Broken Doll

because this is how you all see me…

I say that I don’t understand. I don’t understand why. I don’t understand what meaning I’m supposed to derive from this. I don’t understand, if the gods are supposedly looking out for me, why it seems like I’m being continuously jerked around, denied what I need, isolated, emotionally starved, made miserable.

And then the conversation takes a sharp left turn and we’re arguing. I don’t even understand what we’re arguing about, much less why.

I guess I ought to shut up now. This happened the last time, too. No one wanted to hear about how I felt. They just wanted to argue me out of it.

Well you can’t argue feelings away. I care about him. He fulfilled me. I want him. I was (am) only a short trip away from loving him. This remains true and real and present whether you agree with it or not.

Ever more isolated.

…that I can walk away, if I have to.

I just really don’t want to.

All of these spirits crowding around and leading me to this idea, and is it going to be for nothing?  Why bring me here if it’s no good anyway?

Monday I hosted a Full Moon ritual, a small part of which was a meditation where we called to Diana and asked her to sit with us a spell, and give us a few words of wisdom if any were especially appropriate. She said to me, “You can weather this storm” — not too thrilled but not too surprised to hear of a storm coming. I made jokes — nice to know that I can weather the storm, but really I’d rather there not be a storm to weather in the first place…

I assumed I knew what storm she spoke of. After last weekend, it being so intense, I figured on needing some major debriefing with David which may get too intense to be comfortable. But days pass and he’s not returning my calls, and this conversation in my head morphed into a it-hurts-me-when-you-cut-me-off kind of conversation. And I couldn’t really figure out how to fit both of these things into the same conversation without having it completely blow up in my face. Either one of them alone was capable of doing that.

And it was a week full of petty frustrations — the cold, the ice on the sidewalk making it virtually impossible to walk to the train without getting hurt, corporate stupidity at work. Add in a major case of sub-drop early in the week and most days there was at least one point where I was very close to tears.

But then Friday comes and I am handed a storm of an entirely different sort. Late in the afternoon my co-worker pokes his head in my cube and asks “Did you hear about the shooting?” And I think in that sort of abstract way, how horrible, what makes people do that?

The address didn’t register. It wasn’t until the corporate admin department sent a company-wide email warning that train service at the Ogilvy Transportation Center was shut down due to the shooting that I realized what it meant.

It’s the building where David works.

I can’t really describe what that kind of panic feels like. All those stupid clichés — blood running cold, heart dropping — are true and more. And worse. For a moment there was no ground under me to hold me up.

I jump to my phone and he answers and I breathe again. He’s okay, he says, eighteen floors away from the shooting, and the ground is back under my feet. He makes a joke about really needing to go to the bathroom, since they’ve been in lockdown for over an hour and no one can enter or leave their suite. I worry, not knowing if the gunman was still wandering around looking for someone to hurt.  I tell him to take care of himself and that I’d call back in a little while.

He’s fine and he handled the whole thing with near-perfect aplomb. He went home that night and worked. I went home that night and tried to chase away all the “what ifs” running through my head with a run.

My early-week complaints now seem ridiculously petty — almost selfish. I thought I would have one or both of those conversations with him when next I saw him, but all I said, all I wanted to say, was that he’s not allowed, ever, to get shot.

And at the same time it leaves me wondering if I shouldn’t be saying the things I’ve been keeping to myself. I’ve been telling myself that I shouldn’t push him, that we have time to get to it later, and now that feels a lot less certain.

How can I describe an ecstatic ritual? How can I put words to the magic we built? It is an organic, living thing that fills us, fills the room, fills the world. We heal each other, with support and love. We heal ourselves. We are powerful. We are strong. We are beautiful.

I have grown so much in the last few weeks. My roots are stronger and deeper. I reach farther. I belong somewhere — and that’s no small thing. No longer on the outside looking in. I don’t just belong — I am integral. We weave the threads together — of our magic, our craft, our work, our lives. We carry with us this beautiful web we all have made. We all can share this with the world.

Things will never be the same and it is good.

(I love you guys.)

Tuesday, David and I finally manage to set aside time to play, JUST play, and play harder than we have in — well, forever. I dropped right into space. The blindfold was great (new blindfold, very comfortable and virtually no light-leak), which I’m sure contributed to that. At the end he reached down and pulled my hair — for the first time in nearly a year — growling in my ear “See? There’s enough to grab.” It went right through me and touched my soul. I was sobbing, cathartic, relieved, released.

Monday was a series of cognitive tests, among other things, which per my doc do not indicate any sort of organic problem (although he’s decided that I’m bad at math, ha). This still doesn’t explain the forgetfulness or the difficulty in processing complicated things, but at least the actual brain cells aren’t broken. I’ll have follow-up with the social worker next week. Doc is pushing for me to see their psychologist, however. Both have tossed out meds as a possibility, but frankly I’m not remotely depressed enough for the side-effects to be worth it.

Okay… the math thing still bugs me. Mental math just shouldn’t be that hard for me.

Anyway. Wednesday was Spirit night in class. Although the oracle exercise was painful (take it as a roadsign on the path — I’m not ready for such things yet), the trance afterward showed me good things. My place of power has become very solid. It’s familiar to me, so perhaps I saw it in dreams when I was young. It’s a nice, safe zone for me to be in when I need such things. That, and both cats decided to join me there last night, unprompted. I had always joked that my boys were my familiars, but it’s kind of nice to have confirmation that they want the job.

They were both extra cuddly this morning too. I gave them proper thanks in the form of snuggles and tummy rubs.