Category: Someone Else’s Life

Chapter Fifty-Two – 3 of Swords

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life, Tarot

When I arrived at Francis’ office, he wasn’t there.

He always waited for me to leave work. I didn’t understand why he wouldn’t be at work. I found a payphone and called his number, but no one picked up. I called Stacey and Max’s number and Stacey picked up almost right away.

“Stacey, is something wrong? I went to meet Francis at the office, and he wasn’t there.”

She took in a deep breath. “Oh, Jamieson. Francis is here.”

“He’s at home?” I was shocked. I couldn’t comprehend why he would have gone home without me. My mind knew that we always went home together.

“You better come here, Jamieson.” She let out another long breath. “You aren’t going to like what he has to say to you. I’m sorry, Jamieson, I really am.”

I hung up and hopped on the first bus I knew that would take me to Francis’ apartment building. I sat on the bus clutching my backpack and holding tightly to it. I didn’t like the worry that I heard in her voice and the sad tone that Stacey spoke to me with. It was as if something terrible had happened or someone had died. If I closed my eyes, I could hear her voice in my mind, and it was almost like a warning of sorts.

I tried to think of what she could have been warning me against. Was Francis okay? Why hadn’t he waited for me at his work? Was he sick? The ride on the bus took forever and no time at all. Time ceased to matter while I was the bus. My book, journal and my tarot cards were in my bag, but I didn’t pull any of them out. I knew that none of them would bring me comfort until I spoke to Francis and I could feel his arms around me. I sat there on the bus knowing that everything would be okay if I could hear his voice, if I could feel his lips against mine.

By the time I got to his building and got off the bus, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was on a death march. I was filled to the brim with worry. When I reached the building, I ran into the lobby and keyed his buzzer number into the voice box. I expected to hear his voice welcoming or saying hello like he normally did, but there was only the sound of silence to greet me before the loud buzz telling me that the front door was open. I didn’t bother with the elevator but took the stairs to the apartment. I knew the stairwell was closer to the apartment door and I wouldn’t have to walk down the hallway.

With each step, the worry filled my mind until it was all that I could see. I pictured Francis sick on his bed or injured and waiting on the couch for me. I could think of no other reason for him not to wait for me. He must have been hurt. It was the only explanation that made sense. When I got to the right floor, I left the stairwell and there was his apartment door. I raised my hand to knock on the wood, but the door opened before I could knock.

Francis stood there.

He looked horrible as if he had been crying for a long time and I went to kiss him, but he backed away from me. He held up his hand in the universal gesture of stop and I did. I looked at him and I could see the seas that had been calm before were now a wild storm. The water lashed against his eyes.

“You’re only six years older than my son.” He said softly. Francis looked like he was struggling to get the words out.

“I know that already,” I told him and went to move inside the apartment, knowing that everything would be all right if I could just hold him and tell him that everything was going to be okay. That we would get through whatever was wrong together.

He held up his hand again and actually pushed me softly back from him. “No,” he said. “You’re only six years older than my son.” He said again. “I’m going to be sixty-one when you’re just about to turn forty. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t ruin your life.”

Something clicked in my brain, and I finally realized what was happening. “Francis, what are you saying?”

“I’m saying that I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be what you want me to be.”

My chest hurt and I wondered if my heart would stop. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t draw breath, I was shattering but I was still standing in front of the man I loved with all my heart, and all he did he still had his hand up, like a talisman, holding me apart from him.  “I don’t want you to be anyone else but you,” I told him, hating that my voice was breaking. I watched my words fall to the carpet at his feet, unable to reach him. “I love you with everything I have.”

“I can’t do this,” he said again. The words came out roughly and I felt like he had slapped me.

“Can’t we go inside and talk?” I asked, sure that he would let me in, that I could hold him and comfort him, positive that all I needed to do was talk to him. I didn’t realize that his mind had already been made up.

“I don’t love you,” he said. “I’m not sure I ever did. I think I was in love with the idea of you.” He didn’t say anything for a moment and in that silence, my heart broke into pieces, shattering like a glass window into so many pieces. I could hear them clattering to the bottoms of my feet, the jagged edges cutting into me and making me bleed all the way down. It was like the floor rose up to hold me and at the same time, the lights above me were incredibly bright, so bright that I couldn’t see.

“I love you,” I said. I realized then that I was crying, that tears were streaming down my face. “I love you, Francis. I love you with all my heart.”

He nodded and it looked as if my words hurt him. I could see the pain slash across his face. “But I don’t love you. Don’t make this difficult, Jamieson. For both our sakes, please.”

I nodded, unsure how to find my voice, feeling as if I were falling and flying at the same time, unable to get the world to stop moving and stay still. I stared at him, unsure of who this man was anymore. Had I loved someone but never knew them?

I nodded again, pulled my coat around me. “Okay,” I said. “Okay, I love you, okay. Okay, I love you.”

I turned away from him because I knew that the more I looked at him, the more I believed that our love could survive anything and I knew that it was no longer there, he had put the wall between us. “Okay,” I said again.

I went to the stairwell door and looked back at him. He was looking at me, but he didn’t see me anymore. “Bye.” I said, trying to fill that one word with everything I wanted to say but he didn’t want to hear.

I went down the stairs and out the side door. It had grown dark, and it was raining when I stepped outside. I stood there in the rain, letting it wash over me for a moment, before I started walking towards the bus stop. I was almost there when I heard my name behind me. I turned, my heart in my throat, expecting to see Francis racing after me, but it was Max. She was carrying an umbrella. “Jamieson, here. Get under here. Are you okay?”

I nodded my head but when the tears started again, I shook it from side to side. “I don’t know.”

“That was a shitty thing.” She said. “A really shitty thing he did to you. I told him not to do it that way. He’s such an asshole.”

I almost went to his defence even then. I almost told her that Francis wasn’t an asshole, but I couldn’t do it. I just nodded because I couldn’t find the words.

“Are you going to be okay?” She asked.

I nodded robotically. “Okay.” I said. “I will be okay.”

She hugged me tightly and when she pulled away, she gave me her umbrella. “Here, you need this more than I do, you have further to go home.”

More tears started. I felt like I was walking away from the home where I had been the happiest. Where Francis and I had been building some kind of life together. “Okay,” I said. “Thank you,”

I walked to the bus stop then and looked into the distance. I could see my bus coming. Getting onto the bus, all I could hear was the sound of rain and the rest of my heart falling away from me. I took comfort from the pain I felt because it meant I was still alive.

As the bus took me back to Lisa’s, I let the tears fall and they mirrored the rain falling outside of the bus. I turned to look out the window and could see my face, pale against the glass. It looked like I had become water, and I wondered if the water would take away the pain that was running through me. Finally, I embraced it because I felt like I deserved it. As the bus moved onward, taking me away from the man I loved, I knew that I was leaving a part of myself behind. I looked at the roadside and could see the jagged pieces of my heart littering the road like rubies in the dark.

Chapter Fifty-One – 2 of Swords

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life

I was holding on to so much lately.

I wanted more. I looked around me and all I saw was Lisa’s stuff covering every surface. Nothing in here was mine except for the backpack that I carried with me It still held my tarot cards, my alarm clock that I had taken with me when I first ended up on the streets, what clothes I had, and my journals and pieces of paper covered in my writing. Although I had gathered a few more things such as necklaces and rings, Pagan books and worry stones that I carried in my pocket, I still wanted more.

I wanted more than what this life was offering me. I was struggling with this idea though. I had found myself on the streets and had built some kind of life for myself. Looking back at my past and the world I had lived in before, I couldn’t deny that it held some kind of appeal to me. I wanted something of my own. It felt like I was holding on to two halves of myself: the me from before and who I was now, and I was trying to make peace with both sides of me.

When I brought this up with Francis, he had a look of relief on his face. “I’m happy to hear you say that you want more out of life.” He pulled me into a hug and I breathed in his scent. He smelled like the woods after a rainfall, both musky and fresh. “This is amazing news.”

I shrugged and looked at his eyes. The storm was still calm within him. The seas within his eyes looked dead quiet. “It feels like I’m selling out.”

“Because you don’t want to spend the rest of your life on welfare?”

I shook my head. “Lisa says that true Pagans don’t value money. That if I remained true to my spirit, I would be content with what I have.”

Letting out a laugh, Francis pulled me closer. We lay on his bed, the television playing softly in the background. He ran his hands through my hair as he spoke and I could feel his voice reverberating through his chest. “Well, I like Lisa, but she’s full of crap. I work for a living and I pay rent. Being Pagan doesn’t mean you have to be poor and having money doesn’t mean that you have less of a connection to your spirit.” He said softly.

“It doesn’t?”

“No, it doesn’t. It’s okay to want to have a different life, Jamieson. It’s okay to want more from the life that you’re currently living and find your way as your true self.”

I shrugged again. “I don’t know who that is anymore.”

“Of course you do. You’re the person that I love. You are kind to a fault; you give before you ask for anything from anyone. You are a light in the lives of so many others. You’re a brilliant writer, an incredible lover and you don’t value yourself enough.”

“Well, that’s you. You’re my boyfriend. You have to say that.”

“No, I don’t. Frankly, hearing you want more out of your life than living on welfare brings me so much relief.” He stroked my hair again. “It means that I don’t have to worry and that you’ll be okay.”

I sat up and looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”

When he looked at me, the storm in his eyes showed a momentary surge of waves and I could hear the water crashing into the rocks. I watched as Francis controlled the waves and the water grew still again with only the rings of ripples in the water to show me that the waves had even happened at all.

“I just worry about you. Spending all your time with Lisa and her friends. There are so many people in the world that you haven’t met yet and you are just at the beginning of your journey.” He leaned forward to kiss me softly. “You just have so much to discover. Don’t sell yourself short, Jamieson. You have a gift you have to give to the world. Don’t let Lisa or anyone else in the world tell you any different.”

We lay there, the television switching to a cop drama. Francis and I watched it, but I could hear the waves splashing against the rocks again. The sound lulled me to sleep and I felt the water lapping at my feet, the wind ruffling my hair and I wondered if I had ever been so happy as I was in this moment with my past behind me and my future waiting for me to claim it.

Chapter Fifty – Ace of Swords

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life

I had given the pages to Lisa ten minutes before, and I’d already had two cigarettes.

I hadn’t written a short story for such a long time. I had filled page after page with poetry, bit and pieces of dialogue, but I hadn’t written anything close to a short story since my days in high school. I hadn’t felt that I had anything to say as a story, but there were too many words in my mind, too many syllables sneaking past my lips that I had to find a way to get them out of me.

A story seemed like a good way to use as many words and letters as possible so that I could relieve the pressure that even poetry couldn’t ease. For every word I put down, ten more came to the surface. They didn’t fit in my poems, and it was as if these words found the form of poetry too confining, all shoved into form and shape. When I wrote poetry, I tried to follow the flow of the poem and convey what I wanted to say in as few words as possible. These words felt different. I could hear conversations between two people, and I knew that those words didn’t belong in a poem.

I needed to cut through the cloud of words if I was to get any kind of peace. Opening my current journal, I wrote the first thing that came to mind. It was a short story about a boy named Oliver that didn’t believe in magic, and yet magic was all around him. A troll showed up under his bed and the troll had a flatulence problem and kept farting throughout the story. When I was writing the story, I wrote what wanted to come out and had a fantastic time. Yet, when the story was done, I thought it was silly and stupid. Part of me had been reluctant to show it to Lisa, but she had seen me scribbling away and she wanted to know what I had written.

“You know, this is as good as Charles de Lint,” she said.

I blushed and mumbled my thanks, trying to find words that could express my joy at having Lisa compare my story to Charles de Lint. I knew that she meant it, too and how much she revered his work. Both Lisa and I loved Charles de Lint. My biggest influences for wanting to write in the first place were authors like Stephen King, Tanya Huff and Charles de Lint. I wanted to tell my own stories, but I didn’t think I had anything new to say. Lisa had pushed aside my worries. “Jamieson, every story has been told already. You just have to find your voice and tell you own.”

“If every story has already been told, then why would anyone want to read my writing?” I had asked her.

“Because they will have been waiting to hear what you have to say.”

I hadn’t been so sure, but I had sat down and written my story anyways, regardless of what the internal critic yelled at me. When I got to the end of Oliver and the Trolls, I wrote down the beginning of a new short story. I didn’t know where the words were coming from, but I didn’t want to stop their flow. As Lisa had sat there reading my story and flipping through the pages, I had told myself that even if she didn’t like it, I would keep writing. I knew that I had a story to tell.

“Seriously, Jamieson. I mean it. I mean, I love your poetry but it’s all dark and moody. This story is the first time that I’ve read something of yours that’s funny. I mean, you’re a brilliant poet and I love the spells you write, but this is the first time that you’ve done something funny. It’s so good. You got dark and full of shadows down pat, but I think you have a real gift with humour.”

That surprised me. Up until I had written the story, I hadn’t even thought of writing something funny, but it’s what came out. “I wanted to write about a boy discovering magic,” I said. “There’s no reason that magic has to be huge and terrifying. It’s all around us if we have the eyes to look.”

“Jamieson, the biggest magic in the world if laughter. I know that this story will make people laugh and there is so much magic in that. You need to try writing more. What happens to Oliver next?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, why not find out?” She clicked open her lighter and lit a cigarette for each of us and passed one to me. “I know that all artistic folk like you exist on another plain from the rest of us, you have to in order to hear what you do and be so driven to create. But I’m glad you cut through the doom and gloom a little and found your voice.”

She took a puff of her cigarette and let out a huge plume of smoke and I couldn’t help being reminded of the caterpillar from Alice and Wonderland who spouted wisdom in the form of a riddle. I wondered if I had finally found my voice, or at least another facet of it.

I thought of Alice going down the rabbit hole and I knew that by cutting through the fog of self doubt and writing something different from what I was used to, I was going down my own rabbit hole.

I wondered who I would be when I found my way out on the other side.

Chapter Forty-Nine – King of Cups

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir, Someone Else’s Life

I knew that I had given almost all my heart to Francis.

Some of it remained to love others in my life, but he held so much of me in his hands. Francis had taught me to love completely. I had never done this before and I struggled against it, but the longer we were together, the easier it was to love with my whole heart. We had been together for a few months now and in that time, Francis had helped me to rewrite what I thought love was.

We would talk late at night about what we wanted to do with our lives, the smoke from our cigarettes entwining and dancing between us. In every fantasy, we were together. It was wonderful to have such comfort with someone else and be completely myself.  Francis encouraged me to be my complete self and not hide who I was from anyone. “You’re so easy to love, Jamieson. It would be easier if you let people in.”

I shook my head. “It’s easier this way,” I said. “The less people that see the true me, the less people that will hurt me.”

“I know you were hurt before.” He took my hand in his. I had told him about growing up in an abusive family and how I was always the one to try and keep the peace, so I got hurt the most. I told Francis almost all the things my father had done to me. There were things that I could not tell the man I loved the most. I was completely myself with Francis, but I could not tell him everything that had shaped me. I thought he would look at me with disgust if he knew everything.

“You don’t have to carry it with you,” he said gently. “You can let it go.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think I can. I don’t know how.”

“I can see the pain when I look into your eyes. You’re far too young to be carrying so much pain.”

“I don’t know what to do with it.” I told him. “It’s like it’s all entwined?” I motioned at my head and my heart. “Like the dark seeds that were planted in my head have bloomed dark flowers.” I held my hands upward on either side of my head.  “I’m sorry, that doesn’t make much sense.”

“It does,” he said. “You need to find a way to uproot the dark, Jamieson.”

That sounded ominous, like playing with shadows in the darkness where they could bite. I looked into his eyes at and for the first time in a long time, the sea that was always riling and turbulent within Francis’ eyes was still. The sea looked calm and still. He had been able to overcome the waves.

I wondered what kind of choice Francis had made for himself. I don’t know why that occurred to me, but it seemed like when I looked at him now, Francis seemed like he had been able to shuck off his own sadness. There had always been a light that shone brightly, but now when I looked into hie eyes, I could see the light of dusk as it hit the waves, carrying the glow into the night.

When we held each other that night, there was a deeper softness to his touch. I could hear the wind that still made the waves move within him. It took me a moment to realize that I could feel the wind within myself, that every time the breeze from the ocean that was inside Francis pushed the waves, I could feel the air enter me. I had never felt so alive, and I wanted to fly to where the wind wanted to take me. As I fell asleep beside Francis, I could hear the water and the air as they travelled over the water. I tried to hear what they were whispering to me, but the waves soon lulled me to sleep.

When sleep came, I let the wind take me.

Chapter Forty-Eight – Queen of Cups

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir, Personal Growth, Someone Else’s Life, Tarot

There were always people at Lisa’s house.

One of Lisa’s friends was a woman named Darnelle. She had dark hair and a quick wit. She had been the one to introduce Paganism to Lisa and she seemed to resent Lisa for how little respect she showed the Magick. When she was in the house, I knew that I was in the presence of an elder and she made sure to let everyone know that.

“You can’t conduct a ceremony without calling the quarters,”

“Says who?”

“Says the way it’s always been done. You must respect tradition.” Darnelle would say.

“I want to make new traditions,” Lisa would respond.

They had this argument often and it got to the point where I could follow it like a tennis match. “But you have to respect the Gods,” Darnelle would respond.

“What do you think I’m trying to do? The whole ritual is to honour them.”

I didn’t understand the push and pull between them. To me, Magick and Paganism made a lot of things possible because it was so open. There was no right way to find your light. This is what all the people I knew in the community had taught me. They were all Pagan, but how each person had gotten to this point was different, just as their journeys were not the same.

I thought of my own journey that had brought me here and I knew that each step I had taken had been one of choice. Paganism existed in a place beyond choice. It simply was, shaped by a person’s ideals and what they believed. Their spirit told them what kind of things they needed. The fact that Darnelle always insisted that her way was the right way grated a little.

Yet she could be incredibly kind. She would stock Lisa’s fridge and cupboards without asking, showing up with bags of groceries. There were quite a few people living in Lisa’s apartment and all of us were on welfare. Money was thin, and the extra food was always a blessing.  She always had a spare cigarette for me, and I loved Darnelle despite her rigid stance on how the occult should be practiced.

I ended up going to see Darnelle on my own and would travel to her place to see her. My mother had walked away from me, so Darnelle became a kind of stand in for my mom. She had two children of her own and they were in and out of Darnelle’s house often. Even though Darnelle had a rigid sense of what was right and wrong in magic, she was keen to help me develop mine.

“I know you’re a warrior witch right now, but what path are you going to take when the need to fight is gone?” She motioned at me with a cigarette between two fingers. “Warrior magic is strong, but it can wear a person out. You don’t want to be guns blazing all the time.”

“I am strong.” I told her. I looked into her eyes, dark like a cave that invites you in but hides so many wonders not ever seen before.

 I took offense to the idea that she would find me weak. I wanted and needed to prove myself to her. Darnelle had this way of seeing what a person carried within them without them having to tell her anything. It was like she could see right into you and would judge you based on how strongly the rivers flowed within.

She lit another cigarette and looked at me through the smoke. “I never said you weren’t. But aren’t you tired of being strong all the fucking time? I told you that you can’t keep going at that rate, you’ll fucking burn out. Do you think I want that for you?”

I lit my own cigarette and took my time to respond. Darnelle demanded respect. You could speak your mind, but she demanded I take the time to respond and not lash out. She always wanted me to think of what I really wanted to say, what the heart of the matter was. “If I’m not a warrior, what am I?”

She shook her head. “No, you misunderstand me. You will always be a warrior, but practicing warrior Magick all the time will tap you out. Look at what it does to Lisa. She lets it be the excuse for her ignorance, uses it to be the reason for her rudeness.” Tapping her cigarette in the ashtray she left it there to smoke while she got up to put the kettle on. Taking out two earthenware mugs, she popped to orange pekoe bags into them and then came back for her cigarette. “No, you can’t be a warrior all the time. You’ve had to fight so much. You don’t have to be a warrior all the time.”

“I don’t know how to do anything else but fight.” I told her.

“Well, then maybe it’s time you look at magic that will help heal you instead of magic that will aid you for battle, hm?”

I watched as she put out her cigarette and went back to her kitchen to get the mugs of tea. I wondered about the idea of actually loving myself and letting myself heal from the scars that I carried not just on my skin, but also within me.

I added some milk and sugar to the tea, and we held up our mugs. “To healing,” Darnelle said.

When we clinked our mugs together, I imagined that I could hear the sound of bells over the whisper of the waves. I tried to listen to what the waves within me were saying and took a sip of my tea.