Sacred Journey

You bellow from the other side of the door, calling me names. You bang on the door, threatening me. I've locked myself in the bathroom again. I turn on the water in the sink and the tub to drown you out. I start singing a song as loud as I can. I'm singing off key, but I don't care. My throat is raw. 

I pray that you do not force your way through the door. You have before. I trust that you don't want to break the door. That is something you have stopped doing. 

I sit here staring at the wall, half catatonic. My legs are shaking, and no matter how hard I try, I can't stop them. I'm not shaking because I am afraid. I'm not afraid. I just can't take anymore. You don't stop. You never stop. You've been hammering at me for hours. You just want me to see—you won't stop until I see, but I understood what you were trying to say before you finished your first sentence. 

I don't know how I’ve gotten to such a state, and yet, I know exactly why I haven’t left. Every time this happens, I wonder how I could still be here where you can do this to me again, and yet, I know exactly why I stay. 

You keep screaming outside the door. You've been screaming outside that door too many times. Sometimes you go on for days. You use to go on for weeks. 

Pain snakes its way through my soul until I bleed. I know the source, and I do nothing to stop it. I let my life torture me in penitence. I do not try to stop the things that harm me. You tell me that I am the worse thing that can happen to my children, and I do not try to fight your cruel words I do not leave. I let myself bleed as if bleeding with stop the torture. I never stop trying to be good, and I never stop believing that I am bad. I never stop telling myself that I am beautiful, and I never stop believing that I am truly ugly. I don't even know what it is that I need so badly to pay for, but I cannot stop letting myself bleed. No one made me be here. No one made me stay. I stay to pay. I am standing in the shadows. I look out at the sunshine, but I deny myself entrance. I am shadow. 

The deeper my pain, the more I feel alive. It is the only thing that I am allowed to feel. If not for the destruction of my pain, I would not feel anything. I see the child of my past who should have been innocent. I see her thin frail body and her pale skin. I see her eyes reflecting shadow. 

I want to reach out to her, but I cannot. I am afraid that I will break her. I am afraid that I will destroy her. I am afraid of my will. I am afraid of the power of my intent. I do everything inside of me to protect those around me, from me. I make myself behave. I make myself be good. If I do not, I could destroy with my will. I could bend and break the minds of those I love—and that is not love.

You challenge me with your rage. You challenge me with the nasty things you say. I have never heard anyone talk like you. I want to be shocked. I want to be innocent. I want to pretend that I am appalled—but I cannot. I am standing in the shadows, and I am tired of pretending that I am anything that I’m not. For, I am shadow.

I see freedom in the worst of mankind. I see the worst in the hate in your eyes and the venom of your words. I see myself bleeding, and I realize that I don't want to bleed anymore. I see the truth of all that I am, and I realize that I can live with the worst, and perhaps, I can even find the best. I will not be with you when I do. And, it is okay. I am shadow. 

I lay my tear stained face on my bare knees. I came to you to get away from a bad situation, and I have once again traded bad for worse. I've been here too many times. No matter how hard I try, I keep finding myself coming to this same spot in my life. Over and over, I am here, wondering how I got here, wondering how come. I can't stop the cycle.

It is a cycle not of violence but of despair. It is an exact moment, a moment when I pinpoint my deepest unhappiness. It is the moment I realize, yet again, that I have not moved beyond this place, that I am still stuck where I don't want to be. It is the moment when I try, once again, to figure out how I got to be here. This is the place where I question everything I've ever done. This is where I wonder how I'm to go on if I cannot even get myself beyond this moment. 

This moment when I have to face the fact I am still stuck. But then again, perhaps I am not stuck at all. Perhaps this is exactly where I want to be, feeling this deep pain, locked in despair. 

I am shadow. 

For, I stay to pay. I stay, to pay for not being a good elder's daughter. I stay, to pay for not being what I was supposed to be. I stay because, as I write this to you and the world reads what I write, I know my family will pay the price. I stay, because I couldn't believe, and because I couldn't believe I lost everyone. 

I stay because of the truth—their truth, the only truth. I stay, because I must live with the fact that their truth is a lie, and my family is between me and that lie. I stay, because the pain of failing my family will never die. 

They said that you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free. And even though I now know that their truth was never truth in reality, I stay, because what they have taught me will never set me free but will torture me until the day I die. I stay because you make me bleed, and as long as I bleed—I live. 

PRELUDE TO HER DARK MIRROR

     I’ve lost all fear of being betrayed. I have lost all fear of being abandoned. I have lost all fear of being homeless. I’ve lost all fear of having no place left to turn and no place left to go. I’ve even lost all fear of death itself.

You dressed me up because I’d snubbed you. You dressed me up in a cowgirl outfit and made me dance with you because she’d gone to the dance hall with someone else.

With another of your many affairs, you took me out and bought me a tight-fitting outfit, again at a cheap dress store, because Lilly would be at the study-group, get-together with her husband, and you wanted her to see you had a beautiful woman at home.

You threatened to blow up my world if I threw you out, and yet years later you threatened to make me homeless. And when you had a new girl to whisper to. the same words you'd whispered to me, "I’ve got you, baby, I’ll never let you go"—you threw me out, knowing I had no place left of my own. After all, you had been the one to help me get rid of my things, and you'd helped me to give up my home. Yet you still made me go, though I’d never done the same to you in all those years—all those times I when I should have.

I’ve hidden in closets to escape your wrath, and I’ve taken refuge behind locked bathroom doors, praying you wouldn’t break in. I’ve sat in despair while you forced my bedroom door open, in spite of all the furniture I had placed in front. I’ve lied to cover bruises, and I’ve bled internally from the damage you'd done, and you weren’t done with me. No, you couldn’t be done until you could make me out as the bad one, the crazy one who wouldn’t leave you alone. You knew I loved you, and you used my love to bring me down.

Well baby, I’ve crawled across glass for every ounce I’ve gained since then, and I’ve lost all my fear along the way. I’ve come to know that if I hadn’t been so afraid of being betrayed—I’d have never been afraid of you at all….

Most of all—you will get to watch me be wildly successful at everything you sought to destroy. You will get to watch me be the successful author you said I’d never be. You will get to watch as I live wonderfully—every dream you tried to trample into dust. You did your best to shatter those dreams, so I think it’s fitting that all the things you swore I sucked at are the things that raise me up. Every time you turn a corner and find me there, doing well, I want you to remember the very last thing you did to me—when I was down and out…. 

I’ll forgive you some day like I forgave you all the rest. Keeping grudges only gives you power, and you don’t have that right…but I will never give you the love you so willingly threw away. And I feel sorry for you—because you’re the one who’s going to miss my love.

Isn’t it funny how we never appreciate what we have—until it’s gone?

Bet it drives you more than a little crazy that I have the peace you’d never let me know. And when I laugh, I'll remember you tried to take that too. Too much joy always seemed to irritate you. I will live each day with joy, knowing that if you hadn’t thrown me out—I'd still be right there shaking, watching your face, all twisted with hate, and listening to every disgusting word you’d scream….

You didn’t deserve all the years I stood beside you, even while you brutalized the love I never tried to hide. Still, you have spared me anymore of the rage that eats at you—and for that I’m thankful we finally, really are—through.

You never deserved—me. And baby, I’m finally home.

Wallowing is how negative energy keeps us lost and confused. Wallowing keeps us stuck, unable to let go, unable to forgive others. But we must also love ourselves just as much, forgive ourselves, which we often find so much harder to do. When we let go, we go forward. This way, we remove the dam to our emotions and allow our emotions to flow through us, the way it was meant. Emotions are meant to move, the way the river moves. Life is not meant to be stuck, like a pool that becomes stagnant. When we let go, we remove the burdens that wear us down. We release the past. And, in doing so, we release the heavy, dead energies that keep us tied down and prevent us from feeling the pure joy that is our birthright. ~Lenore Wolfe

Where do you go from here?

You might be asking, where do you go from here? How do you get better, when all you want to do is crash and burn.

When my world fell apart, I spent nearly every minute of every day keeping myself from driving my car off the cliff, into embankment that met the Mississippi river. When people asked me what it would take to make myself feel alive again, I contemplated trying to swim from one bank of the Mississippi to the other, to force myself to fight for my life. Taking my life was not the legacy I was about to leave my children, and it wasn’t that I truly wanted to die. I just wanted the pain to stop. So, I threw myself into writing to survive. I had already written a historical romance, and while I revealed a pale version of something inside me, buried within that fictional story, I wanted to write something paranormal so I could reveal even more.

Stephen King said that fiction is the truth within the lie, and I began to put those hidden kernels into stories that were otherwise completely fantasy, but I didn’t stop to do much in the way of marketing. Oh, I tried. I went on Facebook and Twitter. I went on Goodreads and other places like Goodreads.

Eventually, I burned out, disappearing from online, but kept writing. I would write, put them up, and write some more. It's how I survived. My health suffered severely from the state I was in, and I ended up in front of doctor after doctor. I was diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos and Barrters Syndrome, both things that are genetic, and I was born with, but now these things that had always given me symptoms went into full swing. I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia and suffered body aches that constantly made me feel like I'd been beaten, but also made me feel like I always had influenza. I was diagnosed with POTs where my blood pressure fell below 70 while my heart rate skyrocketed, which explained why I always felt lightheaded and wanted to pass out. My heart was always irritable and threw PVC's, but now often felt like it would completely stop and start again from the complete lack of electrolytes I was losing, and I landed in the ER with bigeminy heart rhythms. I had less that one mg of Magnesium in my blood, and the ER doctor told me I likely had less than that in my cells. I was put on potassium-sparing diuretics and potassium packets. I was put on high doses of magnesium, and while I improved, there was still something missing. Recently, I was put on a medication for the POTS and it was like the lights came back on. And while I still have constant flare-ups with the pain, and I still want to pass out when I stand up, my head actually feels normal.

I never thought I would feel this way again.

It’s been a long time, but slowly I've recovered myself, first mentally and emotionally, and now physically. I've healed the devastation that drove me over the edge in the first place, and I will share that story over time, and while I may not be healthy, I feel like I stand a decent chance, where I can now live with my physical symptoms, instead of just survive them. I’ve been doing more than writing to survive myself. I am marketing again. And while I have a lot to overcome with my books, with the mistakes I've made with them, I'm in a place where I can actually enjoy the journey, mistakes and all.

I will share my journey with you, and that’s what my first non-fiction book is about, Reclaiming Your Sacred Woman. I hope you will join me as I figure out how to share my story, and not just bury pieces of my thoughts and beliefs in my fictional stories. Don’t get me wrong, I love my stories, and feel this amazing elation when others share my joy, and I love them even when others don’t. I look forward to meeting any who would like to join me, and I can’t wait to find out what happens next, as I figure out where I’m going from here. I look forward to getting to know you all, and I hope those I built friendships with before I disappeared, will forgive me. I tried many times to come back on here and do the work I wanted to do, but I just couldn't at that time. Now, I can:)

Thank you, friends.