some difficulties encountered on the path from death to rebirth

Last weekend, Trillium Reclaiming celebrated Mabon. This ritual marked the end of our yearly ritual cycle, and so we focused on the Red God, who brings death and limits, who cuts away that which separates us and leads us back to Mother, to the Goddess. There was a guided trance, in which we cut away the faces and masks we wore, getting deeper and deeper. For me, the last face was a skullface, which represented my identity as someone who wants to die. I cut this off and beneath it was a ball of radiating joyful energy. But that was not the final layer. Beneath that, I was pure change. We cut deeper, leaving behind muscles and blood vessels, bone and tendon, until we were spirits free from the constraints of bodies. Dancing in that space, I remembered–I am not the pain, not the rage and shame and trauma and endless sensation of helplessness. I felt happier than I had in months, lighter, freer, in ways that I had almost forgotten were possible. We flew to the Womb of the Goddess, The Beginning and the End of All Things, and eventually were led to rebirth, to reclaiming the bodies and faces we had cut off, keeping in mind that we could chose which parts to reincorporate. I didn’t really want to come back.

to survive, i must speak

I wrote this in my diary a few days ago (and edited it slightly in posting it, mostly for clarity). Things have shifted somewhat since then, but at the time I wrote it I committed to sharing it, and I know that it’s important that I do so. In sharing these experiences and emotions, they are changed. You also may be changed, healed, enlarged in the reading of them, if you want to be.

I’ve said this before, but it really is true that to survive I must tell my story again and again. The story of my life is itself a living thing, like a tapestry that lives and breathes and moves, and changes when it is unfurled, shown, shared.

I’ve been struggling a lot lately, feeling like I don’t want to live. This is a scary thing to share, a risky thing, but it is a large piece of my story, and of the stories of many survivors of sexual violence. Remaining silent about it only serves to isolate me, to weaken my connection to the web of life/to the world; remaining silent keeps my vibrant tapestry locked up and starving for air.

I have tried to use silence as both weapon and shield but I return again and again to the wisdom of Audre Lorde, who said:

I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. That the speaking profits me, beyond any other effect.

The truth is, it is enormously difficult for me to accept that my father raped me when I was twelve. Part of me wanted to die while it was happening and part of me would rather die now than accept that it is real. I think that one of the roots of my desire to die is the simple feeling/thought–”I don’t want to be having this experience.”

One of the things I hate most about having been molested is not having control. I didn’t have control when it was happening and I don’t have control now. See, in order to heal I have to allow myself to feel all these indescribably painful emotions, to re-experience my soul being ripped and spit upon and the imperative that I act like I enjoy it or else be murdered by my own father; to stay alive, I have to allow myself to be tortured. And I just don’t want to do that. It makes me volcanically angry and I want to rise up in fiery splendor and say, “No, this I will not do. This is too far.” But I can’t really. I mean, I can’t stop the abuse in the past and I can’t stop the ripping apart now without dying. But I want to hug my friends some more, and eat soup, and dance in pagan circles and sit by sunny rivers and eat pie and pick apples and hear my friends make music and write, oh how I want to write, there are so many stories jostling inside my brain, impatient to come through my fingertips and into the world.

But then I think about the pain, that raw sliced feeling in my gut that doesn’t end and all the poisondemonseeds my dad planted in me whispering and I just want to let go, to spin downwards like a leaf, like something elegant and unattached, like something free and light. Instead, I am writing and sharing these words. I am older and deeper and stronger than the violence my dad did to me, than the pain that scars my psyche, and I will survive and flourish and change and grow.