The swamp queen

She’s lost in the muck of her domain. Her sacred space, it’s full of reeds and mud without a bottom. It’s tricky and sticky, and she breathes through the hollow stem of a lotus flower. She hears things like “honor your desires without pursuit, performance, or self-abandonment.” I question as I hold this motto close to my heart.

How can a swamp queen like me live so freely in who she is? Do I say everything I wish to say? What if it’s nothing at all? Do I let it all turn to black, dark rot, and let it disintegrate with all the other decaying matter of this life-rich place? I think I must, because perusing is just as painful as being something that I’m not. Forcing myself into some back room or false story, some experience fo other that is not my true self. It feels like a too-tight dress with no pockets when I have many things to carry. It feels like makeup when I wish to rub and itch my eyes. It feels like shoes that do not let me walk the distance I know that I need to go. Being someone that I’m not, giving out when something has not given in, when it has not met me, may never meet me, carrying on with something so empty and sustained and without the depth I need is a drain to my life force.

It is better to be alone than to force anything, I know this to my core. Still, I have clouded myself with the thoughts of wondering, what if I am wrong?

Is it self-abandonment to think that I will never meet someone who is just like me to my core, who can hold me in all the complexities and depths and the far-off places? It is a sacrifice to try and make it work where it is not happening. I pull my head out of the sand and come back to my sanctuary of self. Nothing to be, nothing to do, other than to just be who I am.

To witness the craziness and chaos and to live from my home of grounded authenticity and love. I love because I need to. I care because it is part of me. I am a lover, a caretaker, a nurturer. I am a witch and a wizard and a sorceress and a wise woman and I am death herself. Others see me as they wish, I may be life in their eyes, I may be the buds of spring. But here and now, with a desire fallen flat upon its face, I am death. And I mourn this change. Next to the stability and weight of reality, fo history, of all that has happened and come before and will continue on. I will not give up. I will never give up. I will never give in, because resistance is what stops the gain from gaining the power it seeks to have to overtake us. Our collective halting of complacency, our continually efforts of showing up and fighting back have made their mark and will continue to do so, as things deepen and darken for the collective of humanity and this country. We must stand together and share the voices that have been silenced. We must remember our power as women, as changemakers, as revolutionaries, as the power of destruction and world building. We must remember, even as it gets dark and desolate. When the lights have all turned off and the city has gone dark, we must strike that match and light that single candle flame, hold our families near, and go out into the rivers and pray. Fetch our waters and forage for our food. We must learn the old ways again. We must listen to the ones who know how to live with the land, who have done so for thousands of years. We must welcome back this knowledge that will keep us living and thriving as everything around us changes. As systems fall and the comforts of our lives no longer live. We must know that we have wisdom in our bones that will protect us. The wisdom of knowing one another, of caring, of helping, of learning, of teaching, of reclaiming what our intuitions live and thrive from. We must honor and hold reverence for all the plants and animals that have gone, our passed-over loved ones and those we never knew. We must know death as a guide and our friend. Not to be feared, but to be welcomed in with a seat at the table and a steaming bowl of food. Death as the only constant, death as a birthright, death as salvation, and death as the next step into the never-end.

There is no heaven or hell we will be dammed or blessed to. There is no eternity of suffering we will face if we do sin. Death is the only constant that we will all face. The only true equality within this world, the only thing that we all will be granted, whether we wish for it or not. Death is sanctuary and death is reprieve, death is not the end nor will it ever be. It is what unifies us for it is the only thing we all have in common. The worst of the worst and holiest of the holiest. Death will find us all, and in this we are all equal, we are all one. Yes, there is life, and yes, we have been taught to fear death, to spend as much time with the living and life itself to get as far away from the truly inevitable end. But I ask you, what is it that you fear?

I feel all of these things rising, because I have changed the script. I have offered myself in a way that is not what I said it would be. I am raw and I am uncaged and I have opened up the space for rejection, and in this I ask myself: what if I am cherished, chosen and accepted for all that I am? I know that I am losing nothing from being my truest self, what if what I gain is only closer connection and truth. I feel a spark on the other side of this question. Something that makes my cheeks heat up and makes the other sit up in bed. Time for honesty, because now there are no rules. All of the old ones have been broken. Shattered. Don’t give me a fake mask or a new smile. Give me what is real to you, honest, give me something that I can work with, something that will feed the hungry part of me. Give me your unrelenting truth and do not cover it up. Do not shy away. Give it all to me. Raw and shaky and trembling and real. Give it to me steady or give it to me broken, just give it to me. Only what truly matters is when you let yourself open. Without any inhibition. You know what I want and I ask for you to give it to me.

In this there is life. I will wait for you on the other side, or I will turn and carry on with my journey into the dark. But I have thrown you a bone and I don’t need to be anything other than who I am.

Here comes the performance part. To not put on a mask or put on a show. To still show up as the most honest version of who I am, and not who you have known before. Me entirely me, unrestrained me. Totally me.

It may not be what you like, but it’s what I wish to be. It’s who I am. I allow myself to drop down into the deepest of waters and swim around. There’s a mask that wishes to be worn.

What if they don’t like me? A deeply set wound of needing to be accepted so that I can receive all it is that I need to survive. Wanting to be who I truly am but wanting to have friends, wanting to have connection and comfort, but cutting off my leg in the process. It’s not real, I’d rather be alone and be who I am than try and live in some falsity of who I am supposed to be, yet this one goes so deep, because there’s this fear, would they ever really like me if I were all that I am? If I let myself shine but also sink deep deep down into it. The truth that they fear, the they do not wish to see, that they do not wish to accept but that I carry within the fabric of my bones. My truest essence is one from the places very few wish to travel, very few have ever known, very few even care to acknowledge. My soul comes from the places so deep and dark and quiet that they write books and horror shows about it. Scaring people away from the land they know nothing of. My soul is from the depths. My soul is from the darkness, my soul is from the world underneath our own. The one that goes straight through hell and out the other side, my soul is from the farthest reaches away.

My soul is one of a star, of lightness, of laughter and brightness and beauty and sanctuary, yet it comes from ‘the place of no return’. And maybe yours does too.

I notice I fear the answer. Will it be as honest as I wish it to be? There is fear because I have a foot on the field. And part of me cares. Oh Lord how so much of me cares. I opened up a sliver, I let it in a crack. And I care. And I care, and I care. And that care can be used up in an instant. It can be waddled against me, it can be taken and it can be broken and it can be beaten out the other side.

Or, that care can be tended, and that care can be nursed, and brought back to health. Back to wholeness, back to peace. Back to a space where that care is truly received. I feel a burning at my throat, and a tightness there. The idea of care being tended, I feel the need to defend myself. I feel like I need to hide and go back into the corner, I feel like I need to run away and get to the other side of this so I no longer have my dripping heart out in the open. Wanting to get it to a safe place where it cannot be hurt or bruised or battered. What if this time that is not the case, what if love meets me honestly and fully? What if I am supported in my questioning and in my opening and my deepening, what if there’s nothing wrong with letting myself be seen, and this time all of me will be loved?

I feel like it’s something that’s helping me come back to center, though I initially wanted to run away. I feel tired in this, because I have been doing it alone, and in the opposite direction for so long. Now I change that, into something else. Something where I allow love to support me. It feels so against everything that I have ever known. It feels almost easier to go the other way, into the dark. Care shows up in many ways but maybe the most important way it’s expressed is when I let myself actually receive. Receive the love and the steadiness and the tenderness and the patience and the thoughtful words and the stories and the time.

Maybe love is asking me not to run from what I feel, but instead let myself lean in. To say what I need to say. To say the wrong thing, to say it again. To be imperfect, to try it for a third time. Even, and especially if it’s messy and unhinged and uncertain. It’s brave and it’s courageous and it’s new territory. It’s not something to run from. The effort I put out will be met, it already is being. It’s waiting for me to let it in, to let me receive.

So much can be perceived in so many different ways. My face heats up, thinking I’ve gotten it all wrong. Because there are feelings here, things that have been pushed back and far away for a long time. Like a door that was closed long ago, bolted with 5 locks finally opening. A heart that is nervous and now tenderly walking out into the world. Into the friendly kind hands of strangers, gentle and tender neighbors, and good-hearted folks. I don’t really know what to do, because I feel like I’ve been bolted and hidden for so long, and now I am out there, in the world again. I am someone that yearns and that wishes. Love is leaving me feeling naked and afraid and I need you to cover me up. To be my shield against the harshness of this world. To let the softeness within me unfurl, let the grace of my being carry me higher, let the love lift me up into places I am meant to live.

It still feels dark around, but I have seen and felt glimmers within this space. Something here that truly might mean something. Something wonderful, something that makes me want to keep unfurling, opening and letting it in. Letting love in. As unsteady as it’s been, and as unknown as it will be, I write with bloodied and bandaged fingers and I know that I am ready to let love guide me. I am ready to let love in. I am ready to be free. And this time I am not alone. And I never will be again. Slowly, the path unravels and I am caught every time I stumble. I am protected and I have stronger and sturdy hands at my spine.

I’ve got you, I’m here, I’ve got you. For certain this time.