A Requiem for a Dream

One of my hopeless dreams had always been having a family of my own: a few children and someone to call my own. Someone to hold when I sleep and someone to smile at when I wake up. Someone to love through hard and happy days. Someone to share my joys and pains with. Someone who could share their world with me.

I never thought that would be possible. One lonely year passed after another on my own. I was happy. I rode the forests with wind in my hair, trained wild horses and learned magic. I remember a big wedding-party we held for my dear friends. I remember dividing the women to go and paint the bride and men to paint the groom and told them to share with the to-be-wedded the secrets of joyous shared life. I stood preparing for the ritual and realized I do not belong to either world of group - I would be alone for the rest of my life. To be the one who holds the broom is to be alone, I concluded.

What a joy, when I found not-yet-bearded-not-yet-daddy who seemed to want to be with me. I was already quite old and not used to people paying court to me. I missed the little red warning signs and fell right in-love. It is easy, when someone so openly and greedily confesses his love and devotion on every chance they get.

But as the years passed, I grew disillusioned. I was desperately alone for most of the time. The more I needed his companionship the less he would be there for me. Finally I gave him back the ring I had proposed to him with and told him that I felt I was living in a front. We seemed like the perfect couple, we looked happy outside but in the in-side there was nothing at all. I told him that this needed to change for us to continue together. He got scared and soon after that began talking me over to having another child.

These past two years of being pregnant and caring for both princesses have been the most difficult time I've ever had to face. It seemed like if he had ever felt any empathy for me - the last of these feelings died. He was full of commands and demands. No more "I love you"'s but "do you really need that", "do I always have to do everything." The simplest of things turned into fights because he would not see my point or even try. His speech was full of "you have to"s. To live like we did, I would have to take more responsibility. I would have to give up on my own wants and needs - we only had money for his.

No matter how hard it got, I tried not to complain. I felt it was unfair to share his wrongs with my friends. It felt completely wrong. I knew things were going the wrong way but I kept hoping that maybe, if I changed my attitude, maybe if I gave him one more chance, if I could start a day without grudge and talk to him, he could see it. He could see me - how desperately tired I was, how in need of someone holding my hand for a little while, someone holding my side and telling others to do their part in our household.

Meanwhile he was preparing to kick me out of my home.

Eventually it was me, who told him to leave. I thought he needed to clear his head and get his priorities straight. He told me we would only be separated for "six months - maybe a year, but I see my-self coming back home" - and behind my back he was dating another woman and telling everyone else how we've been through for months already. It was not that he found someone else that made me angry. It was the fact that he continually lied about it to me. Came home to have sex with me. Grabbed me every time we saw. Had he told me right there and then that he was leaving me for someone else, I would have cried and would have been desperately sad, yes. Now I feel devastated and used.

His lies pile up on each other and his story of what has happened, how and why changes every time he talks about it. I fear that he's loosing his touch with reality. Yet even more I fear that he has always done that - always lied, always tried to come through flawless and clean. That he has never actually been present in the moments we've shared. That for him it was only a role-game that went sour when he realized he can no longer control me.

I feel like my soul has shattered to a million pieces. I do not know what to trust anymore. His world seems like a tangled web of lies. I'm left with questions that will never get answers. I'm left with a hurt so deep it will take me years to heal. I'm left with the realization that truly I will be alone for the rest of my remaining days. And that he will never see what he did wrong and that he will never even apologize. And the worst part of the nightmare is that he will be a part of my life for as long as I live. I will have to see him every second day as he picks up the girls or I take them to him. This will never be over.

This truly is a requiem for a dream - for my dream of someone I could hold when I go to sleep, someone I could smile at when I wake up, someone who would love me for who I am and someone I could love through hard and happy days. It was too good to be true - so it never was true.

An attitude of gratitude?

Spiritual storm survival guide, part 1.

What seemed to cause most pain during this break-up was my lingering hope of "getting him to understand." Over and over I tried to reach Bearded Daddy by writing or talking. He would not hear me. I told my-self that he had to see and that he would have to understand - and by doing so, didn't get it my-self.  If there had been a way to reach him, we would not be breaking up.

So instead of teaching him, I had to teach my-self. The only way to keep my nose and karma clean was to adopt an attitude of gratitude. So my meditation and scrutiny over my actions follows the method of karmic cleansing:

* Be grateful

* Act with love and compassion

* Check your motives

* Watch your attitude

* Forgive, forgive, forgive

* Don't give up

Most people don't seem to see what they are doing and how it affects other people. I can forgive them and treat them with compassion while still holding my ground firmly. Giving up anger and resentment will help me face them and my-self with compassion. I can forgive Bearded Daddy for what he is and what he does. I don't need to teach him or expect him to understand. He's probably never going to see things from my point of view nor the Girls'. To respect my own experience the only one who needs to see it, is me. From that view-point I can stand my ground without the need to prove a point, explain or complain or revenge any wrong-doings.

I can feel relieved and glad I had the years we had together. I can hold on to the gratitude I feel for having my sweet Princesses. I feel desperately sad for all the moments we could have shared during our years together with Bearded Daddy and some-what pity him for missing out. I can not choose for him nor can I be angry with his decisions. The only thing for me to do is to recognize my own needs, limits and desires and respect those. The two things I need to do are heal my-self and keep the Princesses safe.  Investing energy to anything else will be wasting it.

I can feel grateful for knowing the facts. As my beloved Sister said, knowing them gives me the possibility of choosing and deciding. As long as I was in the dark, I could grow false hope instead of determination and action. I long as I was in the dark, I could only hope and wait and blame my-self. Now I know. The bright Spring Sun is almost blinding - yet finally I see clearly. No more hope left for "us" or "family." The pain is almost unbearable but I breathe in it, pray with it and watch it turn into determination instead of guilt or blame.

I have always known I can not change Bearded Daddy. I had the idea that the only one I can change is me. And I did just that - tried to change my-self into a more suitable spouse. But without self-respect and dignity I was changing the wrong way - into less of me and more of an angry doormat.

The past six months I have been able to hardly recognize my-self at times. It seems like I have been fighting for my life and my survival as a self-respecting person. Now the fight is over and it is time to rest and heal. Let the thoughts of compassion and love flow back. I'm no longer threatened. I no longer need to be in pain, scared and panicking. I can fully see my-self and let go of the need to be seen by others.

And laying down the law can be an act of love and compassion when it is done to avoid further harm to me and the Girls.

Dealing with separation and loss.

My love-affair with Bearded Daddy had a tragic beginning - a fall of a beloved community and loss of friends on a heart-breaking scale. The first years of our life together were shadowed by the presence of my despair and agony, loss of soul and eventually depression. It took me four years to find and collect the lost pieces of my soul and become a whole person again.

There was plenty of magic at work and never have I been so happy to be a pagan. There is a multitude of books dealing with the loss of soul and recovering from trauma. Besides Starhawks Dreaming the Dark and Pagan Book of Living and Dying, I read through Caitlín Matthews' Psychic Shield and Singing the Soul Back Home and my ever faithful friend Francesca De Grandis provided me with the prayers and spells my numb soul needed to come back to life. (In her books Be a Goddess and Goddess Initiation - I've never had the honor of meeting this lady in person.)

Now I'm facing the loss again. This time better prepared by work I did previously. This time fiercely determined not to loose my life and my soul again for so many years. Yes, it is hard. Yes, I can feel the coldness of losing soul creeping up on me. Not quite being present, not quite being able to listen to people for all the inner talk going on. Loosing sense of self and the sacred flame within.

Yet it was me, who two years ago visited the underworld in a shamanic journey, found a glacier and Audhumla liking it clean. There, preserved inside the ice was - me. A huge part of my soul that had escaped during the break-up of our first home. I was the one who dug myself out, my fists bleeding, from the ice. I was the one who could fulfill and complete my-self. There in the underworld we danced and danced, until we were only one person. I came back whole and happy, finally together.

Now I'm confident with the knowledge that I will always find the pieces of me that might go missing. Some parts need to leave to be safe. The rest is tough and hardened like and old dragon. I sleep with one eye open, curled around the home and my children, protecting and guarding. I know Bearded Daddy has had six years to learn where the soft spots are, where to hurt and how to wound. Luckily I have also learned to keep them protected, learned to heal myself and like all snakes, repair the damage by being re-born.

The gift of the wild is within me - that which falls is never gone, that which dies is never lost - it is only hidden and sleeping like flower bulbs in the dark covers of earth waiting for the Kiss from Maiden of Spring. We go through our pain and suffering to come back stronger, wiser, more compassionate and ever more alive.

Am I sad? To the point of choking. Am I grieving? The world seems to darken around me. Am I hurt? I'm bleeding out. Yet within me is the wisdom and the strength needed to see this through.

The wind still blows - my blood still flows and within me the eternal song - calling my soul back home.