Jukebox, mental illness, ritual, and community

then she drinks herself up and out of her kitchen chair
and she dances out of time
as slow as she can sway
as long as she can say
this dance is mine
this dance is mine

One of my favourite musical artists is Ani DiFranco. She’s a folk-rock-political singer-songwriter-righteous babe-freak. The first song I ever heard of hers was Self Evident, and I fell in love with her at that moment. I was a teenager, just coming into my own as an activist. I was learning that the world was full of injustice and wrongdoing, and I was learning that it was up to me, and the rest of my generation, to do something about it. Ani DiFranco shaped my life as an activist as much as Michael Moore did.

tattoos like mile markers
map the distance she has gone
winning some, losing some
but she says my sister still calls every sunday night
after the rates go down
and i still can never manage to say anything right
and my whole life blew up
and now it’s all coming down

She did more than that, though. She wrote songs that reached so deeply into exactly how I felt; she wrote songs that described me. It was like she knew my whole life, and turned it into music. She transformed sadness into beauty.

she says, i’ve got a darkness that i have to feed
i got a sadness that grows up around me like a weed
and i’m not hurting anyone
i’m just spiraling in
and then she closes her eyes
and hears the song begin again

I’m sure there are many people who feel that way about many music artists, and that’s why music is so important to us. Listening to a song that you feel describes you, even if it’s describing the most fucked-up person you can think of, can really help you feel less alone. As a teenager with severe depression, anxiety, suicidal tendencies, self-worth issues, black-out anger spells, and so much more, Ani’s music was a source of much solace for me. It still is.

she appreciates the phone calls
the consoling cards and such
she appreciates all the people
who come by and try to pull her back in touch

Roll With It galvanizes me when activist burn out threatens to destroy me. O.K. described how I felt for a certain someone, and School Night reminded me how bad he was for me. Manhole helped me get over him. Not a Pretty Girl helped me realize and reclaim my own strength. And so, so many of them described who I was, who I am — Grey, Dilate, Lag Time, Loom/Pulse, Studying Stones, My I.Q., Rock Paper Scissors, Fierce Flawless, Up Up Up Up Up Up, 32 Flavors — but none so much as Jukebox. (Well, actually, Jukebox and Dilate. But this is my J post, so I’m talking about Jukebox.) 

they try to hold the lid down tightly
and they try to shake well
but the oil and water
they just wanna separate themselves

My Jukebox is mental illness. The songs of insanity repeat themselves over and over in my brain, so what can I do but dance? Out of time; drink in hand. But it’s my dance.

The thing is, mental illness isn’t something that just goes away. You can’t just snap your fingers and get rid of it, and medication — no matter how good it is — won’t erase it from your life. There’s no magic pill you can take once and then be “normal” for the rest of forever. 

I have a lot of ways to deal with my depression and anxiety. A lot more ways to deal with the former than the latter — anxiety is still really hard for me to cope with by myself. And then there’s the whole “inability to deal well with social situations” thing. I’m ragey, defiant, uptight, anxious, full of self-loathing, an assorted collection of contradictory behavior, and, much like Abed, I can’t always deal with change. Which is sort of hilarious, considering how many things I do simply for shock value. See above point about contradictory behavior.

Part of the main reason I am so interested in building an actual, workable religion with rituals and traditions and all that stuff? Ritual and tradition help calm me down in the middle of a meltdown. This is important to me so I can have structure for my soul. It’s also important so I can bring that structure to other people — whether it’s complete strangers, or my future spawn. (My kids are going to be fucked up, too — it’s sort of impossible not to be when you come from generations of mental illness and you’re going to be born into a world that’s basically turning into one huge shitstorm. If they’re anything like me, they’ll need ritual and tradition too.)

I’m trying to cobble together a working faith structure as well as learning the ropes of ADF and possibly ATC in the future so that my kids have religious options. I want to not only include them in my personal Imbolc/Beltaine/Lammas/Samhain Sacred Triad rites, but also High Day celebrations put on by local druids, or events like Spring Mysteries.

These rituals and traditions are important to me, and so is community. Not only do I need something personal to turn to during a meltdown, but I need an external support structure. As much as I dislike other pagans  people most of the time, I’d be the last person to say that humans are anything but herd animals. We need each other. Community is essential to our well-being. Both as a paradigm and a TV show.

So yes, this dance of mental illness may be mine to dance, and mentally healthy people may not really understand. I have major issues with social cues, behaviors, and filters — leading to my general dislike of people. I don’t understand them.

Despite all that, I still appreciate my community. I appreciate my support network, all the lovely friends I’ve made.

And I constantly hope and pray that I’m able to keep a good amount of them in my life. That my issues don’t cause me to lose more people. That I don’t make the wrong choices, again, and get close to people who are not worthy of me. This is actually the source of a lot of my anxiety: fear of abandonment. Fear that when my friends are done with me, they’ll put me in a locker.

I know that people get fed up with me. It’s sort of impossible to remain super-likeable when you’re this messed up. Not for lack of trying on my part. I just can’t figure out the right formula. I don’t understand people enough to keep myself pleasant enough for them.

And that’s not an entirely bad thing. It means I stay true to myself, for one, and that’s something I sort of strive for. And it means that the friends I keep are the truest ones. The ones who like me just as I am. Even if they get fed up with me from time to time. I’d rather have that than a bunch of sycophants — even if I sometimes fear that the amount of friends I have will get smaller and smaller and smaller, until it’s just the Ogre putting up with my crazytown-bananapants.

In the end, it’s the difference between listening to anything on the radio, and keeping a personal jukebox full of all the things that I love best, and that actually serve me well — friends, rituals, traditions, medication, therapy, and music. 

 

Addendum: I realize that I really destroyed that metaphor by the end of the post. I don’t really care. It’s 4:30 a.m. and I’ve been off my meds for a week.

The Time of Culling

I’ve always had trouble with this time of year, from a “earth-worshiping-pagan-who-celebrates-Wiccish-holidays-more-or-less” standpoint. Lammas/Lughnasadh and the Autumn Equinox always feel so disconnected to me. They really shouldn’t, because they are actually at the perfect time for harvest in the climate into which I was born — there’s a reason Canadian Thanksgiving is in early October, and it’s not just so we can be different from the Americans. It’s because you can’t harvest anything much later in the year. It’s too cold.

But, you know, harvest. What the heck does that mean to me? I’ve always had trouble connecting with harvest as a concept.

Until last month. Someone said something that sent lightbulbs my way, and I realized that harvest isn’t just gathering in what’s grown to sustain you for the winter. It’s a time of culling. You are cutting away what doesn’t belong. Whether you bring it in your house to keep you, or throw it on the compost pile, you are still cutting it away.

The culling time begins in early summer, when you start thinning the plants that are growing. When I was a kid my chore was thinning the carrots, so we’d have bigger ones at the end of the summer. We’d eat the thinned carrots — they were small and sweet. From summer solstice to Autumn Equinox is the time of the culling, and this is reflected in the growing shortness of the days. Culling, harvesting, hunkering down for winter.

This is also metaphorical. Culling things in your life, preparing to live lean.

I’m planning on celebrating this Autumn Equinox in honor of Persephone’s descent to the underworld. Her lessons are that of becoming your own person, and culling what doesn’t belong. Shedding old skin; transforming yourself. (I’m celebrating a few days late, because I wasn’t able to celebrate on the actual equinox.)

For me, this process starts with cutting people out of my life. First my father. I was tired of his abuse and venom. Next, comes healing from a wound that happened earlier this year. And in the meantime, I am culling my life of unnecessary people.

Ironically, one of the people I’ve culled from my life is is the same person who originally sent the lightbulbs my way about harvesting being a culling time. Or perhaps it’s not ironic. The universe and the gods work in mysterious ways.

The winter is a reflective, introspective time. It’s when I make the descent to my personal underworld. Like Inanna, I must shed things before going there. Like Persephone, I must change myself. I must be like a snake, or a spider, and molt.

It’s suddenly very clear to me that the cycle of birth, life, decay, death, and regeneration is present in the way the year is structured, if you follow the Wiccish Wheel of the Year or a variant thereof (like the ADF Neo-Druidic structures of the High Days based off the different Hearth Cultures). This is the decay part. This is the part where we prepare for death and regeneration and eventual rebirth.

It’s so easy to connect to sex and death; to death and rebirth. It’s not as easy to find the areas in between. To understand them.

I’m now exploring this time of culling, of reaping, and searching for ways to celebrate a fourth holiday in my Sacred Triad’s year. For a while, Samhain has been Manannan’s time, Imbolc Brighid’s, and Beltaine Morrigan’s. They are the three deities in the path, so there’s no fourth god, no fourth holiday. But the year felt unbalanced, and so I wanted to do something in August that would be for all three of Them.

I’ve finally decided on Lammas. The celebrations will be a combination of old and new, and the meaning behind the holiday will be the culling. Samhain is death, Beltaine is sex. Imbolc is growth, and Lammas is reaping. The Sacred Triad all have powers of culling, regardless what Their other purviews are; They all come together at Lammas to cut away, to burn away, to wash away what doesn’t belong.

Who knows. Maybe by next year I’ll actually have my holidays figured out, both for ADF and my Sacred Triad stuff (name of religion still pending — Triadism sounds silly).

Psuedonyms, Privilege, and Accountability

Trigger warning: mention of rape, abuse, death threats, e-bullying; use of a word that’s often used as a slur as description of sexual orientation; privilege denying people.

I had two separate run-ins, arguments, disagreements, whatever, with two different people this summer. The arguments were about completely different things, but each person holds the belief that if you’re not posting or writing or chatting with your real name, that is, your legal name, then you somehow cannot be held accountable for your words, and are no better than some douchebag on Youtube, languishing in comfortable anonymity. 

Both of these people also claim to be very much into Social Justice.

Guys, you’re doing it wrong.

Continue reading “Psuedonyms, Privilege, and Accountability”

Quan Yin, compassion, and lovingkindness

A while ago I was having tea and knitting time with a school friend of mine and her parents. They’re lovely, amazing people, and I got to talk a lot with them about my work for the Gods — specifically Brighid.

I got an email from my friend’s mother a while after our meeting, and she said that she’d seen a vision of a lotus on my back when I’d turned away for a moment. Her work is with Quan Yin, and she told me she felt that I’d been marked by Quan Yin.

I’m not sure if I have been marked by Quan Yin or not. I spent my childhood being raised with stories and songs of praise for the bodhisattva Tara, who I sort of see as Quan Yin’s spiritual sister. (They are often seen as the same, but I’m a hard (sometimes medium-scrambled) polytheist. Also, there are several different forms that Tara takes, and not all of them are lovingkindness for all beings.)

Mom's altar to Quan Yin, on the stairway. Photo copyright Morag Spinner.
Mom’s altar to Quan Yin, on the stairway. Photo copyright Morag Spinner.

I often think that Quan Yin is far too compassionate a deity for me to work with. I’m more likely to work with or worship deities who tend to equate compassion with “I will kick your ass into gear.” Quan Yin is lovingkindness for all beings. She’s the Goddess of Mercy. She hears the cries of the world.

Maybe I feel I shouldn’t work with that because I don’t have any faith left in humanity. I’m jaded and bitter and I find it really hard to be compassionate in a peaceful, love-radiating way to anybody. The extent of my compassion is generally “Clean up your act before I clean it up for you.”

But then I think about my dog, Major. He died two years ago. I woke up to this horrible crashing noise above my bed, which is located in the library, beneath my mom’s room and the stairs that go up there. I immediately knew it was him. I rushed out of bed to the stairs. He’d fallen — we think he had a heart attack — and he rested on the landing, right below the altar pictured above.

His breathing was labored and it was obvious he didn’t have much time. So I gathered him in my arms, pet him, caressed his ears, and whispered to him that he was the best dog in the world, he was a good dog, we loved him so much, and that it was okay if he needed to go. About twenty minutes later he died in my arms. A family friend and I spent the rest of the day digging his grave. We had a funeral that evening. He’s still in the backyard.

We often say that Major was our bodhisattva dog — a doggisattva. He was the embodiment of compassion.

I keep hoping that maybe he taught me more than I think he did. 

It’s easy to be compassionate for those you love. Holding him while he died was not a huge hardship. It took courage, to not run while a loved one expired, to not run when I felt his spirit leave his body. But it wasn’t difficult. It was just…what I had to do, because I loved him, and he needed the comfort of his pack while he crossed the bridge.

How do I hold compassion for those I dislike? Those who have hurt me? Those I hate? Should I even hold compassion for them — is there a point where I must choose to hold more compassion for myself, where I must choose my own health over trying to hold lovingkindness for the myriad horrible people in the world, who undoubtedly need more compassion than they get?

I still feel sorry for my dad. I still miss him. It’s been over a month since I cut him off, and I catch myself thinking I should take it back. That I should show him some compassion. That it’s not his fault he’s so messed up; he’s a product of his environment — a father who was more or less absent, his mother’s revenge by making my dad the man of the house and subsequently forgetting everyone except him. He’s a product of internalized racism and hatred of his own Native blood.

And he’s an abusive sociopath, who has done nothing but ruin everything in my life for twenty-six years. 

How can I show him any compassion?

The answer is I can’t. I’m not Major, who showed love for my dad. I’m not Quan Yin. I can’t have lovingkindness for all beings. 

I have to be compassionate for myself, and hope that She will take pity on him, instead.

So today I pray to Quan Yin to show compassion for my messed up, abusive, father. Because he’s lost two kids to his horrible parenting now, and I hope that he’s able to keep the last one, or he’ll die sad and alone. And despite all he’s done to me, despite how much he may deserve that fate, I don’t really wish it on him.

Covered in Light and my experience veiling today

A scarf does not oppress people. People oppress people.

-Covered in Light

Today is the Covered in Light International Day (or International Choice to Veil Day), an event started by Covered in Light in order to give support to women who choose to veil their hair for religious reasons.

Basically, women who choose to veil are given crap because of a) Islamophobia and b) ~*~feminism~*~. Category A is full of people who are terrified of Muslims and see a head-covering as a symbol of Islamic faith. Which, yeah, it is, but it’s also a symbol of Jewish faith, a symbol of Christian faith, and just a symbol of…you know. Head-covering. For personal spiritual reasons, or because it looks cool, or because it’s comfy, or because the gods have requested it of you, or because you’re cos-playing a character from the Kushiel’s Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey. But regardless the reason behind a head-covering, thinking someone is Muslim is not an acceptable reason to treat them like crap. I don’t care how much you may dislike Islam as a religion; I dislike Christianity fundamentally, but you don’t see me spitting on Christians in public. Because I’m not an asshole. (Mostly.) Leave Muslims alone, for fuck’s sake.

Category B is full of people who think that women who choose to veil are helping the oppression of women who aren’t given a choice, and that it’s anti-feminist to choose to do something that can be used as a tool of oppression. The people in Category B don’t understand that people oppress people, not scarves or pregnancy or marriage or burlesque or PIV sex or whatever other silly ideas they’ve got into their tiny brains. This isn’t feminism, for the record. Denying women’s agency is, like, the opposite of feminism.

Anyway, I’m not here to rant today. (I know; crazy.) I’m just here to mention Covered in Light Day briefly and talk about my experience veiling.

Putting it on was difficult, but once I got it figured out it was really comfortable.
Putting it on was difficult, but once I got it figured out it was really comfortable.

Took me a bit to figure out how to wrap it around my head just right, but once I got it on and secured it with bobby pins it was really quite comfortable. I didn’t go out much today (yet; the night isn’t over), but I did get some interesting looks. No one said anything to me, which is unfortunate — I was hoping for some teachable moments. “I’m choosing to veil today in support of women who veil for religious reasons, whether they’re Muslim, Pagan, or something else.”

I’m not sure if I would ever cover my hair for religious reasons. At any rate, I haven’t been called to do so by any gods I worship. I wear bandanas often to keep my hair out of my face while my bangs grow out/absorb sweat from my forehead while I do housework or other labor-intensive stuff, but to me that’s not really head-covering, it’s more a headband. I like the look of head-covering, so I may only choose to wear it for events like this or as an outfit accessory. Also it’s ridiculously comfy.

It also feels powerful, somehow. Which makes me ponder if I would ever do it for religious reasons. Or magical ones. I just finished reading Star Foster’s post about pagan women who veil, and I do like the idea that head-covering marks one as an adult, instead of relying on biology to mark the stages of life. (This also gives me a plot bunny for a future story. Because I need more of those.) Especially as someone who’s genderqueer and has some serious dysphoria with regards to periods and such. I used to feel that my period marked my coming-of-age as a woman, but truthfully I’ve never really felt like I made a successful transition to adulthood. Like there was no event that helped me cross that threshold. I thought my period was, but realizing I’m genderqueer, not a woman, and dealing with dysphoria kind of…killed that for me.

I don’t know. I may try doing this, off and on, to see how I feel and if it brings any spiritual or magical benefits. Or emotional ones. Might be an interesting experiment.

Scarf courtesy of my mother’s closet. She has more scarves than there were witches killed in the Burning Times someone with a lot of scarves.

And yes. It’s purple. It looks blue in the photograph but that’s because of wonky light. (My shirt is purple, too, and so is part of my skirt.)

It’s the little things.

Trigger warning: rape, eating disorders, fatphobia, abuse

I have a lot of trauma triggers. Some of them are big. Some, not so big. The big ones are ones more likely to be shared with a lot of other people — rape, abuse, etc — and as such are ones that I actually talk about, as much to just talk about them because I need to as to let people know it’s not okay to trivialize those things when they do. (Read: every damn day.)

Some of the smaller ones are so unavoidable, so everyday, that there’s no possible way I can ask people to not trigger me with them. I’d become impossible to be around; everyone would have to walk on eggshells. And truth be told, so many of these things happen to me even on days when I have no contact with the outside world — they’re just part of my life. Sometimes they’re so commonplace, I’m so used to being triggered by them, that I don’t even notice how shitty I feel until after it’s happened.

There’s not much I can do to get rid of a lot of these, save time, and slowly, ever so slowly working on my stuff. Hells, there’s not much I can do to avoid even the bigger ones — the other night I was watching True Blood with the Ogre, and there was an attempted rape scene. It was graphic, and brutal, and there was no real warning. Not much build up. I had to push through it, and content myself with hugs from the Ogre afterwards. Someday I’d like to see specific trigger warnings on films and TV shows; “Mature Content” doesn’t cut it, thanks. Until then, I just make sure I watch new things when the Ogre is visiting or I’m visiting him, so I can get snuggles and hugs and hair-pets afterwards. (Torso compression really helps calm me after a panic attack or a trigger, as does stroking of the hair.)

So if I can’t even fully avoid the big ones, I have no hope of avoiding the small ones. I count my victories when I don’t get triggered by them.

Friday night I made myself a midnight snack; I was suffering from insomnia again and watching Doctor Who until I was tired enough to actually drop off to sleep. (Yes, mom, I was up all night again, but I actually got the errands you wanted done on Saturday so please don’t bite me.) The snack was nothing really special. Peanut butter and honey (with just a sprinkle of choca vlokken) on sprouted grain bread. One of my faves.

Peanut butter has this odd place in my life. It’s a comfort food, but the comfort gained from it is usually only complete if someone else puts it on my toast for me, or if it’s on celery. If I have to spread it on the bread myself, one of my trauma triggers gets tripped, and I can’t fully enjoy my snack.

It was when I was settling down to bed for the second time on Friday night that I realized — this was the first time I’d made myself peanut butter on bread and hadn’t heard my father screaming at me about being a fat, worthless nobody who was being brainwashed by my mother who knew nothing about good nutrition, and by gods he’d beat it out of me if it was the last thing he did. It was my first flashback-free peanut butter on bread snack in…ever.

That seems like a small thing, and it is a small step, but I count it a huge victory. It means his hold on me is weakening.

It’s the little things in life that I have to celebrate.

 

PS: Been AWOL this week because I really overdid it while moving to the mainland, and I’ve been recouping spoons. Expect to see more posts in the future, but I can’t guarantee a return to my old schedule right away. I’m still very low on spoons.

Dream Record, August 23rd 2012

I slept for a long time last night. I went to bed at 8pm, and woke up around seven this morning. I’m still tired, and could probably sleep for another twelve hours, truth be told. I don’t have the time, because today is my drive to Seattle, but I could.

I had a really vivid dream last night that I didn’t remember until just a little while ago, and only one small part of it.

Back in April, on my way home from my trip to Spring Mysteries and San Francisco, I bought a wall-clock from this store that mom and I love that I’ve forgotten the name of. (Something Imports, I think. World Market or something.) The wall-clock was missing the hands and motor, so we got it half-price. It has skeleton keys where the numbers should be.

I bought this for Hecate. Not sure what I'm going to do with it.

I think you can guess Who I got it for.

I have plans for the this clock, and have for a while. I’ve been meaning to do something to the clock, like putting a picture of Hecate in the center of it to cover up the hole for the hands and motor and the words that say Hotel du Parc.

I dreamt that I was digging through a huge pile of stuff and uncovered the clock, still un-modified. The key in the “four” position was damaged.

The dream means something, I can tell — it has the feeling of a dream that means something, as opposed to “my subconscious drinks too much”, which is the feeling most of my dreams have.

I’m just not sure what.

A Picture from Pride

I’m pretty swamped and exhausted today, and don’t really have anything of substance to post for y’all. So I’m sharing the one picture of me from Vancouver Pagan Pride, wherein I’m participating in the Aquarian Tabernacle Church ritual (I called in South; this is not what’s happening in the photo, as we did cross-quarters).

Continue reading “A Picture from Pride”

The Pronoun Thing

Back in my post about the inspiring blog award I received I mentioned that, while I’m genderqueer, I’m still using female pronouns for now, because I was female-assigned-at-birth and it’s what I’ve grown up with.

That’s changed. Something about my birthday created a change in me. (My birthday and, probably, my ritual to Persephone and Hades and subsequent disowning of my father.) I realized — I’m tired of being default female. I want to use different pronouns.

Some of you may have already noticed the change on the site — the header says “Where Morag Spinner weaves zir web” and my bio below the posts uses zie/zir in place of she/her, and they’ve said that for about a week now.

I’m not expecting miracles from anyone. I’m still femme, so people do tend to use she/her when referring to me. That’s okay. It’s not going to trigger me or make me angry, and I’m not going to leap on you for misgendering me. We’re all human, and it can be really hard to remember the pronoun change when someone comes out as trans* or genderqueer to you, especially when you’ve known them for a long time and pronouns have become an ingrained part of how you think about the person. I know it’s hard for me.

But it’s the start of my twenty-seventh year on this planet. I’ve only known for a few years that being genderqueer was even an option for me, because it’s not talked about or presented as a gender option to/with kids or teenagers. I’ve spent twenty-six years being called a girl, and a woman, and a she and a her. I’m done with accepting that, because I’m not any of those things. I’m not a boy or a man or a he or a him either.

Continue reading “The Pronoun Thing”

Becoming My Own Person — a ritual with Persephone and Hades

A week ago Friday I posted about Persephone, and becoming my own person. I said I was going to do a ritual to cut myself away from my abusive father, because I was tired of being hurt by him.

I did the ritual on Monday the 13th, the eve of my 26th birthday, the last day of my 26th year on this planet. That morning I’d received a tarot reading from Danny, which was eerily accurate and confirmed a lot of things to me: that I had to cleanse, I had to integrate my shadow self with the rest of me, that I had to find positive models of male energy in order to be more comfortable being male on days when I was, and I had to talk to certain deities, including Manannan. But first, I wanted to ask Persephone for help.

I lit candles to both Persephone and Hades, and poured wine for Them. I lit some Vanilla Rose incense, which is probably going to be Persephone’s incense from now on.  I asked Them to look on me kindly, though we didn’t know each other that well, and I asked for Their presence in my life as I tried to rid myself of my father’s 26 years of poison.

I sat before my altar and rambled for thirty minutes, or thereabouts. I just talked to Them. And throughout it all I felt this love, this patience, this smiling benevolence upon me. I said that when the middle candled burned out — the flower in the water — then the flower of his poison would die, and the earth could start to grow healthy stuff again.

I took the glass pomegranate seed that Persephone gave to me at Spring Mysteries Fest and I started playing with it while talking to Her. I said that I thought it had been a symbol of being a better daughter to my mother, but now I realized it was a symbol of my rebirth, my cutting away, my transformation, my becoming my own person. I said I would symbolically eat the pomegranate seed and become someone new, and that my trial would be through fire: I burned away the old thread that was still through the glass bead that had tied it to my necklace before breaking off.

When I looked up, the flower candle had finished burning.

And then I started crying.

“It’s not supposed to hurt,” I said, wiping stinging salt from my eyes. “It’s not supposed to hurt to expel venom from your body, your soul. It’s supposed to feel good to get rid of it. It’s supposed to feel good to get rid of him.”

I knew that wasn’t true, but I still needed to rage against it. I curled up into a ball on the floor in front of my altar and cried and cried and cried.

After a while I rolled onto my back and looked at the ceiling. I stated that he was gone; that he had no more power over me. That I’m 26 — 8, number of the CEO, putting me in charge; that I was starting my 27th year — 9, number of completion, mysticism, and endings. I was done.

And I felt this weight lift off my chest and my heart. I got back up onto my knees and knelt before the altar, and I blew out all the rage and pain inside me. I blew my father right out of my life.

I then thanked Persephone and Hades for Their presence and help and love, promised to do more for Them in the coming months and years, and said I’d leave Their candles burning and wine sitting till the end of the night.

Then I went outside and laid down on the grass for a while, looking at the stars and the space between. I could see, in the darkness, endless light, and darkness in the stars themselves. I could see eternity stretching on forever. I could see The Deep One, and the Smith.

And I knew I would be okay.