Spider has been telling me that it’s time to write about The Hole.

It’s ridiculous, really. The weather has turned colder. There should really be spiders anymore. But they keep popping up…one so large, in fact, that I could see it at a stop sign on the passenger side of my car while I was driving. Not parking. Driving. SO big, SO clear…and then of course, the one in the house last night. And the dreams. She’s insistent, that one. And it’s not the kind of thing you want to mess with, because Spider dreams…well…the more impatient she gets, the higher the pressure gets in the dreams, and they only go two ways….either there’s more and more spiders, or the spiders get bigger and bigger. Not fun either way. So here goes.

There’s this thing that happens when you grow up in a house like mine. Your primary caretakers are unreliable and untrustworthy. As a child, the thought that you are NOT SAFE in your own home is so frightening, you will do anything to not think about it. And here’s this living growing human missing the primary force of stability in their lives, and lack of stability becomes one of the building blocks of their nature. As they become older it can take lots of forms…probably most often it’s a control-thing, because if you control everything then you are least likely to have things fall apart. When control is left to other people bad things happen, you see. So it’s just safest when it’s you.

I still struggle with that piece, I think. I’m much better than I was. But I’m sure I do things that I don’t see that are reflections of this. There’s a different piece I’m working with right now.

The Hole is the part of me that NEEEEEEEDS. Everyone has needs. Needs are okay, and natural and human. But NEEEEEED….that should only be a periodic thing. I live with this thing every day. Every day it screams at me for reassurance, and I can mute it, but I can’t stop it completely. I can distract myself pretty well….there’s work (lots of work) and video games. But there’s quiet times, too, and things get all squicky sometimes.

I don’t talk to many people. Part of that is geographic isolation. Part of that is not really knowing what to say when you pick up the phone if you don’t have news of some kind. Part of that is fear that if I call, people won’t really want to talk. And of course, that may not even be true, they might just have lives and the need to get back to them, because my phone call came at an unexpected time, and I know those things, but if several of those, “oh, I’d love to talk to you but I really have to go,” things happens, well, The Hole gets triggered, and I just stop calling. I can believe it’s life if it doesn’t keep happening, but if I call and it happens again, I’ll just start to believe The Hole, and it’s easier not to tempt that. Just so much easier. So I call different people, and if it happens there, too, (and why shouldn’t it? People have lives) the voice from The Hole gets louder, and I just can’t deal with it. I can’t. It’s easier, safer, to just be alone.

I guess that’s kind of a control thing, too, isn’t it?

We started working on this in therapy a couple of weeks ago. Some of my friend dynamics are shifting around (through my choices, so that part is okay) and I just have to adjust.
The other piece of that is, exactly how much are these people responsible for my well-being? The answer is, THEY AREN’T. They SHOULDN’T be, not on a regular basis. That’s not healthy.  “Thou shalt not suffer thy people to tend thee in thy sickness,” is a part of the Garou litany that always spoke to me. I’ve always just tried to kind of weed my way through this on my own. It’s not about trusting other people, all the love in the world can’t fix it. It’s about The Hole. It’s about the need that screams at me from it. It’s about how I know that needing too much can be draining to other people. It’s about knowing that I can wear out other people that way. It’s about taking care of my own junk.

It affects so many things. It affects my relationships with everyone else’s parents. It doesn’t matter that I’m no longer a child, that I’m now a peer. It doesn’t matter that they don’t understand why I keep connecting and running away, and connecting and running away. It doesn’t even matter that this inconsistency probably contributes to them thinking that my friendship isn’t reliable. It’s the only thing I’ve been capable of doing thus far.

Spider says that other people have Holes, too. She says I need to put this out there, because that’s the next step (she didn’t say why). The shaman thing is a trip….you don’t get to ignore your own junk like other folks. Spirit says, “This is what you’re working on today. I didn’t ask you if you liked it or if you wanted to. I don’t really care about that piece. It’s what you need to evolve, so this is where we’re going. And stop whining about it, or I won’t talk to you at all.”

So in therapy, we have to talk about my parents wanting me dead, my dad trying to kill me, and that hurts SO HARD. I can’t explain how much it hurts. It’s huge huge volumes of noise and pain, and we have to talk about how that’s not my fault, it’s theirs, and that doesn’t change that THE WORLD IS NOT STABLE, and THE WORLD IS NOT SAFE, and THE PEOPLE WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO LOVE YOU MIGHT REALLY WANT YOU TO GO AWAY, because I know that, I have proof of it, and it’s so hard to not continue protecting myself from a thing that doesn’t even exist anymore. Because it’s how I was created….it’s the building blocks of my life, the primary foundations.

Gods help me. The trees are about to show me how beautiful it is to let dead things go. The first guy I loved was born on November 2nd. I was raped October 31st. I was married on October 27th. My mom died on November 2nd. It’s the season for extremes in emotion for me. It’s time to let dead things go.

These are not harvests. These are dead animals. The rotting smell covers up the scent of roses. I need to let them go. Bear with me. This Mowg is under reconstruction. It’s time to bulldoze the shit out of all this and build a new foundation. Enough is enough.

Thou shalt not suffer thy people to tend thee in thy sickness. Show me how beautiful it is to let dead things go.