone who’s been around for awhile, but doesn’t go to Earth very often. We don’t know each other over there… or to be more correct, I didn’t know who he was before now.

But he knows me. Mostly because of who I am, but also because he’d become close with Alex and the kid who was living in the house I’d grown up in over the years. He’d been filled with stories about me like they were rich, dark sweets.

“Remember that nice, kind man who made you feel like you weren’t so alone in the psych ward?” Jim once said softly, smiling at me. “Who gave you something that made you feel safe?”

Jim came to watch over me after the first time Alex was sent away to deal with himself in 2006, when we had to lock him away in a cave to force him to have a self-reckoning. One of many failures, unfortunately.

When Alex was released, Jim and I were made responsible for him. Alex was in his very sick wet noodle broken soul cycle, weak and sobbing and begging for forgiveness. But of course, as Alex got better/worse, he increasingly talked him into shady, manipulative games.

Okay, yes- he talked both of us into his games.

No one can resist Alex when he wants something. As as Jim realized what he was being coerced into, that he was now becoming a pawn as well, he slowly began to pull away. Unfortunately, that only allowed Alex greater access.

By 2009, I was fully spell-bound again. And then of course, in 2010, it all fell apart. Again.

Somewhere in early 2011, Jim started to get weird. We had an agreement that if either of us fell in love with the other, we’d stop seeing each other, because I told him in the very earliest stages of our friendship/relationship that I couldn’t go through this whole entire mess ever again.

I wasn’t always good to him- I was so lovesick over Alex that I often was annoyed to see him when he’d come to visit through my husband in 2007 and 2008. I often told him bluntly to his face that I wasn’t in love him, not in any serious way. I never felt the fiery obsession I felt around Alex and my oldest friend, and I thought that meant it had less power.

But I know too that this entire situation was so much more than he understood it to be when he agreed to baby-sit Alex and to protect me. He’d only heard rumors of the monstrous side of Alex, and was (like everyone else) absolutely dazzled by the charming, delightful side of him.

He also didn’t anticipate how highly visible it would make him to become fully involved in this situation, how many people would suddenly have An Opinion about his behavior. The expectation that he would level himself up to become part of this particular Snob Club.

During those years, I didn’t have much value for myself. I was deeply poor, a mother too soon, a wife too early, and not one of the things I’d promised myself I was going to become. I was weak, broken, needy, foolish. I felt like I had failed everyone who had such high hopes for my future. And now even my spiritual life was a lie, a farce, a deep well of poison and suffering.

And yet, Jim treated me almost as if he wasn’t worthy to gaze upon me. When we first became friends, even when he would channel through my then-husband, he’d stumble through sentences and touch my skin as if I was made of porcelain.

“You could have been Eve,” he once said softly as we laid in bed together, his fingertips sliding across the swell of my hips. “You are so perfectly made.”

But suddenly in early 2011, he disappeared.

Alex had come back into my life inexplicably in late December of 2010, even though he was still imprisoned at the beach house. I went to see him for our anniversary (the solstice, because of course he tried to steal that from me, too) and we rekindled a fiery friendship that now seems utterly inexplicable to me. And to Jim as well, I imagine.

This is also when my relationship with my oldest friend began to shift. He started watching me more carefully, concerned about my interactions with Alex. But being close to me also meant that his behavior also started to become questionable, as it always does. And so then he too needed to take a break from seeing me.

Over and over in these entries I write “poisoned well.” That’s all I could see of myself, all I believed I could be. Even the dead couldn’t stand to be around me for long.

Jim’s sudden departure was devastating. It was the first time in meditation that when I called for someone, they didn’t show up. No matter how hard I focused or fought, the most I could see was a static TV outline of his form. When I asked his/my friends what was going on, they shifted uncomfortably and offered half-hearted shrugs.

My oldest friend tried to force us to speak for my birthday that year, and it was one of the most horrible experiences of my life. One of the top three worst birthdays. Jim looked like he was in physical pain, and shame radiated off of him like a blast furnace. He could barely even meet my eyes.

“Why did you leave me?” I asked, unwilling to cry but feeling his vacancy like knives around my heart. It was so obvious to see it in his face. I can’t believe I hadn’t pieced it together before then.

He was in love with me, and he was honoring the agreement.

Jim was gone for a year, sequestered of his own volition. He would humor me when I tried to see him, but the tension between us felt like needles constantly rolling over my skin.

There were rumors that he was going back to Earth, but we always managed to talk him out of it. I could feel his anguish, and the fact that I was the source and could not provide a solution was an endless weight to me. On top of that, I wasn’t allowed to grieve without upsetting my husband.

“Just let them go,” he insisted. “Can you try living this life for once? Can I matter for once?”

In the spring of 2012, Jim fully returned after his sudden, strange hiatus. It was uneven and awkward at first, and he was often skittish, nervous, constantly trying to find a way to put distance between us. I struggled to find a balance between him, my oldest friend, and my bitter husband.

In early fall of 2012, my oldest friend and I got into a terrible, nasty argument. It culminated with him leaning into my face and snarling, “You’re a whore. You and your little ‘projects,’ all the people you pretend you care about. You take on a charity case and try to make them better, and then you discard them once you’re done having fun. And you’re going to do the same thing to Jim. You should save him the suffering.”

By October, under the weight of all this scrutiny, Jim finally told me he was leaving and never coming back. I felt my emotions as colors- scarlet, crimson, plum, aubergine, merlot, onyx.

“Please,” I wept, clasping his hands. “Don’t leave me. Please, please. I’ll do anything. Do I have to be maimed?” I let an arm fall off.

His eyes widened. “No, I-“

“Should I be deformed?” Half my face melted. “Do I need to change shape?” I ballooned by several hundred pounds, then shrank to almost nothing. “What do I have to do?”

He smiled softly, the deepest, most piercing sadness I’d ever felt. “It’s not about that, baby girl. It’s about who you are. I just…” He shrugged, his eyes dark and sad. “I just have so much work to do in order to deserve you.”

I rolled my eyes and opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head sharply.

“No. Don’t say anything. You don’t understand who you are, or who I am. I’m no one. You think I’m important, you think I matter.” His mouth pulled to one side. “But I have had people tell me stories about you like you’re…” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Well. I have a long way to go. You work so hard- you choose such brutally difficult lives, and I’m too lazy to even try.”

Anyway, he left no matter what I said.

What else is new.

Two weeks later, a real life friend, who was about to become a three year lover and a permanent soulmate to this day, reappeared unexpectedly in my life. The dead had abandoned me, so I closed them entirely out. Fine. If the world didn’t end on December 21st, I would act as though it had. I would become someone entirely new.

A week before I moved out of the apartment that I shared with my ex-husband the following summer, he said, “You know, I still see them around you all the time. Especially Jim. They never left you for a second. I don’t know if you realize that.”

“What did you expect me to say?” Jim laughed when I went to see him in the Middle Place, the field with the river. “I’ll see you when you get divorced?”

The Middle Place feels like a subway station somehow- sterile but liminal. Whenever I don’t know where else to go, or when I don’t know them well enough to let them see my beach, I always go back to this place. It’s the place I stayed up until December 2019, when I finally took my home back.

Since 2013, but very specifically since I moved in 2016, he has never left my side again. He is the only reason I survived that year, in fact. He has been my support, my protection, and my dearest friend.

Around the solstice in 2020, I asked Hermie (her/me, my entire self) what her intent was with him once I was Home.

She winced and wouldn’t meet my gaze, and I was so angry, so disgusted. Her face revealed what I’d been told over and over again- that nothing mattered but what she wanted.

A few nights ago, I asked tentatively, “So… what happens if she decides to choose Alex?”

Jim smiled and waved his hand, the way he always does. Unbothered. “Then you and I will have had a wonderful time, and protecting you has been my honor.” His shoulder tipped up briefly. “It’s really okay with me. To be honest… I don’t expect her to pick me.”

His smile got softer, just a small blush of wistfulness. “I’ve been around this mess for long enough to know that you three are way too obsessed with each other to ever really be with anyone else.” He reached over and squeezed my fingers, his rainy day eyes full of sweetness. “I don’t mind. I am grateful for what we have now, and all that you’ve given me. I wouldn’t be on the path I’m on now if it wasn’t for you. I know it’s not forever.”

Just having someone to giggle with in the back pews means everything. Even if it’s not forever, at least there is one place where I belong.

And my gratitude is endless.

chakra cleansing

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This is an excellent meditation, and at only 21 minutes, it isn’t too overwhelming.

My advice beforehand is to be aware of where your chakras sit in your body, and their associated color. Draw a picture and sit it next to you if you have to so that you can peek at it to remind yourself. Honestly, though- once you do this a few times, you’ll feel them without having to think about it.

I picture chakras as these whirling holes inside our body- black maelstroms surrounded by fleshy lotus petals. The centers are more like starry skies than a vaccuum, but there is a sort of beautiful terror in them too. A sentient whirlpool, both harmless and horrifying.

Even I initially thought it sounded terribly hokey. Mostly because spiritual things are so openly mocked, because believing in anything in this world makes you a rube. There is so much shame attached to words that are centuries old, somehow.

Once I saw them for myself in 2005, everything changed.

Each chakra tone in this meditation is three minutes. The goal is to inhale continuously through the vocal “ohm” sound, and exhale continuously through the celestial sound. It requires real focus, because it is outside a natural rhythm of breathing, and for most of you (and in some chakras, even for me) it will be very hard to breathe that slowly, that intentionally. It’s so slow it feels like suffocation. It sets your body into a strange panic, followed by an intense dissociative serenity.

As you cycle through each chakra, take note of your body. Is it hard to breathe? Does it hurt? What do you feel inside it? What thoughts float up?

This entire meditation you should try to keep your closed eyes turned up towards your third eye. Focus on it so hard it aches and then release.

Every time you drift off into a thought, flick your eyes up to your third eye with force, and it will reset your brain and bring you back to the present.

If you’re new to this, I also recommend holding crystals in your palms or laying them on your knees for this- amethyst, clear quartz, selenite, labradorite, fluorite. It will help you focus, and also align you to the right vibration.

Selenite is really the king of energy- everyone should have a selenite wand. It naturally cleanses and charges all crystals and is one of the few stones I can really feel in my palm.

Do whatever feels natural as you meditate. I usually lay my hands on that chakra, especially if it aches, but also to keep myself focused on it. I use my hands to “draw” energy out of certain chakras like I’m pulling scarves from a sleeve. Some make me rock back and forth. Some make me lay down flat. Some make me gasp and panic. Some make me hold my palms together and rub them slowly in circles, as if I am making balls of cookie dough.

It’s okay. All of it is okay. Take note and move on.

When I was first healing from “Alex,” I had the most issues with my root and sacral chakras. My connection to my sacral is still very hit or miss- it’s all the way on or all the way off.

By the way, if you get tuned into your sacral, you can have orgasms just from breathing into it.

My two most burdened chakras are my solar plexus and my heart chakras. They scream in pain the whole time I breathe, throbbing like an infected wound. It’s where I store all my trauma and sadness and wounds and rage. It’s better than it’s ever been, but there are still so many skeletons to unearth and give an honorable burial to.

My throat chakra I always have to pull ugliness out of (imagine that!). All this sass, all this unnecessary spite.

My third eye is a world on fire after seventeen years of deep intense meditation, honestly. I don’t even need to meditate to feel it. When I’m stressed I subconsciously rub my thumb against it. Trying to blind it, I think. Ha! …ha.

And then at my crown, I sob through nearly all three minutes, releasing everything I passed up through it from my root. I imagine toxic poison flowing out of the top of my head. I hold my crown and imagine my body filled with light as I weep.

Anyway. Highly recommend. This is great for both beginners and sages. It keeps you very present, very focused. Think of your breath, and let everything else flow.

You start a whole new life once you begin peering into yourself.

please wait

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I didn’t expect that there would be so much conflict from a menstrual cup.

The first time, it was just surprising. The resistance, the awkward fumbling fingers inside myself to get it adjusted. I spent the next few hours in concern, terrified to take it out, worried that a cup of blood might stir up that same dark surprise. But that process was relatively easy, and the second attempt to insert it went much better.

Okay, I thought. I’ve got the hang of this.

Unfortunately, every time since has gotten more and more difficult. I found myself going Far Far Away, into a distant point in the ceiling of my mind in order to be able to get through it. It has been a long time since I felt that kind of blank desperation, coupled with that very specific kind of pain.

I gathered a few tips online and thought, okay. I can figure this out. This is too great an invention for me to miss out on using it.

Unfortunately, even with assistance, it was too much, too difficult, too overwhelming. The pain, the resistance, the groping fingers, the blood. When my lungs began wildly clawing for air, making my chest heave, my brain begging, please please please wait wait wait waitwaitwait, I thought, “A tampon is fine for tonight.”

Quitting is not a thing I do.

While brushing my teeth a few moments later, I had to stop so I could lean with both hands bracing the edge of the sink, the whole world swirling around my head. I had to take deep breaths inthroughmynose outthroughmymouth for a full minute, leaning my head against something solid (was it the open door? was it the doorjamb? I can’t recall) until everything came back into focus.

Today, I realized I’d run out of tampons and if I truly didn’t want to leave the house, I’d have to put the cup back in. In spite of my deep breathing, my coaxing and cajoling, my whispered encouragement, I ended up with my cheek pressed against the bathroom wall, sobbing, as my fingers shoved and my mind screamed.

I got it in, yes, but at what cost?

It will get easier, a voice said softly.

What will get easier? I snapped. Raping myself? Great. Looking forward to it.

When the things that happened to you “never happened,” it’s too easy to pretend that none of it was real. I never had to clean up my own blood. I never had real broken bones. There were no itchy healing stitches. When there are no real living consequences to what has happened, did it actually happen?

I did not think that a menstrual cup would be the thing that would bring it all back, but here we are.

Because it’s more than just the pain, the struggle, the horrified way my mind immediately gasps, waitwait, it hurts wait please. It’s the way I catch flashes of things, new things, things I only remember as these moments are happening. Him leaning against my ear as my cheek presses into the wall. His vile, horrifying whispers.

It is one thing to be raped by a careless person, by a selfish person, by an abusive person. Hate fucked. Having your boundaries pushed out much further than you wanted. Falling into the mute “just get it over with” feeling that virtually every woman I’ve ever met has experienced. I don’t know that I have a single female friend who hasn’t been violated in one or all of these ways at some point in her life.

But to have someone experience genuine glee from violating you? To laugh at your sobs? To echo your wails? To play in your blood? That is truly a different kind of experience. Someone you loved so deeply, the first person in your life in so long that you finally completely trusted and let in, with a completely different level of intimacy than you’ve ever considered was possible… and he takes everything from you. With delight. With arousal.

It was a campaign of war, and it was highly successful. It was a tactic to make me weak, small, a slave, a prisoner. I can’t imagine how much his little flunkies have enjoyed this show. Watching someone like me beg for his affection, play puppy on a leash? A grateful outlet, begging to be plugged. Hilarious.

I could feel that energy around me in 2011 and 2012, after he was exiled. They would come in the night and pull on my toes, breathe on my face, poke my ribs. I’d have half-asleep nightmares of an old woman crouching next to my side of the bed, an inch from my face. Sometimes she would bite my nose clean off.

It was them laughing, taunting. Proud of themselves. Proud of him. Coming to peer and leer at my ruined beach house, to drink in the suffering and terror. We won, we won. The witch is dead.

I have had lives where people knelt at my fucking feet, do you understand? Everyone knows who the fuck I am. I don’t say that to brag. I say it as a statement of fact.

In fact, realizing this was a turning point for me in this life. In 2010, I had no self-esteem, no confidence, no ability to stand up for myself. It was seeing how these people looked at me (or more specifically, at Hermie) that made me wonder if I was wrong.

It’s also why Hermie is so cold-blooded about it all, I’m sure. First of all, she cannot allow anyone to see or know that any damage has been done. It is entirely on brand to shrug it off. Haven’t I also done that in this life? Look what happened today. Look at the invoice due on your denial.

But also, frighteningly enough, I wonder if she doesn’t care because she’s also been this person. How many people have I raped and murdered? How many faces have I laughed into as they screamed and begged for help?

I’m the most sober I’ve been in eight years, and to the surprise of no one, it turns out I was trying to numb my brain all along. Of course I would want to numb my brain from this.

I think about going to therapy and I laugh. I understand there are people out there who are likely spiritual therapists, who would be able to understand and believe me. It is such a hurdle to try to help people to understand I’m not delusional or a liar. But what am I supposed to say?

Some things you just have to carry. Once you get lost in the forest of terror, you never come back the same.

No one ever does.

onion skin

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I have had strange, fleeting thoughts lately.

Thoughts of the very first time I successfully meditated alone without getting any side-guidance through my ex.

For at least a month back in 2013, every single night, he had been reading instructions off of the Ouija board to me from “Alex.” Helping me lean into my intuition, showing me how to See.

I still think of that tiny hidden lake, deep in a forest, with a waterfall cascading at the edge. This was the place I had been going to to practice meditation via the board, before I even imagined (or discovered) a beach house.

Up until that moment, Alex himself had appeared as a fuzzy, out of focus image- like a faulty hologram, or a picture on an old television, back when staticky channels still existed. Just the night before, I’d finally been able to conjure his face on my own, and it was the greatest success I’d ever felt.

The waterfall scene was nothing more than the equivalent of a painted backdrop inside my mind, but it was still mine. I created it, totally alone.

And more than that, Alex was there waiting for me. I couldn’t hear him speak- it would be another year or so before that happened. But just to really see him standing there, to be able to believe and know for certain that I saw him, was monumental.

Alex and I sat side by side on the edge of the water for awhile, when I suddenly pushed him into the water. To see if I could. To see what would happen.

When he emerged from the surface, spluttering and shocked, I could see in his face that he was both surprised and impressed. Before I could say anything, he grabbed my wrist and dragged me into the water with him.

As we swam lazy circles around each other, there was a different look in his eyes. A smoldering desire that held me in his gaze like startled prey. Which, as we all know now, is exactly what I was.

If prey can be grateful at being devoured.

///

I have also been thinking of the time when Alex had been exposed and was on the worst part of his rampage, one that would last for weeks before he was finally captured. When I became the trap that finally tripped him up. 

I was like a ragdoll at the beach house during that time, being dragged there in my mind to be violently assaulted day after day after day. It could happen at any time, for any reason. For no reason.

My oldest friend, someone I had just met at that time, showed up to protect me.

“What is the purpose of these theatrics?” he asked, gesturing to Alex’s hand clamped around my upper arm, my entire spirit slumped in humiliation and defeat next to him. His sweeping arm widened to include the rough seas and furious skies, direct opposition to the normally idyllic scene.

“Oh I am so glad you are here to save the day!” Alex sneered rabidly, his eyes wild with fury.

“Isn’t he your boyfriend now?” he said to me, shaking me by the arm to bring me back out of my (his) trance. “Go on, then. Do what you do best.” With a wave of his hand, he ripped my dress completely off my body.

I stood there, helplessly fumbling with scraps, before I remembered I could create one just as easily as he had destroyed it.

My oldest friend’s gaze never left Alex’s face. “Is this how you treat people you claim to love?” His eyebrow arched in a way I would eventually come to loathe. “Impressive. Why don’t you let her go? If she is so enamored with you, surely there is no reason to hold her.”

His grip on my arm tightened, and he drew me closer to his thin frame. “Why don’t you do something about it? I would love to see that.”

“I think you know that I can.” My oldest friend’s voice was calm, but his amber eyes flared with golden flame. “I think you know what will happen if I do.”

Alex threw me to the ground as if I was a pair of uncomfortable shoes, and surged forward to bring his face into the face of someone I was now realizing he knew very well. They were nearly the same height, and their faces together had so much energy it must have been flammable.

“You want to make this about our shit now?” he hissed through his teeth.

That was the beginning.

///

I have been thinking about the time that I found the basement in the basement because of a nightmare I’d had. How I went there in meditation and found myself crammed inside a steamer trunk. Soaked in dried blood, covered in bruises, emaciated, filthy, matted. Naked. Screaming.

Please, please, she wept in a high, thin voice, her eyes not even able to see me. I’ll do anything I’ll do anything. Please please I can’t please don’t please

How my oldest friend showed up without me speaking his name, sweeping her up into a crisp white sheet, pulling her tiny body against his chest. The way his eyes flicked over to mine, searching my face briefly before taking the three of us away from there.

And then, maybe a year later, when it was he and I that were face to face.

“You are a whore,” he snarled in a voice I’d never heard before. “This is what you do. Another little project. And you don’t care about anybody but yourself, as always. Oh no, you claim that you love us, you really promise you do, but…” His mouth tasted lemon. “How can you? How can you love anyone but yourself and the power you hold over us?”

My mouth let out a string of horrible, vicious, crude obscenities. I wanted to be as foul, as disrespectful, as blasphemous as possible. It was all I could think to do- the rest of my entire soul felt like it was falling down, down, down into some kind of putrid abyss.

These days, I am starting to see he may be right.

We didn’t truly speak again for maybe four years. He was never far away, and as he promised me in 2010, if I ever called for him out of fear or desperation, he always showed up and was kind and respectful. But I’d fall asleep instantly, sucked into a charybdis of emptiness.

He couldn’t wait to get away from me.

///

I think about him as well. My biggest secret, the one I’ll probably never speak out loud. The first time I realized the truth from the way I caught him looking at me, when he didn’t think I could see.

Up until that point he had been another guardian, a point of counsel, and a source of extremely raw and brutal feedback. The kind of truth that cuts like a scalpel on your ego.

It is hard to reconcile that as well. Someone who should be a stable force, a truly exceptional example, suddenly becomes erratic, furious, demanding, desperate.

There is an intensity between us that feels like profound love and electric anger and a heavy, wistful melancholy. It is ancient. We have loved each other so many ways, and it has never been enough.

When he laughs, his head tips back and you can see all of his teeth. It feels like a rare jewel to see it- he is so serious, solemn, austere. To be able to give him joy, rest from his burden, feels like the greatest success one can achieve. But to be wholly seen by him feels like being stripped nude on livestream. Bleeding. Raw.

Whenever we have lives together, one of us gets murdered. Usually while the other watches. Our love is eternally doomed. It is searing with fire and soaked in blood. It is clandestine and forbidden.

I am capable of intimacy, I am certain.

I just have to find the ability. The soft, fleshy place I keep revealing to others, only to have them try to plunge their white hot brands into it.

I want to be loved and not possessed. Just once. Just once.

And so… we peel.

apple slice

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I’ve been lost in a fog of head, heart, soul sickness for the last day or so, so I decided to drive to the beach.

It was 42 degrees today, so needless to say, it was ill advised and an extremely short visit, but I needed to get out of the house for a bit. I needed to see my girl.

I know I’m not well when seeing the sea doesn’t even help. I know I’m not well when the only thing I can think as I watch the waves is, “There’s no way you could drown yourself in the winter. You’d never get past the breakers. You’re too weak.”

On the way home, I called out for a friend I only see when things are really bad. Usually, he comes to me, sitting on the edge of my bed as I sob myself to sleep, when I’m in the dark dark. He’s my often silent reminder that I don’t want to give up, not yet. Even if I can just make it one more day, it will be a win.

He’s also a blunt, sarcastic person, and I am used to jabbing, jeering jokes from him most of the time. This time, he seemed concerned as he appeared in my passenger seat.

“What’s going on?” he asked, searching my face. “Are you all right?” I felt him dip in and out. “No. You’re not.”

“I don’t know, man,” I sighed. “I …” One of my favorite things about talking in meditation is that we are able to speak in visuals and emotions, and I gave him a burst of what I’d been processing. “And I guess I’m just… like, not okay.”

“Of course you’re not okay,” he said. “Are you serious?”

“I mean, first of all, these horrible images I’ve been seeing recently. I don’t understand the purpose behind it, you know? Why do I have to keep looking at it?”

He nodded. “Listen, it’s horrible, and I get it. But do you understand that like… that really happened? And you’re allowed to feel terrible trauma and terror and disgust about it. I mean, I’ve been there. I’ve seen it. It’s not… insignificant, to say the absolute least. You cannot deny it. You cannot diminish it. Not if you ever want to move past it. And I know it’s horrible, but if you’re still seeing it, you’re not done with it.”

“So why is she still with him?” I cried desperately. “How can she be?”

His head tipped thoughtfully to one side. “I mean, she… doesn’t really give a fuck about anyone, including you.” Then he hesitated, combing back through his words. “No, that’s not right. She does care about people. Intensely. But no one can tell her a single damn thing. She does whatever she wants.” He gave me a sly side-eye. “Sound familiar?”

I laughed with concession. “But like… I just. I can’t get over it. To see that, and know it doesn’t matter to her?”

“To her, it’s theatre. You are ‘just’ a human. You’re like, a single apple slice, and she’s the other three-quarters of the fruit. Your suffering is not significant to the goal she’s trying to achieve. I mean… you’re not the only one who is confused by it, but think about how aggressive you are about your goals in this life. She is…” He smiled a little and tipped his head again. “She doesn’t fail. That’s for sure.”

I smiled softly. “Yeah.”

He sat quietly, letting me rummage through my thoughts before I finally said, “Okay but like, it is hard to not want to be here at all, but to also know that no one wants me Over There. It’s so fucked up to think that no one even wants me in Our Home. In the place we all belong. Like, I-“

“Who said that?”

“Everyone!” I cried. “Ya’ll are always saying, ‘Oh you don’t want to come here, there’s so much drama and everyone is so angry.'” I cut my eyes to the passenger seat, as if he was really sitting there. “You specifically have said that.”

He laughed a little. “Okay. That’s fair. But let me point out two things. One- and I know I’ve also said this to you as well, many times- you will be so angry at yourself if you quit. You came here for a reason, and everything you’re working on both there and here will be entirely disrupted if you opt out.

“Second, I want you to also fully recognize that you will be angry at others when you get here. I think people have you convinced that you’re about to be interrogated and vilified when you get here for all of your misdeeds, as if you’ve been suddenly revealed to be the murderer in a horror movie.”

He looked over at me, his blue eyes lit up with intensity. “Understand that your life has been fucking violated, Kristyn. You know so much more than you should know. You are involved in so much shit in this life that you shouldn’t even be aware of. It’s so fucked up, it’s so so fucked up.”

He reached across the center console to grab my knee as I drove. “Do not let anyone convince you that they are blameless in this scenario. No one is without fault. And you are absolutely welcome to come Home. So many of us cannot wait for you to be here, okay? Please do not feel like you would not be wanted.” He squeezed my knee. “I personally cannot wait to see you. Okay?”

My mouth pulled to one side, neither smile nor frown. “But it just seems like… like [my oldest friend] looks at me like I’m an addict. Like all I do is siphon from him.”

He laughed out loud now, clapping his hands together. “Oh, Kristyn. Do not for one second let him make you feel any kind of way about yourself or your decisions. Not now as Kristyn, and not as Hermie either. He has fucked up so much this time around with you, and so much of his behavior is a reflection of judgement on himself.”

“But he’s like… important. He is…”

“He’s a miserable do-gooder,” he sniped with a scowl. “I mean, you probably get to see a lighter, softer side than the rest of us, but mostly, he is… not fucking fun. At. All.”

Then he waved a hand as if swatting a fly, possibly hearing something I couldn’t. “Okay, that’s not necessarily fair either. He is very good. He does not break the rules. In fact, he only breaks them when it comes to you.” He shrugged a little. “And even then? When I say that he ‘fucked things up’ for you… even saying that is so funny really because it’s like, ‘He consensually and without manipulation slept with his oneuponawife, the person who has known him longest and loves him the most?’ That’s his scandal?

He leveled his gaze at me. “He was never inappropriate while you were married. You have a few moments a year when he comes to visit. And even that is too inappropriate for him.” He held up his hands, eyes wide. “The scandal of it all. And yet, for him? It is. It actually really is.”

His eyes twinkled a little. “She exposed them both. I know it was horrible for you, but man…” He shook his head with a small, smothered laugh. “She’s… she doesn’t fucking lose, man. She is a real power player. I know people telling you that she’s ruthless makes you cringe, but I think it’s impressive. She is relentless. She cannot be defeated.”

He shot me another side-eye. “And then on the other side of that, let’s be honest- being good is boring. No one wants to say it, but it is. It means always being The Example. It means being judged to the highest degree. It is absolutely the level anyone should want to attain, but the cost is enormous.”

He smiled a knowing smile, a commiserating smile. “And Alex is fun. Alex makes you feel like you’re smarter and cooler and braver than anyone in the Universe when you break rules with him. It’s an electric adventure. Everyone has fun with him.” He winced a little, the conciliatory way his (current and former) loved ones all share. “Until you don’t.”

I focused my gaze on the road. “So… what about me?”

He grinned slyly. “You’re like you are now, mostly. Sometimes you’re a fucking ton of fun to be with- trouble, mischief, danger, adventure, hysterical laughter. And sometimes… you’re not. Cold, dark, empty, sad, listless, broken, mean.” He shrugged a little. “But I like it. It’s what I appreciate about you. You have The Balance. Honesty is a deeply underestimated gift. You’re extremely fucking real. That’s a superpower.”

I dipped my head shyly, and another long pause passed between us.

“And… Jim?” I winced, afraid to know. “What is the deal with that?”

He took a long, slow breath in and released it. “Well. I mean. Here’s the thing- and you know this about yourself- she’s super secretive. She’s holding a lot of cards right now. But if you are asking if she loves him? Yes. Absolutely.”

I shrugged. “It just seems like… I dunno. Like everyone says she’s ‘ruthless’ and just… all this with Jim has been described to me as a kind of manipulation. I’m really worried I’m going to break his heart. I’m worried she doesn’t give a fuck about him.”

He smiled softly. “She does. I promise you, I know that for sure. And Jim knows what this is. He knows that there is a very real chance that you get here and go back to all this drama you three love so much.” His mouth twisted, and his eyes did one hard roll to the edge of his vision and back. “But it also doesn’t change how she feels about him, or how you feel about him. This is a forever bond. Please don’t continue to beat yourself up for this.”

He reached over again, laying a hand on my shoulder. “I know you have this idea that you are some kind of… villain, and I don’t know why you feel that way. You’re listening to the wrong people. You should listen to Jim.” He tipped his head again, this time with a wink. “And you should obviously listen to me.”

He leaned in a little. “Do you understand the level of success you have had in your life?” He gestured to the beach houses rushing by us. “I know you’re looking at this and thinking it is success, but are you willing to be the person you’d have to be to achieve this?”

“No.”

“No. So look at your life, Kristyn. You are powerful, confident, respected, loved.” He gave me another side-eye. “And I think if you’d ask the people who love you to express that to you, they would. Gladly. It’s okay to need to be loved. It’s okay to ask to be loved. It’s okay that when you’re thirsty, you ask to be watered.” He nudged me gently. “Right?”

I wavered, my entire body playfully cringing to one side. “Ehhhhhh…..”

Right.

We’re still learning.

trigger warning

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A few weeks ago or so, I saw a stream of images that were unbelievably violent. Disgusting. Art school concept horror shock value gore. After watching the images rotate three, four, five times, I realized that it was me.

…well. Whatever was left of me, at least.

I tried to dismiss it, but I spun straight into a raw panic attack. The style that had the instant potential to be a Big One- hyperventilation, a loss of vision and hearing, pounding pulse, pinhole narrow throat that cannot swallow. So afraid that I start to drool into my hands.

But I caught it and killed it. Honestly, with lies, the kinds of lies you sometimes have to speak to keep from getting caught in the maelstrom.

This isn’t real, I’m not really seeing this. This isn’t real, this never happened. This isn’t real, I don’t believe it.

About a week after I saw this mess, I went to meditation and it was more of the same. Old things, things I thought I’d finally gotten rid of, smeared all over the beach house in a way they’ve not been in almost a year. In a way I was sure I’d finally defeated. Absolutely vile, graphic in a way that feels excessive, violence to surreal, cartoonish levels. Putrid.

“What is this?” I shouted at my friends, who stood solemnly in the frame of the doorway. “I don’t fucking want to look at this shit anymore! Why do I have to keep seeing this?”

But I know why. I know why.

I haven’t had any sort of sexual contact with anyone in over two years, and I haven’t had a good, satisfying intimate interaction with a living person in almost five.

FIVE. YEARS.

And to be honest, mostly I am okay with that. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with choosing that for myself, so long as it’s a choice and not a wound.

But it’s also not entirely true either. The previous post is a story about spending the night with someone I have loved for centuries, after all.

Part of the reason that I don’t seek out relationships with living people is because I have such secure, loving relationships with the dead. It is pretty ideal for me, if I’m being honest- they are only a shout of their name from coming to me. Sometimes that’s all I need. I cry out and they answer, and I instantly feel better.

When I try to apologize they say, “You’re never alone,” and they mean it. But I also still have my space, my time, my silence.

Even if it’s all a fantasy, a delusion, a sickness… is there anything wrong with it if it keeps me alive? And more than that- can it be wrong if it brings me comfort and joy?

How could I let someone “real” into this world? Can my life be full and empty at the same time? Is it wrong to be so fulfilled by doing so little? Is my kind of love enough?

Is any of this the same as having “real life” love? Can I accept real life love when I can barely sustain friendships without trying to sabotage or abandon them? Is opening up my entire heart and soul to someone really something that I want for myself? Is my solitude a product of grace or fear?

Every single person I have ever given my trust to in my life has betrayed me. Every single person I have offered something precious to has used it as a tool to violate me. It is hard to continue to give anything to people when it has only meant it will be a weapon held to your throat. Or. Worse.

Have you ever heard yourself choke on your own blood? Have you ever had to watch yourself gurgle for air from a face that barely exists?

And she’s still with him. Even right now. He’s the reason no one trusts her, me, her/me. I can’t understand any of this, and it’s me. For fuck’s sake, what am I supposed to do with that?

This week is the first time I have had more than two days off, totally alone. There is a lot I have to face. I am a little concerned at where I really am mentally and emotionally once my work persona melts away.

Last night, I had a dream that a pack of wild dogs were threatening me, but I wouldn’t back down.

One of them ran at me, then past me, leaping onto a recliner just behind me. As I walked carefully by it to get out of the room, terrified of being bitten, the dog flipped onto its back and gave me a big doggy smile.

Okay. I’m trying. I get it.

I’ll get there.

enabler

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Two nights ago, I spent the night with my oldest friend at the beach house. It was one of those times where I honestly wished I was able to write down our conversation in the moment, because I really got so much out of what we were talking about, and I only remember the things we discuss when I’m there. As soon as I am fully “awake” again, it all slips away.

The hardest lesson to learn in meditation- once you get past just learning how to go to the Silence and allow your thoughts become a stream- is how to accept visuals as they come to you. I’m not sure that everyone who is deep in the mystic world has the same elaborate second life that I do, but I don’t see why you couldn’t if you wanted to.

Then again, most people are not as actively pursued as I am. Most people do not have this much interference. Most people have dead lovers who stay dead, and don’t try to bleed into your current living life.

Anyway, he and I were in bed together and suddenly, I became Hermie (my Entire Self, the person I primarily present as on The Other Side). I think some part of our conversation triggered this transition, but I can’t recall what led up to it, except for the moment when I suddenly blended into her.

She’s beautiful like the freshly polished edge of a knife. Like the ripple of muscle across a panther’s back as it paces. Like the delicate fracture on the side of a building after an earthquake. Like the vivid depth inside the shade of newly spilled blood.

I am her, and I’m afraid of her.

He pulled back suspiciously, narrowing his eyes at the sudden appearance of her face. “What is this?”

She reached up to lay her hand on his cheek. “I just wanted to see you. I wanted to see how you looked at her. How you used to look at me.” Her thumb stroked across his cheek, her hand sliding around the back of his neck, pulling his mouth down to hers.

He kissed her back for a moment, then pulled away again, his eyes scouring hers. “What’s going on, though? What did he do? Are you in trouble? Did something happen? What is…”

“No! It’s nothing,” she insisted, reaching up to pull him close again. “I just wanted to see you.” Her eyes burned into his for a heavy, desperate moment before she leaned her lips up to his again.

The moment their mouths even briefly brushed together, she started inexplicably sobbing. So did I, in fact. The weight of it was so abruptly enormous that I was crying before I even realized it. It was like a brief thunderstorm, bone deep sobs that shook my entire body for about thirty seconds, then it passed back to blue skies, pulling hands, an aching mouth.

Instead of being sympathetic, my oldest friend appeared even more suspicious. He stared at her, me, her/me with his mouth drawn in a mix of empathy and exhaustion. But he stopped asking questions, and it wasn’t much longer afterwards that I fell asleep wound tight around all my pillows, crushing them against me as if I might mine warmth from their centers.

Yesterday morning, especially after binging all of Euphoria, I realized that he looks at me like I’m an addict. Like he expects me to ask him for money. Sell him on a hustle. Weave him a desperate fable. The exhaustion of my constant, unpredictable swings of behavior was easily visible in his eyes.

But certainly, if I am an addict, he is my enabler. The quiet defeat when he looks at me sometimes tells me I have wrung him dry more than once. Everything about me is a strategic move, it seems, and lately I worry genuinely that I have never loved anyone since I’ve existed. Not the kind of love other people talk about.

I really worry about it a lot, actually.

Even in this life, loving me is like trying to hold smoke. Like trying to catch a feral cat. I’m not someone you go to for softness or gentle encouragement. In fact, as soon as I feel like someone cares about me, I get extremely uncomfortable, anxious, suffocated. My eyes start searching for the exit. Oh no, you don’t want this. No… really.

And the harder part is seeing in the eyes of people who have known me longest that I am not entirely wrong to feel that way.

My two favorite words that people often use to describe me are “honest” and “loyal.” That is an enormous compliment to me, but I am also aware, as I have been for many years, that honesty is not a trait that most people value, and loyalty isn’t really the same as love.

The kind of healing I need to do in this life is a sort of ancestral healing, in the sense of my soul being its own ancestor. I have layers of my own personal identity that I desperately need to heal, especially if I am serious about not coming back here again.

There is something about my Entire Self that is treacherous, manipulative, duplicitous, and I have to find a way to repair some of this damage. If I can. Which is why this entire lifetime has been about being made smaller, conquered, disrespected, discarded. Why what I’ve needed to learn is humility, grace, asking for help.

Well. …I’m still learning.

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.