Queen of Swords

It's been four years.

The pain diminishes.
The love does not.





Looking at that entry for the first time in a very long time, I am warmed again by the love and support my LJ community offered me in those very dark days. I have lost touch with many people since then, as my emotional energy dwindled and the challenges of life left me with few resources to be meaningfully engaged with others here. . . but I will be forever grateful.

I was doing a good job of being up-beat today, and this Valentine's Day is better than the last three have been, but the fact is that do I hurt like hell, and I'll be glad when today is over.

My grieving was long, and I don't begrudge that. uncrowned_king was worth every minute and every tear -- but I'm done now. He remains dear to me, part of my heart and soul, but I am no longer in constant pain because of his passing.

I know I've written that before, but this process has been a three-steps-forward-one-or-two-steps-back journey. And I hadn't realized that even after I'd reached the "Acceptance" phase there would still be convalescing to do.

But the last two weeks have blessed me with a series of encounters and stimulus which have fast-forwarded my healing and brought me fully back to life again. I've been feeling eager, energetic, optimistic, even joyous -- all emotions that I'd often thought would be beyond me for the rest of my life. After months of aching because I was unable to feel desire or creativity or longing or interest in anything, I have ideas, plans, and plots bubbling up inside me.

My life has become very boring over the past few years. I'm grateful to those of you who still bother to read this journal.

I'm tired of being boring.
I'm tired of the emptiness.
I'm tired of "numb" being the best I can hope for from day to day.

And now, finally, I have the energy and inspiration to do something about it.
I don't want to write about it quite yet. I've learned to value silence a bit more than I used to -- but hopefully there will be new posts soon with new energy.

I was on the phone with my teacher and Scotty for more than two hours last night, and it was transformative.

The thing about initiations is that once they are underway, you can't stop in the middle of them. (I'm not talking about a ritual you can walk out of, but the deeper processes.) Trying to get back to what you were only traps you in a death state. To thrive, you must move forward into the unknown, newly-birthing new self.

Now that my grieving is over, I've been trying to get back to "normal" -- but defining it in terms of who I used to be, even as I paid lip service to having been through an intense initiation. But I'd only defined that initiation in terms of my spiritual path, not understanding that my entire being has been impacted.

I am not who I was. I don't know yet who I have become, who I am becoming. There is continuity, of course, but so much disjunct in my internal patterns that I am often at a loss, numb. I've been saying "I need to find new ways to be happy" and etc., but part of me has still been clinging to my old self, my style of life. For those of you who know "Once More with Feeling," I've been singing along far too often with "Going Through the Motions" and the first few lines of "Walk Through the Fire." (Why can't I feel? My skin should crack and peel. I want the fire back.)

First I had to grieve the loss of LM and accept the hole in my life where he used to stand.
Then I had to accept and grieve the loss of the future with him which I had been looking forward to.
Now I have to not just accept that I'm becoming someone very different than I was, I have to let go of that old self-image before the new one is fully in place.

There is a sadly ironic element as well. There have been days when I've hated Michael for changing so much after LM's death, but I've been blind and resistant to my own transformation.

When my allies and I started the conversation last night, I had been afraid because of the numbness I've been feeling for the past several months. I had been starting to think about going to a psychiatrist, perhaps asking for anti-depressants. Now I feel hope and an openness to life I haven't felt for quite a while. It's not a finished process. I suspect I will still go through cycles of resistance, grayness, and forward motion, but I feel like this is the key to what I've been suffering for the past few months since the end of my grieving.

This was confirmed by my dreams last night especially the one where LM and I encountered each other as completely different people, but we recognized each other and he kissed me the way he first kissed me in this life: as if he owned me and would never, ever let me go. I woke up with that kiss and its energy still with me like a blessing.

Yesterday I met someone who I ended up telling about uncrowned_king's death.

He then told me about going to bed with his beloved wife six years ago and waking up the next morning to find her dead beside him. No one was ever able to identify a cause of death. She was just gone. He too has remained alive because of his children. He is still wearing his wedding ring.

We looked at each other with a degree of mutual understanding and empathy I've never shared with anyone else about my grief.

Many years ago, I slipped in a movie theater and went down, crashing my ribs against a wooden arm rest as I fell. Although I was able to stand up and walk out under my own power, I was in terrible pain that night and went to urgent care the next day. There the doctor explained to me that in a situation where the body receives a painful shock like that, the muscles will remain clenched, prolonging and intensifying the pain. Rather than medicating me, he gave me my first chiropractic adjustment, which released the muscles and gave me relief.

I tell the story as background to a realization I had (again) today about my own emotional-spiritual state: that I have been in so much pain the last three years that even now when I no longer am "grieving" both my psyche and my body are still clenched.

I started a book today called "Your Heart's Desire", which surfaced synchronously with a visit to a possible new spiritual director. When I finished reading the introduction, which seemed sincerely enthusiastic and heartfelt, I was confused by how resistant I felt. I put the book down and paid more attention to my internal state and realized that some part of me was shouting No! No! No! No!

Doing what this book suggested was hopefully going to open me to new energy, new possbility, increased joy and satisfaction in my life -- which terrified the part of me that's curled up and clenched and afraid of further pain. In fact, just the thought of un-clenching seemed like it would cause even more pain because everything has rusted into a defensive, almost semi-fetal state.

It was sobering, a bit scary. . . And it reinforced my growing sense that I need to spend more time being gently positive and self-nurturing with myself instead of focusing on challenges and projects and demand a lot of dynamic effort to accomplish. I do want to do those things, but I'm beginning to realize that I continue to need a certain amount of convalescence as I transition out of grieving.

Some days even the thought of pleasure brings back the grief, because I still connect pleasure and happiness so much with LM, want him with me to share it or have intense memories come up, or feel his absence more keenly -- or all of the above. It's a terrible paradox that even good things can hurt right now.

I sometimes feel like the Tin Woodman: rusted and stiff, my chest hollow. . . I wish I could afford weekly massages, which I'm sure would help on multiple levels. Some of it will just involve being mindful of what I ask and expect of myself, and a lot of it will involve being mindful of when I slip into self-numbing behavior instead of facing the chronic pain and addressing it directly with authentic nurture -- no matter how much some part of me fears what will happen if I un-clench. . .

Unsurprisingly, I am feeling better this morning.

Last night I tried to add a self-aware, rational element to the post about anger, but it felt wrong -- which is unusual for me. Usually it's very important to me to leaven my emotional excesses with a bit of rational reflection, especially when they are as unfair as last night's outburst. But whenever I started typing those words, I had to stop. My anger needed to be honored and accepted without apology or diminishment, like every other aspect of my grieving.

I am not truly angry at him, of course.
I know he would never have left me willingly, that he fought with all his strength to stay.
I know that he has not left me, even though he could not sustain his hold on his body.

I think the root of the anger is the feeling of helplessness. I feel angry at my own inability to change what happened, and that extends to his inability to change things as well.

And actually it's more than that. It's as if all the things that have made me sad for the past three years suddenly became sources of anger -- and it's taken me somewhat by surprise, given the lessening of the pain I've been feeling. It's as if the grief has a life of its own and has shape-changed to re-assert itself as this third anniversary approaches.

No way out but through.

While doing my regular morning practice today, it suddenly occurred to me that I need to go deeper into clarifying what I want my path and practices to look like.

This path emerged out of grief. It was brand new, and I needed a lot of guidance. Fortunately, I've been blessed with a wonderful teacher and strong, patient patrons. I had resistance to some of what I was asked to do, but overall I was grateful to be led. I still am.

However it's also becoming more clear to me that I need to sit down and decide -- in concert with the gods, especially Ereshkigal -- what my path is supposed to be. I strongly believe that we are guided by our yearnings and our talents, and also that good discernment is necessary so we don't fall into simple wish-fulfillment and either self-aggrandizement or insecurity. It's a delicate balance. But I need to start having a more personal vision of what my priestess work is to be.

My sense of self has been shifting as the grieving has come to an end. I've spent the last year or so feeling adrift, cut off from my past in a way I never have before. I'm coming back into my self, but it's not the person I was before LM's death. It's shaped by the grief but no longer dominated by it.

Time to meditate, write, do divination, and listen.

A couple of days ago, anax_anarkhos said something to me about my emergence from my grieving making me seem like "Persephone kissing the springtime." That image took my breath away -- and it was all the more startling because I've never identified with Persephone. Inanna emerging from the underworld, yes -- but never Persephone.

Except that Inanna hasn't 'been there' for me recently. I think she's waiting for me to grow back into her. She's so passionate. I think she's waiting for me to rediscover my passions before we start to working closely again. It's part of my need to be new. Persephone is definitely 'new' to me. . . In ways I never expected.

A couple of years ago, all adrift, I went into meditation to get a sense of where I was. I found myself in a wild wood, at night. I found a clearing, then set out a ring of small stones and sat down within it. I had a cauldron and a blade. I knew that I had to sit there until I found my answers.

Now when I go within I am standing naked on the top of a grassy hill. A pleasant breeze is blowing and I'm facing the early morning light -- about as classically "East" as one can get. Eventually I need to walk down the hill, to rejoin the living world, but for the moment I'm still in the borderland. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, but my skin still feels the heat of the underworld. It would be so easy to step back into the welcoming shadows. . . into the welcoming arms. . .

This is what I wrote during my afternoon break at work:

I've been thinking of Persephone a lot from my hilltop. . . Behind me, my passionate husband, bound to his place in the underworld. My heart is with him, but I can not live there all the time.

Not even if Zeus had not decreed it.
[A new thought there, and a radical one. . . What if Zeus's decree had been not to appease his siblings but because it truly was in the best interests of the girl?]

Before me, somewhere beyond the hills, is my mother. . . I've blamed her for trying to keep me a child -- but did I project my own fear onto her? It's easy to grow into a new person when you're in a new place, but harder to carry that newness back into the familiar places.
[Adria knew that, with the very air of her high school trying to press her back into her previous shape, her familiar roles. . .]

Blame Hades, blame Zeus, blame my mother. . . It leaves me the perpetual victim, always at the mercy of the will of others.

Hekate chuckles from her place under the apple tree. I hadn't seen her until this moment, but of course she is here at this crossroads.

"The rest of them are bound to their places," she tells me. "Only you are free to move. Only you have the full freedom of the crossroads. You are my heir-in-spirit, my god daughter."
[A gray, cloaked figure on the side of the bed in a little girl's dream. I am your mother she told me, and I cried back No, you're a witch!. I had the dream twice before I was five years old, vivid and terrifying. Never to be forgotten.]

Hekate gives me a key. "You control your own going out and coming in."

Inanna was stripped of her carefully-selected finery when she descended to the underworld, and we have no account of her picking any of it back up. I am naked on my hilltop. I must choose, choose deliberately and with full ownership of the consequences, what I will "put on" before I re-engage with society. What garb, what regalia, what roles and honors and secrets and silences will I wrap around me and use to adorn myself, to announce myself to the world and to others?

The choice is mine.

I have (almost) always seen Persephone as a victim.

Today, I experienced Persephone claiming her personal sovereignty.

Today I was affirmed as an initiate of the mystery of the sacred crossroads.

For almost two and a half years now, my "best" alternative to pain has been numbness. I have not been entirely without pleasure or happiness, but they have been comparatively rare -- and have often been "paid for" with an intensification of pain in the aftermath. Numbness has been safer.

But of course that hasn't been entirely clear to me. I've been functioning emotionally on a rather primitive level: deep in pain or avoiding pain -- and numbness has often been preferrable to brief or shadowed pleasure.

Except that now I'm slowly waking up to the fact that numbness is not the same as pleasure, nor happiness, nor satisfaction, nor relaxation. . . and I'm missing those feelings, those experiences.

I'm missing them enough that I might be ready to face experiencing them without Him here to share them with me.

And almost ready to not feel guilty about it.