I wonder if the grass would burn my feet...
There are times like now where I feel like I've lost my spirituality. I remember talking with the trees when I was younger, making it rain for Trips, and generally being more in tune with nature. It struck me the most when 006 asked me to read her cards when she was down here; I told her I didn't have a working deck.
I remember first getting "involved" with the occult, though I had been unofficially my entire life. A friend of mine once called me a "hedge witch," meaning everything I knew/done was the results of genetics, not something out of a book. I remember being in middle school and Momma reading a 52-card playing deck and telling my friends their futures; they were highly freaked out. I could focus energy, read people's auras, and feel their own feelings. It was when I finally learned the term "empathy" and was pleased it wasn't just me.
In college, this became a common pastime, where people would gather in my room to have tarot card readings done. I often had friends mad at me for what I saw. Eventually, I and the boyfriend of my friend started having a table at our fall/spring events where we would read cards for my classmates. I would wear my hippie clothing and carry Mr. Bear, my tried and true familiar.
I couldn't ignore what I felt, but couldn't fully believe in paganism, often feeling (once again) stuck between two worlds. I jokingly say I'm a pagan Catholic, but the term is true enough. I can't believe in a God and Goddess due to my Catholic background, but I can't dissuade talking with the dead when they pound on my ears.
When I met Stella, this was ramped up, along with my more intimate friendship developing with Shink. Between the two of them, I was at the height of my witchy ways, being possessed, reading futures, and generally freaking everybody right the hell out. As I started working in my field, I molded the empathy into helping with my clients, pulling from them their emotions to better help them with therapy. Due to where I worked and the clientèle that resided there, I had to shut off my witchy ways because it was truly driving me insane. I couldn't hear my own clients because of their loved ones walking around with them, not to mention the four resident ghosts we already had at the House. I shut off that part of my brain, focusing only on the empathy. While I still saw auras, I had long adapted to just responding to them and not making anything out of it.
I often said that I hotbox people, and depending on where your abilities lie, I ramp them up. I can make Kayrin's empathy go wiggy if I focus too hard. Trips saw my aura. Hunny could feel ghosts poking at her ear. Both Hunny and Kayrin would get mad at my "haints" for moving their belongings. Regardless, I am not specialized in anything in specific, but have a hand in so many pots that it makes me handy, but sometimes superficial and not able to dig deep enough.
When Shink and I went on vacation in 2008, I took my new tarot deck to be invoked on the water. Kayrin had given it to me, as my tried and true deck (which was also my first) was trying and truly dead. I've always done any sort of invocation on the water, as it is in my element and the one with which I'm the most familiar, and also I was constantly surrounded by water when I was coming up. Instead of invoking the deck (as it hasn't worked right since I did it), I ended up being possessed in Topsail and wanting to walk into the water until Shink stopped me. I can even remember the creepy, creepy song she was making me sing, though I can't recall her name right now. It was honestly one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me, and I don't usually prevail with bullshit and other such notions, but that was simply ridiculous. Scared the hell out of me AND Shink, and both of us are pretty much unflappable.
Anyway.
So, I haven't really practiced since June of 2008. I use my auras, see things in handshakes, and reel in my empathy, but I don't practice anymore. I don't shuffle a deck. I don't do energy transfers. I don't focus energy balls. I don't communicate with dead folk. I haven't even sage-d my home.
I had a fleeting moment of discussion with Mimosa about ALL of that a few weeks back, something I hadn't really shared with Baltimore people. It was like opening a much-loved book and smelling the binding.
My fear? I don't have a ground anymore, which I had discussed with Mimosa. Call it my supernatural box theory, but I've grown too old to use Mr. Bear anymore. I need flesh and blood to funnel, and that's a LOT to ask someone. Usually, I'd use Shink, but that's obviously not going to work. I don't know if I could ask anybody down here to be my ground, because not only is it an intimately trusting relationship, but if you don't find someone with equal and opposite energy to yours, it could short you right the hell out.
Balance. Stella, and other readers, often said I needed to find my balance. Unfortunately, I'm an addict, so it's all or none. While I can do minor things (auras, hunches, empathy), I'm afraid to open floodgates on something that has been shut down for two years. I'm a powerful little person, and I'm afraid if I start using it again (regardless of who's funneling/grounding me), I'll kill us. Or at least drain the other person where they need to recharge for a very, very long time. I don't want to open floodgates and be haunted again. I don't want to open floodgates and not have someone able to bring me back. I don't want to blow up a microwave again, or be possessed and walk into traffic. I don't want to channel in my home and bring out things which lived here hundreds of years ago in my old Victorian basement.
This all started because I watched a documentary on Lily Dale, New York, which made me REALLY want to go there. Part of me thinks that if I DO go there (I want to put a LOT of miles on Onyx this year, yes), I may just fall over dead. Floodgates will open, the mediums won't know how to handle me, and my brain will go boom. I would get so overwhelmed by the environment and the amount of sensitives that I'd just collapse and be overrun.
But I want to go. I want to feel the energy in the trees. I want to hear other people's thoughts and loved ones in a safe environment. I want to recall someone else's memory in their metal jewelry. I want to shuffle again; I wish my damned deck would work. I want my hands to heat up. I want to take away someone's pain through touch. I long for those years. I'm still truly afraid that I would go insane if I were to open those doors when working in mental health, whether it be direct care like I used to, or indirect over the phone that I do now. Both are draining and require a lot of empathy.
Would I be able to go to Lily Dale, then box it back up to go back to work? Would I ask my clients to repeat themselves because I would not only hear them but also their dead grandma in the background? Would I show up haggard to the Starship because I brought someone back with me again and am losing sleep because of being haunted? Would I become more irritable and annoyed because I wouldn't be able to avoid hearing/seeing/feeling everything of the 20+ people who work at the Starship?
I want to go places. I know I'm going away for Labor Day, and I think there's some more beach in my future. I want to experience more of Baltimore, but I want to gogogo and maybe, just maybe, re-center myself before the theoretical move back to Florida...
... 2010 was supposed to be my year, and dammit, I'm doing it.
I remember first getting "involved" with the occult, though I had been unofficially my entire life. A friend of mine once called me a "hedge witch," meaning everything I knew/done was the results of genetics, not something out of a book. I remember being in middle school and Momma reading a 52-card playing deck and telling my friends their futures; they were highly freaked out. I could focus energy, read people's auras, and feel their own feelings. It was when I finally learned the term "empathy" and was pleased it wasn't just me.
In college, this became a common pastime, where people would gather in my room to have tarot card readings done. I often had friends mad at me for what I saw. Eventually, I and the boyfriend of my friend started having a table at our fall/spring events where we would read cards for my classmates. I would wear my hippie clothing and carry Mr. Bear, my tried and true familiar.
I couldn't ignore what I felt, but couldn't fully believe in paganism, often feeling (once again) stuck between two worlds. I jokingly say I'm a pagan Catholic, but the term is true enough. I can't believe in a God and Goddess due to my Catholic background, but I can't dissuade talking with the dead when they pound on my ears.
When I met Stella, this was ramped up, along with my more intimate friendship developing with Shink. Between the two of them, I was at the height of my witchy ways, being possessed, reading futures, and generally freaking everybody right the hell out. As I started working in my field, I molded the empathy into helping with my clients, pulling from them their emotions to better help them with therapy. Due to where I worked and the clientèle that resided there, I had to shut off my witchy ways because it was truly driving me insane. I couldn't hear my own clients because of their loved ones walking around with them, not to mention the four resident ghosts we already had at the House. I shut off that part of my brain, focusing only on the empathy. While I still saw auras, I had long adapted to just responding to them and not making anything out of it.
I often said that I hotbox people, and depending on where your abilities lie, I ramp them up. I can make Kayrin's empathy go wiggy if I focus too hard. Trips saw my aura. Hunny could feel ghosts poking at her ear. Both Hunny and Kayrin would get mad at my "haints" for moving their belongings. Regardless, I am not specialized in anything in specific, but have a hand in so many pots that it makes me handy, but sometimes superficial and not able to dig deep enough.
When Shink and I went on vacation in 2008, I took my new tarot deck to be invoked on the water. Kayrin had given it to me, as my tried and true deck (which was also my first) was trying and truly dead. I've always done any sort of invocation on the water, as it is in my element and the one with which I'm the most familiar, and also I was constantly surrounded by water when I was coming up. Instead of invoking the deck (as it hasn't worked right since I did it), I ended up being possessed in Topsail and wanting to walk into the water until Shink stopped me. I can even remember the creepy, creepy song she was making me sing, though I can't recall her name right now. It was honestly one of the scariest things that has ever happened to me, and I don't usually prevail with bullshit and other such notions, but that was simply ridiculous. Scared the hell out of me AND Shink, and both of us are pretty much unflappable.
Anyway.
So, I haven't really practiced since June of 2008. I use my auras, see things in handshakes, and reel in my empathy, but I don't practice anymore. I don't shuffle a deck. I don't do energy transfers. I don't focus energy balls. I don't communicate with dead folk. I haven't even sage-d my home.
I had a fleeting moment of discussion with Mimosa about ALL of that a few weeks back, something I hadn't really shared with Baltimore people. It was like opening a much-loved book and smelling the binding.
My fear? I don't have a ground anymore, which I had discussed with Mimosa. Call it my supernatural box theory, but I've grown too old to use Mr. Bear anymore. I need flesh and blood to funnel, and that's a LOT to ask someone. Usually, I'd use Shink, but that's obviously not going to work. I don't know if I could ask anybody down here to be my ground, because not only is it an intimately trusting relationship, but if you don't find someone with equal and opposite energy to yours, it could short you right the hell out.
Balance. Stella, and other readers, often said I needed to find my balance. Unfortunately, I'm an addict, so it's all or none. While I can do minor things (auras, hunches, empathy), I'm afraid to open floodgates on something that has been shut down for two years. I'm a powerful little person, and I'm afraid if I start using it again (regardless of who's funneling/grounding me), I'll kill us. Or at least drain the other person where they need to recharge for a very, very long time. I don't want to open floodgates and be haunted again. I don't want to open floodgates and not have someone able to bring me back. I don't want to blow up a microwave again, or be possessed and walk into traffic. I don't want to channel in my home and bring out things which lived here hundreds of years ago in my old Victorian basement.
This all started because I watched a documentary on Lily Dale, New York, which made me REALLY want to go there. Part of me thinks that if I DO go there (I want to put a LOT of miles on Onyx this year, yes), I may just fall over dead. Floodgates will open, the mediums won't know how to handle me, and my brain will go boom. I would get so overwhelmed by the environment and the amount of sensitives that I'd just collapse and be overrun.
But I want to go. I want to feel the energy in the trees. I want to hear other people's thoughts and loved ones in a safe environment. I want to recall someone else's memory in their metal jewelry. I want to shuffle again; I wish my damned deck would work. I want my hands to heat up. I want to take away someone's pain through touch. I long for those years. I'm still truly afraid that I would go insane if I were to open those doors when working in mental health, whether it be direct care like I used to, or indirect over the phone that I do now. Both are draining and require a lot of empathy.
Would I be able to go to Lily Dale, then box it back up to go back to work? Would I ask my clients to repeat themselves because I would not only hear them but also their dead grandma in the background? Would I show up haggard to the Starship because I brought someone back with me again and am losing sleep because of being haunted? Would I become more irritable and annoyed because I wouldn't be able to avoid hearing/seeing/feeling everything of the 20+ people who work at the Starship?
I want to go places. I know I'm going away for Labor Day, and I think there's some more beach in my future. I want to experience more of Baltimore, but I want to gogogo and maybe, just maybe, re-center myself before the theoretical move back to Florida...
... 2010 was supposed to be my year, and dammit, I'm doing it.