beach house

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.

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

her/me

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In 2010, I developed the ability to see myself in third person in meditation. I’m not sure if it’s a skill others have, or would even want to have. Mine came about because of the degree of violation and trauma I had to deal with that only I knew about or could explain… and also because I was being held accountable for her behavior in those years, things I didn’t even know were happening.

Once Alex was gone completely, pulled out of me (by myself) that summer, I met her for the first time. I was separated from my ex, and she gently tried to get me to be brave enough to leave him.

I wasn’t strong enough. I wish I had listened to myself that summer, that I had been able to stand on my own two feet. In fact, it would take three more years to finally have a spine again.

The way I see her- and what I think is her/our Home form- is of a slender, lithe woman with olive skin and a shining mane of dark hair. Her eyes are wild, glittering with violence, like Villanelle in Killing Eve. She stares at you as if she is weighing your flesh. She looks tired of your life, like your breath is a burden on her.

Our eyes are the same color. They always are, from what I understand.

After what I saw in meditation the last time- she and Alex (not his real name, as I feel occasionally compelled to express) together in their little love nest- I needed to speak to her.

Her. Me. Her/me. Hermie. I dealt with her a great deal in 2011 and 2012, but not much since then. To be honest, I spent the following years trying to pretend none of that happened, desperate to believe I was never that “insane.”

But we all know I’m insane now, so.

We met at The Midpoint, my neutral place- a field full of lush green grass, sometimes filled with some flowers, but always with a shallow, crystal clear stream burbling through the center.

With our feet in the water, I turned to stare at her in disbelief.

“So you’re like… with him?”

She sighed. “I mean. It’s hard to explain. First of all, it keeps him away from you, which is what you have said you want. Secondly, I’m not just going to give up on him, okay? We are working hard to try to make him better. And you understand and accept that this is part of our plan.” Her tone was annoyed, not comprehending or allowing my admonishment.

“But like… how can you just… sacrifice me? Do you understand what you did to my life?”

Her emerald eyes looked flat, blank, and she regarded me like a puddle of waste dripping from a summer dumpster. “I don’t understand. Are you fine now or…?”

My eyebrows bounced in shock. “Oh. Okay. Wow.”

She arched hers back at me and said nothing. Defiant. Uninterested.

After a long moment of silence, I said, “So nothing that I am experiencing now matters to you? What about [our oldest friend, the one who took me to the house to show me this foolishness]?”

She chuckled with a sharp edge of bitterness. “It’s all fresh to you. He is…” She laughed again, almost to herself, shaking her head. “Look. You’re a person, so I get it. You’re swept away in the fable. Ooh, ahh.” She waved her hands as if she was casting a spell, then laughed one more time, darker. Nastier.

“He’s not the person you imagine he is. I mean, look at how he’s behaved with you in this life.” She gave me a hard side-eye, and I acknowledged her with a small nod.

“So… what about Jim?” I asked, tentatively.

She sighed and wouldn’t meet my eyes, offering a half-hearted shrug.

“Oh man,” I snapped. “Seriously?”

“He’s nice, okay?” she replied irritably, her eyes arcing electricity. “And I’m grateful for what he’s done for you. I have a great deal of tenderness for him. He’s doing a lot of really great work right now, and …” she held her palms out. “I mean, we’ll see what happens. It’s just…”

“‘It’s not like what WE have,‘” I sneered at her. “Yeah. I’ve heard that before.”

“You don’t get it,” she said dismissively. “And I know you’ve heard that before too, but it doesn’t make it any less true. Do I love Jim? Sure. But am I also involved with real work with the person you know as Alex? Absolutely. And I am very committed to that right now.”

I threw my hands up, baffled. “So why come here to Earth? Why now?”

She shrugged. “I mean… I didn’t know he’d die. I wanted a chance to live a ‘clean’ life, one without his interruptions. For once.”

“So did you know … like, when he died?”

She arched her brow at me again, observing me with amused irritation. “Did we not find out immediately, and have an enormous, bizarrely deep reaction to it? To the degree that we stopped listening to his music for years?”

Then she held up her hands defensively- a brief moment of concession. “Listen- what has happened here is… not normal. Obviously. Most people don’t have to split in half just to be able to work through something this vile. You’re lucky to not remember most of what happened.” She shook her head gently, like a weary parent. “Stop trying. There’s nothing you will gain from seeing any of what your brain allowed you to lose.”

“And again… you’re okay with that?” I was grazing the edge of appalled, and I could tell my face showed it.

Her mouth pulled hard into a sneer. Furious, even more defiant than before. “And again.. you are fine, right? You lived? You are recovered? You are the most powerful and confident you’ve ever been, living what I see is a lovely, successful, content life?”

I put my hand up and gave her a hard glare. “Hang on. I can’t have intimacy with anyone but the dead, I either sabotage or back away from all friendships, and I’m a fucking retail manager. Of all fucking things.”

Now her entire face twisted into an ugly, disgusted expression. She waved both hands at me dismissively, as if I was a foul scent she could push off. “Oh, please. Give me a break. Don’t pretend you don’t know who you are. Retail manager.”

She rolled her eyes. “You have seen who you are and what you can do. Two of the most powerful souls in this Universe are obsessed with you to the point of ruining your life, and to be honest? We treat them like fuckboys.” She shrugged dismissively. “So don’t be foolish.”

“So you’d rather fuck around with a demon than the other one?” I barked. “I just don’t understand.”

“He’s not a demon, okay?” she snapped. “That’s fucking crude. Demons are worthless. They’re pawns. That was all for show, okay? It was part of his strategy, and it was successful.” Her mouth turned again. “But we were much more successful, and though he exposed a great deal, we have exposed him even more.”

She pressed her palms together, as if trying to hold her patience together. “You don’t understand. You will. Please just worry about yourself.”

“Really? The teeth, the eyes, the cheekbones…”

“Oh my God,” she growled. Her eyes were practically black. “Everyone makes it more serious than it is. It was a charade, okay? You’re fine. You survived. It proved a point to him. It’s a catalyst for his change.”

My eyes were huge. “Oh… kay? Wow. You’re really… invested in this, I see.”

She shrugged dismissively, and I fell asleep.

How do you forgive your own soul when it sacrifices you and isn’t sorry?

ruthless

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

A few nights ago, I got pressured into meditating. It’s been a long while since that’s happened, this pushpushpush to see something. It’s also been awhile since I’ve been sober enough at the end of the night that I can even hear anyone.

These days, I usually show up and I’m already inside the bedroom of the beach house. This time (again for the first time in a long time), it wouldn’t “load.” The images kept stalling out, stuttering as if they were on a broken reel of film.

I closed my eyes and took a breath, letting whatever I was supposed to see wash over my eyes. When I opened them, I saw myself outside the beach house, looking in.

“Oh no,” I said out loud on the sand, knowing I could be heard. “It’s never good news when I start outside the house.” I used to see it like this so often when things were hard, broken, ruined.

As I approached, the house appeared to be up a slope that slowly turned from sand to grass. When I stood in the glass patio doorway that led into the bedroom, I saw that the inside wasn’t the same either. The golden beachy hardwoods were dark oak, teak. The whites and turquoises were hunter green and charcoal grey. Beautiful, but alien.

I was so baffled by how the house was the same and different at the same time that at first, I didn’t notice the people in the bed.

Tangled between the sheets were a beautiful, olive-skinned woman with a long, thick jungle of dark hair, and a soft, thin man with a highly angular face- two people I immediately recognized, but didn’t want to.

Instead, I stared blankly at it, confused. Why was I seeing this? Why was I here? Where was this?

I walked into the open plan living room/kitchen and saw other scenes- the two of them laughing and cooking together, dancing in the living room, kissing on the couch. I watched it all suspiciously, my mood bordering on annoyed, disgusted.

I spun around, back towards the bedroom, and my oldest friend was standing in the doorway. He had That Look on his face- weary and disappointed, struggling for grace. A look I have unfortunately have grown used to seeing over the last fourteen years.

This time, though, it didn’t seem to be directed at me.

Well. Not me.

He looked different too- his features were sharper, his skin slightly darker. He glanced at the bed, pointedly, and then turned his searing golden eyes back to me.

“You wanted to know where he was,” he said softly. “You kept asking and asking, worried that he might be out in the world. Well.” He swept his arm wide, as if unveiling a grand prize. “Here he is.”

I was still baffled, holding my palms out helplessly at the bed that contained Alex and my Entire Self. “Okay, but this is…”

“This is now. Well.” His head dipped to one side. “Whenever now is. I have no idea what day it even is there. But like… this is currently happening. This is recent, not a memory.”

I still couldn’t understand, looking back and forth between him and them. “Okay, no but. Like. She’s with him?”

His eyebrows raised with a bit of sadness, a commiseration with my lack of comprehension. “Yes.” Then he shrugged, sighing deeply. “Maybe. I don’t know. She’s… sequestered with him, at the very least. I can’t tell if it’s to keep him away from you, or because…”

His mouth twisted bitterly, his eyes trying not to look at them. “Because this is what she actually wants.”

“Can’t you just ask-“

“She won’t speak to anyone.” He shrugged again, this time with a touch more anger, a mouth of lemon. “So maybe that’s why it seems like I am trying to soak up as much time with you as I can. I guess it’s selfish, greedy maybe. But I don’t honestly know what her motives are. And neither do you. Everything may change once you come Home.”

I peeked back at the bed again, turning slowly to watch the series of images in the living room and kitchen. “But I mean, who I am now doesn’t matter? The connection we have in this life is… meaningless?”

He sighed from the bottom of his soul, and I saw real pain cross over his face, an expression I’m not sure I’ve ever seen before.

He looked so real- nothing like a dream, or a memory, or a figment of my imagination. If you’ve never really seen people in meditation, you can’t understand. His face is so familiar to me. I have known him since before time was time.

“She’s… ruthless, Kristyn. You’re the best version of her so far, by far, but you don’t understand how she can be. She does whatever she wants to accomplish her end goal. Nothing and no one else matters. It is highly effective, but it is…”

He smiled, wan and thin, centuries of heartbreak. “It is hard on the people who love her. And whatever she has with him… it consumes everything else.”

This last shrug was helpless. “We don’t have to understand it for it to be true. I just have to have faith that she knows what she’s doing.”

Does she?

Do I?

9/20/2010

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

[transcribed from the original entry]

I went to see Alex (not his real name) last night, and I was nervous as soon as I set foot on the sand. The entire house was washed out and grey while the landscape around it was still full color. It was instantly eerie. Wrong.

Alex stepped into the doorway from the bedroom that led out onto the sand, leaning heavily against it. He was also entirely grey, and as I approached him, I realized that his form was actually made of ash.

I rushed to his side and laid a hand on his cheek. His cheekbone crumbled under my palm, raining ash onto the ground, and I pulled my hand back in horror.

Despite my disgust, I leaned closer to peer at his eyes. They were matte, no pupils, blank as a statue. “Alex?”

“Krissy…” he breathed, reaching blindly for my hands. His fingers broke off against mine, his hands crumbling to the wrist. “Oh, Krissy. You came.”

“Alex, what is going on here? What are you doing?” I reached out to touch him and then recoiled over and over, remembering his fragility.

“I can’t… I’m just trying to…” The more he tried to form words, the more his mouth crumbled. His lips would fall off in clumps and then reform as he struggled to speak. Eventually he just gave up, slumping chin on chest.

“Let me help,” I said, putting my hands on his chest, my palms pressing against his ashen sternum. A white light slowly began to grow, filling his torso with more solidity. His skin began to gain color as the light traveled through his chest into his arms, up his throat. He was slowly becoming whole again.

He threw my arms off, and instantly the light began to fade. His solidity vanished with it, turning him back to ash.

“No,” he mumbled, and when he shook his head, half of his face came off with it. He lifted an arm to keep me back and it broke at the elbow, exploding into a cloud on the sand. “This is my battle. This is for me to figure out.”

“Have you seen yourself?” I challenged. “You need help.” 

He tried to speak, but the entire right side of his body collapsed in an ashen avalanche. In terror, I called out for Jim.

“No!” Alex tried to shout, but he was now falling apart so rapidly he was hardly even a human form any longer.

Jim showed up instantly, and when he saw Alex as a huge pile of ash in front of the open patio doors, his eyes grew huge. 

I reached out for Jim’s hand, and we knelt in front of what remained of Alex, focusing our energy on him until he regained form. The color spread out from his renewed form into the house, bringing it back to life as well.

I was concerned we’d have to fight a fully healed and bitterly furious Alex, but he was suddenly unconscious. It was strange to see him like this, in an almost fairytale-like slumber, his features serene and soft. It had been so long since I’d seen him so vulnerable.

“Alex?” I said gently, squeezing his shoulder. “Hey. Wake up.” I gently tapped his cheek with my fingers.

He didn’t respond.

I shook his shoulder until his head rattled slightly. “Alex. Hey.” I slapped his cheek. 

Nothing.

I looked up to express concern to Jim, but he was peering into the bedroom.

“Did you hear that?” he asked in a thin voice, his eyes dark, his entire body on alert. “What the fuck was that?”

He stepped through the doors and my stomach sank. I hadn’t been inside in a long time, and I wasn’t particularly interested in finding out what might be making noise within.

Or to be more honest, what I already knew was there.

And indeed, each room was playing a neverending loop of all the worst things Alex had ever done to me in that house. And the worst of the worst was- as always- in the bedroom.

What was happening in that room was so grotesque it was a caricature, something so appalling and vile that it was impossible to believe. And especially impossible for me, when I was adamant that it was fine, and not traumatic at all.

Without being unnecessarily triggering, or the least amount I can be while still getting my point across- there was a slightly red tinge to the lighting in the room because of the blood sprayed up the aquarium.

It was all you could smell- wet copper, and the sharpness of adrenaline and terror. The energy felt wet with violence.

Jim was staring at this looping  “mirage” with a face I had never seen before and couldn’t interpret. 

He leaned down to examine it further, stunned, as if he couldn’t fully comprehend what he was seeing. As he got to eye level, the onyx-eyed, filth-fanged version of “Alex” looked up at him and laid one long, skeletal finger against his mouth.

Shhh.

Jim staggered backwards and grabbed my hand as if he needed it to keep from falling, and pulled me back to the beach. Running.

We got to escape.

She didn’t.

Outside by the surf, Alex was awake. He was sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching the waves.

When he saw us approach, his face crumpled.

“Oh, you shouldn’t have helped me, Krissy,” he mewled, and I winced at his weak, flimsy tone.

“You needed help, Alex.” I stooped down next to him, searching his face, but he couldn’t meet my eyes.

He glanced briefly at the house. You could hear screaming even from this distance. 

“Have you been in there? I don’t deserve your help.” He was on the verge of tears again, his voice shimmering with sobs. “Look at what I’ve done!”

“This isn’t helping you though,” I said firmly. “This isn’t supposed to be punishment. This is about you getting better.”

Now he actually began to cry, burying his face in his hands and weeping. “You have to hate me, Krissy. You have to. You should be looking at me the way that he is.”

I glanced up at Jim. His face was hard with fury, his eyes locked on the horizon, angrier than I’ve ever seen him. His tongue was pressed into the corner of his jaw, one heel bouncing violently into the sand. His arms were crossed so tightly against his chest that it would have ached.

Jim flicked his gaze at me briefly, then went back to scouring the waves in the distance. “It seems like everything here is okay now.” His eyes bounced back to me again, burning with desperation. “I’ll talk to you later, okay? I want to talk to you.”

His eyes went back to the ocean and Alex said, “Jim-”

Jim held up a hand with a hard, single shake of his head, and disappeared.

cleansed

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

“So the reason that you always disappear is because of how I feel now, isn’t it?” I asked gently.

He smiled gently. “Yes.”

I bumped my knee against his. “But don’t go yet, okay?”

“Okay.” He bumped me back. “Do you want to work, then?”

We went to the beach and I saw what I’ve seen for too long now- black smoke rising out of the palm trees, laughter like high-pitched birds cackling, the sound of alien legs and feet shuffling on the sand.

I walked through the house and pulsed white light through every room. Creatures appeared like a video game and I sliced them with a sword, battered them with an axe, and they dissolved into ash. Creatures with black, slimy skin. Creatures with no head. Creatures with a face of fangs. Creatures that ran at me like deformed dogs, on uneven and unsteady limbs.

Destroyed, destroyed, destroyed. Maybe I was screaming the whole time. I don’t even know for sure. It seemed I could feel their oily thick blood all over my skin, in my bared teeth, clumping in my loose, wild hair.

There was a silence and I ran my hand over the countertops in the kitchen, slowly walked through the living room, and then he was there. In the doorway. The way he’d been so many times, when it meant I was about to be torn apart, sliced open, organs spilling out, so many empty holes to be ruined.

His neck looked broken, his head dangling loosely to one side, occasionally popping up like a puppet as he spoke. His eyes were black, black, black. His voice sounded like shrieking metal. His arms hung rotten and limp at his sides.

I was terrified beyond words, but approached him anyway, and this is when Fisher came to lay on my chest.

“You aren’t welcome here,” I said.

His broken neck waggled slightly, and his foul fangs slid from behind his lips. “I see that you know who you are now.”

“Yes. I do.”

He began to talk nonstop, telling me what was real, what wasn’t, and I felt an old, familiar feeling. Smoky sickness, weeping into my brain, making my logic surreal and confused. Fisher laid his little foot on my hand and flexed his claws gently into my fingers.

“Get out,” I sneered, lifting my hands and pushing him backwards with pure energy. “You don’t belong here.”

He kept trying to speak, but I continued to blast him backwards with my hands, until he was at the edge of the sea. My entire body was shaking.

“You are not welcome here,” I announced. He began to shrink as I screamed, smaller and smaller, until he was the size of the tiny, piggish little demon that first attacked me in 2005. How silly and small and pathetic he was now, how he’d always been. Nothing magnificent or awe-inspiring… just another bag of garbage energy, a tiny little charger that tried to suck from the innocent.

And I told him so. How dare you steal from a little girl. How dare you take something she had no idea she was giving. How could you betray a love so pure, so generous, so naive.

But of course, he had no smoky words for that.

I spun around to face the island, and light rose from the sand. “None of you are welcome here. This. Is. My. Home.

“All. Of. You. Are. Banished.”

A blinding light seared through the entire landscape, and there was the sound of shrieking and screaming and tearing of flesh. I felt severe, searing pain roar through my third eye, and my entire body convulsed through one strong shudder.

And then all was still.