Dusk.

The Dream.

I was running through the woods. Sometimes I was running through an abandoned building, but mostly I was outside in a heavily wooded area. It would have been beautiful if I wasn’t so busy running and gasping for breath.

The arrow pierced through my coat. It didn’t hit me but it could have. I didn’t know where it came from except somewhere behind me. It flew through the coat and cracked against the tree in front of me. That’s when I realized I was being hunted, so I woke myself up.

When I went back to sleep some time later, I was back there again. But instead of arrows, the hunter was using a rifle of some kind. I’d hear it cock and the bullet go whizzing by when I zigged out of its way. The hunter wore all black, no camouflage, and stepped out ahead of me, gun aimed at my chest…

I woke up again and it was close enough to the time to get up that I didn’t go back to sleep this time. It was many hours later that I looked up hunting in my preferred Dream Dictionary. It’s not the only one I use because I have a personal one for repeated themes, but I had never been hunted in a dream before. I didn’t know what this meant.

To dream that you are being hunted indictates that you are being overwhelmed by life’s challenges.

Yeah. Yeah, that sounded about right. I couldn’t deny that.

The Dog.

My pet is a 14-year-old tweenie Dachshund. Her mom was a mini and her dad was a standard, so she’s in-between the two common sizes people see.

She’s had health issues with her back since she was 5 or 6, which is common. She has IVDD, the disease of all long-shaped dogs, and we manage it when she has a flare. If anyone knows Crusoe, the famous Dachshund, he had a flare some years back that left his back legs paralyzed. Wth medication and physical therapy, he came through. Jazz’s flares aren’t that bad, luckily, but they sure suck.

She also has very Bad Teeth. This is my fault for not getting her used to teeth brushing as a puppy, but we manage as well as we can now. She periodically gets an abscess that leaves her more crotchety and stubborn than the usual Dachshund crotchetiness and stubbornness.

In late September, she had an abscess that we dealt with via medication. She is old enough now where the vet has major concerns about putting her under to remove her teeth. The meds worked and she was back to her usual round of Dachshund stubborn in two days. That’s when she had an IVDD flare.

I had picked her up and then she was crying in pain. I brought her to the emergency vet room and we waited a very long time to see the dogtor. I went in knowing what we needed because of previous visits and the doc didn’t disagree. Since the pain was more in her neck than her back, the dogtor warned me that this might be a bigger flare than we were used to; evidently neck flares can sometimes only be treated with surgery.

Jazz was pretty pissed off with me for all the poking and prodding she went through. She snubbed me twice in the office and then again after we left. She was also quite high, which leaves her wanting to become one with my lap. It was an interesting ride home at ten o’clock that night.

After a few days on her anti-inflammatory and pain meds, she was moving around a lot better. She wasn’t running around just yet but she was able to move her head again. She was loopy, as she gets on gabapentin, and slept the entire day away while I was at work. I knew she was feeling better when she tried to walk up the stairs (a big no-no for Dachshunds) and jumping on the couch (another big no-no) when no one was around.

She finished off her meds last week and I did a placebo test to make sure she was 100%: I pretended to sprinkle her meds on her medication-laced-cookie-of-choice (cheese) and saw she was still ok. She’s back to being her usual self and I’m glad this flare is over.

The Dread.

I realized my mom was MIA on social media in early October. I checked her FB profile and saw her last posts were in late September. My mom’s only form of communication is social media so I texted her, but received no response. This isn’t weird because she is agoraphobic to a degree, has anxiety about talking on the phone or texting, and usually gets back to me when she’s ready.

I texted again last week, which is when my brother messaged to say something was wrong. After talking it over via messages, I managed to get him to take her to the ER because everything he said was a major RED FLAG that something was wrong. She wasn’t taking care of herself or her dog-daughter. She suffers from severe depression and while she may stop taking care of herself for a bit, she has never stopped taking care of a pet.

They took her to the ICU because she was Very Ill. They managed to stop the original symptoms of what sent her to the ICU and stabilized her enough to go to a regular room. But every day there is more Bad News and every day, I’m left kind of numb at the end of it. They think they may have finally figured out what caused the change in her behavior but we aren’t sure yet. They run test after test and ask question after question. I’m tired and worried.

I’m waiting for The Call the child gets when things go down. That Call. I honestly don’t see her leaving the hospital, healed and better. Based on al the positive vibes they tell me I suppose it’s possible. She could come out of this, but I don’t think so.

The Dilemma.

So when does the child pack a bag, hop on a plane, and fly 3000 miles to watch her mom in a hospital room? I could fly if I need to (I have a fear of heights) and my boss says she’ll give me time off if needed. But do I go down there to start wrapping things up now, or wait until a prognosis is given?

I don’t know what is to happen here. I’ve spoken with my brother about what we do if this ends the way I believe it does. We always had a plan in place because my mom has never been the healthiest person on the planet. But I can say that I thought this stuff was 10+ years away.

She’s only 63.

Two Roads Diverged…

Some days, I feel like my whole life is a famous poem just splashed out on paper to read. It sits there like a flashing neon sign to me when for everyone else, it’s just a bunch of fancy words on paper. Maybe everyone feels that way sometimes; maybe I’m alone in this.

After the nice woman on the other side of the state told me to get going or else, I came home and ranted for a while. It wasn’t really the message that angered me insomuch as the parting shot, the bit that left me pale and shaking. The bit that, upon seeing me after the reading, my friend asked me if I was okay. I’ve never talked about that part; I probably won’t.

When I was calm enough, I sat down with my gods and asked them what the hell I needed to do. They were all very nice about the situation but it was still a lot to take in. They let me bitch and moan and listened while I railed on about how I was a good fucking devotee who didn’t deserve this next round of horse shit. I guess they understood why I was so angry.

I laid all my cards on the table about how I was angry and how I didn’t know what the fuck I was supposed to be doing. I told them I thought about leaving, just packing it all up and burying myself away because it was all just too damn hard. I wasn’t serious, not really, but they talked me down.

At that ledge, looking down, I realized I was overwhelmed with all of this. I was at the point of being so overloaded that I couldn’t figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing or why I was supposed to care. My gods told me that my tentative plan of taking a time out was a good one. We decided that I had until March to make a choice.

After that, they showed me two possibilities. Isn’t that always the way though? There are two doors to choose from with the frog that always tells the truth and the frog that always lies. No frogs this time, just two possibilities to choose from with a general idea of where both would lead.

I had three months to figure it all out.

And sorry I could not travel both; And be one traveler, long I stood; And looked down one as far as I could – The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

I am the type of person to stick my head in the sand when things are too big. It’s actually a familial trait passed down from generation to generation. Eventually I will do something but when I get to the “I can’t actually form words” stage because there is too much going on, I get overloaded and hide.

My gods may have been kind to me because I was overwhelmed but they kept reminding me that I had a time limit. Arbitrary calendar dates are a thing for me and even though I knew I should probably look a little deeper into it, I chose not to. The partial glimpses of possibilities in December were enough.

The first path looked nice enough. It was calm and quiet with a sense of familiarity that sent shock waves through me. I looked at that possible future and saw that, while things would be dealt with efficiently and relatively quickly, things would change to a degree that I would wind up losing out on what I have established for myself thus far.

It wouldn’t go away, per se, but the dynamic would change. And that was a game changer. I could see my gods behind me, but crowded to the background.

I have worked very hard and gone through a hell of a lot of shit to get where I am today. I wasn’t saying good-bye to it, but I was, in effect, trudging up a mountain and away from my gods, my path, my life. As much as they annoy me, the possibility of that dynamic change was worrisome and confusing. I didn’t like what I saw.

The other way was more frightening. It made my heart stop with its deep, dark places eschewing light and cheer. It was filled with fear and with sorrow. There was nothing recognizable to me there. I looked at that possible future and saw an interim change in the dynamic, but at the end things would be much more manageable.

It would take longer to deal with things, though. Even with the picture drawn before me, the path was filled with unknown pitfalls and I would need to travel slowly and carefully, trudging through the slog and mud.

Knowing how hard I have worked to get to where I am, even if most people don’t recognize that hard work, I realized that while the happier seeming path would be simple, the darker seeming path was more in line with what the end game. I had to take time to look inside and figure out what was more important here.

But as my gods steadily pinged me, reminding me that we did in fact have a time limit, I was depressed for the decision process. Though they kept coming at me regularly with hits and reminders, I ignored them; that whole overwhelmed thing making its debut.

Besides, I had actually made a decision. I just hadn’t announced it yet.

Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. – The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

In the last few weeks, I’ve been dreaming about various modifications to myself. I think the one that took the cake was the dream where I got a tattoo of the ending stanza to the poem, The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost. I got the gist to a point, but I was still a little confused by the dream. (Not to mention that thinking on it over the last few days has only made me really want to get it tattooed on my forearm, just like in the dream.)

It’s actually a little amusing that the dream took that particular poem and that particular section. I’ve been saying from the get-go that my religious life, and by extension my mundane as well, oft resembles that poem. It’s not just my favorite famous poem of all time. It is me.

It’s taken a little bit of back and forth on my part to confirm what the fuck my mind was telling me, but I got it after a bit. (Still trying to decide if a tattoo is really warranted though.) I got the message; I understood what was happening finally. But of course, the emotional hits are never over with just one final nail on the coffin.

Last night, I stood between Papa Legba and Loki, looking from one to the other.

When I looked at Legba, I could see things so clearly and I wanted so much to walk beside him again. He was a rock in a time when I needed one even while he was teaching me important things. He held my hand and helped me through the worst of the bullshit after my head split further open and the Long Term was explained to me. I cried for months after his door shut on me and still sometimes cry, like I am now.

The sweet filled smell of him was there and I could see him in such a beautiful sun-filled place. Green fields and clear lit paths, birds chirping and the crossroads so clearly marked for the eye to see.

But I turned to look at Loki and the skies were gray. There were storm clouds in the distance. Everything was hard to see and I couldn’t tell what was slog and what was path. I wanted so much to turn away from this red-headed unknown in my life, contract be damned and knowing that the Old Man would get me out of it if I asked, and march the fuck away.

But three months ago, I saw what my life could and probably would look like with Papa. And I saw what my life could and probably would look like with Loki. And I decided then what I had to re-illustrate last night.

Did you know you can grieve for might-have-beens? It’s entirely possible. I wasn’t aware though maybe I should have been.

I had to finally say good-bye to someone who meant a lot to me. It’s not the first time I’ve done it, but that doesn’t make this any easier. Loki’s kindness after didn’t really help, though it distracted me at least. I will miss the might-have-beens, but I need my autocracy as it is now, not what it would become with Papa Legba and his brood. I will miss the relationship and the lessons he set before me, but what ice been working towards is more important than all that.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
– The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost

Raise Hell and Turn It Up.

It’s not unheard of for me to dream of my online friends. Over the years, I’ve cultivated a very good personal community and the bonds of those friendships have twisted enough to include an occasional visit via the dreamscape in some form or another. There are some people who seem less like dream visit friends than others, of course, but on the whole, it surprises me not one wit to wake up from a dream with one of my friends in it.

Last week, a Norse friend of mine showed up to take me to a bank to discuss getting a car loan. All very odd but not overly interesting. Two days later, they showed up again, but this time, to physically pull me from a dream about work which had no clear exit. (I have become adept at pulling myself from dreams I have no interest in continuing but this one was impossible until they showed up.)

Another friend of mine mentioned that these instances could be something Other. They mentioned that a certain, very well known Norse trickster was a fan of showing up in dreams wearing the skin of their followers. A little concerning, I suppose, but I didn’t start to worry until the friend who had appeared twice in dreams mentioned they don’t dream walk.

Damn.

The icing on the cake came when Seth fucking Rogan appeared in a dream to show me condominiums to buy. At one such place, the guest book had LOKI in very ornate calligraphy across a page. When I looked at Seth, he grinned and nodded. The game was over; I had figured it out (with help) and it appeared as though Mr. Trickster had something up his sleeve.

I wanna wake up; can’t even tell if this is a dream… – Don’t Threaten Me with a Good Time by Panic! at the Disco

All of the people who have commented have been remarkably nice about my ambivalence. Every single person has remarked that, as it stands, Mr. Redhead is very well and good for initiating change. This actually only causes me to actually have concerns about his appearance. I definitely need a change, what with all of the inertia, but is it truly so bad that I need the assistance of Mr. Wears-People’s-Faces-for-Funsies?

The first reading I did when I had a chance to calm down seemed to indicate that I was relying more on hope than doing to get through the situation in question. The card wasn’t wrong; it just crystallized something I had been unable to verbalize to myself. The second card in this reading remarked that the existing traditions were broken and unusable. I swore a little bit and walked away.

As additional information comes trickling in piecemeal (mostly because I have made no time, on purpose, to look deeper here), it all relates back to the stagnation, to the inertia. It pops up when I least expect it and while I haven’t thrown a tantrum at my gods yet, who have been curiously silent in all of this, it’s rapidly coming down the pike.

I can’t help but feel a little betrayed: the very traditions that they have coached me in are somehow failing? The very message of hope that they have harped at me is now causing further damage? Well, for fuck’s sake, what the hell am I supposed to do here? Apparently, pay some tiny attention to Mr. Becomes-a-Mare-And-Has-a-Foal.

I don’t even know if my complete lack of interest is due to the fact that I feel this insurmountable mountain should, in fact, be surmounted with my Kemetic background or if it’s the fact that Mr. Has-a-Wolf-for-a-Kid has been steadily tossing “helpful, friendly” vibes in my direction. Hasn’t he figured out that the nicer you are to me the more distrustful I become?

Beyond the feelings of betrayal and irritation and distrust, I have to admit that I’m a little curious. I have followed and paid enough attention to Lokeans for long enough now to know that he’s really maligned by the wider community. I don’t doubt that he would prove useful in the fulfillment of getting out of the rut. I just have to wonder what the methods would be and how deep down the rabbit hole I would find myself at the end of all this.

Champagne, cocaine, gasoline… And most things in between – Don’t Threaten Me with a Good Time by Panic! at the Disco

I did, eventually, sit down and pull a few cards to mull over the situation. I may not jump to the task immediately, but I recognize that sometimes I need more than dreams and arm flails. Unfortunately, the readings made complete sense and induced more arm flails. At least I have a better understanding though.

The gist seems to be that, while the work I’ve slowly been doing with Ptah is sufficient to meet the expectations there are, hm, fears that it won’t be enough. Ptah is stability and silence for me. Since I have an ability to ignore the work under the existing tradition and gods who I have relationships with, it’s been decided – not by me – that I need an outside assist in order to truly be successful.

To be clear, this decision was undertaken out of love for me even though it is without my knowledge or without my direct input. One of those, “I’m only doing what is in your best interests” things without talking to the person whose best interests are being taken into consideration.

I get… the need for it. During the moments that I am being rational about the whole situation, I can even agree that what’s being said is correct and that someone to push me off the cliff is probably warranted. I can also agree that a person from outside of my home base is more likely to get results if for no other reason than I don’t want them around and will work harder to make them go away sooner. That doesn’t mean I’m thrilled by any means.

It seems as though I will need to determine a contract between us. It was made quite clear that guidelines and rules need to be determined (I am not surprised) and that the “finite timeline” needs to be built into this. My one concern is that I’m going to not think this contract through clearly and wind up accidentally stuck with Mr. I-Turned-into-a-Fly for more time than I am willing to endure. I fucking hate contracts, man.

All in all, I have more concerns regarding how all of this is to come about: loss and isolation. I didn’t ask for clarification on this (mostly because I was already upset and forgot to ask) but the idea of both loss and isolation is concerning. He was quite clear that this is what would be needed to get me through the bullshit morass I’ve been doing through. Another concern was the hint that poverty was going to cause problems.

Not a horrible start, I suppose, but not exactly thrilling either.

I keep coming back to the nice old woman who read the cards for me in December though. The description that I was a house with a solid foundation and nothing going on inside because the work hadn’t been done. And the warning that not bothering would cause things to get worse.

I know that my choices are limited and it’s my own inaction that’s brought me to be here. But damn, man, why did it have to be him?

The Lovers.

Alternate Title: Follow Your Ib

Three days ago, I had yet another in a long line of strange dreams. It’s practically par for the course. I think about 75% of my week is filled with strange dreams that don’t seem to fit with the standard dream lexicon I’ve built for myself. Deciphering these little shits has become almost a major focus in my life. It’s like, I feel as if I could succeed mightily if I could just figure out what one of the damn dreams meant or is supposed to mean. Ha.

For the most part, I try to parse out whatever meaning I possibly can during my ride into work. My mind is still fresh enough but not hyper focused enough on something else to present me with about 40 minutes of almost down time. So, I try to figure out anything I can and that’s where most of my “ah-ha” moments occur… though I will be honest that I have had a surprising limited number of “ah-ha” moments in recent months. In either case, the drive to work is both a relaxing pastime and a spurt of frustration, but no matter how much I assure myself that I will not think about what I dreamed about the night before, I invariably end up thinking about it.

While thinking about the self-cannibalism dream and trying like hell to remember what the fuck the ouroboros is supposed to stand for (still haven’t remembered and I can’t be bothered to look to be honest), I had a vision of an anatomical heart. Damn. I don’t even want to say “vision.” It wasn’t really a vision. It felt like more than that. There was a black space, which I’ve been in or seen before, and then in the center was a giant-as-fuck anatomical heart. It was just spinning slowly, like it was a coin that was slowing down after being spun really fast. It just kept rotating around and around until I finally heard a whisper, “Follow the heart.”

Well that made so much more sense!

In rapid succession, my thoughts went something like this:

My heart?

Their heart?

The SO’s heart?

The child’s heart?

A stranger’s heart?

The heart I ate?

The fractured heart that I have been working on?

The ring on my finger that is an anatomical heart?

If you’ve been paying any attention to my religious life lately, then you know that hearts are pretty important. Most of my relationship with Sekhmet can best be summed up with a picture of an ib. It seems to be a very big part of what’s been going on between us, never mind all of the recent shenanigans. But just because it’s a large part of my practice that doesn’t necessarily mean I fully understand the point behind seeing one in a dark head space and hearing the phrase, “follow the heart.”

I was quite confused.

I forgot about it because as much as I would like some damn answers, things have happened that required my attention. I went to work. I had things to do there. And then I came home and seethed inwardly for a while. Lather, rinse, and repeat.

The Lovers card from the Mary-El Tarot deck.

This morning, I pulled my daily card because, eh why not. I honestly don’t know why I bother anymore because nine times out of ten, it just causes more arm flailing and makes it that much harder to figure out what the fuck is happening. I was totally unprepared for what I pulled because mostly I have been getting cards like Strength and Death. This morning, I got the Lovers.

I’m not a huge fan of this card, mostly because it’s telling me that a choice that I need to make and I need to make that choice based on my heart. I liked the card even less this morning since it only made me recall that moment in the car, when I could see darkness all around and there was a giant swirling fucking anatomical heart and the whispered words, “Follow the heart.”

Maybe not quite a “clue-by-four” but kind of appropriate all things considered.

The problem is that I don’t know what I’m supposed to be listening to or even what specifically in regards to.

The Tower from the Radiant Rider-Waite deck

There is just so much going on in my life recently. I have honestly felt beset on every side. I think I spend hours upon hours at a time, wishing and hoping that I could just run away. I feel less like I’m stuck between Scylla and Charybdis and more like I’ve been crushed flat by a thousand tons of rocks, wondering if someone will come over with a fireplace bellows and push me back into shape.

I think I’m more at the Tower than at the point where I need to follow my heart.

I know that there are a ton of things that I’ve been sitting on that I should do in order to benefit both myself and my family. However, I’m actually at a moment of complete stasis. I can’t move in one direction or another. I keep weighing the consequences of each. I know what my heart is telling me – I’ve always at least been able to hear it – but the idea of actually following through frightens me more than anything else.

What I see in my heart frightens the shit out of me because there are so many unknown possibilities and I just… I feel as though I cannot take that chance.

I understand, to a degree, why the need to follow one’s heart is important. I also understand, to a degree, why some people have made the best choices in this way. But I’m too on the hedge. I need to ensure that I truly am seeing all of the options from every angle. This has been a huge problem for me for a very long time, but after 32 years, I honestly don’t know if I could possibly quit now.

But perhaps that is the point in all of this: kick my ass into gear and get me paying attention to the deep part of myself that is talking, the part that needs to be heard and listened to. And if that is the case, then maybe more than “follow the heart” would be useful here. Perhaps something that tells me how to get over the heart-crushing, body-paralyzing anxiety would be a good idea.

The World from the Wild Unknown deck

I think what worries me the most about all of this is the same old shtick: I know the end result or at least what the end result is supposed to be. The thing is that I just don’t know how in the fuck I’m supposed to go about it because it’s not just walking through the jungle without a map, but also how to break through my own personal failings or, maybe not failings, but like the programming I’ve been built with.

If I fail at this, it’s not just me that pays the price. I’ve always gone into things under the impression that others would pay for my mistakes. But now, it’s actually true. I have a family to consider. I have to take care of them and their needs throughout all of this. In some instances, I know full well what my heart, my ib, is telling me but I just don’t see how I can take that chance with two people who trust me the way that they do in the mix.

“But Sat, just trust in the gods! Have faith!”

The problem there is that I’ve done that. I have absolutely been there and done that; I got shot with the T-shirt cannon for fuck’s sake. And I’m sorry, but I can’t just blindly follow. I need more than just, “do the thing,” to get my ass in gear. I need a huge neon sign with flashing lights and hymns praising my beauty. I need to my smashed in the face with a piece of luggage falling from the sky before I can even consider the idea of trusting them to that level again.

I think I get the point but I just can’t get with the program on a faint glimmer of possibilities.

Stillness and Thoughts.

Some days, I go outside to simper in the sunlight, streaming down over my head. I sit down on the back stoop with book or phone in hand, originally intending on getting something going. Instead, I sit back on the stoop and close my eyes against the bright rays that pierce my eyes with deepened shadowing than they are used to and feel the very fingertips of Re upon my face. On days like that, the thoughts roll around my head like a wayward rubber ball, rolling around the circle for a game of jacks. On those days, I’ll pick up that wayward ball and bounce it down, picking up one of the jacks and flipping it over my hand, end to end, in an effort to puzzle out where it is my mind has gone.

Lately, this particular game of Re-touches-and-I-puzzle has been heading to the same place. It feels, now, less like a game and more like a terrorizing moment of heart-rending capabilities. I’ve been thinking too much about this now to leave it alone and it’s where I’m meant to head with these thoughts; I know that. That doesn’t mean I have to fucking like it.

It started with a dream.

I’m beginning to suspect that I’m so stubborn, the only way I can get through to what I need to pick at is through dreams. I think every major undertaking I’ve done, either religious or healing, has come about because I had a dream. This dream started off okay. It was about my ex. It started off like all the other ones I’ve had since I severed our bonds. But the end of that dream was not okay. He wore me down and down and down some more until I was crying and he was over me, grunting, and I was thinking, TH is going to be so mad at me that I didn’t fight him.

Just re-writing that leaves tingles of anxiety and panic in my arms and my heart races.

I didn’t understand the dream, not at first. It felt like I had missed something and I was worried. I turned to a bunch of friends and said, “Here is the dream and I don’t understand.” I thought that maybe there was still some shadow work to do there – perhaps the ball of anger at returned. But when I looked for it, it wasn’t there. I thought that maybe I hadn’t severed all the bonds between us – perhaps there was something that had found its way beyond the magic and the hard work I had completed last year. But when I looked at all the other bonds I have, I didn’t see that snaky ribbon of his bond and realized that wasn’t it.

I didn’t understand it.

Then I saw something else, something about consent, which has been a very, very, very weird and strange thing that has popped up everywhere for me two weeks before hand. My mind went, “Oh, well that’s it.” And I understood. This wasn’t really shadow work, per se, but this was about me and about how I’ve always behaved when it’s come to things. I realized, honestly, that I wasn’t very good with consent at least as it is discussed by modern day people. “Consent is giving permission,” more or less, and as I thought back to that, I realized that, well, I was never really good with giving anyone consent. Before now, before TH and our relationship, I didn’t really understand what consent was. And I still have issues with it.

I stopped thinking about this. There was no point in moving forward because the thoughts that would come would, of course, hurt. I didn’t want hurt, so I ignored it. I’ve been ignoring this for weeks now. Sekhmet has been incredibly patient, of course, but I knew it was only a matter of time. Either she sent me another dream or my subconscious had enough of my frail attempts at poking at the internal bees’ nest, only to hunch back and run away from it at the first sign of pain to come. Whatever the case may be, I had another dream, which left me less confused and more willing to move forward with the overall process.

I was at TH’s parents’ house and there was something in my hair. I could feel it on the right side of my head, plucking and pulling at the snarled strands. TH was there, beside me, and very gently removed whatever it was. The thing in his hand was a 10 pound black widow spider. I stared at its carapace as it glinted off the streaming sunlight. TH, thoughtfully, put the thing on a bit of spider webbing above the pool. The spider went shuttling back and forth across the strands, not with its oversized legs but like one of those little rabbits on the side of a dog race. It maneuvered back and forth as I watched it stop above a child’s body, swimming in the pool and taunting it to come for it. The child ducked beneath the water as the spider came down and that’s about when my mind had enough because I woke the fuck up.

I’m not a fan of spiders.

I lay there, heart pounding, trying to make sense of what it was I had just dreamed. My head still hurt where the spider had been tangled in my hair. I reached up and touched it, frightened that I would actually find a fucking spider in my hair. There was nothing there. I think, in my consternation, my hand got caught in my hair and, I think, pulled some strands loose. At four in the morning, I sat up and watched television for a while. When I felt calm enough, I checked out my favorite dream interpretation site since I was running blank on interpretations, “To see a black widow in your dream suggests fear or uncertainty regarding a relationship. You may feel confined, trapped, or suffocated in this relationship. You may even have some hostility toward your mate. Because the female black widow has the reputation of devouring its mate, it thus also symbolizes feminine power and domination over men.”

Well, whether it meant I was uncertain in my relationship or not, it certainly seemed to go hand-in-hand, in a fashion, with all the thoughts I had been having and running away from. I supposed that I should get to it and so, I began writing this entry then. I began thinking of what it is was that I had been hoping to ignore. I felt pain and sorrow. Sometimes, as I sat up in the morning, waking up long before the sun rose, to contemplate what it was going on in my life and what it was that had happened, I would feel my heart palpitate, my palms sweat, and my breathing become irregular. All that mattered was that I had to get through this in some form or another, but I realized that I couldn’t run through the gamut in too quick a time. I had to take my time.

I decided to start off with Sekhmet, turning over the reason she wanted this in my face now, right now, over and over again. Of course, this all started with Sekhmet.

It’s because of her, and her uncomfortable ability to make me face the things I don’t want to face, that I have to face this. I’ve been looking back and back down the halls of memory, trying so hard to see where I consented to anything in my relationships with the men I’ve been with. And I don’t see a single instance where I said, specifically, “Yes, I want to do this,” except maybe once or twice. I can only see that I gave in. It wasn’t, “Yes, I want to be here with this person,” but always, “I don’t want this person to leave me so I’m going to do whatever it is they ask of me, from the small things to the large things, and they will be happy and take care of me and everything will be okay.”

The problem with living in relationships that way is that, well, there is a bit of a stubborn streak inside of me. For some reason, I grew up to become a sort of rag doll that people could do with what they wanted, but there was a hint of strength underneath that façade. And that hint would come out now and again, causing major arguments because the people I was in those relationships with didn’t expect me to stand up for myself about anything. And something would set off that hidden steel and I would argue and stubborn my way through something, and they would leave.

This only reinforced the, “I have to give in because otherwise they’ll leave me.”

I was thinking the other day about the first boy who kissed me. He was a boy in my neighborhood and I think we were nine. We were supposed to be playing hide-and-seek with his little brother. And instead of hiding on his own, the boy found me hiding in the spare bedroom. And I remember him coming over to me, hiding in a darkened corner and trying to kiss me. I can remember turning my head away – a clear indication of no, I supposed – but he went on with it anyway. And I can remember thinking, “No, I don’t want this,” but I never said anything.

I stopped hanging out with them after that. It bothered me that he would continue to attempt to kiss me. Even though I hadn’t said, “No, we shouldn’t do this,” or “No, I don’t think I’m ready for this stuff,” or “No, I don’t want to do this,” I just turned away and hoped for the best. This seems to have been my basic philosophy with just about everything, though, from that time forward. It wasn’t ever a “No, please stop,” or “No, let’s not,” it was always just hints and signals, some obvious and some not, and hoping someone could read my fucking mind.

I moved forward in time and looked at other relationships, too. I can remember in middle school and the first real boyfriend I had. He was okay. He was nice and he didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do. If I wanted to hold his hand, then we held hands. If I wanted to kiss, then we kissed. He was nice to me. He treated me very well, though I didn’t return the favor. I treated him very badly and ended up not even really breaking up, but just stopped returning his calls. (I was in a deep depression by that point, so it’s really I was a jerk but also I was unable to speak to people by that point.) He was good and nice and I stopped speaking to him.

But other boys were not so nice and not so good and I continued to talk to them. I let them do many things that I wasn’t comfortable with. I let them say things about me, to me, or about others that I was uncomfortable with and just let it go. I can’t remember a single person ever stopping to say, “Do you want to do this?” Or asking me, “Is it okay if I said this thing?” I don’t remember anyone every making sure I was comfortable with anything because I was too busy hoping someone would just magically see that I was not and make a decision for me.

For a long time, I assumed that my lack of consent in these relationships, or well maybe not lack of consent but lack of actually make any fucking decision whatsoever about anything, was because I thought of sex and the stuff related as dirty. It was wrong. It didn’t get done. It was something gross and icky, but other people didn’t see it that way, so I went along with it, knowing that my viewpoints on the matter were rather unorthodox. Oh, sure, having an orgasm is pretty nice and all, but the unbearable guilt and disgust that happens after said orgasm? Well, that was a bit much and I think, partially at least, that’s where the whole, “please read my mind,” thing comes from. I knew my viewpoints would be seen as incorrect and kept them to myself.

But where the fuck did that even come from? I can’t think of it, honestly. And with certain boys, when things would happen, it wasn’t always some form of guilt complex that happened after the fact. Some of the guilt and dirtiness, I know where it stems. But the stuff from before I was raped and before I was molested? Where on earth did that come from anyway?

In an effort to keep people beside me, I kept my trap fucking shut. I never said word one to anyone about how I felt about things. And that’s the gist of all of this, isn’t it? I was so busy keeping my mouth shut because people would be upset with whatever that came out of it that I kept my mouth shut when I probably should have fucking said something. And ended up opening it up and being the stubborn little fuck that I actually am over the most asinine and ridiculous things you can imagine.

This morning, I sat outside and ruminated over the nightmare I had last night. This one was more painful, in some ways, than the one that started all of this. While I contemplated the dream, I watched as a blue jay swallowed some tasty morsel it had picked up from the yard. I watched that blue jay hop up the tree, trying to keep my emotions in check before I lost it in full view of my neighbors, who were getting up and greeting the new day. I thought about that dream and wondered how much things may have actually changed.

It started with a beautiful girl. She was small and lithe with curly brown hair and hazel eyes. And she was looking for TH. TH found her with me by his side and she held her hand to her womb and smiled at him. And then it came out: he had cheated on me with this girl and evidently, on the first try, he had knocked her up. As the dream progressed, the girl’s belly swelled with new life and more came out: it was three separate times within as many weeks; he had enjoyed himself immensely; he was going to leave our son and me to be with her and have a “real” relationship; and he thought I wasn’t really asexual but jumping on the Tumblr bandwagon of such things.

And I lay there, in the dream, crying until I could barely breathe, clawing at his legs and saying, “What do I have to do? Please don’t leave me; please don’t leave me. What do I have to do in order to keep you here with me? I forgive you; I forgive you. Please stay.”

I woke up crying.

And I wondered, as I lay there swiping the tears from my cheeks, how much change I’ve actually gone through. Do I truly stand my ground with TH? Am I truly willing to do many things in order to keep him with me, as it has always been with the men before? I lay there, my heart pounding in tune with the anxiety gnawing away at my insides, trying to decide if maybe I hadn’t changed as much as I thought I had. Maybe I am still really bad with consent and maybe I am still really bad about making my viewpoint heard and maybe I am still really bad with not doing everything in my power to bend to the unforeseen will of others, changing everything I can about myself, just so that they will love me and stay by my side.

According to the website I use, having your significant other cheat on you in a dream means that “your fears of being abandoned. You may feel a lack of attention in the relationship. Alternatively, you may feel that you are not measuring up to the expectations of others. This notion may stem from issues of trust or self-esteem. The dream could also indicate that you are subconsciously picking up hints and cues that your significant other is not being completely truthful or is not fully committed in the relationship.” I don’t know if any of that matters, honestly, but the dream hurt and I have to wonder how much change I ever did…

Later, I cuddled beside TH, letting his gentle touches calm my overwrought mind from the dream. He said nothing as I cried, letting his tender fingertips tell my mind and body the reassurances they needed.

Maybe I have changed. Maybe not. But this journey is far from over.

Dreams/Visions 01/01/2012.

This morning, I didn’t go to bed until after midnight. Both TH and I stayed up watching Ted and then, we ended up falling asleep shortly after doing the midnight kiss thing. I was telling him, before falling asleep, about the swathe of dreams I had been having about my ex-husband in the last few days. I told him how when our son fell asleep on me, I didn’t dream about the ex at all, but when he had gone back to his room and I was all alone, all of my dreams were ex-husband related. As I told TH, it was kind of like those stupid chase scenes in the Scooby Doo television series. We went from room to room, with the ex-husband chasing after me. Only instead of the rooms changing, the dream scape would change with each movement into a new room. It was very strange. I told TH how I was hoping that, with him at home after a week at his mother’s, the dreams would stop.

They did.

I was living in some woods, out in the middle of nowhere. The cottage I was in was very similar to the Sanderson sisters’ cottage from Hocus Pocus. It was overcrowded with instruments and necessary items for both witchcraft as well as things necessary to eke out a living. And I was working some witchcraft to keep the ex-husband away from me. I was interrupted in it and I don’t know if I ever finish it. I’m unsure what interrupted the magic making in that dream. All I know is that it went from me being a witch, doing some serious mojo on the ex, to me in my apartment bathroom. It was like I went from re-living an experience that I didn’t finish or couldn’t finish on a trip with Hekate to dreaming. Or maybe, the whole damn thing was a dream and that’s why the switch from past life experience to my apartment bathroom was as swift and smooth as it was.

I had my hair done up in pigtail braids, along either side of my face. It was me, which is odd because I don’t normally see myself in my dreams. But, I was staring at myself in the mirror. My hair was wet in these pigtail braids. And I remember very purposely, with real intent, pulling the braids out of my hair. I combed out each section with my fingers, moving from plait to plait one either side of my face. My face was stony and dark with its intent. And honestly, I’m not sure what the intent actually was. I have an idea that it was probably me moving past something. An old way of life? An old aspect of myself? A youthful disposition? I’m not sure, but I’m pretty sure it was my way of moving from one aspect of myself to another. I’m just not sure what aspects I was leaving behind to move forward into.

At this point, I woke up which is when I had my vision.

I had to use the bathroom really badly at this point so, I got up and did my business. When I came back to the couch to lay down (we still don’t have a bed), there was a child standing at the foot of the couch. It was standing in the table with the printer at the end of that part of the couch. It was staring at me while I slept.

The child had very dark brown hair. He was Caucasian with olive tones to his skin. His dark brown hair was a little too long, in need of a cut desperately as it was falling into his eyes. He was wearing a dark blue, long-sleeved shirt. His face was round and still full of baby fat. In fact, as I saw the child, I immediately thought I was seeing my son astrally project himself out to me. I thought about going into his room to check on him. Maybe he had need of me? But that feeling went away immediately after I had it because it just wasn’t the case. This child stared at me with very sad, dark eyes and then he faded away.

The kid was dead.

I don’t have any doubt of that one.

The thing is that I don’t know who the child was. I was pretty sure it was a forgotten Deadz as I went to sleep last night. I mean, I’ve been leaving out a calling card to all of the cemeteries I visit for months and months now. I kind of thought that my “powers” were just growing. Instead of just sensing them when I’m in the cemetery, I could finally begin to sense them when they came to visit me. But, now, I’m not so sure. Both Devo and I were talking about it this morning and she posited the possibility that this was a child from a past life that had somehow found me while I was in the astral, viewing all of my past lives.

Oh, well, now. That’s an interesting theory.

Most of the lives I’ve been traveling to view with Hekate have been without any children. I think she was prepping me for some very difficult work ahead and wanted me to just see all the lives I’ve been with the ex-husband sans children. As Devo pointed out to me, there’s some serious heart break into past life shenanigans when you start bringing children into the mix. Considering the one life I know of – the one where Hekate saved both myself and my son in return for three lives’ worth of servitude to her – yeah, I can only imagine just exactly how bad the lives we had together where children fell into the mix. I don’t think heart-breaking really can begin to cover it. More like epic tragedy in every sense of the word and such a tragedy that William Shakespeare would quake at writing that play/sonnet…

If that is the case and this child is a harbinger of what I can expect over the next few months… I think the whole “drained” thing I’ve been going through will double or treble in its strength. I have to wonder where this will end up. And when I can finally admit to everyone, gleefully, that it’s truly and finally over.

Dream 12/29/2012.

I had a very long-winded dream last night. At one point, I woke up in the middle of the dream to go to the bathroom and after falling back to sleep, I went right back into the dream. It was obviously an important dream. I rarely have moments like that unless I’m having nightmares. Now, it’s possible I can say that this dream was a nightmare because it ended rather suddenly and because my mind said, NOPE MOTHERFUCKER; GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE. But, over all, it really wasn’t much of a nightmare. It just was what it was.

I was driving down to visit my mother in Texas. I was alone in the dream, and yet I wasn’t. I took both of my dogs with me to visit my mom as well as my son. We were going to visit. I had a vague feeling that something was wrong with my mother and she needed me. I found her in a park that doesn’t exist where she lives. We started walking around. At some points, my dogs were there and at other points, they weren’t. My son was nowhere to be found while I talked with my mom about things. She was being evasive, which isn’t my mom at all. There was obviously something she didn’t want to tell me. She was nervous. We walked into the paramedic station attached to the police department down there and there was my ex-husband sitting in the middle of a desk, looking a little too comfortable.

My mom had been trying to keep me away from my ex-husband.

I went insane. My mom disappeared from the dream at this point. She was only a vague background note. I went insane at my ex-husband, demanding to know what the hell he was doing there. He was sullying and destroying everything by being back down there. I kept rounding on him, reminding him how much he hated Texas and how the entire time we were down there, he would go on about wanting to move back up north. He just kept laughing me off, like what I was saying wasn’t valid at all. I was getting so angry with him and it really got the better of me when, walking somewhere random, he told me he was actually living with my mother. He had conned her into it somehow and he was living in her house.

I flipped the mother fuck out and started attacking him. I started beating at him with closed fits, which was completely ineffectual. This was borne out in the fact that he just kept laughing at me with each ineffectual hit in his direction. He wasn’t even trying to block the hits, either. They would make contact and my fists would bounce off of him, like he was wearing a protective carapace or something. I finally got so tired and winded that I had to stop attacking him. It wasn’t like it was doing anything. It wasn’t like I was proving a point except that everyone would think I was the crazy one, attacking a pillar of the community* and just generally acting like an escapee from an insane asylum. We started walking and he began telling me about his life in Texas.

* This is actually a very real fear of mine, both current and past. There’s something inhuman and disturbing about how easily he has had things. I mean, I know his life hasn’t been all sunshine and roses; I know. But he always comes off as the wounded soldier, the one who was wronged even if he was the one doing the wrongs. When he would tell stories about the fucked up shit he used to do to Demon Boy as a child, we would all end up laughing about how Demon Boy was in the wrong when really, it was my ex-husband. This is part of the reason I never, ever considered telling anyone what an emotionally and mentally abusive asshole he had become in the final few months we were together. I had proof in the Sister, but she was “crazy” and he could spin whatever yarns he wanted… people would believe him over us any day.

We walked back to my mother’s house, which isn’t the house she actually lives in. It was a bigger, white edifice. There were stories, which is ridiculous. If you live on an island in Texas, you really shouldn’t have a home larger than two stories. In reality, there are plenty of storied homes on the island where my mother lives. But, I’ve always thought the salt box, single floor homes were made to survive any hurricane the Gulf can throw at them and the storied edifices of the rich assholes from Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin would fall apart at the first sign of a good storm.

We walked into his home – it had become as though my mother was living off of his largesse – and he warned me that his family was home. I had to be a good girl. I had to behave myself. The house had become my childhood home. I went upstairs and I met his blonde-haired wife. (I don’t actually know what she looks like but I’ve always assumed she’s the Nordic perfect beauty that men drool over.) She was sitting in the room, on the bed, owning everything. She was condescending and bitchy. I flew at her in a rage and I began slapping her. I began to beat the shit out of her and the ex-husband was nowhere. She kept screaming at me that she was a lady and she would beat me if she wasn’t so much of a lady. I laughed at her. I made sure to slap her open handed, like the ex-husband would have done to me if I had stayed, because we don’t want to leave marks.

I ruined her pretty hair. I ruined her perfect make up. I destroyed her bedroom. I made it a mess.

I walked away, breathing heavily. I wanted to take a few minutes to gather myself because I was behaving childishly. I turned to the ex-husband, who was down in my childhood kitchen. He was looking amused. “Were you fucking her when we were together?” I asked him coolly. He smirked at me and replied, “Of course, I was. You already knew that.” I went into another white hot rage and ran at after her. I started hitting her until the ex-husband interrupted our girl fight. He said, “I want to introduce you to my son.” And there was MY SON, in his arms.

My beautiful baby boy was staring at me as though he didn’t know me. There was no outstretched arms for hugs. There was no snuggling under the blankets and watching TV together. This child was my son; it was his face, his body, his clothes, his demeanor, his personality. But he didn’t know who I was. And I began to cry. I moved away from the ex-husband’s wife. They had stolen my son and I told them that they had done this to me. I would make them pay. And the ex-husband just smiled at me as though I were insane. And his wife said, “That’s my son.”

I took my/our/their son downstairs to show him something. And the wife started hurling threats about what they would do to me if I tried to steal “their” child from them. And I was crying. And I took this child who didn’t know me down into the kitchen and pulled out a piece of meat. And I said, “Look, it’s an angel. It’s really an angel in there.” And he said that was very cool. And the cold, dead meat really did look like an angel. And I was so angry because my mom knew this had happened and hadn’t told me. And I was so angry at the ex and his wife, knowing no one would believe me about this being my child and their stealing him from me.

And then I forced myself awake because that’s some fucked up shit for a mother to go through.

Now, upon waking, I thought that the stealing of my son had to do with some bullshit regarding my son’s birth certificate. You see, his father isn’t on it. In Texas, where my son was born, there’s this silly, backwards law that states that if you’ve been married within the last 300 days of having a child, the man you were married to would be placed on the birth certificate. I refused to have my ex-husband’s name near it because the child was not his; R is TH’s child. I had stopped having relations with my ex-husband after February 1st** and my son was conceived in either March or April. (April, I think.) But, Texas people wouldn’t listen to me about this. The ex-husband either had to go on the birth certificate, the ‘father’ portion was left blank, or the ex-husband showed up to deny paternity but he had to be at the hospital even though he was living in Massachusetts. They refused to fax the paperwork or anything, not that I wanted anything to do with that asshole during the days following the birth of my son.

After moving back up to MA, I started the proceedings to get TH put on our child’s birth certificate, but never went anywhere with it. We didn’t have the money to file everything with the Attorney General’s office. I decided it would be easier to do a blood test, but it stopped being so important. The ex-husband had signed all the paper work denying custody, so it didn’t matter anymore if the father portion was blank on the certificate. I didn’t have to push the matter and I was grateful for that.

I woke up thinking we should have a blood test done, but we don’t have insurance, so how do I go about doing that?

But, I don’t think my fears that my ex-husband would steal my child are valid. In reality, he would not do that. Besides, he has a child of his own now if I hear the reports correctly. So, what the hell?

As of right now, this is the going theory, supplied by L. Your son is the only person you really actually care about at this point. he is your life. your ex still has control over many aspects of yourself and your life. you’re not totally resolved with that issue yet. he drains you in many ways, and takes from you what is rightfully yours. you also mentioned before he always wanted a kid and that was part of your core issues with him back int he day. its showing you these things are still issues within you…that you are not free from him within yourself–he still influences you and steals your happiness Yeah. That sounds about right.

Dream 12/09/2012

Last night, before bed, I asked for clarity.

I was just lying there, not really paying attention to the Supernatural episode I had on and was staring at the ceiling. There was absolutely nothing illuminating there, so I switched my gaze to the wall. And I said, to no one in particular and everyone in particular, “I need some clarity. I think I deserve some. I’ve been asked to do this warrior thing, but I think I deserve to know what the hell the point in all of this is. I’m not asking to know the future; I’m not asking for you to tell me what the hell kind of path I appear to be treading. I think I just deserve a little fucking lucid thoughts here on what the fuck this whole thing is about.” This resulted in a sort of sucking, spinning feel that reminded me of bed spin after a night of drinking. I wasn’t drinking and I can tell you, I didn’t like the fucking spinning. I ended up falling asleep and this was the dream that came after this little interlude between me and whoever was willing to help me.

I was in an old folk’s home. I don’t think I was actually visiting anyone, in particular, but I was there when my ex-husband showed up with his entire family. I was in a crowd headed out of the door as he was in a crowd headed inside. I turned my head as we passed each other, my hair slapping me in the face and covering my profile as we walked by one another. He didn’t see me and I can remember the smirk on my face that I managed to get out before he saw me. I went to a van – a big, old, maroon van – climbed inside and began driving. I had to leave; I had to move; I had to get the fuck out of dodge. I ended up driving up a mountain road.

The dream rewound itself so that I was back at the old folk’s home. The situation wasn’t really different except that I didn’t bother turning my face. I didn’t hide who I was. I looked forward and proudly as I walked by him and his family. I think his eyes found me and I think he may have recognized me, but I’m not sure. Instead of a big, maroon van in the parking lot, I ended up in a very old and decrepit pickup truck. And I drove off in the exact same direction as last time. I went up a very long, dark, rutted, old mountain road. I don’t think I was going home this time. In fact, I’m not sure if there was a particular destination in mind. All I know is that I had to go up this creepiest, fucking scariest damn road so that I could get to wherever I was going.

However, the truck disappeared at some point. I don’t know if I had to stop and get out. I don’t know if it literally just disappeared out from beneath me. All I know is that, one moment, I was bouncing around in a truck that probably hadn’t had its shocks tended to in years. The next moment, I’m scared out of my fucking mind of every possible movie creature you can think of because I had to walk up a long, dark, rutted, old mountain road. In my mind, there were zombies and vampires and monsters and aliens and wraiths and demons and the whole fucking nine yards of the most evil, vile, scary fucking creatures imaginable. And even ones that had no faces because they’re not imaginable. There was no way I could turn around – I had to go forward.

So forward, I went.

I ended up finding the maroon van I had driven in the earlier interlude buried under a deep mountain of dirt and plants. Mostly, the greenery was grass and weeds. I brushed at the van and found the passenger side door and its window. I peered inside at a mountain of dust. The windshield wipers were casually folded against the dirt-shrouded windshield, looking like serene bugs sleeping it off. I was scared of this mountainous hill surrounding this van. I remembered driving this van but I didn’t remember what happened to it. I was scared. I began booking it up the long, dark, rutted, old mountain road.

I took to walking into people’s yards, walking through their thick and verdant green grasses. I didn’t count the steps or the minutes or the hours that passed by, I just kept going and going. And when the sun began rising off to my right, I saw that I was in a yard surrounded by puppies. They were happy, cute, and fuzzy little puppies with a happy, cute, old momma dog corralling them everywhere. And from that spot on, I began doing back flips up the mountain.

And that’s when I woke up.

Since I was specifically asking about the Christian friend situation, I was not happy with this response.

So, I began to try and figure out what the hell this dream meant. Obviously, it had to do with the ex-husband, so I had to work from there. What the hell was the point? Where was this going? I mean, hadn’t I already been doing all that work? Hadn’t I already come to the point where I’m just at the point of “who the fuck cares” when it comes to the ex-husband? So why the hell was he popping up now? Why in the world was this whole thing about the ex-husband and whatever the hell we had together? It didn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense. But, you know, now that I’ve talked it over with TH and a post I have saved to drafts… eh… it makes sense.

You see, TH and I were talking about my dream while we were eating breakfast. I told him that I had asked for clarity with the whole Christian friend situation and that was the response I received. He laughed at me. “Isn’t it obvious? You’ve left the ex-husband in the past; you’re well and truly passed all of that. Maybe that’s exactly what you need to do in this case?” I gave him a look like he was pulling my leg. He shook his head and said, “The van is your biggest fucking indicator. There it is, all helping you to get away. And then later, you find it covered over in years and years worth of dirt, decay, and plant matter. That’s the only symbol you need to focus on here. You’ve left the ex behind.”

And isn’t that the absolute truth of the matter? I walked by him a second time with my shoulders squared, my head held high. I didn’t care if he saw me or not. I would have preferred him to not, just in case I said something out of hand or snarky in a public place that would have left us both embarrassed. However, I didn’t really care one way or another, if he saw me or not. And the van being buried for as long as it was… that was clearly my mind trying to show me that time had passed and I’ve long since been done of the scared rabbit I used to be. The person who wanted to hide behind everything and everyone just so that I wouldn’t have to see or speak with him ever again.

But what does this have to do with the whole Christian friend?

TH thinks that this is everyone and everything telling me that I have to leave that part of me behind, too. The fact that I’m torn up about it should be an indication that I don’t really want to kiss that part of my life good-bye. In same vein with the ex-husband, however, I will if the need arises. But I’ve left things mostly alone. I haven’t commented again on anything she’s left for me; I haven’t even read it. I’ve decided to just leave it alone. What was it that I had said to Devo? That it wasn’t worth it because it would just happen over and over again until we were both blue in the face? This is something I’m having an issue integrating into myself because, you know, friends. Loved ones. But I know we’ll meet again, so why cause myself pain now when nothing will be resolved?

I’m not really sure if TH’s interpretation is correct here, honestly. It seems okay. It seems valid. And I know he’s telling me this because he hates to see me hurt. I’m pretty good about crying by myself so that I can get it out of my system without having to try to speak my hurt through sobs and snot. But I know he heard me crying yesterday. Ostensibly, it was because Dumbledore was dead. But, in reality, it wasn’t. I know that. Just because I said it was because Dumbledore was dead doesn’t necessarily make it true… and that’s why I asked for the fucking clarity here. That’s what I wanted to know a thing or three.

I think the symbolism behind the sun is that, soon, it will rise over what the hell I’m doing and I’ll know. The back flips and the puppies… I think it will be a joyful moment when that epiphany shows up. (CAN’T WAIT.) In the mean time, I’m just left guessing.

Thanksgiving, Polytheist Style.

Before we get to the meat and potatoes here, I should inform people who I had a regular, American thanksgiving. It was good. We spent the day at TH’s aunt’s house. We got to Skype with her son who is living in Japan as a teacher. (I think he’s teaching English, but he may be teaching Japanese? I’m not sure. His major was Japanese something-or-other.) However, I don’t really see the point of the holiday aside from getting together with your family and eating a turkey. I don’t find it very spiritual and I don’t find it much use aside from eating turkey. It’s the only time of year that I eat turkey.

Also, this thanksgiving polytheist… thing fell in my lap… today.

This morning, I awoke from a very odd dream. I don’t normally dream about my OTHERS™. Or, if I do this on a regular basis, I never recall them. When I do wake up with them in my memory banks, there tends to be a large reason behind it, usually a warning of some kind. What was even more fascinating was that I dreamed of Hekate for the first time.

I was at her altar in my home, but it was outside. Or maybe, there was no roof above the alcove I have her table in. (And that makes sense since I want to try and find a scarf with stars on it, as pictured in this image of Nut to tack to my ceiling.) Anyway, I was kneeling in front of it and I was being incredibly formal as I made offerings. I couldn’t see the offerings, but it was definitely me, kneeling, and formally giving her offerings of some kind or another. I was also speaking formal words, possibly some of the ones I’ve been reading about in Hekate: Liminal Rites by Sorita D’Este. Again, I don’t remember what words I was speaking or what I was offering, but the dream was important.

I’m pretty sure Hekate was trying to tell me something. I figured I would do something big and bad ass for her on the new moon.

Today, however, is the first of the month of Sf-Bdt according to my Kemetic calendar. This is also the first of the new season of Peret, or winter. I knew I was going to do something in commemoration of this. Since I’m not huge on festivals and big-huge things, I try to at least bake something at the start of the new month and I’ll go a little more extra on things when it’s the start of a new season. But over all, I’m really not a huge ritual, celebration person. I like being the low-key, lay person I’m pretending to be. Of course, it’s funny how you assume or figure things will end up in one way but they really end up in another. Today was about giving thanks for the things that I do have.

You see, things haven’t been very well over here. On Friday, I go back to being unemployed and I’m pretty sure I can’t file for unemployment benefits because I’m only a temporary employee. After this, I don’t know where money is going to be coming from. We receive TH’s miniscule weekly allotment from his unemployment, but even with me trimming the fat on certain bills, it’s not enough to pay for everything. I figure that if I could get cash assistance from the state in the tune of, say, three hundred dollars, we should be able to survive… as long as we also get food assistance. So, suffice it to say that I’ve been wicked depressed and moody. It’s at the point where I’m cleaning like a fiend, taking non-cleaning out on my family members (even though it’s not their fault that they didn’t do something, but I feel like it is because I’m angry at the world), and rearranging my entire house to boot. Well, parts of my house. I’m sobbing internally at the thought that I won’t be able to buy anyone anything for Christmas, again.

Since my daily rune pull today was othala, I decided to take this as a sign that I should be thankful for what I do have.

Sure, I don’t have a job or won’t in the near future, but I have to have faith that I will be provided for by the universe. As easy as it is for me to slip into a deep, black depression over all of this, I really can’t. I have a four-year-old and a twenty-four year old who relies on me. I have cleaning and laundry to do. I have the ability to ask for help from numerous people and I will receive something. I still have some money in savings so maybe Christmas and bills won’t go completely to shit. My car is still functioning even if she’s not at tip-top shape. So, while I’m liable to be miserable and depressed again in the upcoming week or two, TODAY, there’s no fucking room.

And I’m thankful for that, too.

To get the party started, I went to my local Goodwill and purchased some items.

I bought a wooden bowl, two small tumblers, and a pretty picture with flowers on it.

I had actually gone in there with the intention of finding a small, but wider bowl for Hekate. She was going to get pomegranates when I did the thing for her, but I was hoping to have a bowl that had a wider lip than the one I have. No dice on that, obviously. The wooden bowl was purchased for Papa Legba. At a future point, I’m hoping to paint it red and get a black paint-pen to inscribe his veve into the middle. Since I can’t afford a real calabash bowl, like they do in Haiti, but I can afford the fifty cents this bowl cost me… Yeah. He was all for it. The two glass tumblers are for Hetharu and Sekhmet. They’ve recently requested oils for offerings. Right now, they’ve got regular old extra virgin olive oil, but I think they really want scented ones. The picture was for Hekate. She likes plants, right?

Before I went home, I decided to stop at the grocery store. I had AN ITCH and I couldn’t go home. So, in a half-daze, I wandered around the grocery store and picked up cheap items for tonight’s dinner and for any of my OTHERS™. The only one who didn’t cost me anything, oddly enough, was Papa Legba. (Although, he almost talked me into another red candle in a glass holder. ALMOST.) Hekate sent me to the fruit section for a pomegranate and then I went zooming down to flowers. They had a pretty little bouquet on special for five dollars. I was shocked by her choice, though; oranges? I think it’s a last lingering feels regarding the end of the autumn, but who knows what’s going through a person’s head when they– OH. You know. I read something about her getting lilies from someone as an offering and guess what kind of flower is in the bouquet? I get it.

The next step was to notice that I was being trolled by the land spirit.

That tree is the tree I focus on when I’m working with the land spirit, so it IS the land spirit in a sense. The leaves from that tree are all leading up to just below my living room window.

It’s the full moon tonight and that was when I decided I would leave my monthly offerings for the land spirit. I didn’t take a picture because I didn’t leave them until it was cold and dark outside. But, later, I went out and did leave a diced apple and some kumquats for the land spirit. Tomorrow before work, I’m going to leave a slice of bread and the big fucking rock I plucked up from one of my local cemeteries. I also talked, briefly, with the land spirit today about how things are going really badly in my life (again). I got the overwhelming feeling from it that I needed to stop worrying so damn much. I guess I’m getting it from all over: the gods, the lwa, and the universe will provide, so knock it off. It was nice to talk with it, though, since I always think that winter = land spirit communication being remote. INCORRECT, SIR.

So, after a lot of cleaning and generally annoying labor, I went around and began baking. If nothing else, when I celebrate a new month, I will bake something for Hetharu. However, I got the feeling that my baking was more in line with a Certain Other Feminine Deity than the one living with Sekhmet. I’m just getting trolled by all the female deities… Of course, I have to admit to everyone here that I’m not surprised. I know that Aset’s statue was in that dream I had about Mut a while back, so I was kind of expecting it. I’m just… I hope she likes small offerings in my kitchen. I’ve been putting her off for a while and she’s been patiently waiting. Apparently, patience has run out. And I’m pretty sure that she’s here in the FOREVER WAY, like Sekhmet. So, this should be weird and interesting. And it explains so much shit…

But that’s a post for a different day.

Continuing on.

So, after I did my baking chores, I went around and started making my thanksgiving dinner. Of course, it was small and tiny. I can’t afford big and expansive. And besides, that’s kind of the point, to me, in a thanksgiving meal. It’s my family sitting down and enjoying what I make. It’s the three of us lauding my cooking abilities (of which are good, okay, but I always wait to see how people react when I cook, all nervous like, because what if I kill someone by accident?). It’s the three of us arguing over who gets the last dollop of milk in a cup. It’s the three of us being a family.

And of course, before we all sat down, all of my OTHERS™ were summoned to their respective places.

He wanted rice, but he got orzo in a garlic and butter sauce. We argued for five minutes about why he needed a fork. Obviously, he won.

Water, oil, cookies, and steak for the two of them. They were also given more items on their altar, per requested.

Flowers in the background, pomegranate in the foreground, and Grey Goose and diet Coke. She was also given a rearrange and clean.

So, that, ladies and gentleman, is how a polytheist can get down with the giving of thanks.

Dreams of Charms.

I haven’t had remembered dreams in a while. Part of this is because my body has been left behind while I do unknown astral work without being prompted. The other reason is because I haven’t wanted to remember. I haven’t said anything before falling asleep about remembering what happened the night before. It’s nothing against the dreams I am probably having and don’t remember. It’s just that, figuring them out, can be such a huge pain in the ass. And sometimes, there is no message and I have to come to that conclusion at some points and I hate that. I would like to always believe my dreams are aspects of my subconscious, trying to talk to me. Unfortunately, sometimes, it’s just our minds blowing off steam. But last night… yeah.

So, I had two dreams. I’ll talk about the simple and easy one first.

I dreamed this just before waking up and I understand most of the context behind it. It started off hazy. It was like I was entering a situation that was already mid-deep when I started the dream. I remember lots of action packed sequences prior to actually being in the dream. I had to help NCIS agent, Gibbs, locate a pendant that was dangerous in the wrong hands. You see, if you clasped the pendant in your hand and made a fervent wish that dream would come true. Now, any Supernatural fan knows this necklace because it’s the one that Dean wears all the time. Only, it wasn’t because instead of a head it was two nails wrapped in golden twine together with a third and a fourth coming out in a Christian cross pattern. (I don’t know what the symbolism there is.) Oh yeah, and by the way, I was Xena, Warrior Princess, helping out Gibbs and we were lovers.

So, we end up in a giant Norman Bates kind of house with red carpeting everywhere. It’s a house and an old-time movie theater, too. And we’re roaming around, trying to find this pendant so that no one could unwish the world because someone, somewhere, was bound to want to unmake the world. It was like I was Sekhmet and Gibbs was Sutekh and we both had to destroy the followers of Apep from making uncreation happen. (THE SYMBOLISM HERE.) And I ended up finding the necklace first. I put it on and I grabbed it in my hand and I wished, I wish things would go back to the way they were before… But, I never said what that before time was and then, Supernatural came on the television and I woke up to hear Sam and Dean in the pilot episode.

This dream is easy to figure out. I was Xena because I see her as self-empowerment in woman form. I was with Gibbs because he’s an older, wise man who takes care of his people. I wanted the necklace because I feel like my life should go back to the way it was before… well, and that’s open to interpretation. I could think of it as before my father died or before my sexual assault(s) or any of that. It doesn’t matter. I was hoping for an out-clause to the way things have been and my mind conjured it up in the form of a necklace that granted wishes. The Supernatural thing is due, in large part, because I’ve been watching it daily for the last two weeks while I try to catch up to the current season. So it was like my brain was looking for a way to let off steam with my fandoms. (I love Dean Winchester – his necklace. I love Gibbs – his appearance. And I wish I had Xena qualities all the time.) So, like I said, this dream was pretty easy to figure out.

The one before that… not so much.

You see, I’m pretty sure I had this dream as a way to let off steam. I was not best thrilled upon waking up from the one prior to that. It was morbid and scary. And my mind needed to slip out of that dark thought-stream.

That one started with missing children. I was trying to find them, at first. But, as time went by, I found the guy who was taking the children. He was running experiments on them, but it wasn’t because he was some evil mad scientist. He was trying to save the world. He showed me what he had intended and what he was trying to stop, although I don’t remember what it was he was hoping to prevent with these experiments. All I remember is that he kind of swayed me to his viewpoint and he had me help him.

There were four children, still alive, and they were the key to keeping the world from ending. To stop the end of the world, we had to mesh a charm into the children’s ribcages. It was the lower left portion of the ribcage. There were two boys and two girls and the final child that we needed – the special, hand-selected child that would stop the end of the world – I had to work on that one. I had to make the charm myself. The ingredients of the charm are wishy-washy in my head. I remember having to take a skeletal foot and turning it into a kind of basket or box. Inside the skeletal foot, I had to put various ingredients. I remember, clearly, a kind of thing that looked like a lucky rabbit’s foot and then a very fine but gritty powder that was brown. I had to sprinkle that in there. There were other parts of the charm, but those were the two big, most important points to this charm. And then, we had to use magic to fuse the basket-charm-foot into the child’s ribcage.

And I was in the middle of this process while everyone else was eating dinner in the room that I was working in. It was dusty and ill-lit. There was a large, long dining table as though we were going to be feeding a hundred people, but there were only a handful of people across the table. I was at one end, demanding that this work because I had seen the man do it, my mentor, and I knew I needed to get this right or the world would end. It had to be perfect the first time because then everything was lost. And I remember looking up from the sleeping child with the skeletal foot-basket-charm in my hand and staring down the length of the old, dusty, forgotten dining area and staring around me and then, I woke myself up from that.

But I can clearly remember seeing the children with the charms in their ribcages.

And I don’t know.

I don’t know what this is.

I’ll put it out there to anyone who cares to give it a shot.