I have a few tv shows that are my favorites even though they aren’t overly popular.
Carnivale for one, HBO’s first attempt at a series. 23 episodes.
The Wachowski’s made a show for Netflix called Sense8. I am on my 6th time watching it now since Mandabear made me watch it last year. 23 episodes
And another one that I gravitate back to called Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. Aaron Sorkin. Also 23 episodes.
There is an episode where everything goes slippy sideways 3 or 4 times and they have to do a bunch of cut ins and retractions on a live feed broadcast.
That is what this feels like.
This was not what I would have pictured myself writing when I sat in front of my laptop yesterday.
You see dear readers, I did DMT yesterday, after 9 years of want and preparation.
I was gonna have a chat with god.
And I know there are a lot of people clamoring to find out what I found out and I am sorry.
This is not the show we intended to do tonight, but it is what is.
This really is a live feed of my life, parts of it. Edited and rehearsed and presented here.
I am absolutely going to write a post about what happened, several likely and what I learned, but for the patreon platform that is coming in January. I am worth something, even if it is a buck or two a month. This witch is now accepting offerings for my gifts.
But this is something that needs to be said out loud.
This revelation that I had was not directly involved in the ceremony, but a side effect of the soul purge.
I am afraid.
I just am and I didn’t know why.
Fear was dictating a huge portion of my life.
Even here. I couldn’t go into the deep water because I was jumping at shadows.
I stick close to home wherever home is at the moment.
I wrote about meeting Solo and that I used to love to dance at regular bars, and when I thought about it some more, I used to love stage shows too, now they are something to get through and over with.
I took on the protector role with friends, never getting drunk, but being the sober babysitter, even in New Orleans when I should have been able to let loose and have fun. I did have fun and I remember 90% of it.
I look at Attica and Carabear and they seem so fearless and I remember being like that, but I didn’t know how or when I lost it.
Upon ye olde Facebook there is/was a meme that makes the rounds about a tribe somewhere in Africa that treats depression and anger by asking the person ‘when did you stop singing, when did you stop dancing’. Basically they remind the person to find the small joys in life.
I did myself and others a great disservice.
19 years ago I was violently raped, threatened with death and held hostage in my apartment for 8 hours.
The 19th anniversary of said event is tomorrow, and I have exclaimed and shouted from the rooftops how ‘over it’ I am. I mention it in passing with all the emotion of recanting an old tv show I watched.
That I am not a victim nor a survivor because I don’t acknowledge it. It is something buried so far in my past that it doesn’t affect me. I am a vocal advocate for survivors and women’s rights in general. But I never get triggered nor did I think what happened in my past had any bearing on how I live my life now.
I talk a lot about shadow work and gong back to different versions of myself and treating them with love and compassion. 10 year old me, teenage me, I have worked through my failings as a parent with my son and been forgiven.
Even in regard to me being raped I thought I had that covered. I acknowledged the self-loathing I had for who I was at the time, the job I had (stripper) the drugs I was doing, the life I was living. I was making bad choices, I felt guilty about the money I was making and the parenting I wasn’t doing. I gravitated to a controlling man because I felt out of control instead of getting my shit together myself. I had a nice list of things to never do again. And I haven’t.
Now, I feel compelled to say that no matter what you are doing, no one deserves to go through what I went through with that man. He beat me, he stole from me and after I bailed him out of jail for those charges he broke into my house and was waiting for me when I got off work New Year’s Eve 2001. I knew he was there; he had called me from my landline. And part of me thought I could handle whatever he was going to throw at me. My stuff and my cats were more important than my safety, and calling the police meant losing my $5000 bond.
Still didn’t deserve any of it, but part of me thought I did.
I had to tell the story like I was listening to someone else tell it to me.
I dubbed myself forgiven.
Except I didn’t.
There were good parts to the life I had before him.
I made good money, I lived exuberantly, I loved to dance. My sex drive never really went away after, but I lost my voice as far as being able to acknowledge the quantity and quality. I stopped indulging in any kinks I had while I was with him, and that lasted until very recently.
And, this is the first of a couple hard admissions, I felt damaged. Like I didn’t deserve anything good relationship-wise. Parts of me still feel that way. Gestures broadly at most of my exes. Farm life was a holdover from that, Graham and the potato too. Mediocre long term couplings instead of choosing a good complimentary partner partner. Some of that was stripping, what kind of relationship can I really expect if I am a dancer. But that was the mindset that got me into the relationship with the rapist in the first place.
Sitting at the bar at Sneaky Dee’s talking to Young Un the First, I brought it up casually and his reaction was the first step in healing that part of my trauma that had gone unacknowledged. I knew it in that moment; and I remember it now. He didn’t look at me like I was broken or a pain in the ass that needed to be placated, but like I should be protected. He simply asked what I needed and did the thing, like I was worth compromising for. He never once shut the door when we fucked, that was my thing, I needed to know I could leave the room for years after.
The Hulk came along after and treated me the same. Like something to be treasured, like I was worth something, not just in spite of my past, but almost because I had lived through it.
We had a moment the second or third time we slept together where he pinned me down and said, “You’re trapped”, playfully of course. He is a gargantuan man. I should have been terrified, and I was, for a minute. And then my brain clicked into a deeper understanding of what it meant to live in the moment. I wrote about it here https://www.ourladyoflustandgrace.com/trigger.html
Basically that was 2 paragraphs of me saying, I got the sex stuff figured out.
And I realized a long time ago that if I let the rapist take enjoyment away one of my favorite things then he won. He wanted me to hurt and be scared, so losing something as important as sex to me, would have meant he conquered me in the way he meant to, and I wasn’t having that.
I attained a level of the deepest subspace I have ever been in not too long ago and I think that catapulted me to this. I let go of everything and I came back safe and loved.
Yesterday, sitting on a mat in an open room full of someone else’s magic, my heart beating hard in my chest, after the craziness had passed and I had done a massive purge of primordial tears and angst, I had yet another epiphany.
There was a playlist of what you might expect to hear in a shaman’s house, and this song came on and I realized I hadn’t heard it in 22 years. In the house of my first Leo. And I was catapulted back there for a minute. I remembered the girl I was when I was with him. I remembered being giggly and happy and so brave and tenacious. I walked the streets of Toronto at all hours without fear. I went on grand adventures. So willing to take risks and live life and experiment. And I still danced and felt joy.
For a minute I thought that Leo had worked some dark magic on me that had stolen my life spark for lack of a better term. But that wasn’t it and I had to go forward in my past and see what it was.
It wasn’t him.
I am still living some of the ramifications of being raped.
I am too careful and too cautious.
I tout the benefits of being an introvert and being okay being alone, safe as houses, inside my house.
But I am not living.
Yesterday, consenting to the ceremony I took part in was a huge step in and of itself.
I am in a strange city, I have no data or wifi, I had no idea where I was going, no idea what was going to happen, like not even a little bit. I didn’t even know how much it was going to be or how long it was going to take. It was a trust fall of epic proportions and even the act of getting in the car and walking into the door (black 19 for the record) was monumental for me.
Some old part of me that exists from before took over and I am grateful.
I even sabotaged my first hit of DMT because I was scared I wasn’t going to make it back.
What am I so worried about coming back to?
I have made some leaps as of late.
I moved to perdition, but even that was safe. I knew my way around, I had people there.
And yes, I have been getting on planes, but with an obscene amount of planning but then staying tucked into Airbnbs just waiting.
I am old enough now and have enough self-love to not get into a situation like that again. I have been assaulted since and lived through all of it. Life hurts sometimes and there is no way around it. Hiding away and only coming out when that damaged part of my psyche decides its safe to do so isn’t really living.
My son gave me an amazing piece of advice about a week ago when we talked about how I have been feeling. He said, ‘do something that resembles death so you can remember how to live’. I did. DMT is the chemical your brain releases when you die. I am going to the market this week and ziplining too, going to swim in the ocean away from the safety of the bay.
I accept that I might get hurt.
The last time I was in Mexico I got on the back of a scooter with a ‘strange’ man and we swam on the ocean side of the island, got tossed around in the waves of the Caribbean. I gave a chunk of skin as an offering, sheared of on a hunk of lava rock under the water. But I remember feeling alive and elated.
I’m constantly saying, everything you want is on the other side of fear, because it is.
