Feast of Sekhmet.

September 29, 2013.

Part of the reason why I have my Google calendar set up to ping me a thousand times regarding when I can expect a holiday coming up is because I will always forget about it until the day before the holiday. This has happened to me with every holiday that has come about since I started keeping track of this whole thing and I’m no longer overly shocked, per se, at an upcoming holiday. I’m thrown into a tizzy because I’m never prepared for such a thing and I end up wondering what new thing I can pull out of my butt. As I’ve said about a hundred times – and will probably continue to mention – I really do like the idea of being shocked by a holiday. It, to me, makes things much less fancy and much more real. If you sit about planning something for months on end before it happens, then you may lose the overall focus of the holiday in question.

And that’s just bad news bears, to me.

Something that happens when these notifications come up is that my life ends up cracking around the edges and yet, I have to prepare something devotion like for the netjer the feast day is regarding. My normal fare for a holiday such as this is that I would end up cleaning my home, spend some devotional time on or with the netjer, and cooking a [really poor person’s but meaningful] feast. Whether or not I am successful in any of these items is a hot topic of an [inner monologue] debate, but I do at least try. Considering how things have been going in my mundane life, however, I knew that I just could not provide Sekhmet with any of that. I could try all I wanted, but I knew I would end up failing.

Things have been incredibly difficult lately. And by difficult, I mean that I occasionally and very seriously entertain the notion that I must have been cursed around the time of my divorce because holy shit has stuff been difficult since TH and I got together. In the last seven years, we have only ever had to fight to remain together. We have only ever had to struggle. We have only ever been hit with one crippling financial crisis after another. We have only ever been thrown around in an angst-ridden sea that has been merciless in everything.

I’ve had to forego paying rent in a timely fashion so that I could have money left over from my last paycheck to keep us fed this month. I have had to replace a tire that was shredding [without me knowing]. I found out that the transmission in TH’s car was beginning to slip. So, instead of spending solitude in devotion to my goddess, I ended up spending most of my day on the verge of tears. I had an intense yearning to say, “I’m sorry, TH. I’ve ruined your life.” And then, I would spend a thousand moments irrationally angry with how very “unfair” everything has been.

It’s almost like with each step forward I make on the path – with my religion and with fixing my traumas and the like – that I end up having to fight that much harder in the mundane world. I don’t really know if anyone else has noticed this, but it feels like with each forward motion spiritually, I’m getting thrown back in the mundane world. It feels to me, almost, as though you can’t really have the best of both worlds. You can either be an asshole fucktard who is a dick all the time or you can practice the “not be a dick” strategy and end up shit on from every possible quarter. Maybe I’m just making this shit up as I go along, but all I know is that I feel like this is the case.

I could be wrong.

I could be right.

In the meantime, I end up feeling like everything is being shit on purpose.

I really try hard not to go on about how things “aren’t fair.” Since my discussion on the topic of what “fair” is supposed to be versus what I think it is with Papa Legba, I’ve tried to break myself of the habit. Whenever humans, usually, discuss what is “not fair,” they are usually doing it in comparison to people they know nothing about. The people are presenting this easy picture of achieving whatever it is that I may be jealous of. Whether or not things were really easy isn’t up to me to decide. I don’t know. I wasn’t there. I don’t live their lives. But sometimes, it’s really hard to be an adult and admit this in a logical manner. Yesterday was one of those days where it was nearly impossible to admit this shit in a logical manner. All I could do was sit around my messy apartment and thinking, this just isn’t very fair.

One of the few things that I do when I’m really upset is I end up cleaning. It may not always do what I’m hoping it will do – make me feel better – but it gives me a purpose, at least. It also gives me time to listen to really loud music, sing along to said loud music, and just ignore the reality of the world. I know that the reason I do this is because I have no control in my life, so I have to enforce control wherever I can enact it. Case in point, the place I can enact it is on my messy apartment. (Hey, I work all week and I have a five-year-old. You try to keep shit clean.) So, in an effort to at least stop thinking about how things aren’t very fair, I cleaned like a fiend.

I don’t know if “successful” is really the word I would use on what ended up happening. Oh, my apartment got cleaned and I was able to get everything dusted. In the grand scheme of things, in that instance, I was successful. But I couldn’t really stop myself from thinking about what is or is not fair. I couldn’t get the thoughts, I’m tired of the struggle. I’m tired of this. I’ve heard phrases like this from me before and from others. I’m fully aware of what it is about: I’m just sick of constantly having to fight for everything I have and feeling like no matter what choice I make, I will always end up fucked over in the end. I’m not sure if any of this was a really fitting feast for Sekhmet, but even though I may want to do something pretty big and expansive, life gets in the way whether I want it to or not.

I ended up feeling like it was time to get this all out.

I pulled out a red piece of construction paper, pulled out the pen I keep next to Djehuty, and I just began to write.

Sometimes, writing is incredibly cathartic and later, I find myself surprised by what has come out. It’s not always easy for me to put a pen to paper and go to town, but it was yesterday. I was able to clearly describe every aspect of my emotional state in a single sheet of paper. I watched as my emotions came out in word form with almost a detached interest in what I was seeing. While I wrote what I needed to get out, I listened to My Songs Know What You Did in the Dark (Light ‘Em Up) by Fall Out Boy. While I can’t tell if the song really was a big help for what I was hoping to accomplish, it wasn’t a horrible soundtrack. In fact, with each beat, I ended up feeling more and more confident with the bits that needed to come out and felt less like I needed to sit back and make sure I was saying things correctly.

If nothing else, the song was pretty fucking appropriate for the goddess in question.

May she be well fed upon the entrails of my insecurities.

I had always just assumed that when it came to feast days, it would be a home cooked meal. But I knew that I needed and wanted to do something completely unexpected and different this time around. So, with that gut instinct, I ended up with a feast for my lady – I gave her a feast with my execration. I took her statue outside with me, along with my cauldron. I did the usual execration items: spitting, kicking, stabbing, punching, and stomping. I also anointed the paper with some special oils I won from TPR blog a while back. And then, I did what any self-respecting Kemetic and devotee of Sekhmet would do – I burned all the things.

This particular feast day was not what I was expecting. I always expect a tad of the usual. I never really think things are ever going to be weird or different or difficult. However, sometimes the status quo means that we have to look outside the box for devotional items to add to our feast days. I’d like to think that, if nothing else, I definitely succeeded in the fact that I thought outside of the box. But I think I did more than all of that. I think I also proved, more to myself, that sometimes, it’s the shitty goings on in our life that we can offer up on a plate (or in this case, burning in a cauldron) and the gods can feast upon that as well. In particular, with Sekhmet being a deity who upholds ma’at, by offering up my execration, an action that I am performing to attempt to bring my life back in line with [my definition of] ma’at, it stands to reason that I would offer up such a thing to her.

May she be well fed upon the entrails of my insecurities.

And me? I’ll go on with my life and I’ll continue to plod through the treacherous waters I’ve been floating on, waiting for the day when either I realize what all is going on or I end up overcoming it.

My vote is to overcome.