Yesterday's post on the person we don't seem to be able to let go stirred some "stuff" up. There was a lot of "stickiness" following me around during the whole day. When I woke up, I realised that the veil must have been very thin during the night of Samhain because my soul felt flooded with memories and people shouting at me to grab my attention.
I remembered all those situations and people who disappeared along the way...
... there is a letter, here, in this house. Locked in a box. It's a letter I received in early 2018 that I have never read. It's a letter which followed a stern email and me being blocked from making any contact...
... there is this beautiful soul and our endless nights of talking, who waved goodbye, one evening, standing there in the rain while I drove out of the car park, who went home that weekend and died there, alone...
... there is a dear friend whom after a night of talking and more talking and confessing and laughing and more walking and talking, endlessly circumscribing that body of water in Preston, the following day sent me an accusatory hurtful message, ghosted me, never to be seen or heard again...
... there is this face, of a man, who knocked at my door and asked me when I was leaving because this is not my country...
... there is someone who one day in the early 2000s, after a warm night of sweet love-making under a starry sky and waking up with the blackbirds, changed his phone number and disappeared...
... there is this beautiful boy, my very first kiss, on a summer evening, sitting on a swing at a campsite in Lignano, who then grew up, got married, went to work on his motorbike, never to be kissed again...
... there is that school friend whom I left, one night, and then she died that night, and there was nothing I could have done to save her...
... there is this dinner that is always ready...
These are not endings. I carry these people with me all the time. The last conversation with my mother, the last time I touched my father's hands; the last time I saw my ex-husband on the other side of the road, the last words of my ex-father-in-law in a car park in Udine, the voice of my ex-sister-in-law while we had a coffee one morning a handful of years ago. All these unfinished conversations, me standing at imaginary crossroads, alone if it weren't for Hekátē, left there, awaiting explanations.
Feeling a pariah. Not wanted. Rejected. No accepted. Avoided. Not trusted. Pushed in a corner. A sense of not belonging, a recurring feeling of not being "good enough" to understand the reasonings and elucubrations. Not wanted at the table where plans are made. Controlled. Manipulated. This is how it is. Shut up. Don't ask. I decide for you. I know what is best for you. The voice of my Mother, the voice of the Priest from the pulpit. The words of God in the Bible: "You don't know why things happen, but I know and I know what is best for you". There I am, alone among the untouchables, celebrating Malavazhiyattam instead, the Mother Goddess of the Paraiyar [the Tamil untouchable caste members], as a Disinherited Daughter of the Soil learning about my magical powers, drumming and dancing my rituals away.
On a day like this, cards felt a must. Saturn flew out of the deck while shuffling but I put it back in, almost irritated that I had the "same usual card". Well, don't you like Saturn? What about I am giving you his son, Kheiron? Eh, what about that? Chiron is the rejected son of Saturn, half man and half horse, not a planet and not even a star, both wounded and a healer. He comes to let me tell the story of my scars, allowing me to dive deep and deep within the recesses of my vulnerable Self, not as a victim anymore, not blaming the ones who left me, but by storytelling my pain. Between 2017 and 2019, Chiron moved slowly [excruciatingly slowly] back and forth over his placement at my birth. This is the dreaded Chiron return when you are 50ish. A recurring trench, deeper and deeper, as an automated sewing machine, back and forth, again, and again, and again. Cleaning, opening, scarring, stitching; infecting, opening again, cleaning, stitching back up. Those were the years of intense rejection, a severe month of losing a partner, a job, and my car; the time of receiving that letter I never read. That was death. That was me walking through Malebolge, the eighth circle of Hell in Dante's Inferno. I met the Seducers, there; and the Flatterers, the Simoniacs, the Grafters, the Hypocrites, the Thieves, the Falsifiers and the Sowers of Scandals; all led by the Malebranche, those evil demons who lead me to paths that don't exist.
Still, I also befriended the Alchemists and the Sorcerers there... that was the darkness that led me to write and publish my first book here in the UK, to go back to college and then to university. That was the Grey Wolf of Alchemy, the lonely Stibus, that wilderness and freedom that need to be channelled as creativity by not allowing them to become corrosive and destructive. I am sure that there is still something that eats me away since I am writing this and this is the perfect reminder to dance more, to go out more, to hug more trees. And, as Kim Krans suggests, to re-read CP Estes' Women Who Run with the Wolves.
Then, think: Paraphrasing JS Bolen as on p.69 of her Artemis. The Indomitable Spirit in Everywoman: who am I when I don't have these relationships anymore? Who am I when I don't have that job, that land, that name anymore? In tears, one day I asked my clinical supervisor: should I empty, sort and clean these old dusty drawers full of rotten and mouldy memories, I probably wouldn't need to write anymore. So, then, who am I if I don't write?
I think I am ready to delete some old pictures I have. I am ready to burn that letter I never read. Or, at least, for the first time I acknowledge that I could burn it. Then, of course, Darkness arrives. I welcome it as a time to dismantle, loosen, free, and allow for decomposition, recycling and regeneration. It will take some time to digest and allow it to resurface as propositive energy and not dead weight. That is going to be the [recurring] story of a wounded woman, written as a healing offering. I have to admit that a large part of the work has already been done. If I look at myself as I was back then and where I am now, I can see the difference. There is a distinction between how I felt when I saw "them" back then [all powerful, unreachable, ethereal entities] and how I see "me" now. Even the focus of looking is different: the large part of comparison is gone. The "me" who felt rejected, pushed away and not wanted, went through the angry phase of "I'll show you" via the "whatever" and landing now on this feeling of "I hope they are okay. Anyway, I am off planning what is coming next in my life..." kinda vibe.
As per usual, I don't know where I am going with all of this. But this is it, isn't it? No knowing. And being okay with that.
onwards + upwards > out + about
mx
* you might want to have a look at Kim Krans' ALCHEMY cards HERE
TOP BW IMAGE : photographer - Diane Holt + edit - mtomat
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Date : 31 OCT 2023
Duration : ---
Steps: ---
Location : home
Weather : no idea
T : warm inside
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