Not good enough...

I have come to recognize a belief from very early in my life that is common to many amazingly gifted and magickal people as well as to a lot of just plain awesome, loving, normal people.  It is the belief that we are somehow not enough.

Not good enough to be loved, not strong enough or skilled enough or smart enough to do what needs to be done.  That somehow we are not deserving of the love, community and care we need.  That we are deficient somehow.  That we are indeed unworthy, unsuitable, lacking, and that we will be seen as such and be abandoned and rejected. 

This is not an unusual belief.  It is not something that makes me unique.  It is common among many of those whom I love dearly. 

I am sometimes afraid that because I am not enough, I will let down those I serve.  That I will fail them and that they will be hurt because of my lack. 

I voiced this to a beloved recently and he pointed out that there was no reason to be afraid, that it would indeed happen sometime. He also reminded me that community provides for this.  That when I do not have the knowledge, skill or energy to take care of someone who needs, someone in the community does, and that allowing another to use their skills, knowledge or talents, serves both them and the one they help. 

I have come to see that focusing on the fear and pain of “not good enough”, keeps my focus too much upon myself.  It becomes an obstacle to serving others, an obstacle to loving others.  Life is not about my own sense of worth; it is about valuing others and doing the work of service.  That is where I find joy, that it where I find purpose.  That is where I am “good enough”.

the shadow child and her body

The shadow child will not write.  And I cannot write while she is speaking to me.  I tried to invoke her the other night, for the first time I invoked her by choice but, I had to stop because it hurt too much.  The pain in my chest made it too difficult to breathe and I knew that if I chose to go any further it would be a very long dark night.  I am not afraid of the work or the pain but, I have a job and self-induced fatigue is not a responsible decision.  

I will do that work when I can do so without time constraints and I will borrow a recorder and try to invoke her to use her voice or I will give voice to the things that she says in those moments.  It was not an unproductive evening however, I did gain some understanding and insights that I had not previously possessed.

 She has a great many fears, many things that anger her and, a lot of irrational beliefs and I will be working with her about those feelings and those beliefs but, the insight I gained the other night was about her feelings concerning our body. 

 She is conflicted in her feelings about our body.  She hates it because she sees it as the only thing that anyone wants from us and something that others can use to take from her, yet because she fears being invisible and abandoned she is afraid that no one will ever want it enough to see her and to stay with her..even love her and protect her.  She does not truly trust me to do that, because I was not able to do so at the time.

She has very little control over what we decide to do with our body, and that both angers her and frightens her but,  the one thing that she does have more control over than any other member of the committee is what we eat.

She does not control what we eat entirely.  If she did, we would starve and waste away to nothing, or at the least become very ill.  I have diabetes and I must eat to maintain my health.  Most days I will force myself to eat if I have to because, it is my responsibility to keep this body and this soul together for as long as it takes us to learn what we are here to learn and to accomplish our purpose in this life.  

I have noticed her anger and rebellion when someone comments on what we eat.  People will  joke about what we eat, will offer opinions or advise,  will criticize and ridicule, or take offence when we do not eat what they have spent the time and effort to cook.  I appreciate the love that others show by making food to feed others, including us.  But, no one gets to decide what she puts into her mouth, what she eats.  She will not eat just to please anyone.  She will not eat to be polite.  It is the only control that she has over her body and she will not relinquish it.  She is very stubborn, that is one of her strengths.

I am glad that she has strength of her own…it will help in the work we have ahead of us. 

The Committee

Pathways by Susan Sedon Boulet

I do not suffer from dissosiative identity disorder however, compartmentalization is a natural part of how I function. It does pose a challenge in areas where it creates obstacles to emotional involvement or, to engaging all of myself in certain processes, especially magickal ones.  I am actively working to overcome those obstacles in those areas of my life.  This includes how they affect my identity and my ability to live with integrity.

I am becoming familiar with the many different people who live within this body…I would call it my body but, it is truly our body…it belongs to each of us.  Each of us has desires.  Each of us has only this body to fulfill those desires, to experience that which she craves, to express who she is and how she loves.  Complete integration does not seem to be truly possible, or ideal for that matter, because someone would have to be sacrificed, suppressed or silenced, and we have been doing that for far too many years already. 

We have been communicating with each other and we have been attempting to express our various desires, to find common ground and to establish boundaries that we can agree upon when those desires are in direct conflict with each other.  It has been important to recognize that each of us has a distinct voice and deserves to be heard and to be allowed to express herself and her desires without being sublimated to another.

Sometimes more than one of us desires to engage and, while some of us can engage simultaneously if our natures are similar enough, some of us are too different to do so and a choice must be made.  We are learning to negotiate those choices so that no one goes hungry to the point of rebellion. 

Rebellion is generally counter-productive and results in destructive behavior.  We have been working and conversing for many long nights over these past months to establish agreement so that we can live with integrity, for each of us and, for all of us.

I will be sharing the poetry and expressions of these various persons/parts of me, on this blog over the next few weeks or months.  For now I will simply “name” them, the mother, the witch, the priestess, the bitch, the woman, the switch and the other. 

We greet you, Merry Meet, Hail and Welcome.

Instinct of Home

Instinct of Home...the things we say while fucking…

When you were fucking me,

and I was begging you to cum,

you asked me “why?” 

I remember you asking,

I remember having no language to answer.

All I could do was beg.

In that moment,

I needed you buried deep,

I needed the gift of your potential,

Even though it could never take root as a child,

I needed you to plant your seed inside me.

I needed the energy of your release,

Like a crust of bread to a starving beggar,

Like air to a drowning man,

In that moment,

I needed to please you.

I needed to be owned by you,

I needed to be your bitch.

You said later that I referred to my body as Home,

and again you asked me “why?” 

I have been trying to find a way to reconcile 

the desperate need I felt and

the language I found to answer.

As the Earth is our Home and the body of our Mother

Home is an instinct beyond the language I have.

Home is where life is,

where needs are met, 

where sustenance is provided,

Shelter and comfort 

warmth and light,

strength and stability 

from which to go forth,

A haven when rest and sleep and healing are needed,

a place of safety and belonging and pleasure,

Home is a place you own and possess by inhabiting it.

A place that is not home,

is empty space 

without life,

or warmth 

or light

abandoned 

un-owned,

without purpose.

Even a grave has purpose,

to the dead who own it.

That instinct is older than my language.

It is primitive knowing from lifetimes ago,

encoded into my body’s  DNA,

that my body exists to please another,

that it has no purpose

that survival is not assured

that it is not completely justified

without a child in my womb

or a cock in my cunt.

but, I am a woman of my time, 

and  you should never take too seriously

the things we say while fucking ...

Judgments

The thought crossed my mind today that I wish I had not learned these things about myself. 

I am having difficulty accepting and reconciling the conflict between these desires and most especially with the judgments that I make about them. It feels as though these desires belong to separate people who do not understand or trust each other.  And who judge each other harshly.

I considered pretending that they are not real, not truly a part of me but, I have too many memories from too many decades that prove to me that they are true and that they are profoundly important. I have too many memories from too many decades that warn me that pretending that they are not real will fail and that would be dangerous to my well being.

I fear that the part of me that enjoys inflicting pain and controlling others is too chaotic, too destructive, too angry, too dangerous.  I fear that given the freedom to express itself, it will hurt someone because it does not give a damn.  That it is devoid of both compassion and conscience.  That it is incapable of self-control or compromise.

That part of me is so angry because I have denied its existence and its right to exist and to express itself since I was a little girl.  And it judges me, and the part of me that enjoys pain and submission as weak, and deluded, and a coward, and a liar and a whore. 

Some of these judgments may be based in truth.  I have been a liar in denying certain truths, or in pretending to be other than I am.  I have been deluded in thinking that pretending can make it so.  I have been a coward in not speaking because I was afraid.  I have been a whore in betraying my own integrity and honor.

But I am not weak, and I am striving to overcome years of habit in behaving otherwise.  And if I give that angry part of me the chance to express and to live, it may learn to do so in a way that will not be as destructive or out of control as it has been in the past.

So I will put aside the judgments and try for reconciliation and understanding.  I will give each of these conflicting parts of me a gift.  I will give them both the chance to dress up and dance to music that expresses those desires.  I will give them both a book of their own to write from their own point of view. 

That is what I do, I communicate.  Maybe through acknowledging and honoring both as equal parts of myself, as equally deserving of existence and life, and giving each the space to express those desires, to create art and poetry and stories about who I am, I will be able to integrate them into a happy and whole person that is me.

While I may find this knowledge confusing and disturbing, I am committed to understanding all of who I am, and to learning to live as a whole person.  I suspect that the process of integrating these aspects of my identity and of mastering the power that they hold for me will be uneasy, perhaps uncomfortable, and possibly painful.  I know that the prospect is terrifying. 

But fear and pain are not reason enough to turn back, even if I could.  I have paid too high a price to fail.  People I love have sacrificed so that I might finally live.  I will not betray them, I will not betray myself.  I will do whatever is necessary to fulfill the vows that I have made.

So Mote It Be.

time travel and the laws of physics...

Photo by Helen Jarvis-Reynolds

In the sunlight, 

the tail occasionally strikes, 

kissing my arm, my leg, my belly, 

the side of my neck once.  

We are just playing  but,

the bite of the tail, slight as it is, 

brings a flush to my skin, a rise in my heart-rate 

and a slight release of neuro-transmitters in my brain, 

I still understand the science, for now.

Later, we sit in the summer evening.  

I recall moments from long ago; 

the sound of rain on the roof of a car, 

the smell of South Carolina soil, 

the taste of strawberry wine,

another face, another name,

and the structure of time begins to shift.  

My memories from a lifetime ago are closer than they appear.  

the day to day, of life as it is now, fades to a distant past.

Later still, I sit on my bed in soft cotton, 

drinking wine and listening to music from that life long gone; 

you say my voice changed somewhere during the third song... 

The occasional touch of your claws playing lightly on my arm 

causes another release of the magick potion in my brain, 

I am less conscious of the science now.

I got up to get something, 

from the kitchen I think, more wine maybe? 

I am not sure now, 

you were standing behind me, 

your claws tracing symbols across my skin.

“You may turn around now…” 

your voice, a whisper from a half-remembered dream.

Moments skip forward; 

Minutes? Seconds? Days? Hours? Years?

The structure of time has lost cohesion.

bent over the bed, my hands behind my back,

"Do not move"...

the universe collapses into my skin... 

there is no spoon, no room, no clock on the wall, no walls…

only your claws on my back, your growl in my ears, 

your hand gripping my hair, 

pulling my head back, exposing my throat.

The magick in my brain has taken effect; your spell has cast me into power...

The laws of physics have been replaced by a warm russet fog 

that smells like sex and tastes of your skin; 

gravity no longer applies. 

Your forearm pressing against my neck makes it difficult to breathe, 

your grip on my hair tightens, 

both pull me back against you, 

“Don’t make a sound” 

and when you have finished fucking me again... 

“That, was for me."

Your voice penetrates the fog that fills my body and my brain, 

causing the temperature to increase by a magnitude...

Later, after you have restored the clock 

along with the walls and spoons and things, 

and I am once again a woman of my age 

and not a time-traveler, containing the entire universe within my skin, 

you ask me about the things I said when you asked me "why?"…

There are no bruises this time, but for a shadow on my belly from your teeth, 

and answers that I do not remember giving...

Perceptions

You cannot completely control another person’s perceptions.  Neither the way that they perceive the universe nor, the way that they perceive you.  It is an immensely frustrating fact.  You can try very hard to communicate, to be transparent, to express yourself truthfully and honestly but, you cannot control the way you are perceived.  And another’s perceptions are always, at least in part, colored by their own feelings and unconscious programming, as are our own.

I am perceived by many to be cold and distant.  Apparently I have many sharp edges and it matters not that this is neither my intention nor, how I truly feel about the world or other people.

All the advice someone can give me about how to be warm and approachable is beyond my ability to always follow successfully, no matter how much I might wish to. 

This fact is painful sometimes because it feels as though I am being judged as deficient in some way and, because I do not like to fail.

But what I can do is be sure to examine my own perceptions and judgments and, give someone else the benefit of the doubt.  I can remember that my own perceptions of others are not always completely accurate and that I am not capable of knowing everything about their heart and soul.