My Sept. 10th gratitude stated I was hanging in there in the face of major overwhelm and doing so without guilt. *ahem* Both lies it turns out. I am neither successfully “hanging in there” nor sliding by on the guilt-o-meter because there are mounds – mounds of guilt all around me. Guilt for failing at being me. Whatever the hell that means, I do not know, I only know that was the thought in my head.

Then the Messages came.

1. Kuan Yin says: Compassion for self first.
2. Poseidon says: Compassion for self first
3. Yemaya says: Love for self first
4. Hel says: Bone and loving flesh, choose wisely
5. Cerridwen says: You already know the end of the story – are you willing to let it unfold in spite of that knowledge?

I will answer in order.

1. I forgot
2. I forgot
3. I did not
4. I made the wrong choice
5. I don’t know; maybe

For all of the things that are crushing me in their whelming I can speak of almost none of them because they are all being held in various levels of confidence. I can normally juggle these things without harming myself. Normally. Normal is not occurring at the moment.

“Normal” is when people see Boneweaver they see the hard, cold, dead side of Bone and not the living loving flesh side of Weaver and I okay with that (resigned to that?). Some people see Weaver right off, but that is rare. Most do not see Weaver until I make a concerted effort to drop Bone down, unmask if you will, and often the dropping is short-lived. Oh so swift I am to return it to where my comfort level lies with new people. In time and the closer I become to folks the longer Bone stays dropped so Weaver is visible.

I tried an experiment (though I didn’t think of it as an experiment at the time, I thought it was a shift in behaviour) and I not only took the Bone side down, but I hid it behind my back and wouldn’t let it return to its usual place of cover. Really really bad move. I laid myself bare to a chosen few and I was fine until I hit this level of massive overwhelm which occurred in all my circles at once: my spiritual circle, my friends circle, my family circle, and the media circle of relentless news from Internet and TV about painful long-worn subjects, and thusly I got triggered. And I got triggered hard. It was like being young again without the accompanying youth.

*quell surprise*

Little used defense mechanisms remain in perfect working order, tyvm.

“It is times like these I despise being human,” I thought, and I sunk into despair.

When I finally checked my email today there was an e-newsletter titled “Gentling” in which many things made sense related to the drowning feeling I was experiencing. I guess drowning is not quite the right word. I felt like I was in quicksand. There was a branch to safety being offered and it was just out of my reach. I knew my next move was critical. It would determine whether I would be able to grab hold of the branch or sink to oblivion.

The last part of the newsletter – summed up by me as: When you are flailing in quicksand, return to your practices. Always, always, always. They are the branch being offered to you.