Tag: Let Go

Chapter Fifty-Six – 8 of Swords

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

I looked at the world around me.

I wondered how I fit within it and where I belonged. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere. I was between two places, where I was and where I wanted to be. An itch had started underneath my feet, and I didn’t know what it meant. I had chosen to stay. I would help Lisa through the birth of her child and then think of what I wanted to do.

The only problem was, I didn’t know what that was. What was after this? I felt stuck and not stuck at the same time, as if my body, mind and spirit all wanted different things and the only thing that I could think of doing was remain in place. I looked at Lisa and the life that she was growing within her and my life before, now and after. I had no idea where I was going. Lisa was fine with this life, but I felt like it didn’t fit me anymore. Yet, I was afraid of what would come after.

I felt damaged after Francis. It was as if by setting me free, he had taken all the confidence he had given me, too. I had felt like I could do anything but now I didn’t know how to. I was unsure of how to move forward. Francis had made a move for himself and left me behind to flounder in the dark.

I don’t know why I was having so much difficulty making space for myself without Francis. I knew that we were done and that there was no going back and nor would I want to. He hadn’t given me the respect that I had deserved. I felt lost and uncertain about where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do now.

It was Sophie that gave me the answer.

“You look like you need some kind of reset.” She told me.

We were at one of her dinners. Fox, Lisa, Jenn and a few others were there. We were sitting in the living room after dinner and Sophie pointed at me. “You have this look of a rabbit about your eyes, and you don’t know which direction to go in.”

“I’ve noticed it, too.” Lisa said. “I knew that you needed some space after Francis was such a dick, but it’s been a while.”

“Gods, was it that obvious?” I said. “I felt like I was hiding it pretty well.”

Lisa snorted out loud. “If you mean by hiding it that you’ve been wandering around our place looking for something you haven’t even lost, then you’re doing a good job of it.”

I felt my spirit sag within me. “I’m sorry,” I told them.

Jules, a new person to the group, took my hand in hers. “You don’t need to apologize. Fuck, when my last boyfriend and I broke up, I was a fucking mess for a year. Just because you know you’re done with the relationship doesn’t mean you’re done with the grief. That shit takes time.”

“What do I do in the meantime?” I asked the group.

“I just told you; you need a spiritual reset.” Sophie said.

“What kind of reset?” I asked, almost in a hushed whisper.

“I’ve already talked about it.” Lisa said. “We need to take you to the Kaleidoscope Festival.”

“Ugh, camping?” I said.

“It’s not as bad as all that. You’ve never camped with a bunch of pagans. Picture it, there are hundreds of us all camping at this site. There’s booze, magic and firelight.” The light in Lisa’s eyes shone and I knew that she was travelling back Kaleidoscope’s from her past. “There is magic all over the fucking place. Nothing I can say will do it justice, it’s something that you have to experience.”

“Besides, you’ve been wanting to immerse yourself in magic.” Jenn said. “Kaleidoscope is the way to do it. It’s a powerful place.”

I knew that I needed to break out of whatever funk I was in. If Kaleidoscope was the place for a spiritual reset, then I was going. Anything was better than the state I was in. I knew that it was all in my mind, that I wasn’t disposable and that there was a light inside me that desperately wanted to grow bright again.

I would nurture that weak flame until I could find the fire.  

Chapter Forty-Four – 9 of Cups

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

I looked around myself a lot.

I was always trying to find my place in the world. I finally felt like I had a family of a sort made up of both people I knew from the streets and the Pagan community. My life had gone from having no one to being abundant with people I considered family of the heart.

I was so used to hiding who I was. However,  since I had ended up on the streets, I had met so many people that welcomed me as one of their own. I still found it odd to realize that I knew so many people that wanted to know me. I carried a lot of self-hatred, both from my childhood and there was a small part of me that wondered who would want me?

It turned out that a lot of people did. Sophie had weekly dinners for a bunch of her Pagan friends. We would bring ourselves and meet at her house in Lebreton Flats. It would be a gathering of like minds and kindred spirits. The people gathered in Sophie’s living room changed every once in a while, depending on who was dating who, or who was visiting from out of town. but the core group of us stayed the same. There was Sophie and her boyfriend James, Lisa, Jen. The people I knew were joined by Franny and her boyfriend Michel with Janice and Kyle to round out the group. I was a little shy around the people I didn’t know, but they soon became fast friends.

We would eat potluck style with each of us bringing something different the dinner and we would sit and play games or delve into magic by creating spells or doing rituals. It was the magic that brought us together on a deeper level as you must open yourself up wide to be ready for magic and it brings people closer together. I often wondered if the thrum of magic was something visible, the air would be filled with rainbows and shadow.

I went through a lot of different emotions when I was among these people. There was sadness if someone was going through something difficult and we had to band together to lift the other persons spirits, especially if it meant that one of our group would be leaving us. The people changed over time, but the core group of us remained the same.

I was reminded of the people that I had met on the streets and the kind of family those people had been to me. Looking around the room at these people, I could not deny that I had been lucky enough to find another kind of family and I knew how lucky I was to have these kinds of people around me.

Sitting in amongst a gathering of Druids, Wiccans, Pagans and otherwise, I thought about how my street family may have given me back my body and my Pagan family had given me back my spirit. These people hadn’t known me but had accepted me because they saw my spirit and accepted me completely. The streets may have taught me to protect myself, but this world taught me to be free. It was a juxtaposition that I was still having trouble accepting. However, whenever I felt like I had lost my place, all I had to do was come home to myself and the emotions that my body held.

The people around me were full of emotions and over time, the people that shared in food, joy, sorrow and laughter showed me that I didn’t have to be emotionally cut off. There didn’t need to keep a wall between myself and the emotions that I had been taught to bury down deep within me. I knew that if I didn’t let them out, they would rupture within me. The Pagan community were full of light. There were a few bad apples, you’ll find that in any bunch of people, but everyone was completely open with their emotions. They showed me that while I had to practice ward and sigils to keep myself safe, I was free to share my true emotions with them.

It was an odd experience. I was so closed off from people before and I was being asked to be open. My life was abundant with the people that surrounded me, and the core group of people had my back. I knew that I could be completely myself with these people and it was frightening and wonderful all at once.

I had spent my entire life so far having to keep so much of myself hidden from my parents, family and friends. I couldn’t talk about my disability, the abusive home that I had survived, my sexuality or my gender. There was much that was off limits for me to be able to form lasting relationships with other people and it was exhausting.

Looking around at the people that surrounded me, at Sophie, Lisa, Jen, James, Franny, Michel with Janice and Kyle. We were an odd sort of family, but we were a chosen family together. My life was abundant with so many emotions and that was okay. I didn’t have to hide anything anymore.

Especially from myself. I didn’t want to hold on to so many unnamed emotions. When I got back to Lisa’s that evening, I filled a cup full of water and then wrote the emotions I had been holding onto for so long. I wrote quickly listing off everything I could think of. I wrote about my anger, my self-hatred, my fear of being who I truly was and being completely myself. I filled both sided of the small piece of paper and dunked it in the water.

I watched as the water smudged the ink and softened the paper, making if soft. I swirled the paper until all of it was completely wet. I took the paper out of the water and began to shred  the paper into lots of little pieces until the cup of water looked as if it held wet snow. If I looked into the cup, I could see the letters that had been the words of my emotions, their ink fading even as I looked at them as the water continued to soak into the paper.

Standing, I walked off the back porch towards the edge of the garden. I poured the entire cup of water and paper into the dirt. I watched as the paper settled into the soil and if I tried to spell words with the letters I could see. With each word I spelled, I was making that negative emotion into something else.

I was letting go of the past and finally looking towards the future instead of merely living day by day. I wanted to dream of something more.

Looking down at the letters in the dirt in front of me, I tried to find a word so that I could divine what awaited me in the future.

Chapter Twenty-Eight – 7 of Wands

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Finding Balance, Memoir

I was overjoyed to get a phone in my room.

It felt like such an adult thing to have such a thing. A phone was an item from my past and

I was finally able to stay in touch with those I loved and even a few friends. Not that many people had my telephone number and felt special. I didn’t have a lot of money and would not use the phone very much except for local calls. That’s why it was odd to find it ringing when I got home from the garage. I had made myself a bowl of pasta in the kitchen of the rooming house and was having dinner while I read a book. The phone ringing was like a siren and my fork clattered to the desk.

A part of me didn’t want to answer it, but I ignored that part of me and picked up the receiver, the ring of the telephone loud in my room. “Hello?”

“So it is your number.” Shades said. His voice was dark and full of honey, the kind that could clog your throat and make it hard to breathe. “I wasn’t sure that Sunshine was pulling my leg or not when he gave me your number.”

It had been so long since I had heard his voice. I had come to know it well during our time together and I knew that this was his angry voice. It was how he liked to start most conversations. He had always been angry about something or angry at someone. I saw that with the gift of hindsight, but when I first knew him, I thought Shades being moody was just his way of being misunderstood. I was attracted to these parts of him that he was brave enough to share under the cover of night. I realized that I had been something to be kept hidden and kept from the prying eyes of others.

I knew that he had been ashamed of me. At that moment, I was ashamed of myself because when I heard his voice, my body reacted automatically. Even though my mind and body knew that Shades was bad for me, they still wanted him. I still wanted him.

“I need to see you,” he said. “I don’t know what you did to me. I was never fucking gay before you but now I can’t get you out of my head.”

The words came out in an angry torrent, and I felt each one of them pierce my skin. I wondered how much a person could bleed before they had given away all that they were to the needs of someone else. He had already taken so much from me, aside from the parts of myself that I had willingly given him.

“I didn’t make you gay.” I told him.

“Then what did you do?” I could hear the desperation in his voice, and it echoed my own when I realized that I was gay and prayed for someone, anyone to take it away. “You only think of yourself, that’s always been the way you do thing. You just took from me.”

“I didn’t take anything from you.”

“You took my manhood. You made me gay when you put it in your mouth.”

I let out a laugh. “It doesn’t work that way. It’s not like you can catch being gay like you can catch the flu.”

“Then what did you do to me?” He asked again. “I need to see you. Will you come to see me, please?”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me doing it. “Sure, I’ll come see you. How do I get there and what’s the address?”

He told me and I told him that I would be there in about an hour. I sat in my room and thought only for a moment of what I wanted to do and wondering if I could do it. I knew that it would make him angry, but I just didn’t care anymore. I sat there at the desk and looked at myself in the mirror that looked back at me like an eye. I went to my purple bag and took out all of my make up and set it on the table in front of me.

I pushed my bowl of pasta aside and began applying my makeup. I started with a light powder to cover my skin and then eyeshadow. I chose a light purple colour, an almost lilac colour that made my eyes brighter. I applied a little bit of blush in a natural tone and a lipstick in a soft rose petal colour. All very neutral but I was clearly wearing make up.

With every strike of the brush against my skin, it felt like I was putting on war paint. I knew that by going to see him, I had put the ball in his court. I had to take my power back from him. I knew that this had to be done, even if it meant going to him. By the time I was made up completely, I was ready for the battle ahead of me. As I waited for the bus, I said mantra’s over and over in my head and tried to recall what I had learned from reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. As I got on the bus and it began to bring me closer to where he waited, I thought of the bus as a chariot heading into war and wondered if I would be victorious.

In truth, I was afraid. I didn’t know how he would react, and I had seen him rage before. He had made me hide inside a closet rather than be seen with me. At the time, I had thought it was because he wasn’t out of the closet yet. Later, after I had left him, I wondered if it was because he was ashamed of the feelings I brought out in him, so I had to be hidden.

I would not hide now.

He would not make me cower because of who I was and what I was. The makeup drew looks from my fellow bus passengers, but I thought “Let them look.” That was the point anyways. I didn’t want to hide anymore so that I could make Shades feel better about his shame. I had to stand up for myself once and for all with him and let him know that he could not intimidate me anymore.

He was waiting for me when the bus came. I got off the bus and could already see a storm brewing around him. Part of me wondered why this was so important to me and what I had to prove, but in that moment when I saw the anger in his eyes when he looked at me, I knew that this was important to me. Shades didn’t matter one iota to me. I would not hide myself so that he could feel comfortable with who and what he was.

“Do you have to look like such a faggot?”

I could see the air around him and it looked as if it had been supercharged with the energy he was putting out. I could smell the booze emanating from him and knowing how alcohol affected people, I knew to be wary and on my guard. Confronting him was about giving myself closure, but that didn’t mean I had to endanger myself.

“I’m not exactly sure what you mean, Shades.” I told him. “How exactly is a faggot supposed to look?”

He waved his hands at me. “Like this! Like you do!”

“I’m not sorry if the very sight of me offends you.”

“It’s not that! Do you have to be so fucking gay all the time?”

“It’s not like I can turn it off, you know.” I said. “It’s not like there’s a gay switch that I can flick on and off to blend better with society.”

“You could at least try!” He was yelling now. “Then we could be together.”

I looked at him, at this man I used to be so enraptured with, and I wondered why he had held so much power over me. I thought of Rainbow and how he had treated her, how he had treated both of us and the way we thought we were lucky to have drawn his gaze to ourselves. We felt like we had been blessed to have him in our lives. I would have done anything for Shades, and I think he knew that, too.

That stopped now.

I was not someone to be ashamed of or shoved into a box or a closet to remain hidden until you were ready for me. “I’m not going to be the reason that you’re pissed off. You’re angry at me because I’m braver than you are because I can live as I truly am.”

“Just come inside and we can talk about this, about what you’ve done to me and what you plan to do about it.”

That sounded less like an invitation and more like a threat. I was done being threatened and I was done hiding. I looked at Shades and finally saw him for what he was. When that happened, I realized he had no power over me.

I could see another bus coming and I turned my back on Shades and walked towards the bus stop. It didn’t matter what bus it was, only that it would take me away from him and back to the life which I was trying to live where he had no place in it.

“Where are you going?”

When I turned back to him, it was to find him looking at me with eyes so filled with fear. I knew what it was like to be afraid, and I hoped that Shades would find a way through it towards self acceptance. I knew that it wasn’t my place to take on someone else’s fears and try to make sense of them. I had enough to deal with on my own.

I turned away from him and when the bus door opened, I got on and let the doors close behind me. As I made my way to a seat, I could see Shades looking after the bus for a moment and then he was gone from my sight and my life.

Chapter Thirteen – Death

by Jamieson Wolf, posted in A Tarot Guide, Tarot

We spent our days in the square.

It was where we gathered when we had nothing to do and wanted to be with others but still have the freedom to be outside. There was a Coffee Revolution on one side with a large patio and on the other side, there was a Scotiabank. There were other little stores too, but we stayed away from those stores. We felt comfortable more out in the open areas. I know that I felt safer among a group of people than I did sleeping in the shelters. I had stayed at the Ottawa Mission before, and I had felt like I was out there for the world to gawk at.

When I had stayed at the Ottawa Mission, I’d had a clean room with four walls and a small window, a simple bed with clean sheets and a blanket. It is a place for healing, but when you come out of there, people look at you differently. Your story is visible for everyone to see, and you don’t belong to anyone.

Among the people here, I was among my family. Sunshine and the people I knew here had become part of me in some way. I was surprised by how quickly you could form a bond with someone. All you had here was your word and your reputation. As long as I was honest about who I was and treated people kindly until they gave me a reason not to, I could be part of this family. It was that simple to have a family and I had never experienced anything like it. In my biological and extended families, there were lies, memories held onto for too long, jealousy and pain caused by other people. There were shadows with the occasional moment of light. There were promises that were broken time and time again.

With the people here on the streets, we supported one another, and we fought for each other. These were my brothers and sisters, and this surprised me. To be accepted for who I was and the fact that people wanted to know me was mind-blowingly amazing. It felt wonderful not to justify who I was and talk about what had brought me here. I simple was.

At the end of the day, we would go back to wherever we had found to sleep and rest our heads, but during the day, we always found each other. It was like there was a homing beacon that led us together.

I remember sitting in the square one day with my family, the sun bright on my face and in my eyes. I turned to look away from the suns rays and found myself looking at my mother. She was walking with a friend and looked just as shocked to see me as I was to see her. I hadn’t thought I’d ever see my mother here, but I knew that she often went out on Friday nights of went shopping on the weekends. Still, it I had never thought that I would see her here, or rather that I couldn’t comprehend the sudden clash of my two worlds: where I had been and where I was now.

My mother did not slow down when she saw me. She continued talking to her friend and kept walking. Her eyes looked at me though and I tried to hear what my mother was saying without the power of words. I felt an ocean stretch between us, each of us on our own island and unable to touch each other. I watched the current take my mother away from me and into the waves.

I sat there stunned, my head filled only with the sound of waves and the scrape of metal and steel when the waves hit the rocks around me. I tried to think of what she could have done, what kind of life receiver she could have thrown me, and my brain came up completely empty except for the sound of the waves hitting the rocks with furious abandonment. I knew at that moment that if I didn’t give up an offering of some kind, the wave would take me, too.

Closing my eyes, I tried to delve into the wires, skin and light. It took me a while to find it, but it was still pristine. It was the mind garden that I carried with me, the plants the result of everything I had planted.

Around me, my family carried on and I could hear the gentle sounds of their voices, but I was still within myself. I knew what I had to give to the waters, what I could freely give them in order the calm the waters within me. I didn’t want to break, not now, not after all this time. My mother told me that I would have to learn to do everything by myself, that nobody else would be able to do it for me.

Up until quite recently, my mother had been the one who had helped me and made me realize that anything I wanted to do was possible, despite being disabled. She had helped me to realize that even though I had difficulties I had to fight against every day, I could fight the battle. Even better, I could win.

I just didn’t realize that when my mother had said that I would have to do everything by myself and nobody else was going to help me, she was also talking about herself.

I reached down and gently plucked the Lily-of-the-Valley. Its petals were a wonder of blue, a few different shades so that the petals were made of water. The petals had reminded me of sapphires, and they always shone like beacons in the dark when I got lost for too long among my plants.

I went to the small pond in the centre of my mind and placed the lily within the water. The hiss of the waves and the strong screech of metal stopped. I wondered where the currents would take the lily. I knew only that by the time I saw it again, I might be ready to see my mother again.