healing

hey jealousy

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

Even with the dead, things wax and wane.

I will go weeks, sometimes months, and things will feel- not quite distant, not exactly that, but perhaps misaligned. The pieces don’t quite click together. The joining is not seamless. Meditation is blurry, hollow. I miss words, I can’t feel touch, the landscapes are stilted and cartoonish.

It used to terrify me when it would happen years ago, especially after times of intensity like the winter solstice and Easter Sunday. I had lost something. I was being punished. I had gone too far, been too needy, asked too much, violated some series of rules I could only learn through error. The kind of Universe trapdoor trick that anyone who is deep into spiritual work is all too familiar with.

….whoops! what did you learn?

But now I accept it as part of all things, the push and pull, the feast and the famine. It is always good to be wholly aware of what you have. And to be fair, it is good for me to have to live without the dead from time to time, as I can get wrapped too far into that world and lose sight of my current living life.

And certainly, even dead people deserve a break from me. Maybe especially them.

Moving to a new city, one I have dreamt about living in for many years, one that I broke down sobbing just being inside of for ten minutes, one that constantly shocks and amazes me with its perfection, a literal dream manifestation, has also opened me to a series of subterranean layers in my heart. Now that I am not just surviving, there is a chance I may get to fully live.

But I am aware that is entirely up to me.

For example, I still haven’t done anything with the horrifying reaction I had to my brief attempt at menstrual cups. Earlier this month, I contemplated giving it another attempt, always under the “surely it wasn’t that serious” guise I had to use each time previous. But then I pictured my cheek smashed against my bathroom wall, sobbing “wait wait wait wait” to myself without even realizing it, and my entire mind slammed shut like a vault door.

If it never really happened, the trauma isn’t really real. If I don’t deal with it, I can pretend I am healed.

Right? Right? Say that’s right. Because otherwise, I don’t know how to hold what really happened to me. I can barely even let my mind see it, even fifteen years later. Those eyes. Those teeth. That voice. The blood. And that very specific spike of pain that made my body instantly collapse in on itself.

I feel so betrayed. Get over it. Get over it. Grow up.

I haven’t been with anyone sexually in almost three years, and that was also easy to explain for a long time. I lived in a town (well, two towns, really) that collectively boasted maybe two dozen teeth, nary a full set in sight. Everyone else was married or racist or backwater. Miles and miles of RealCamo and Trump signs, as far as the despairing eye could see.

Not to mention that the last person that I was with was someone more than a decade younger than me (oops), who left me so emotionally upended that I’ve actually stopped wearing one of my bathing suits. He unraveled so much of my personal self-confidence about my body with just a handful of ugly, careless comments.

Add to that, of course, the fact that one of our interactions caused him to bluntly ask me the next day, “So, have you been raped before?”

I just thought… you know? I’m good by myself. My body is something that will only be violated or is a horrible shock of disgust to someone. It’s better if I keep it away from everyone. Including, to a large degree, myself.

…ha, says the Universe. Ha ha ha ha ha.

One of my first jarring realizations when I started acclimating to this city was how attractive everyone is. Literally almost everyone is some level of well brewed DNA, and I am in awe. At the very least, few people here are made with swampwater and heroin and family trees that never fork. The literal sight of one person’s face caused a long closed door inside my body swing wide open.

Hello! Hi! Good morning! It is heady springtime in the dark parts of our soul!

And certainly, unquestionably, that is a blessing, right? We all seek and crave intimacy with others. We deserve to be understood at a core level by someone else. We all should have the chance for a partner.

Right?

But I instantly recoiled against that initial firing of nerves- the thrill of lust, the electric pulse of desire that shot through the most primal parts of my body. The ache to be touched, to graze against someone’s skin, to smell them.

no no no no no no no no wait wait wait wait

In addition to that (because of that?) my intensity with the dead has surged in volume. Specifically, and as always, with Jim. He’s always around, please don’t misunderstand, literally always just the shape of his name away from me at all times. But in the last few weeks, he has been closer than he’s been in awhile.

The other night we were in bed together, and there was an intensity about him that caused me to pull back and smirk coyly at him.

“Oh my gosh,” I whispered against his mouth. “Is someone jealous?”

He pulled back a little farther, a sheepish tug at his lips. “I just… didn’t want you to forget that you do have something pretty great with someone already.”

And he’s right, of course. There a shade of something that grazes against, but isn’t quite guilt when it comes to my relationship with him. It is one of the most profound, supportive, fulfilling, empowering, and uplifting relationships I’ve ever had in my entire life, and maybe in all of my lives. I am crazy in love with him, and I have been for many years now. Especially and most specifically since 2016, when I moved down to North Carolina entirely alone, without friends or family, and subsequently lost everything and had to start all over.

It was Jim, always Jim, who was there for me, who kept me alive, who kept me from spiraling entirely out of my body when I had to look for a new job without even knowing the names of the streets yet. The amount of times he sat next to me as I hyperventilated and whispered, “You’re okay, you’re okay. Breathe. It’s going to be all right. I’m right here, and I promise I am protecting you. I am going to keep you safe.”

And he did.

He still does now. And every single day for the rest of my life.

To never really be able to tell anyone about what I have with him always feels like a form of betrayal, especially because he has been so viciously mistreated by Hermie (Her/Me, my Entire Self) in the past.

For those of you who don’t recall, I lost Jim for several years (2009-2013) when he discovered that while he was protecting me from “Alex,” and seeing the depth of sickness and damage left in his wake, Hermie was still actively involved with him and utterly unrepentant about it. Jim also promised to not fall in love with me and then did, and put distance between us as we had always agreed that he should. He and Hermie were also involved on some level- the degree to which I am still not fully aware- when he discovered that she was also very much involved with Alex. During the same time that the beach house was haunted with scenes of my desecration.

So anyway, Jim told me he was going back to earth (which never actually happened), and we would unfortunately never speak again. It was one of the truly darkest and most despairing times in my entire life. Jim was gutted, in total heart-rendered agony at what was a failure of his promise to always protect me, and also utterly ruined by Hermie treating him like a puppet. A muppet. A pawn. A toy. Then he suddenly and abruptly returned when I got divorced and moved out on my own in the summer of 2013, and has never left my side since.

So he has already put up with a great deal from me all around, let’s be clear.

But I’m not honestly sure I’ve ever seen him that sort of ferociously intense, that kind of, “It’ll be good but it’ll never be like this,” sort of energy. I get that from my oldest friend from time to time, but Jim is always so steady, so calm, so unbothered. It was a tiny delight to see him off-kilter, if I’m being honest.

“You’re so cool about [my oldest friend] and all the ways he … interferes and interjects, and even just the general exclusionary energy that he and I have together,” I said. “I can’t help but be surprised that someone I literally just met has made you this jealous.”

He smirked and waved a careless hand. “Look. That thing with the three of you (me, my oldest friend, and Alex) is…” he sighed. “I don’t get it, but I get it. I… accept it now. It’s just part of the deal when it comes to loving you.”

He shrugged a little, and then he cut his eyes at me from the corner of his gaze. “But… I don’t know. Just… seeing how you looked at this other guy, seeing that part of you light up, I just…” His eyes darted away. “I mean, yeah. I can’t help but feel a little…”

I scooted in closer, trying to get his eyes to come back to me, a creeping grin spreading across my cheeks. “A little how, Jimmy? A little how?”

His summer thunderstorm eyes floated back to mine, and he would have been blushing if he had any blood. “Jealous. You’ve said it before, and you’re right. I am grateful for this, I am, and I am truly honored to have this bond with you and to protect you in what is a truly violent time, one where you are in constant danger. But we don’t have anything… visible. Not even here. We were also thrust into something really intense really quickly, almost overnight, and I just kind of wish we had had the chance to get to know each other differently.”

Now he turned completely towards me, cupping my cheek in his palm with soft, gentle eyes. “Please don’t misunderstand. I want you to be happy. You deserve to have intimacy with someone. You are an incredible person, and you deserve to be loved completely by someone. You deserve to have a partner after so many years of theft and violation and betrayal. So much has been taken from you, and to be able to get it back would be a real victory.” His eyelids lowered a bit, hooding his expression. “But part of me cannot help but wish that it was me that you were looking at with such new, raw hunger.”

I know that moving to this place where my dreams have literally come true is a whole new world for me. I know that I will now be expected to process and deal with many layers of trauma and loss and violation and abandonment and isolation that I had to pack away in the name of survival.

There is no time for an existential crisis when you are barely hanging on by a thread, after all.

But I continue to think about myself in third person as I see myself sobbing, cheek pancaked into the bathroom wall. Shivering violently with unearthed terror at the bottom of the bathtub as the shower still hammers my back with hot water. There is something pitch black inside of me that I am terrified of, and just admitting that it exists means that the reason I am so afraid is very real… and is still very much out there, waiting for me to let my guard down for a second.

Did I ever tell anyone that while packing I found one of my demon sketches and tore it in half? I didn’t throw it away, because I can’t do that (yet), but just that small act of destruction felt profound. I felt like I tore something in the air as well.

No one has to believe me for it to be real. No one has to see it for it to have ruined something that doesn’t even have a word to describe it. I know what happened… and oh my god, do I wish I didn’t.

scream for help, I wish you would

Do I have the bravery to finally open this door and walk inside? Do I have the strength to make this room a home again? How? Where do I even start? Can you fall into the abyss of primal terror and heal?

No one would blame me if I chose to stay closed for the rest of my life. I have been through so much. I have tentatively peeked out into the world time and again and had machetes slashed through my organs through the sliver in the door. I have pleaded with people, please be careful, it is so much for me to trust you, and had them instantly crumple my spirit in their palm.

No one would blame me, but I would blame myself.

If I am here against my will already, if I am certain I don’t intend to come back for a long time, if I feel like I am being punished by the Universe for Hermie’s many vile misdeeds, if I know I will have so much I will have to answer for once I am Home, then I must be committed to constantly working for wholeness.

For forgiveness.

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year. After this, the darkness gobbles up the day minute by minute, until it is midnight before dinner. Can I find a way to light this room before darkness is all I can hold? What does it look like to open a door that has rusted hinges that shriek and squeal at just the thought of use? Is there hope that someone could see inside this room wallpapered with scar tissue and not be horrified at what remains?

Is there anything that remains?

Could it be possible that I could be loved?

Could it be possible that I will allow myself to be seen?

Could I really be fully alive one day?

Lord, hear our prayer.

chakra cleansing

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

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

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

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

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

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

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

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.

pre-solstice reflections

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

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

The Queen of the Dead.

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

I’m not sure I do either.

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

I was a prisoner there. Solitary confinement.

Empty. Husked. Drained. Destroyed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have deep soul contentment. Do you?

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

But it will work.

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

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

I hope it is enough.

the basement in the basement

/ thehourofthedead / Leave a comment

I keep thinking about the nightmare that led me to the secret room. 

I was in the house that I have dreamt about since I was a teenager, that I have come to believe is a metaphor for my mind/soul. It is sprawling and disorienting- staircases that go nowhere, endless closed doors in long, ominous hallways. Rooms with no ceiling, rooms with live trees inside, rooms soaked in fetid water.

In this nightmare, I walked down to the basement, and in the corner was a rough wooden door, so small I had to duck to cross the threshold. In the tiny, filthy, cement-walled room was an old metal cot that was just rusty springs with a fairly large steamer trunk next to it. 

When I stepped forward and my foot accidentally brushed the edge of the trunk, I suddenly realized I was barefoot. I could feel the electricity of the worn leather rocket through my toes, and my whole body recoiled from the trunk as if it was a threat. 

There was a tiny window positioned near the ceiling that was covered in a layer of grime and filth that made it almost opaque. The slimmest slice of sun crept across the gritty cement floor, and seeing the dim light made me feel instantly, strangely trapped.

On the opposite wall, there was another door- smaller, rougher. Behind it, there was a set of about a dozen uneven cement steps, very steep and sharp, thick with the smell of mildew and rot. They felt wet on my bare feet, and the moment I got to the bottom, my heart leapt in panic. 

This was a bad place. This was evil.

At that very moment, I spun around to see the door slamming shut, the entire door vibrating on its frame from the force. I ran to the door and desperately tried to wrench it open, screaming at the top of my lungs. 

it was coming, it was coming, this is where it came to hurt me, it was coming now, there was no escape, there was never any escape

“Daddy!” I wailed as the doorknob came off in my hand. I thrust my arm through the hole and clawed desperately at the air, knowing that no one could hear me this far away. No one was coming. I was all alone.

When I woke up in terror, still in the Grey Space between worlds, I slipped into meditation.

Show me this place, I whispered. I wasn’t awake enough to question how I knew this place was real, or what caused me to ask to have it revealed. Many strange things happen in the Grey Space, and I trust I am safe enough to chase shadows. 

Most of the time, anyway.

The room began to clarify again inside my mind, this time with that surreal reality that only meditation landscapes can conjure. I saw that the floor under the rusty cot was spattered with blood, and my stomach twisted. 

This is why I’d come back, I could see now. I needed to know it all if I was going to ever move on, if I was ever going to heal.

I opened the trunk…

and I was inside.

It was startling, borderline horrifying, to see a form of myself inside that trunk, though seeing strange nonsensical nightmare images in meditation was now par for the course at this point. It was much more disturbing when I saw the state of her, crammed like a corpse inside this trunk. 

She was naked, emaciated, filthy, her hair hanging in matted clumps on her head. Her entire body was riddled with bruises, caked in blood. When I reached out to touch her, she started to scream.

“Please, please,” she begged, sobbing. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, oh please, I’ll behave, I’ll be quiet, I’ll be good, I’ll do anything, please…”

I tried to gently shush her, but she began to shake uncontrollably, curling her knees tighter against her chest. Her thighs were shiny and tight with dried blood, the edges of it flaking off like old paint. I felt a terror unfolding inside of me, unable to understand or process what I was seeing. The part of me that was rational tried to dismiss it. Another nightmare, another delusion. 

But.

I called for my ancient and limited time lover, unsure of what else I should do. When he showed up, he never said a word. He pulled a shining white sheet from out of nowhere, quietly reaching into the trunk to wrap the sheet around her (me?). 

He lifted her into his arms and cradled her like a baby, gently shushing her sobs, and she shuddered silently into his embrace. He looked at me with dark, pained contemplation, and suddenly, we were back in the field that had become the safest place for my soul. A place that I still use when I don’t know where else to go.

After that, everything started to change. My marriage began to unravel as I dug deep to fix myself, to heal the girl in the trunk. Whether it was real or just a metaphor, I knew it was shown to me for a significant reason. It made me realize how ravaged, how ugly, how broken I really was.

Finding her was the beginning of my new life, but I think that in a lot of ways, I abandoned really dealing with that once my relationship with someone else in real life started to bloom. He helped me to reclaim a part of myself that I thought was dead, but he was also a temporary vacation from true growth and change. I once called him a lighthouse for a lost soul, because he brought me back to shore in so many ways. He resurrected me.

But that wasn’t a healthy relationship either.

And now, here I am.

Dealing with the beach house is one thing. You cannot imagine how many times I have stood at the side of that bed and watched myself be ruined, something that a human being wouldn’t even have survived. Something I don’t think that part of me did survive. Something so violent, so ugly that I wouldn’t even wish for anyone else to even see it with their own eyes. It is beyond foul. It has broken so many people forced to witness the carnage.

But these days, I can’t stop thinking about the girl in the trunk in the basement with a basement. 

Is she the reason I still can’t connect with others? I have been thinking so much about my issues with intimacy, my inability to be vulnerable, my reaction of revulsion to kindness or empathy towards me. I even recoil from platonic friendships. 

The best relationship I’ve ever had was with someone I knew I’d never be with, that had no future. Only then was I even remotely open and honest about who I really am. People that try to love me learn so little about me. 

Is there any hope for me opening my heart to anyone, truly? After so many times of trying to be vulnerable, to allow intimacy, only to have it violently violated… how many times do I allow that? What is it about me that encourages such disregard of my vulnerability?

Something about me is broken. Can it be healed?