Death and the Maiden

Death and the Maiden.

The Wheel turns. Each festival, Sabbat is it's own unique place within the rolling of the year. Yet as I often tell my students the opposite face of the Wheel is watching, present and shows it's self. At Samhain there is a fae glimmer, a flash of future, of life and hope, and at Beltane filled with so much life, vigor, lust and aliveness there is death.

This year when the Veil was thin I lost not one but two people. To say they were in my life would be a lie. Both were from my past. Both male, both older. Though that is where the similarity ends.

The deaths were shocking (one was a particularly gruesome suicide) but after a little time to cry, let go, grieve in my own way I have found a certain peace with the dead.

It is the living that currently make my stomach twist and turn in sickening knots. The flowing stench of blame, and rage and pain that makes me pale a little. I did run away from these people for a reason. In so doing I left the good with the bad, the blameless with the guilty. I neatly have made my life as drama free as I can possibly make it. It frightens me, disgusts me. I have found some peace with the living, the joyful spark of goodness, the beauty and light in people yet I look over my shoulder and it is more than a little grim. Death brings out the best and worst in people. I want to be there to support, and yet I find myself flinching. These people hurt and betrayed me. These people abandoned me when I was in need.While I have reached differing levels of forgiveness, of letting go, some more complete than others I do not wish to jump in. If you swim with sharks and crocodiles sooner or later you will get bit.

Part of me wants to say "Screw it" and just not go, not go back. I am at peace with dead why should I put myself through pain, especially for people who had no such sentiments when I was hurting.

I can not decide what I want. Absolution, resolution, peace...something. 

I want something I haven't found a word for.

Small town politics and complicated relationships do not need more than a nudge to explode at the best of times.

I have no name there. I am sister, but not sister, friend, but not friend, family but not family. I am someone but no-one to these people. Myself was never what they wanted. It is that I want? To be myself, unwaveringly myself, apologetically myself. To be seen, to be heard. These are the ghosts that haunt me. I have to let them go to. Not run. Turn and face them. Let them go.  Does the ugly duckling return the swan? Or just it just fly? I am not a chicken, or duck, I have grown beyond the farmyard.