Hey all you wild magnolias just waiting to bloom…
Okay so Ran suggested Robbie do me a reading last night and I dunno what told him to but man it was a big EPIC reading!
I guess I can no longer ignore my strength and power sleeping inside me or I risk self-destructing. Any time someone has tried to show me I have strength or encourage me to take control I retreat into flakey and spastic. “I can’t possibly be that. I don’t want that. I’m not strong enough to do that.” When really it’s that I’m afraid of what it means, what it symbolizes. I fear (have always feared) being alone and being made an outsider because the people I care about don’t like the stronger, louder, more self-defensive me. They tell me I’m “being difficult”, “causing trouble”, “having an attitude.” And so, out of that fear of them alienating me, I push that person, the spirit and that power back down inside. I have been fighting myself for something like 8 years now because I keep doing this. On of, if not my biggest, goals since I turned 21 and left my first bad relationship has been to “find myself” or “understand the real me.” The wording changes with time, but in essence it’s all still the same goal - I want to be whoever/whatever I’m really meant to be inside. And I’ve come close more than once. But every time I get close and start feeling stronger, happier, it starts to cause friction with people around me and I fall back down the ladder just when the top is nearly in sight. So I remain stuck in this pattern of climbing out of the hole and falling back into it.
In the last couple years parts of me have made a lot of changes. And especially in the last year so far so much has changed in me, and so much of my perspective of things, places and people around me has shifted in ways that I can’t ignore. Often it’s been a painful process, but my vision is much clearer. The way I’m seeing things now is something I don’t think I can turn away from. Something I can’t go back to the way I was before. Things sound different. Things feel different. At this point in my life I’m so far from anyone I’ve been before. There are a lot of parts I don’t understand yet, but I’m open to them. I’m trying to let my energies and my spirit respond to the world around me with its most authentic feelings, not filtering them thru what is socially appropriate. I’ve still got quite a bit of work ahead of me because I’ve assimilated too much of society’s laws and standards into my brain and it’s like warring factions between my soul/heart vs my brain. I need to listen to what’s in my heart first instead of issuing an automated response of what I’m “supposed to say.”
When magyk first came to me, or when I was first introduces to magyk, it was free and easy. I came to it open and moved thru it without expectations, responding and listening with my heart. But when I started to study it to learn more and got involved with study groups in the hops of connecting to other magykal people near me I came up against ridicule and lack of understanding. They looked down on me. I was just some silly, tree-hugging “fluffy bunny.” I was told about all the things I was doing “wrong.” “You don’t talk to trees. You don’t talk to fairies. Talking to inanimate objects is crazy or stupid.” In essence I was made to feel like I was all the things most pagans/wiccans hated because people like me made them look like a joke. And so I started to feel wrong about doing those things. Without really realizing I was doing it I closed myself off from the energies that were speaking to me. I see not that this is a big part of why I have felt so alone for so long. If I had left those channels open I would never be alone. I see now that those spirits never really left me. I just forgot how to listen for them. And I understand now that my spirit and my power are steeped in nature, in wild magyk, and that by trying to do it the way I was “supposed to” I was no longer in tune with my true magyk.
Thru the course of the reading I pulled all 4 Queens, a couple Kings, The Fool, The Tower, The Wheel of Fortune and The Emperor and Empress. That’s a lot of power and it’s done being ignored. For all my protesting and denial of my own power, it is there. It’s no good holding on to the flake with a death grip anymore. It’s time to leave myself open to that power and see where it takes me. It’s no wonder I’ve dealt with borderline self-loathing for so long and have no self esteem. It’s impossible to think highly of yourself and see yourself clearly when every minute is spent in crazy, blatant denial of your own strength, power and potential. I will have to learn to embrace that power. I have to learn to break the auto-response of self-deprecation when someone tells me I’m strong or smart or powerful. I have to accept that this is who I truly am inside. If it were someone else I would be in the front row playing cheerleader, encouraging them how amazing they are. But I’m not sure how to do that for myself. I’ve spent so long refusing to see it, to see myself clearly…
Thank God I don’t have to do it alone. I have amazing friends to help, support and encourage me. I also have them to throw rocks at my head when they see my slipping into old, unhealthy patterns. I think they have been seeing the sparks of that internal strength and power for awhile now (if not all along) and while they can’t do it for me they can push me when I’m stuck.
There is a lot I’m gonna have to deal with. Becoming what I am inside isn’t gonna be an easy road to walk, but I see not that I have to. I have to truly put myself first in all things as opposed to only when it’s convenient. I have to be true to myself even when it hurts. I have to live my life for me, by my own rules, using my own magyk.
Some of the things I have in mind to do are scary, border on insane maybe to most people, but they are the instincts and responses of my true heart. It’s crazy to me that I can so clearly say that I love my family, but they are no longer the driving force in my decisions. My choices at this point have to be based on my hopes, my future and my happiness. I love them but I see now that as much as I want them to they will never understand me. The choices I make for my life will always be wrong to them.
They are my blood family, but they are not my Family, my tribe. And they cannot be the examples for my life. I’m just not made like them. It’s bothered me all my life to feel like an outsider in my own family, but I see now that I was never meant to be “one of them.” All along I have been destined for a different life. It’s scary as hell for me because my family has been pretty much the axis that my world turned around, so to say that I know I will always be separate among them… But at the same time it is one more thing that’s tormented me for years that now falls into place with the rest of the puzzle. There are a lot of pieces that I suddenly see how they fit. This new perspective on things, this new vision, changes the shape of a lot of things. I understand so many aspects of myself and my relationships, my lovers, my friends, my family, that I could never understand before…
So I step out into this new world wearing this strength and power proudly, ready to learn my lessons and learn how to use it. I am ready to face the world with this true me I am becoming and if they can’t accept me I will go on without them.