Category Archives: Pagan Culture

Divorcing a Real Witch Pagan Culture

How to count it – Pagans being Pagans about their demographics

October 11, 2011 – 1:00 pm

probably not where I'm going with this

While the neopagan divorce survey is not yet closed, I have been editing it so I can pull the data for this final draft of my book.  While I’ve made a concerted effort to ensure that each section was clear about the data requested, I’ve found some … interesting…interpretations of the requested data.

I have a whole new respect for survey writers. I’m often frustrated by leading questions and the  limited answers I find. In the case of Fox News Polls, where questions posed are along the lines of “How much does Obama suck?” for the most part, survey writers really mean to be objective. No matter how well you write it, or how thorough you try to be, you find you miss a question and you can never prepare for the subjective way people interpret your questions. Also, no survey writer in the world can prepare for Pagans, who, despite their own best intentions, behave like squirrels.

To prepare for this, I did draw on my college training on survey writing. I spent extra time trying to avoid leading questions, even though it’s technically impossible: as the author of the survey, I am part of a specific culture and part of a specific subculture. This colors my perspective no matter what I do. I can’t just not be an American-born white citizen with complicated cultural background.

…and my specific subculture doesn’t really restrict people on measuring time.

When asked for lengths of time on marriages on this survey, I’ve gotten some… interesting answers. Answers that force me to spend extra time editing to make sure the data tabulates right. Answers that make me pause and say, “Huh, this person is right. How do I go about counting that/measuring that time?”

For the sake of clearing confusion as much as it can be cleared, here’s what I’m laying down so we have the structure necessary to start a dialogue about Wicca/neopagans1  and divorce:

  1. A handfasting counts as a marriage. The presence or absence of paperwork does not determine the seriousness of a marriage.
  2. Living together before marriage is one I’m on the fence about; right now I’m inclined to not count cohabitation because getting married/marriage ceremonies means there is a conscious, alchemical change to the relationship on a level that can only be determined after that change has been made. It has been indicated that the real alchemical change happens from 6 months to two years into the marriage: the “honeymoon is over” time is the time when “married” affects the persona and the interrelationships of those paired. Most survey respondents also indicated that they consider cohabitation different.
  3. If someone was married “1.5 years” for the sake of consolidation, I’m counting it as “1 year.” If you don’t reach anniversary markers, I guess it falls back to the previous year, assuming those remaining months were taken up with the business of divorce.

I’m also taken aback by the vast majority of respondents who waited “no time” to start dating/start new relationships again. Even when I remove people who went through extended periods of separation and polyamory most people went straight from one serious relationship to another. For reasons I intend to explore further here and on the book, I strongly believe that this may also contribute to a high divorce rate. While I am not opposed to divorce, I do advocate making healthy relationship decisions, and those that have had successful second marriages (or third) have spent time alone between relationships.

neither advocating nor criticizing

I also realized I did not ask the following questions. Granted, few probably want to answer them, and I may even ask about this stuff on camera for the brave and willing.

  • How did you ask for your divorce/how were you asked for your divorce?
  • What magical actions did you take to deal with the grief moments?
  • Did you consider the end of the relationship the actual divorce, or from the moment of agreeing to divorce?
  • Were there any attempts at reconciliation?  Did you consider this beneficial?

Yes, these questions are grating, hard, jarring – and necessary. Even though the divorced themselves often display visible discomfort with the book, most comment to me with “Wow, that’s really needed!”

 




  1. I make this distinction because of course, my writing will be colored by the Wiccan perspective [↩]
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Pagan Culture

#allhallowsread Haunting Stories: the White Robes

October 11, 2011 – 11:34 am

This is part of my series about my own ghostly encounters. I invite you to share your own stories as a guest blogger or in comments!

Como Conservatory

The college I first attended lay almost literally in the middle of a cornfield. Surrounded on all sides by a dairy farm owned by the college, buildings were sparse and unless you had a car, you made your entertainment by smoking white out, drinking whatever you could get an older student to buy you, and hiking out into the unmapped woods adjacent to the property.

While I did partake of the chemical entertainments from time to time, I found them limiting, and I had a GPA worth protecting. So for major portions of my time, I hiked out into the woods. At first I spent most of my time on an island in the middle of a pond that used to be a baseball field. Then the bridge “broke” that year, and administration saw fit not to fix it – most likely, a young couple got caught having sex, and the older adults of the time put in a great deal of effort in preventing sex among the younger adults, without thinking that they in fact were the disturbed ones for doing so.

So I began exploring the other side of the woods, closer to the boys’ dormitory, and extending out to the peculiar township that, despite being walking distance from the college, none of the students ever really visited.

It had to be March or April. It was a Friday night, and since no one invited me to anything, I set out on my own into the woods. A thunderstorm came up suddenly, but I kept walking.

Somewhere between the first patter and the raging downpour, I started to see them. White robed hoods peeking at me from behind the trees. At first I attributed it to my overactive imagination: the lack of stimulation from staying at such an isolated college had led me on some wild fantasies, and it seemed only a matter of time before they began appearing as though outside my head.

Perhaps it was one of the Greek groups on campus playing a joke, or doing one of their strange little rituals. I was never crazy about the concept of fraternities and sororities, but I’d come to appreciate the members as individuals, and so I walked toward one of the trees where I saw a robe. I could ask what was going on, ascertain I wasn’t intruding on some sacred tradition.

A robed figure stepped out from the tree toward me, and I looked inside the hood – and saw nothing. Not an outline, nothing – it was just a robe, moving like it had a body in it.

I turned around and ran. Thunder rolled under my feet, the heavens opened their downpour, and I ran my ass back to my dorm.

Somehow, however, I found myself running progressively deeper into the woods, and seeing those robed figures peeking out at me from the trees.

I had gotten lost just enough on that part of the property to have a favorite stump, a place by the stream where I would rest before getting my bearings. I found the stump – and I was coming at it from the opposite side of the stream. I know I did not cross that stream on the way into the woods.

I found my way back, those hooded things peeking out at me along the way. If it was a frat game, I just didn’t want to know.




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Pagan Culture

#allhallowsread Haunting Stories: Casting 13 Shadows

October 10, 2011 – 3:00 pm
This is part of my series about my own ghostly encounters. I invite you to share your own stories as a guest blogger or in comments!

File:Man Shadow.jpg

Mankato, Minnesota is famed for doing whatever it can to isolate university students from the rest of the community and for the largest mass execution of American Indians in the United States.  There was no question even at the time it happened that the hanging was unjust, and no one cottons to the exact location of the hanging. Even I can’t suss it out, but I imagine with a dowsing rod I could pick it out fast enough. Somewhere on Riverfront drive, away from Reconciliation park, enough blood got let to keep the land awake forever.

I knew none of this when I transferred colleges, I just knew if I went with the “family plan” my parents made with neither my consultation or consent, I faced an arranged marriage or an arranged pregnancy, whatever they deemed best to force me to quit the whole higher education pursuit. Mankato crossed my path in a strange way, the price was right – cheaper than any school in Indiana, even with out of state tuition – and it appeared I could find means to support myself without needing a car.

So in the beginning of the summer of 1996, I persuaded an old friend to dump my ass in Minnesota, since I knew she fantasized about that even when we still called each other “friend.”

I had only started my Wiccan practice a few months before, and when it came to blocking out spirits or psychic input, I only knew the absolute basics. I had no understanding about how some see shields as strength contests, or why constant shielding could in fact endanger me. I also had no inkling about what lay half-awake and angry beneath the soil of Stadium Hill.

I first realized something was strange when I walked across the campus underneath the lights that lit my path from the library to the student union one summer night. The day had been hard: the campus was located pretty far from any grocery store, and in summer MSU only served the needs of its athletes. All other students taking classes were damned. I’d had to buttonhole someone in the financial aid office, and my first night walking home from work at a fast food restaurant, some guy tried unsuccessfully to force me into his car. The place scared me, but I wanted to get out in the air, especially as denying student air conditioning in the dorms was at that time not viewed as a human rights violation.

As I walked beneath the lights, I noticed that I cast shadows both backwards and forwards. It looked to me like I cast about 12-13 shadows.

The next night, I persuaded a friend to walk across campus to a coffee shop and took the same route. This time, I only cast two shadows – one for each angle of light. When my friend took her leave, I cast 12-13 shadows again. I asked another friend to watch his own shadow some time later. He experienced nothing like I did.

It was the damnedest thing.

It still happens sometimes, when I’m out walking alone. I’ll pass a  lone street light, and suddenly I’ll see three splits of shadow, from three different angles. Sometimes far more than that.

There is a scientific explanation for this , but not for up to the amount that I cast.

I never have figured out what causes it – but yes, since I do see dead people…




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Pagan Culture

Diana’s List of Good Things in the World

October 9, 2011 – 7:57 pm

Apathy is Dying
I know that there are some mixed feelings out there, but I’m seeing the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations across the United States as a good thing. Why? Because, as Cara Schulz of the PNC points out, these are demonstrations, much more than they are protests. Yes, people are objecting that no individual has landed in jail for what amounts to crimes defrauding millions of US citizens (and non-citizens in a system that runs deep and only appears irresolvable.)

Also, just an FYI: BoingBoing has a video up on how to break out of zip ties.

Justice is Restored
Amanda Knox was released from Italian prison after an appeal on her conviction in 2007. It’s terrible that she was ever arrested – and ultimately because the investigator thought she “wasn’t sad enough.” Sexism, ethnocentrism, and just being horrible led to her Kafkaesque nightmare. What’s also a very serious concern:  Meredith Kercher’s family still needs justice for the loss of their daughter.

Equal Rights in Haiti
The United Nations has pledged protection for LGBT people in Haiti.

Oh, and a general positive tip for my US citizens: credit unions are YOU. If you can move your banking to one, do it.

 




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Pagan Culture

#allhallowsread Ghosts: the Parasole

October 9, 2011 – 12:01 pm
This is part of my series about my own ghostly encounters. I invite you to share your own stories as a guest blogger or in comments!

The street seemed strangely quiet on that summer night. I sat on the front steps of someone’s house, in the oldest part of that town. It was one of those parties that my parents dragged me to; the presence of teens my age somehow obligated my presence. Since I did not fit with the clique present and absolutely did not trust any of them, I managed to get myself out on the porch, alone, with some soft drink or another in my hand. The noise of the party seemed muted against the huge trees that arched over that part of Main Street, and only a few cars buzzed through.

I relaxed, feeling somewhat safer far away from the people inside and whatever the hell it was they did for social maneuverings. I had made a game effort, still wasn’t included, and felt glad of it because it meant I didn’t have to nod and look interested while stabbing a fork in my leg to relieve the boredom.

Across the street a movement caught my eye. I leaned forward, passively interested. A woman with a parasol open above her bustled along the sidewalk on a suited gentleman’s arm. I blinked, but saw it again. As I watched, they took a few steps forward and then disappeared as though merely walking through a door.

By then I had learned never to tell my family members about the things I saw. At least it made going to the party, if not worthwhile, then at least somewhat more interesting.




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Pagan Culture

#allhallowsread: the Table Lamp spirit

October 8, 2011 – 6:14 pm

This is part of my series about my own ghostly encounters. I invite you to share your own stories as a guest blogger or in comments!

Two women with a spirit

Ghosts still have choices. This is a little known fact. I get to see this on a regular basis: ghosts still learn things, still discover things and ultimately they decide whether they wish to move on or hang out all spirit-like. It’s sometimes like the guy in your high school clique that kept mooning over the girl that he made out with once in the 8th grade: yeah, he can’t help how he feels. Sooner or later he diverts his attention to something else and while diverted his feelings usually change. For a ghost, diverting that attention generally leads to moving on. Death, like life, has some stuff that happens that’s just harder to get over, especially if you died from a violent crime or suffered abuse during your life. Some people who suffered as victims are all “hello oblivion!” and zap right on out of here once what I call the Year of Walking is up; others linger. It’s not about their force of will – doing things by “force of will” is arrogant clip-clap that translates to “Look at me! Respect my authoritah _!” and ultimately doing things magically and/or in the spirit world by force of will means that either before your death or after, someone like me will be called to clean up the mess you made handling everything and everyone so roughly. I’m willing to guess the damage it does to your own spirit body increases your chances of ending up all ghostly yourself. It’s not the way the world fucks you up that makes a difference in the here or the hereafter; it’s what you do about it when you get fucked up.

This is not to say that all ghosts are petulant whiners. They have the same percentage and spectrum of human behavior as do the living, and the whiners annoy just as equally alive or dead. Of course the whining on the other side is usually summed up as “What do you mean I still have to make choices?”

Part of the ghostly process involves eventually making the choice: do I go see what hides behind that next curtain, or do I hang out here? Most go for the curtain.

There are a relative few, however, who figure out that the curtain’s there whenever they want it, and decide to take advantage of the extra time on earth sans airfare. In the process they figure out how to manipulate matter in some way, that they do not need to retain the form they did while living, and that every theater in the world is open to them.

These are the ones that also figure out that I can see them.

Of course, because they’ve got the ghost-system hacked, some of them use my ability to see them to fuck with me. I’ve had things go bouncing off my car when driving down dark country roads at night, found myself suddenly turned around in an alley I’ve cut through for years, even had one pretend to be a tree.

The one that annoyed me the most was the table lamp. read more »




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Pagan Culture

The ghost in hijab #allhallowsread

October 7, 2011 – 10:04 pm
This is part of my series about my own ghostly encounters. I invite you to share your own stories as a guest blogger or in comments!

For the nowadays few who do not know what the word hijab means, it covers any covering of a woman’s modesty. Usually this modesty includes hair. It’s sort of like how Christian churches once required all women to wear hats, and why Jewish men wear a yarmulkah.

395px-Muslim_woman_in_Yemen_cleared500px-Old_and_wise

As you can see, there are variations on how much modesty demands covering.

I bring this up so you know what I describe, and because what the ghost did appears to relate to this whole modesty thing.

When Mike and I lived in Franklin coop, we shared the space with a lot of Muslims. It just came as part of daily life in that neighborhood. One woman who spoke no English went totally blind in one eye, and would sway down the hallways at odd times of day, acknowledging no one. There’s more than once I asked friends if they saw her too – I honestly don’t remember if Mike did. I placed my bets on her for village shaman, and went with the assumption she was among the living. While the problems we had while we lived there all happened in the last year and were quite many, for the most part we didn’t interact, which in Minnesota is the definition of a good neighbor.

It stands to reason that a few Muslimmahs have died while living in the coop. The building has existed since 1980, Seward neighborhood is the second most densely populated part of Minneapolis after Uptown, and, well, people die. Them’s the odds.

What I don’t understand is that, more often than not, when I took a shower, the ghost of a Muslimmah would poke her head in. She would stare, the water bouncing through her yellow hijab, as I stood with loofah in hand feeling quite irritated. Sometimes I gave her an energetic shove out. Once she stepped in with me, but I had salt on hand and threw it at her. My bathing activities are invite only, thank you.

Many people assume that ghosts watch us shower, see us naked, etc. I haven’t found that to be the case. First, nudity is only sexual because our culture makes it so. I’m Wiccan, so I’m exposed to non-sexual nudity once in awhile. Second, I’ve never asked about this, but it seems that ghosts do not date or pair up (though they can and do interact), which suggests that there’s a total absence of sex drive. The forces of life are not directly what powers the spirit. As it is, I’ve never seen a ghost in a porn theater, although I have in porn shops. Yes, I’ve been in porn theaters, and I realize this is making for one strange post topic.

I asked her repeatedly to stop poking her head in – first, I paraded naked in that home on a regular basis, so if she wanted to see a naked body, it wasn’t a problem. Second, it got annoying and creepy. She kept right on with the peeping Tomasina act. I don’t know if it was about the naked person or the water, I just know it drove me nuts.




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Pagan Culture

Ghosts: a heretical opinion

October 5, 2011 – 10:35 pm

032911 007

“We are all connected and it’s important to honor that.”

Life, death and sex are the three most sacred things in the world to me. Even so, I will be just as quick to dispatch a parasite that eats my light bulbs as I am a parasite that eats my blood.

“The spirit was here first; that’s a valid perspective.”

If it were a living person, we’d call that a squatter.  If I have obtained my place to live through just means, I believe it is reasonable to expect all previous inhabitants to relocate.

“It’s kind of cool to have a ghost.”

It’s all fun and games until you get a ghost in hijab poking its head in every time you take a shower, your work gets disrupted as a ghost insisting you relay a message that the recipient will not want shorts out the circuits in your office, and you go through multiple sleepless nights because the dead feel entitled to your attention to the point of zero regard for the basic needs of life.

When it comes to ghosts and hauntings, I mind. I mind very much. I see a ghost moving into my house as exactly the same situation as the neighborhood drunk that tried to squat in our Franklin coop apartment. The neighborhood drunk did not at the time have a place to live, and since he was living, he needed one. He needed food, he needed shelter, he needed a place to land, or people to land with, or something larger than the bottle he crawled into.

I felt for him, but that didn’t obligate me to give him a place to live. I did, however, persuade the police officers we had remove him from our doorstep not to dump him in detox and thus stick him with another bill he couldn’t pay. I try hard to be a good person, but my virtue has its limits.

Ghosts, on the other hand, do not need a place to live. I do not care if that ghost lived in my place in 1850s, had babies there, or still wants its lost shoes under the floorboards. I do not share the opinions designed by various adherents of holy books: my opinion is based on direct experience.

When dealing with spirits, I operate on the following principles/assumptions:

  • A ghost is the spirit of a dead person. Other things are out there, lots of them, and they are not dead. Parallel universes are also a huge and little-explored factor in the magical worldview. Perhaps, though, that is best left to the physicists.
  • Death does not mean you lose free will or choice. Ghosts can decide what they want to do. They can even learn stuff if they want to. The key word to that is “want.”
  • Only the assholes or the deeply disturbed continue to wear their “upon death” appearance or clothing. Loss of life in no way requires your spirit imprint to leave organs hanging out, and in fact you can update or backdate your wardrobe however you like.
  • Ghosts – i.e. spirits of the dead – have the same variations in mentality as the living. The same percent are criminals and bullies. The same percent are just confused. The same percent really just want to sit and watch the world go by.
  • Ghosts/spirits of the dead do not have all the answers. They certainly have more time to eavesdrop and much more time to learn how to spin bullshit.
  • Ghosts, like any entity, needs some kind of energy. They’re hell on the power bill, especially in the summer if you use central air.
  • Ghosts and any other beloved departed are entitled to respect if and only if they also treat us with respect in return. Sentience requires courtesy.

If a spirit is not somehow contributing to the living household through protection, healing or non-invasive guidance, I do not feel obligated to keep it around. I get haunted walking down the street because that’s how non-voluntary second sight works. Also, for some reason, living this far away from the equator, the veil gets thin twice a year rather than the usual once. Beltane and Samhain I’m braking for thin air, flying squirrels that ostensibly disappeared in the ice age, and I’m not convinced I didn’t see a dodo bird last week.

I am laying down my perspective here for a few reasons. First, to me the existence of a “second” non-physical world is a plain, physical fact. I’m not guessing about life after death. It’s real enough, the consciousness does go somewhere, and it decides where it wishes to go.

It also makes me chafe a bit when I hear various paranormal experts proposing theories because I can see the things they’re theorizing about. I certainly don’t know all the answers: maybe something is funky with my optical nerves or retinas, or my brain perceives information too rapidly and ends up letting me see time or something. I don’t know why I’m the way I am (in that respect), or how it all works. What the ghost hunters say do not usually fit my own experiences, and it makes me really uncomfortable.

I have no intention of working as a medium, ever. I have zero interest in helping you find where Grandma hid that last vial of violet perfume. If you need to tell your long-lost cousin you’re sorry, or that she was awful,  just find some space by yourself and tell your cousin you’re sorry. Saying the name should be enough to bring that person around if s/he’s still here. The point isn’t whether or not the ghost is real – the point of such exercises is to change the way you feel.

You may think it’s a cool trick, a spooky moment, but for me it’s a daily reality that while not disabling, does create a layer of social awkwardness for me especially since agressive, angry atheism and declaring everything bullshit is quite popular these days. I’m not saying there’s not a reason for it, but to me it’s just someone without a holy book ready to burn me at the stake over the unprovable, metaphorically speaking.

So if I don’t enjoy living my ghost stories, why am I telling them?

Because I want to get my perspective out there, and I want folks reading this to get comfortable accepting their intuitive and inner experiences. We shove them aside and label them “crazy” to the point where we do not know the difference between genuine mental illness/a poisoned brain-as-organ and simply having experiences not deemed socially acceptable.

Second sight is an inner experience, an emotion of sorts, it just operates as an emotion that masquerades with visual output. It is not hallucination; I hope to write about the key differences between hallucinations, visions and second sight experiences in the future.

Ghosts are people, and they are complicated. Seeing them is also complicated, especially when they know you’re aware. Most of the time, I don’t want a relationship with any of them, although here and there, exceptions are made.

So, with that said – what ghost story do you want to tell?

 




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Pagan Culture

The Lady on the Stairs

October 3, 2011 – 9:08 pm

Spirit Photograph [Woman's spirit behind table with photograph]

This time, it was summer. Horror movies did not even haunt the cinema at that season, not that year. I was in my teens,15 or 16 at the time; my mother called me to tend to her endless chore list. I came around the corner from my bedroom to the stairwell, and came face to face with a woman. She wore a brown calico dress, was white, and had her hair pulled back in a bun. She stopped just short of the top stair. I looked straight into her face – and saw only blank flesh. With a visible “pop” she disappeared, and a familiar shiver ran through my body – at last, I knew what that sensation was, as she must have passed right through me.

I came downstairs and told my parents what I saw. My father made a sound of vague interest, and my mother immediately insisted I hadn’t seen a damn thing. She was quite fond of telling me I wasn’t experiencing what I was actually experiencing; unless it happened to her, it didn’t exist.

The woman on the stairs looked to be in 19th century garb. While the town I was born in was settled around then, the house was one of those 1930s tract houses. That one I only ever saw once.

 

Do you have any ghost stories to share? Contact me, or comment here, and tell your own!




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Pagan Culture

Ghosts and me

October 2, 2011 – 2:37 pm
King House Statue Ghost

photo by Josh Self on flickr - Creative Commons

The lights were out, the brown wood bedroom door was closed, and what light came into the room had a grainy filter, almost like the static from the TV screen had somehow leaked into the air. A chill swept through the room, and I snuggled down into my quilt, pulling my feet in. Nothing could get me if I kept my hands and feet covered.  My sister’s boom box blared on the bunk above me, keeping me from sleeping easily and ensuring a host of artists from the late 80s and before that I resent to this day. Her headphones allowed her the illusion she was being considerate, and I assumed she was off in whatever la-la land that she was always so eager to escape to. It was winter, after Christmas, and one of the rare winter days where neither my mother nor my sister had colored the hell of daily life in Indiana with one of their mood swings.

I sensed a change of air pressure, and for a split second, the boom box went silent. I turned my head toward the source of the change, the bedroom door.  Glowing white, an arm reached through the door and extended me the middle finger.

Whatever the hell that was about, the “push” I felt was my own resistance. I have long interpreted the obscene gesture as an indicator that my presence somehow stood between the ghostly arm and its goal. As I aged into adolescence, I saw it once or twice more, but while my sister was in Japan it hovered at the end of the hallway in the kitchen, and seemed to want me to close the door so as not to have to deal with the reality of my presence. After my sister returned from her trip, there was another middle finger gesture incident, but it kept its hand further back, as though it were afraid of being grabbed.

This was my first experience with haunting a ghost.

Typically, ghosts haunt you. But since this did happen during the Cold War, maybe it was one of those …”in Soviet Russia, you haunt ghost!” scenarios.

I’ve certainly never forgotten the incident. You just don’t forget a disembodied arm flipping you the bird, especially when you’re old enough to know that that means “grounding” but young enough to not really be capable of doing anything that would prompt a “Fuck you!” from the living, let alone the dead.

I suppose I’m making a lot of assumptions here, to this day. For instance, I’m assuming it was a ghost/dead spirit, and not some projection jettisoned off of my sister’s adolescent damage, or somehow conjured by that creepy boy always hanging around her who was scared of me because like dogs and children under 12, I could see evil as plainly as the back of my hand. I’ve wondered vaguely at why the ghost couldn’t get past me, and indulged in fancying myself special. Despite my notoriously analytical nature, I’ve never earnestly looked into it because I’ve wanted to keep fancying myself special.

I also had a sense it had something to do with the family politics constantly fed by a culture of dishonesty on both sides of my family that ran so deep that I found it all vaguely repulsive. Perhaps it was an egregore, a way to the store the truth that was powered by the constant mill of lies circling around the center of that tiny house like a whirlwind. And that egregore just plain hated me. Which is unsurprising; despite knowing nothing about me, my own mother and her kin hate me to the point where I’m expecting to be accused of rape and murder any day now. I’ve always managed to stay just beyond the controlling arm that would stifle the life out of me: I quit the DAR before I could be forced to violate myself by participating, I went to a college I paid for myself where my invasive grandmother could not report on my every movement as though I were a Soviet war criminal – or worse, an adult with a sex life! -  and I even defied my father and published under my own name, after a blatant attempt by my mother to quash my hard-earned identity under the bullshit of “you’re a married woman”  as she defined marriage rather than as I did.

Perhaps it was the Lee family egregore, reaching out for me and failing.

At the time, partly because I still had affection for her then, I thought it might be a monster come to eat my sister. Certainly if that were the case nowadays, I’d still take every measure to prevent her from getting eaten because that would be the right thing to do, but certainly not because I give a shit in any other way. I often hate my deep-set morality. There’s a lot of people I’d rather see getting eaten but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I allowed it to happen.

All I know for sure is that I bugged the living hell out of that ghost for years. I’m also pretty sure it was a factor in deciding I was going away to college.

 




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