The crushing tenderness

Of a wound that has opened the soul

The beings swirl around me, urging me on, bestowing love and encouragement. Walk on witch. Press forward. Better things are coming, they say. The veils lift momentarily and I get glimpses of a future where I am strong. I am woken in the night by spirits who want me to remember the truth of it all. So that I cannot get caught in yearnings and missing. They show me things and it hurts to look and my heart thumps through my body and I am awake but I am asleep but I am awake. Do I ever really sleep?

And so, I make art. I touch the black clay of my work and my spirit. I mould it into shapes and through this I renew my being. After all, what is required is deep repair, after so much sadness, this is the only real goal. Whatever comes from this is a blessing, a gift, though the lights on the path are still dim and there is still the spectre of loss.

There was a time where I walked in full sunlight, where the shadows were behind me - where they are supposed to be. When I was solo and in full flight. Wings spread soaring over the mountain ranges of my life. And then the shadows crept forward and began to walk beside me. One day I realised my whole world was in shadow. I became the safe house for another’s demons, someone else’s unprocessed pain became the burden I carried, through long nights and longer days, walking under the weight of so much darkness, surrounded by shadow.

I have spent much of this one small life feeling definitively on the brink of madness. Attempts to live normally, like everyone else, but not at all like everyone else inside, have left me dangling over the edge of sanity itself. Did I fit in? Absolutely not. Could I understand people? Never. Years, a lifetime, spent ignoring the realm that seeped through normality. Looking away from the ghosts and creatures. Living in society/waking each day to urban life, something screaming inside to be heard. And now. Such knowledge, such knowing that a strong daily practise and connection to spirit is the only way to be sane. I cannot pretend any longer. And I cannot be around people who want me to pretend.

How do we get to a point where we can accept such pale love? What does it take to allow the promise of love to become the version of love that is experienced? Who are we when we stare down the hard road of healing and find ourselves walking it alone, and yet still believe that something will change, convince ourselves that maybe it will be alright?

This radical act of self love is monumental and comes with its own struggle. What is the medicine for these times? To sit quietly and feel the feelings. To face them head on. To not numb or distract or reach out. Because to do so would be to gaze into the abyss and be stared at by the nothingness there. So I am present with this pain. I am honest.

It is so quiet, and so still here. The sky cries silently, misting reverent tears down onto milkweed and grasses. Heavy skies press down onto the hills, obliterating sight. And I am vanishing. I have become so small, I have shrunk myself down to nothing, for nothing. If I lost any more of myself I would vanish entirely. So in the nick of time I pull out of this disappearing act and I shuffle back towards wholeness and self esteem and grace. I inch towards a future where someone will be kind to me. Where I am cherished.

But here in this stillness, I lay quietly.

I watch the silence. It shimmers in and out of vision, shifting timelines emerging in confluence. My bed a gathering point for all the realities now available to me, all the ones where I am safe. As I lie here, merging in and out of the void, veils so thin, I am aware of the healing power of the nothingness. The absence of hurt.

And in this nothingness - I can sense peace, on the edges. I can feel moments of calm settling down like an autumn fog on the headlands, blurring the heartache.

And what of my heart, the one that beats too slow? Worn out by giving everything. Slowed down by neglect. Wobbling along, hopeful but ever weaker. I feel it thumping quietly, measuring its beats out so that there is enough to get me home. Beat on gentle heart, take courage.

It’s like all of the effort and struggle converged into this nexus of self love. This sharpened sense of what is right and good, of what is safe. The zenith that surely comes after the nadir. To move consciously away from cold hearts and cold places, to trade long term suffering for short term sadness, to know deeply, in your being, that the dance is one of lifetimes. A story as long as an eon. Frustrated this time, perhaps it will untangle next round.

For now, I rest. I make small bits of food. I make offerings to the beings of place and my altar. I stay in contact with the numinous and divine, for this is my home, and the assistance is manifold. The stars whisper down to me, daughter, sister, you are dear. I hear them calling out, I hear the spirits rejoice. A being in the meadow sways silently and I know that I am seen. I am sheltered.

And always I walk on, towards the light.