spirituality

will

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When Will was seventeen, he was in bed with another boy for the very first time in his life. It was the 1950s, and homosexuality was absolutely not an option in his family. So when his father opened the door and discovered his son tangled up naked, it was a horrifying and humiliating disaster.

His father simply closed the door without a word, and it left Will in a state of total and utter panic. He tiptoed around the house in hysteria for days, waiting for the beating that surely awaited him.

Instead, a week or so later, his father took him into the woods under the guise of going hunting. They walked deep into the forest, and he shot his son in the back of the head. Will’s body was never found.

Will was the ghost that haunted my childhood home, as far back as I can honestly remember. He would chase me through the house in the night, appearing in my mind as a monster with teeth that chewed constantly the back of my neck. He was the first ghost I successfully put up boundaries against- he wasn’t allowed in my bedroom, and as soon as I could slam my door shut, he’d disappear.

Except for the night, way back in 2003, when I suddenly felt a presence in my room. I thought it was “Alex,” because I had just had a dream about him a few nights prior, and I was surrounded by people who were actively speaking to him either in meditation or through Ouija boards. I was so desperate to be included in this very exclusive Cool Kids Club.

“Alex?” I asked out loud, and a green flash streaked right in front of my eyes in the candlelit semi-dark. I gasped, and then watched with my own eyes as the edge of my bed lowered, as if someone had sat down on it.

Most supernatural things are both exhilarating and literally bone-chilling. When people tell me ghost stories that are true, it always makes my throat close and my eyes well up with tears. If you know, you know. Seeing my mattress shift on its own made me instantly start to cry and feel as if I might throw up, all at once.

Will is the first person we ever spoke to on the Ouija board, and actually the person who demanded that we speak every single night at midnight. If we didn’t, he would shove papers off desks onto the floor, make my personal items go missing, or poke us in the ribs all night as we tried to sleep.

Will, Alex, and my now ex-husband (but then fiancé) were a very close group for several years. With Alex’s guidance and support, Will decided he wanted to finally transition to the Other Side. We were told that because of the trouble he had caused (he haunted the FUCK out of people, not just my family- he used to come on the board and regale us with horrible and hilarious stories of how he’d ruined someone’s night… he especially loved unfortunate souls on too much acid), he had to put in all of this extra work to essentially repay his debt. Alex, in his bid to be a better person, helped to orchestrate his healing.

Will transitioned over right at the same time that things with Alex and I were getting very intense, so I don’t think I paid the correct amount of attention to how different he suddenly became. Will and my ex were also much closer, probably because of how close Alex and I were, so maybe I didn’t care? My ex and Will were entwined, which allowed Alex and I to surreptitiously strengthen our bond. Alex always just said Will was off exploring, because this was his first life, and therefore first opportunity to come Home. I had no reason not to believe that.

How did Will feel coming to the Other Side, seeing the Entire Truth? He was led- like my ex and I were- to believe that this was all new and fresh to us all. To get Home and realize that Alex and I already knew each other for centuries and centuries, and this was all some huge elaborate dance? That Alex was, in fact, a high-ranking demon trying (and failing) to make amends?

Will must have felt so blindsided. This precious boy who was both seventeen and well into his sixties, trapped in a liminal space where he was both so old and also just a baby. Murdered by his own father, left to rot to dust in the forest. Alex as a surrogate father, who then turns out to be a rapist and murderer.

In late summer of 2005, Alex had come to visit through my ex and as we cuddled in an afterglow, Alex suddenly gasped in panic.

“Will is here,” he said in a low, flat voice. “He is very upset.” Then he (inside my ex’s body, of course) began to hyperventilate and shiver. I wrapped my arms around him and wept, begging him to stay, but Will got through and shoved me violently off of him.

“Alex lied to me,” he growled. “He said he was coming here to talk and clear things up and you fucked?” He shook his head. “You two are disgusting. You’re a married woman. You should be ashamed.”

When I tried to explain that I was confused too, that it was complicated, that the three of us had figured out a way to make it work, he got even angrier.

“You know,” he said, “I had three really great friends. And now I have none.”

A year later, after Alex raped me, Will was the first person I told. I think he saved my life, because I’m almost sure he’s the one who then raised an alarm to bring everyone else’s attention to the situation. He was perhaps the first person who realized that Alex was quickly backsliding into extremely dangerous ground.

Suddenly, there were a ton of dead people appearing to me in meditation, and everyone had input or an opinion on what I needed to do to move forward. This was the period of my life when there were so many voices that I felt like I genuinely might be schizophrenic. At that point, the idea that I had completely lost my mind was actually preferable to the reality, and at that point, I didn’t even remember what had really happened.

I was reading about when Jim first started to come visit me, when he first became my “guardian,” so to speak. We were the last two people left who would be around Alex on any level.

As I read this condensed version of my journals that I found, where I’m trying to shape it into a fictional story, I actually had to edit and rewrite the historical events because they’re honestly too sick to believe.

Now I see everyone else’s horror at my behavior. I was so completely bound to him, constantly allowing him access to me even though he did literally nothing but betray and assault me at every single opportunity.

He raped me at least four or five times that I actually remember, but it was probably on the scale of dozens, and at least once it was so violent it caused people to have full emotional breakdowns witnessing the replay I’d cursed the beach house with.

And I just kept forgiving him. And not just forgiving him, falling back in love with him. And I know that is illness, it is abuse, it is trauma, and largely it was also terror, too. But speaking with Hermie… it was also a calculated war strategy? I can’t understand.

I gave myself up to pillaged, my whole body just a small town to be incinerated and leveled…. all just to show a demon he was a demon? What the fuck was the purpose of that?

Last night, I spoke to Jim and said, “Do you think he was right when he said he ruined me for anyone else?”

His head dipped briefly to one side as he contemplated. “I think honestly, that it is entirely up to you. I think in a lot of ways that that’s what he hopes, because he never wants anyone to get to you. And I think it gives you an excuse to not let anyone in, either.”

His feline shaped eyes swept over my face. “How could it be possible that you’re ruined forever? I refuse to believe that.”

I am constantly receiving messages from the Universe that I need to slow down, sit in my sickness, peel it open and examine the wound. I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know what I hoped to gain from going to see Alex, but it certainly didn’t help me at all. Nothing about being near him is good for me, because it reignites my sickness for him. I am addicted to his poison, and I have been since before time was time.

My reaction to someone else in my “real” life shows me that I am unwell. I am unbalanced. I have a festering, burning hot wound just under the surface of my skin.

Can I fix it? How?

I have to believe I deserve to be loved softly.

shark swimming

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A few days ago, I was at the beach, leaping over waves. It’s my absolute favorite thing to do, maybe of all time- I run into the crest of a wave and leap over it at the last second so I fly off the back of it and plunge into the water. When it crests early or I mistime my leap, I have to duck under the foam so it doesn’t punch saltwater all the way into the back of my throat.

One of the times I went under and came back up, there was a three foot shark swimming approximately two or three feet away from me in the water. Close enough that I could see the black/white tip of its dorsal fin. Close enough that I saw its entire body flicking through the waves.

The lifeguard temporarily pulled all of us out of the water right after that, but the event stuck with me. It certainly felt like I was being sent a message.

As I had been packing to move, I’d found an iteration of this entire story that used Will, the teenager who “lived” in my childhood home, as the narrator. Will is the perfect person to be the narrator, because he successfully bridges both sides- first as a bitter, furious kid who is trapped in the grey area between worlds, and then as the betrayed and horrified man who discovers that “Alex” is a fraud, and he has been pulled into more than he ever bargained for.

I worry about Will, even now, but I can feel that he is lost to me and does not want to be found. He was so blindsided by who Alex really was, and the mess he was thrust into, and I hardly blame him for his hurt. We went from a cute little foursome who cackled over card games and laughed raucously over the Ouija board to a gross little cave of evil and surreptitious sex and sin-soaked abuse.

I still shudder when I think of living in that place, somewhere I was essentially kept as a hostage- or, to be more clear, as a spiritual battery- for four years. I know the key to so much of my healing lies in that place. I know that I have to face and confront what is going on with me internally in order to be able to move forward, to ever have any hope of a “normal” relationship with someone. I am so deeply traumatized and broken by events so strange I don’t even dare describe them to anyone.

I don’t have any specific spiritual practices, just that I listen to the Universe. I am- at all times- trying to do what it asks me to do. Even when after the other night, after an entire day of mulling over that period of time, I was told that I should go see Alex.

Which. …..okay. Sure.

I met him on the edge of the sand at the beach house. I’d never let him inside again- not after I finally took it back from all of the violence. That was actually the last time I saw him, the winter solstice of 2019.

That time, his neck was broken and his head hung limp on his shoulder, popping up like a puppet when he spoke. He was not just full demon, but something beyond that. Skeletal. Ghoulish. Devoured.

This time, he was more of a fully formed person, and much more human than he’s been in quite some time, but there is still so much visible darkness all over him. I think I saw him as he “truly” is. This is how he presents on the Other Side, for the most part. To be honest- it’s not much different than how he looked in his last life. I used to call them his “demon teeth” long before I ever saw who he really is.

His entire eye, even the pupils, are wholly black. In fact, even the area around his eyes is an ashen color, as if he hasn’t slept for centuries. His features were extremely sharp even in his life, and are even more pronounced now. Cheekbones like origami folds, a nose like the curve of a dagger, jaw like the edge of a cliff.

And those fucking teeth. There’s so many of them that his mouth appears to be swollen, like a kid with a bad overbite, hanging out from the underside of his lips. Greyblack, as if they are rotten, but they are also razor-sharp, glistening. Waiting.

Just saying his name with intention brought him here, just as easily as ever, and he could see through my eyes as I brushed my teeth and got ready to see him.

“Well look at you,” he said softly. His voice was a strange blend of the freshly baked bread softness he had in his life and that grinding gears/wounded animal demon voice that shreds straight to the base of my soul. “Quite an apartment you have here.” His eyes grazed across things as if he was stroking them with an open palm. “Good for you, Krissy. Fucking fancy. You’re a long way from Pennsylvania. Quite literally.”

“Yes. I am.”

I briefly stepped into the living room to grab my phone charger, and my son was sitting on the floor playing video games. I felt Alex’s shock as he registered the time that has passed.

“He just turned fifteen,” I said, watching Alex watch my son. The way you’d watch a strange dog with a child.

“Fifteen,” he breathed. “Wow.”

I quickly went back to my room, because I don’t even want him to look at my son, to be honest. Nothing good can be gained from those black eyes soaking in my son’s form. He doesn’t deserve to even look at him, to be honest.

I settled and placed myself fully on the beach, examining his dark features. I was surprised that I didn’t feel afraid of him- just a kind of dismayed curiosity. And strangely- a sort of deep love and affection for this creature who has caused me so much loss and catastrophe.

My God, I still love him. I still love this monster.

We stood side by side on the sand, watching the waves crash in front of us.

“So,” I said flatly. “What are you… up to? Are you and Hermie still…”

He tipped his head slightly and shrugged a little. “I mean. She’s really trying to help me, and we…” He smiled a little to himself, just the vaguest shake of his malformed head. “We really got each other good in this lifetime. We both thought we had the upper hand.”

I was disgusted by him referring to my life as some kind of strategic play, some type of game. “What were you thinking, Alex?” My voice was cold. “I mean, I go back and read these journals and my God- I was a fucking baby. I was so naïve, and I trusted you so much. I don’t understand what the point of any of it was. What did you hope to gain?”

He sighed. “I know you’ll never believe me, but I really did want to prove that I could be good. At first. I really felt like this was my moment to show you what a truly kind and pure man I was capable of being.” His shoulders drooped. “But then I got lost in the fantasy of having a life with you. And then I… got lost.” He turned to look at me with his whole face, as if displaying it as his example.

“I’m still really fucked up, Alex,” I said, my face not showing a slice of sympathy. “Like. I can’t let people touch me. I haven’t been in a relationship in years and years and years.” I let intense flashes of him roaring over me, all teeth and blood, wash over both of us. A flash of me wrestling my last physical partner off of me. A flash of me sobbing with my face pressed against the bathroom wall.

He nodded slowly, turning his face back to the sea. “I know. I’m sorry.”

“Are you?”

He looked back at me briefly, the vortex of those onyx eyes pulling me into their hold. “Yes. I really am.”

“Okay, but like-” I held up my hands. “What am I supposed to do with that? How am I supposed to fix that? I’ve spent years and years trying to find a way out of this fear and I can’t seem to get my hands around it. Like I met someone that I-” I cut myself off instantly, immediately angry that I’d said too much. I don’t want him to know anything about me now. I don’t want him to have any idea of what my life is like.

I could feel him begin to sift through my thoughts, pulling up an image of a person that I’m currently vaguely interested in. I immediately waved my hand and swept him completely out of my brain, giving him a hard, angry look. He smirked and shrugged, as if to say, What do you expect?

Some things never change.

“This isn’t an invitation for you to be… involved in my life. I don’t want you involved in my life. At all. And I want you to stay away from my son, too.”

He turned to look at me with a face that is all too familiar to me- one that lands somewhere between a smirk and a scowl, his mouth disgusted and his eyebrows smug. “I really have no intention of interfering with your life ever again,” he said. His eyes were like a midnight new moon- somehow both empty and full. Like a burning hole. “And you don’t have to believe that-“

“I don’t.”

“-but I mean it.” His features softened to the degree they were capable of, and his hand lifted as if he was about to reach out for me before he thought better of it.

“Look at the damage I have already done. Krissy, there is no repairing some of this, and you know that.” His eyebrows lowered with a remorse I wanted to believe. “I ruined you for anyone else. On purpose. And now…” He held up his empty palms. His fingers ended with blood-caked claws, so dark they too looked black. “I don’t… I don’t have the answers. There are no answers. And I think you know that. You wouldn’t be here right now if you didn’t.”

I sighed and we both looked back out at the horizon.

“So,” I said softly. “While I have you here, let’s talk about a few people. I just wanted some… clarity.”

“Okay.”

“What about my ex-husband? Does he…”

Alex sneered, and then chuckled nastily. His eyes flickered with a raven flame as he gave me a leering look. “Oh, come on. Is it necessary to have that conversation? You and I know what it was- and you were perfectly okay with using him. We are both complicit, and you know that. Now, of course, he was abusing you too, just in a different way.” He turned and raised an eyebrow at me, his mouth pulling to one side with an arrogant joy. “Talk about toxic, wow.”

He chuckled to himself and waved his hands, dismissing the entire conversation. “Look- you finally managed to get away from that, right? So let’s… not.”

“Okay. And what about Jim?”

He took a deep breath and all the supercilious humor in his face faded. His entire form even drooped a little. “Oh, man. Fuck. Yeah, that whole thing was… super uncool. He is a really good dude, for real, and …” He shook his head slowly. “I feel really bad about what we did to him.”

I arched an eyebrow at him. “We?”

His face slowly turned back towards me and his black eyes scoured me with disdain. “Yeah. We. As in, like, allllllll of us. And what you continue to do to him, as a matter of fact.” He held up a clawed hand. “Well I mean, not you, but her.”

“Wait wait- I thought she was done with him? Is she…”

He laughed a little bitterly, and his eyes went back to the waves. “Oh, no one ever really knows what she’s up to. I mean for fuck’s sake, you had to split into two different ‘people’ just to be able to survive and sustain all of this.” He turned back to me with his entire face twisted into confusion and bewilderment. “Do you understand how fucked up that is? You have to refer to yourself in third person?”

He held up a finger and wagged it at me. “Don’t ever let her convince you she’s not as much trouble as I am. She is.” He leaned in a little. “You are.”

My mouth twisted, and I turned my face away from his. “And what about [my oldest friend, who is Alex’s oldest enemy]?”

Alex snarled suddenly, viciously, and I took a half-step back. His teeth immediately grew out of his mouth another three or four inches, until they hung like charcoal icicles off of his chin. His eyes got blacker, which hardly seemed possible. They became so black that the skin around his eyes became even darker, spreading like a rash all the way to his temples, down his cheeks, into his hairline.

Then he caught himself. His teeth pulled back and the darkness of his skin receded, and he gave himself a quick shake, as if he was resetting. I watched this with the same sensation I’d had watching that shark swim only a few feet from me- a helpless terror, while also knowing I was not in any real danger.

But I could have been.

“Oh, let’s not go there,” he hissed. “Please.” He turned to scour my face again, searching for how much I know. “He is not who you think he is and you know that, right?”

I shrugged. “I know.”

“I mean, he is … that guy, but…” He scowled with disgust, unimpressed. “Who fucking cares? That’s just one lifetime. It doesn’t change any of the other shit he’s done. And if you think how he’s behaved with you is any fucking better…” He laughed a single bark of defiance. “Ha! Yeah fucking right. Look at how the fuck he’s behaved in just this lifetime and tell me he’s not a mess of a person.” He scowled again, deeper, angrier. “Please. Ha! All he got was a cool storyline.”

“Did he, though?” I asked softly, and the fury on Alex’s face receded.

His face slowly turned back to mine and the darkness in his eyes seemed to sparkle. “Yeah,” he admitted, giving me a semi-sheepish grin. “Okay. That’s fair.”

I started to fall asleep as we were talking, and woke up to find his face very close to mine, as if he was leaning in to kiss me. I pulled my entire body away, even my living body, and gave him a baffled, disgusted look.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked. “Like I mean- are. you. fucking. kidding. me.”

He laughed a little, holding up his palms. “Oh, come on. I mean. All right, all right.”

“I have to go,” I said. “And I want you to go, too. Please do not take this as an invitation for you to be a part of my life or to start-“

He waved both of his hands at me dismissively. “Oh my god, stop stop stop. Look.” He waved his arm around the beach. “You can’t see, but you are being very closely watched, even right now. You are never alone. No one will ever let you be alone again.”

He leaned in a little, conspiratorially. “And part of that, my love, is because you are in just as much trouble as I am, and we are under close surveillance.” Then he leaned back again, smug, proud, always happy to remind me of my darkness. “But let’s be really real- I couldn’t get to you if I wanted to. But I don’t want to. I cannot stress that enough. I have enough to answer for, to repay.”

He flashed an image of my new apartment into my head. “You have created a beautiful life from total destruction. That is a marvel. What I did to you, what you survived?” He shook his head a little, then turned to look at me with as much softness as his monstrous face could allow. “You amaze me. You truly are a phoenix. If I couldn’t destroy you, there’s nothing you can’t survive. Conquer.”

And then he was gone.

Is this the closure I wanted and needed? Is this the conversation that needed to happen? I don’t know.

It is a long walk in the darkness with the darkness, my friends.

messaged

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Yesterday, I was reminded by a friend of an old reality show that I used to watch with “Alex” fifteen years ago. I have a very specific memory tied to it, one that I was actually thinking of just the day before, seemingly out of nowhere.

My then-husband and I were staying with my parents with our newborn son, because we had a massive flea infestation that broke out while we were in and out of the hospital in that last week. My dad was on some sort of trip for work, and my mom had finally gone to bed. Alex and I were watching this show, and started sort of hooking up while watching it. To be honest, we were always on the cusp of hooking up at all times- even just holding hands somehow would turn into some sort of sexual event.

Because I’d been on bedrest, I wasn’t allowed to have orgasms (ha, like that honestly ever stopped him), and at that moment, I was full of stitches and agony. But we never could keep our hands off of each other, and he whispered in my ear that he wanted to make a bet with me that he could bring me to orgasm without ever touching me intimately.

At some point, he pulled back to look at my heavy-lidded gaze with a smirk curling the edges of his lips.

“I just love playing with you,” he murmured with a smirk. “You look at me like you’re drunk.”

It was about three or four months later when my rescinded acceptance of his ridiculous marriage proposal caused what I am now thinking of as my murder.

Obviously, I continue to live, but some sort of incredible spiritual violence took place in that beach house. One that truly altered the shape of my soul for this life, and I fear for the rest of all time. The dead themselves would not react the way they did if it wasn’t just as vile as I thought.

And honestly? I think it’s much worse than that.

Nothing was ever the same again, and I slowly became more physically and mentally ill than I’ve ever been in my entire life. And to be honest, I think the entire course of my life changed in that one night. I am still trying to heal that specific wound, even now. It’s so deep. It is so violent. It is so horrifying.

Last night I wanted to speak to my oldest friend, but took a moment to bless my chakras with palo santo before I did. I don’t really have any specific spiritual practices if I’m being honest- I just listen to whatever the Universe tells me to do in the moment, and that’s what it wanted from me last night.

So I blessed my chakras, then I meditated, during which the long, unbroken line of Light inside my body lit up like a pinball machine, rocketing through all my nerve endings.

I never could quite connect with my oldest friend, and even bitterly accused him this morning of being unable to keep his word to me that I could speak to him. To be fair, we are really only “allowed” to spend time together during very specific times of the year, or when I am in great distress. But I can still choose to be petulant about not being able to bend the Universe to my will.

This morning, someone sent me a message about a dream they’d had about me. This happens to me every so often, and honestly doesn’t even surprise me anymore. But no matter who the person is, they are always embarrassed and half-horrified that they feel so compelled to tell me, and I have to reassure them it’s really not as insane as they worry it is.

Nothing is really insane when it comes to the Universe.

Anyway. In this dream, this person solved a murder in a cave with a friend, and I came into the cave to bring her out to show her a model of a house I’d made. The foundation of the house was cracked, which told me that someone was in danger. So I tried to sneak away to help them- a person with a “K” name, who ran away to a frozen mountain for safety but got trapped there.

This person left my son with her dog as protection and followed me, only to discover a police officer was following me as well. This cop was not what he appeared, because his goal was to leave K trapped inside the frozen mountain. But I followed a logging road and found a safe passage. Then I hid under a frozen piano, but this person knew I was really hiding under music itself, and led the cop away so I could escape and save K.

This person also said that even after she woke up, she had to deliver the following messages: K did escape because of me, that the police officer who isn’t what he seems is Spanish (not Hispanic but from Spain) and can’t smell, so lavender will protect me. My son was safe with the dog- no one can touch him- and that the foundation being cracked is a blessing in disguise.

This person then proceeded to get violently ill later in the day, likely food poisoning, but it felt terribly ominous to me. I knew I was in danger before this, but now I am more than a little concerned. There have been signs all over the place that I’m being watched, but this………….

The person who sent me this message was sure it was insanity, but there are a lot of things in this dream that pluck at my ribs like a guitar string, the vibration rolling through all my bones.

The police officer that isn’t who he appears feels like my oldest friend, even though he’s not Spanish. I used to refer to him as “Detective” during the years I was still under Alex’s spell because he used to spy on me all the time, follow me around, interrogate my behavior. I understand now that it was out of terror, realizing what had happened while no one was watching, but there is also a layer that is possessive, sick, hysterical, controlling.

Especially since he thought the entire experience might “teach me a lesson,” long before he saw what actually happened at the beach house.

Hiding under music. My son being protected by a trusted family dog. Both seem like Jim- I know who is loyal and who actually protects me at all times. I know who keeps me safe.

And the person stuck in the frozen mountain? That’s me, of course. And my oldest friend would likely be okay with part of me being trapped in that mountain, honestly. It keeps me “behaved.” I must be much easier to corral if I am still not wholly whole.

It’s more upsetting to think that I am not wholly whole. Am I? Did I really save her? Or is she still frozen in ice, waiting to be resurrected?

And sure, of course, it could all just be a dream, absolutely. But for it to compel someone to message me, even though it horrified them to do so… oh, dear. I am extremely concerned. Especially when I blessed myself last night and had this enormous, sexual chakra cleansing (or reignition?).

This will be an intense autumn and an enormous solstice for me. We are slowly moving into my power season, and while I look forward to seeing what I can manifest next, I am deeply concerned for the levels of horror and trauma I am being expected to face and correct.

I’m worried that if I knew how much trouble I was really in, I would never sleep again.

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.

pre-solstice reflections

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

The Queen of the Dead.

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

I’m not sure I do either.

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

I was a prisoner there. Solitary confinement.

Empty. Husked. Drained. Destroyed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have deep soul contentment. Do you?

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

But it will work.

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

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

I hope it is enough.

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I talk to “myself” all the time in my own home, and hell- even sometimes at work. Sometimes I’m talking out loud to someone I need to work things through with, sometimes it’s self-therapy, and sometimes I’m talking to the dead.

What I forgot about my friend’s house- what I always forget- is the moment I walk in the door, I am unable to speak out loud. I feel intensely that someone is listening. Someone that I don’t want to hear me.

I have learned from my previous stays to leave the kitchen lights on and to close the door to the spare bedroom until I’m ready for bed, but I’d forgotten about how intense the constant, low-grade panic really is. I used to think it was just the vibe between my friend and his wife until the first time I stayed there alone.

Nope. It’s the house.

When I say that the first night I was there I almost had to leave?

As soon as I got into bed, I blurred right into this incredibly vivid meditation. I thought about my apartment from 2013-2016, and instantly, I was there. I remembered every part of it- how it smelled at night, the way the kitchen floor felt on my bare feet, how it looked with just the undercabinet lights on, the weirdness of the stairs. All of it, as if I was actually really there.

It was so real it actually frightened me. I had to open my eyes to wash it away.

Also- lately when I go into meditation, I find the same person waiting for me, someone I usually am not really allowed to see this often. I am getting increasingly suspicious of it, and when I asked him about it the other night, he got the kind of evasively sheepish that I know entirely too well.

In March, I drove to the very end of the mainland of the Outer Banks, then walked the two-ish miles to the point. It looked almost exactly like the stretch of beach in my meditation, once I conjured up seventeen years ago. I broke down sobbing, my entire body lighting up with electricity.

Anyway, that’s where we go most nights. The more intensely I could see the beach, and see my old friend, the more intensely I could feel the ghost in the corner of the bedroom. He was standing half in the closet, staring right at me. It’s been so long since I’ve felt that kind of violent fury of my presence.

“Dude, I want to be sleeping in my own bed right now,” I even said out loud, into the dark. “Trust me. I don’t want to be here either. Just let me sleep.”

The moment I would slide back into being able to feel my feet on the cool sand, the warmth of his fingers twined with mine, the way I feel when he locks his eyes on me, I’d immediately be washed over with terror, panic, sickness. Smoldering resentment. Behind my eyes, I’d see the shadow running full speed across the room to leap at my bed.

“You see?” said my friend. “The more you dissolve the veil, the more you are forced to be seen. Are you sure you’re ready for this feeling again?”

I wish I could say it was easy to feel that intense visibility again, the terror and power of being able to see through the veil, but… it never gets easier. It’s deeply and profoundly terrifying, and also enormously empowering as well.

I (finally) binged the final season of The Good Place today, and once again, it was the exact right moment to see it. They got it absolutely right, ya’ll. More people who know the Universe.

Turns out, I think there’s a lot of us here right now.

And I’m just going to keep hanging onto that.

cleansed

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“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.

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If you think about the Universe as kind of a management structure, with The Creator (not a person but an energy like sunlight or flowing water) at the top, the next level of authority are angels and demons.  Both of these creatures have limited to no actual interaction with human beings, and they know for a fact that they’re on a higher level than we are.  They see us maybe as fish in an aquarium?  Hamsters in a wheel?

Either way, angels only “protect us” (in a more vague sense, like watching over the whole world) because they are instructed to.  If anything, they’re resentful because they don’t get to live real lives- they never know the agony and ecstasy of being human.  Their entire existence is complex, difficult work, the task of literally holding the fabric of time together and maintaining the balance of the Universe (that is not the same as “saving the world”- we are responsible for what we’ve done to this place, not them).  I mean I’m sure they have other things that they’re responsible for, but it goes beyond the scope of what I can imagine.

And demons are similar in that they don’t really interact with humans outside of sucking them dry to power themselves- essentially using humans as batteries.  And they do that by luring humans into trouble, into selfishness, into outright evil.  I watched a documentary about cartels on Netflix and they talked about the members laughing hysterically as they burned a man with a blowtorch and chopped bodies into pieces.  That’s what it’s like to be the power source of the darkness.

It’s Destroy vs. Create, Harm vs. Heal, Give vs. Take every single second of every day for all of eternity.

I picture angels like soldiers or warriors.  Skin made of armor, eyes filled with fire, extraordinarily tall (like nine, ten feet), with faces that are both beautiful and terrifying, and ethereal to the degree of not resembling humans much, if at all.  I imagine if you really saw an angel, it would shatter your brains.  I think often when someone says they’ve seen an angel, they’re really seeing their guardian.  Again, I don’t think angels are ever given specific humans to care for, but honestly- what do I even know?  I could be entirely wrong.

Demons are much more into using their appearance to control and terrify.  They’re more accessible because they’re lower creatures.  They think they have the same power as angels but honestly, and this shouldn’t be a shock, but goodness love and kindness are infinitely more powerful than lust power and selfishness.

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Q: What is a demon exactly?

You know that whisper in your ear, that one that tells you to do things that you know are wrong?  The things that cause shadenfreude or the things that give you that sneering side smirk and sneaky little heh heh heh feeling in your belly?

That’s what a demon is.

I also think that vampire stories are largely about demons.  Being invited into a “home” and having your life slowly drained out of your body until you are left feeding on others.  When I was sick, I was also a severely selfish, nasty, viper-mouthed, tantrum-throwing brat.  Everything light and pure and good about me was siphoned out and replaced with darkness and hardness and cruelty.  It took a long, long time to work that poison out of my body.

You don’t have to believe in demons for them to believe in you.  They live on anyone’s sadness, fear, rage, selfishness and self-hatred.  The weaker you are, the more you give them, and the more they want to take.  It’s why people who are depressed are shown to be shrouded in shadows, in black smoke, in thick oil.

I’m not saying that everyone who is sad or a jerk is “possessed” by demons, by any means.  But I am saying that they are out there, and they’re constantly trying to encourage people to do the wrong thing.  That’s why it feels so easy.  That’s why sleep paralysis often has the same themes, even for people who know nothing about them before experiencing them.  Everyone knows what evil looks like.  We just pretend that we don’t.

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Q: Why are you cosmically connected to rock stars? Why isn’t it like…Bob from accounting.

 

A: Right?  I know.  Trust me, it bothers me.

My first thought is that it’s to keep me quiet.  Because the minute you mention a famous name, people start to doubt you.  The first time I told the story online, I changed the names of everyone (like I did here), so people would just read the story and not start a “fact-checking session.”  I just needed to get those words out somewhere, to explain what I’d just survived.  Here I did it for legal reasons, because the site is public, searchable, and the last thing I really want is to get snared into a case of slander.

To claim something as crazy as, “Oh I loved this dead guy but also he was a semi-famous musician but also he was a demon,” is like literally the most fucking weird shit anyone can say.  And that’s not even the fucking weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me, so.  It’s very alienating.

But also, maybe it’s like “What Dreams May Come,” where someone comes into my life “dressed” as someone else so I can place a face to the person who has come into my life to help me.  I thought about it obsessively when things with “Alex” first ended, when I wanted to convince myself I was insane.  When believing I’d had a dip into pure psychosis was better than what really happened.

I mean maybe it was never Alex, you know?  Whoever he is is someone that is really, really good at mimicry, so.  I mean there’s a great chance it was only ever a demon, and never Alex at all.  To be honest, that answer hurts so much I can’t think about it being true.  I’ll just wait until I die to find that out, when it won’t matter as much anymore.  It will make watching his soul be destroyed a truly magnificent moment.

But there was a time I really loved him, you know?  There’s a photo series that keeps coming up on another social media site I frequent where he is flirting with whoever is taking his picture and his eyes are dark and mischievous and his smirking mouth makes my heart like a pebble skipping across clear water.  And I just.  I just.

In the early days, we asked Alex if he knew any famous people.  He said that being “famous” is kind of a …. joke over there.  Like it’s something you get teased for.  People only really ever identify you as that person, for better or worse.  So when you’ve had a Really Famous life, you have experiences here AND there that no one else really understands, which creates a little… group.  Clique?

Anyway, he said yeah, of course he knew people who are recently dead and famous musicians.  He had a little crew of people he talked to a lot, people we also occasionally talked to (more often whenever Alex became sick and they started to intervene to warn us that he was waaaayyy more ill than we knew).

I honestly think the fact that I know other musicians is really only coincidental, not that I have some kind of cosmic tie to them.  Actually, one of them hasn’t been friends with Alex in a long, long time (pre-Alex) and is only really my friend.  Also I, interestingly enough, am not a fan of his music from this life, though others are.  So I mean…

tl;dr: maybe I am, maybe I’m not.