What I’ve discovered this summer is the quantum, energetic undercurrent that few of us are really aware of and because we aren’t we’re making a very big mess.

You, me, everyone. We are not alone in the way we’ve always perceived.

We stumble through our lives believing that we’re an island floating through this realm with a bunch of other islands, occasionally bumping into each other and sharing ourselves with the other one-on-one. We believe in self-containment. But the collective exists and we don’t get to opt out — energetically.

However, listen up collective: The individual also exists, and force won’t erase that reality energetically. I can submit outwardly, but who I am inwardly, authentically, is not going to fundamentally change at all, not even through force. Who we are at our cores energetically impacts the collective energy and must be accepted for what it is by the collective.

To put it in an American, culturally understandable way: My vote both matters and doesn’t at the same time.

Words matter and they don’t.

I matter and I don’t.

I have spent this summer (and now fall) understanding this. A lot of violation happened. My internet security and privacy were breached, my financial security tampered with, and my life was threatened. My nervous system didn’t get a break after leaving the one who’d wrecked it.

I couldn’t get many to believe me and I don’t have enough personal skills to stop what was happening for myself. I went to the police twice. One female officer could barely contain her laughter; another male officer dismissed me as an emotional female. Authorities were not going to help or save me and my previously held views on human law enforcement officers haven’t been nudged closer to that of support.

I ran from as much as I could, but at a certain point, there was no running. I was really, really scared. I couldn’t make it stop. So, I chose to live with what was happening and face my fears. I had to conclude that if I was killed, I was killed — we’re all going to die sometime. If I was brought to financial ruin, I was brought to financial ruin — it’d be easy to do since I’d gotten myself in a bind that way without that which is working against me. If my privacy never returns than it never returns and this is my new normal.

I faced it.

What’s occurring is a return to my internal sense of security and peace. I can’t make what’s happened stop. And my internal experience turned to trying to understand what I’m in, why me (what’s the lesson here and what’s my role in it?), and how to live with it. Because that’s who I am — that’s never going to change about me.

I find myself having to negotiated with the devil whose hand I shook.

Internet security is an absolute myth. It does not exist. There is no security in that realm and everything we find security in externally is now tied to it so, buckle up buttercups. If there’s a “why me” it’s that I’ve gotten to eat this shit and I’m learning how to be resilient and transcend it, something which minorities, via their experience, do better than those who fall in the majority.

However, seeing that material-realm reality and security has just been a metaphor, a story told to me to communicate a deeper, more abstract truth: My words and/or actions send energy into the world, and it impacts others.

And right now? We’re in energetic overload because we’re energetically fighting each other for control. The wave and the bouncing ball exist. It is not going to be just the collective, nor is it going to be just the individual. Getting political: It’s not going to be just the left, nor is it going to be just the right.

Conservativism is classic physics. It’s the predictable response to magnetic push and pull. Listen up, left: You can’t get rid of that physics. It exists and isn’t going anywhere. And shooting individual bouncing balls doesn’t wipe it out.

Progressivism is the wavelength that has not been understood in its existence, has been dismissed, devalued, and ignored. Listen up right: It exists and continuing to believe that classic physics is all there isn’t going to make the realities of quantum physics any less real.

The collective exists and so too does the individual. And, in my self-admitted extremely rudimentary understanding of quantum physics (any physics, really) is an understanding that both are at play whether we understand and accept it or not, and that both drive each other to forming stable patterns within boundaries over time.

My words and actions have an impact. So too do others on me.

After Charlie Kirk was killed, the energetic load of the left really impacted my eldest child. She could feel the evil of the response and despite having been very left leaning, it drove her more toward the center. You are not going to get rid of the bouncing ball through brute forces and scare tactics — Oh, wavelength. It exists and trying to get rid of classic physics only makes more feel and accept its reality.

At the same time, I’ve been hyper aware of the collective, the wavelength, in a way that would make a number of you think I’d lost my mind. #Libra, I’ve been standing in the middle ground of the scales of justice, very personally learning how to accept the collective wavelength that I didn’t even know existed in this way, while maintaining my own sense of self and trying to understand how to have my individual boundaries.

While all this has been going on, I’ve been trying to get back on my feet and move forward with my life. I enrolled in my local community college. I signed up for the Psychology track and have since changed it because while I really enjoy learning about systems of understanding self and others, I need to create a fulfilling income for myself and to be honest, I don’t want to be a therapist or social worker.

I do find success in helping others and I am designed for guiding others, particularly one-on-one. However, I have to be recognized by the individual as being able to, at an energetic level, before I’m successful in using who I am with others. A piece of paper saying I’m qualified to help creates an intellectual recognition but not an energetic one. That, and while I do enjoy giving good advice to others, I don’t want to listen to people all day, every day, particularly when I’m just having to listen and the other doesn’t necessarily really want to be helped and/or doesn’t energetically recognize that I’m able to.

So, I switched my track and am excited about my new direction.

This semester, I’ve had one course, College Writing, and that’s just about all I could get as late to the start as I came. It was definitely just about all I could handle as I’ve sorted through everything else. As I’m sure you’ll all guess, I’ve enjoyed it.

I’m about to write an essay on oppression because I’ve been oppressed and I’m aware that what I’ve experienced was to get me to hear and feel the wavelength. But I’m me. And I’ve been holding my boundary too.

Yes. I hear you collective. Yes. I feel your plight and point. The wavelength, the collective, exists. And it matters. But the bouncing ball and I exist. I matter too. I’m hearing you, seeing you, feeling you, but I exist too and no force to external submission is going to change my actual and authentic energetic contribution. Even when I hear, see, and feel you, I’m still me.

The energetic overload, the energetic war, is that both the wavelength and the bouncing ball exist and don’t want to acknowledge the other does and/or want to eradicate the other. We can’t and the effort to try is a silly human condition caught in a belief that has us blindly, hurtfully, and ignorantly not realizing that we’re all held by laws and forces that aren’t man made. Neither the left nor the right is going to “win”. All, the opposing forces do is drive each other to a centered, new pattern. A balance of control and chaos.

I don’t matter. If I’m killed, I’m killed. My energy doesn’t continue to contribute in a direct and significant way. But that won’t eradicate the bouncing ball.

I do matter. My energy does contribute in a direct and significant way. And right now, at this point on my path, the contribution I’m making is to say that I see the physics. I faced what I couldn’t change, accepted that I couldn’t change it, and tried to approach it with rationale and humility. And, at the same time, I refused to give up myself out of need and/or fear.

I’ve been listening, Collective wavelength. But I also exist and threatening my existence, while it has been deeply scary, isn’t going to accomplish what you want, and understanding the greater laws and forces at play helps to eradicate the fear. I don’t matter so much that either my contribution is essential to all of humanity, or that my absence would be greatly missed. But I can contribute essentials and what would be missing through my absence would have to be built up through someone else while I already have it to contribute — I do matter.

Oppression both perceived and actual (because they both exist at the same time) work something positive. Without something to fight against, without something pushing and pulling, we wouldn’t know our individual strength nor the importance of our contribution to the collective.

The war sucks ass. I really, really would like some peace. I’m gaining my own but would like it for everyone else too. Can we all just take a moment and consider the side we’re fighting? I mean, really consider it.

Whatever you’re fighting — politics and otherwise.

My energetic contribution today is this:

Do you really recognize that you’re fighting anything? We all are.

Do you understand that your fight only drives you and the opposition to the middle? To balance? That there are no absolute winners?

Once you recognize what you’re fighting can you hold space for the other side? Can you stand back from the emotional investment in your rightness, your side, and look at the other with some rationale and maybe empathy?

Can you be part of the collective and retain your individuality?

You are part of the collective and so am I. The collective energy is at war. It’s pushing and pulling and hurting and screaming and yelling and crying a lot. Do you feel it? I do.

I’ve noticed my posture in the mirror lately. My mid-haven is in Cancer — I work like a Cancer works. The weight of the world is on my shoulders, and I see it when I look in the mirror. I exhaust myself working for the benefit of others and it’s OK — that’s fulfilling to me.

However, as I’ve gone through this, my work has included finding and maintaining my boundaries. Because “can we be part of the collective and an individual at the same time” is not a challenge to rise to. We are both at the same time. Believing otherwise is what misaligns us. It is what causes the frustration, the anger, the bitterness, and the disappointment we all live through.

Take a moment today to consider that the war you’re fighting isn’t winnable, that the laws and forces of physics exist whether you like them or not. Take a moment today to consider that you are part of the collective — if you’ve been fighting for the individual. And that you are an individual — if you’ve been fighting for the collective and maybe you’ll feel a little more fulfillment, peace, success, and surprise in the beauty that is there.

Fairness, oppression, right, wrong, good, bad, left, right, collective, individual, peace, war, wavelength, and bouncing ball. They’re all in existence at the same time. None of us is going to eradicate the other. The effort is futile for a win, but the effort drives all into a centered, new pattern.

I hate that Charlie Kirk was killed and that half this country cheered, but I love that it brought some balance to my kid. I hate what was forced on me this summer but I’m thankful for how it’s helped drive me toward a new balance. But we’re all really tired. I can see it in my reflection and in the faces that cross my path. The energetics are a lot and a lot of us could use a break.

All of it continues to exist all at the same time, but there has been an abundance of collective warring recently. I’m well aware that some feel compelled to keep up the fight, but to some individuals who can hear it: Be in and bring as much peace as you can today.

My shoulders are sore, and this Libra thinks the energetic load of the world needs some balancing.

The details of my summer’s exceptionally weird experience matter but aren’t necessary to fully share yet. It was scary (still is at points) and oppressive, but also curious and intriguing. I’m both in it and standing outside of it to observe and understand it. It was too weird and too outside my control for me ignore it.

I’m both things at once — kind of. I’m in it and standing outside of it but not simultaneously. It’s a quick exchange of being in it then, detached. This is my regular process of getting to understanding. That I’m in something I don’t understand, and it can be distressing and/or confusing. Then I detach so I can think it through.

The experience I’ve had has led me to wanting to understand quantum-physics/mechanics. Now, I’m not a physicist. Much of this, in its technical and specifics, is far above my pay grade as it were. However, I’m confident in my ability to grasp the basic concepts. The mechanics that everything is both a bouncing ball (classic physics) and a wavelength at the same time has me in my philosophical happy place.

Schrodinger’s Cat is a philosophical thought exercise meant to point out a weak spot in the understanding of quantum mechanics. It posits that there is a cat in a box. We can’t see whether the cat is dead or alive so, we can stand outside the box and say that it’s both dead and alive, but we won’t know until we open the box and get a confirmation one way or another.

And it’s a good thought exercise. As there’s nothing less abstract than alive and dead, especially dead. That’s rather binary. One is either alive or dead. You can’t be both at the same time (physically speaking — all you emotional philosophers, settle down). He wasn’t just pointing out the weak spot in the thinking about the mechanics, but he was also pointing out the need to open the box to see if the cat can be both dead and alive at the same time.

I’ll say this about my experience this summer: I believe the box has been opened and that people are already poking around trying to understand if ‘cats’ can be both dead and alive at the same time and, that, somewhat rather irresponsibly. I watched a video yesterday about the advancements in quantum computing (maybe mechanics? I watched a lot of videos yesterday lol) and of three top areas that are where we’ll see the most impact in the near future, the third being cognitive behavioral which caught my attention. You need to test things before you can know and use them with confidence and effectiveness, and I think a number of us are unwitting lab rats. As one of my judges put it, more of us, me very included, should limit our online time a lot more than we do or, as it was rather crudely thrown out, we should “unplug and fuck off”.

That said, as I ponder my experience, myself, and what I’m healing from, I understand Schrodinger. I want to find the bouncing ball. I want to find the normal physics, so I know which way my ball needs to go — pulled away or pushed toward the magnetized “next, next”. I want the cat of my last relationship to be dead so I can go on living. The problem? I’m a Libra with the balanced scales of justice on my back. I am also inherently drawn to understanding quantum mechanics at metaphysical level. The bouncing ball and the wavelength.

To illustrate, I’ll go to what I’m healing from. Is it entirely fair of me to label him a “narcissist”? No and yes.

‘No’ because I don’t actually put a lot of stock in the field of psychology — at least that which is more on the classical side of things (brain science and quantum physics not withstanding). I don’t know that I actually believe in mental ‘illnesses’, I do believe in the need for mental adjustments. I don’t believe in the push toward the predominant importance of nurture, rather I lean heavily toward the importance of understanding individual nature. The DSM is a human construct of trying to understand that which is still, and may be forever, outside our ability to fully grasp why we do what we do and it comes conveniently with a bunch of labels that help us identify and dismiss that which makes our skin crawl. Do I actually even believe in such a thing as what modern day psychology describes as ‘narcissism’? Not really. And I see the validity in looking at it from other angles and through other philosophies so, it’s not really fair of me to label him that way.

However, ‘Yes’ because I was terribly used and broken down in the ways that are consistent with the label the DSM has slapped on the forest of the experience I was in. I didn’t throw the word out lightly. I sat in that possible definition for probably about a year before I said it out loud to anyone other than him, and another year after that only daring to say it to a few trusted friends. I had to find some kind of anchor for the chaos that had been created inside and outside of me because I was driven to a place of being more adrift than I ever have been in my life.

It is both fair (bouncing ball) and not fair (wavelength) at the same time. The use of the word helps me, and others understand that this wasn’t just, ‘we weren’t compatible’ and the healing in the aftermath wasn’t as easy and ‘just letting go and moving on’. It was really, really damaging and you understand that when I say, ‘narcissism’. I shouldn’t have needed an anchor it should have been enough to look and see that I was caught in a constant tornedo of his chaos. I don’t need the label — I needed the label to be heard, to be understood by others. And I needed to say it because as I was trying to rebuild from being literally demolished, I kept being told to ‘let it go and move on’ as if I’d been caught in just a rainstorm, easily recoverable with a change of clothes and a hot cup of tea.

I once read that there’s nothing more painful than a divorce. When people get separated by death, it hurts but they’re dead and the survivor has to make their peace with that. There is no other choice because the two things, alive — hope and possibility and dead — no hope or possibility are one or the other, they don’t both exist at the same time. There’s a static finality to death. But he’s not dead. He’s alive and well two miles up the road from me. Don’t misunderstand me, I absolutely do not wish any hurt to his physical life. But I so desperately want him dead inside of me. I don’t want quantum physics to be true in this way. I don’t want to feel his vibration and care. I want a static finality that doesn’t exist.

During my exploration (and trial) over the summer, the concepts of past lives/reincarnation, twin flame, soul mate and the more mainstream concept of generational karma/trauma were repeated. I don’t necessarily believe in any of it, and I became aware that it was a literacy being spoken to me because it was a language I’d been studying, but they’re explanations for unknowable things so, I’ve allowed myself to consider the possibility of them with some humility.

Here’s the thing, if those things be so, I want resolution in this life because without it, this was a painful enough mess that I don’t want him to come find me again in the next- i.e. I want this bond that was created (again, not him) to be dead. This is taking me a minute to get past because this is not only not the first time I’ve loved and been damaged this way in this lifetime, but I’d like to learn the lessons this time for the rest of this lifetime and the ones to come if that be a thing.

This is where I state that it is both not fair and fair of me to proclaim he never loved me. There is of course the discussion of what is love. Love is a feeling and an action, a natural draw and a discipline. He had feelings and a natural draw to me that were strong so, it’s not fair to say he never loved me (wavelength).

He lived through some hell at my hands too, but he does not know how to turn the feeling into action or be disciplined within the natural draw. And that would have been acceptable, except I do know that side of love, I gave it, displayed it, and addressed it with him. He didn’t want to listen, do, or be disciplined. Like a child, he just wanted to have feelings and didn’t want to let go of the draw despite not being willing to step up to the responsibility that having someone stay close demands.

He came to me not knowing how to love and he refused to learn from me. I can accept that. What I can’t accept easily is the damage he did to me by not letting go of the draw but not wanting to step up — ever — to the responsibility of my love, devotion, and the fact that I’d put myself in his hands. He didn’t just fumble me, it was like I was the other team’s ball, not his. He took but did not give in equal measure — not even close. He took a lot. Too much and it’s been hard to take it all back from him on my own. He did not love me — ever (bouncing ball).

Both things are true at the same time.

And, what’s true here is that I love and hate him. He’s both alive and God willing, will stay that way for the rest of a natural, healthy life span, but is also being put to death in my mind, heart, and energy. Having no good resolution sucks. I’m going to be honest. I don’t like that it was messy and hurtful and that I have to put him, ‘us’, and even a part of myself to this kind of death. Because his energetic wavelength still exists and yet it has to be dead to me.

Both things are true at the same time and what was under Schrodinger’s Cat was a desire to poke a hole in what is uncomfortable, he exposed a desire to cling to classic physics because it’s one predictable outcome, a more knowable, and controllable thing.

I’m sorry Schrodinger, but the box is open. Quantum physics is true. The cat is both alive and dead at that same time.

I wrote what I wrote at the beginning of this summer. I mostly understood the potential impact of it when I wrote it. I had one point of mention that I wasn’t being honest with myself about when I wrote it, but through being on trial, I got honest, went back to the post, and edited it out. Everything else will stay right where it is because that’s the story I was given to tell, and it never changed despite having given him more than enough fair time to change it. And not only did it not change in my life, but I’m also not the first person who was given that story to tell by him. His ex-wife deserves, much more than me, the justice of that truth being proclaimed because the hell of loving someone, giving your all, and being mistreated the way we were is not OK. It’s not OK to just walk away from it Scott-free while she and I had really heavy, hard, miserable burdens to bear and real messes to clean up alone.

While on trial this summer, and let me be clear, I was on mother-fucking trial. My electronics had been hacked and I’m really not sure how, but so too was my internal world. My life wasn’t private, right down to my thoughts. Moment-by-moment, my life was being put in a public sphere. I have screen shots of how. It was not my imagination; it was not my mental/emotional health. I ran home to my family after some really fucked up shit where I had been living and showed them what I was experiencing. They saw what I was seeing. I am not crazy.

That my life was being made public, sometimes down to my internal processing before I’d had time to actually do the processing was, at first, scary as hell. At one point, I’d noticed a post titled in a way that let me know something from far in my past had been uncovered and was being exposed. My judges noticed that I didn’t care. They noticed that it didn’t send me into a fit of anxiety. It is my darkest spot, but I didn’t care if it was being made public because I’d long since delt with it. I’d long since faced it and taken not just the legal consequences of it, but had also faced the spiritual consequences and changed who I was to be better.

People setting themselves up as my judge, learned that they aren’t my judge and that they couldn’t scare me with uprooting my past because I am who I say I am. I’m not perfect, but I’m also not fake. I’m not scared to face my imperfection. I’m not scared of change. I’m not scared to start over. And, now? I’m not scared of my privacy being violated and being put on the public court of opinion.

Here, I’ll expose my past myself: When I was 17, I had sex with a 12-year-old. And, when it was found out by my peers, I got what was coming to me for doing it. I was bullied, and I deserved it. However, when it turned physical, when I was literally pushed up against a wall, I went to the cops. I turned myself in, as it were, got 6 months of ‘informal adjustment’ which included useless-to-me therapy and regular checking in with a corrections officer.

What I didn’t know when I did it, was that the place it had happened in was being watched by the cops. It was the home of a single mother with two young children. Drugs and people who should not have been there — like me — were present, but she loved her children. Those children were taken from her, in part, because of my testimony and given to their father who, though he looked more stable and secure on paper, killed them.

Two children died because of my reaction and words. So, when I give people space to change in my silence it’s not because I’m nieve. It’s not because I’m a door mat, it’s not because I’m weak. It’s because I know better than most the consequences of speaking. I know better than most the consequences of exposure. I wasn’t scared of being exposed for this because I’d long ago paid for it and learned the lesson from it.

Let me tell you what I faced back then: I went through the bullying, daily walking through the halls of my school being called a ‘Baby raper’. I took it. I went through the legal consequences. I took it. But none of that external force alone would change anything in anyone — it didn’t make me a better person. So, understand, I know that what I wrote at the beginning of the summer won’t change him. It’s my judgement, my words, my experience alone. And, I wrote them because not a single person in my life understood the impact of his way of being on me. I was constantly having to defend myself for being broken, really, really broken by him. At a certain point, I realized I had to speak so that people would understand why I couldn’t just brush it off and move on.

Back then, I understood that sex was ruining my life. Therapy wasn’t helpful. It didn’t do anything to get down to my root and help heal me. So, I turned to God, through Christianity and it did help. It taught me some important disciplines. I didn’t have sex for five years. With anyone, not even myself. I worked to control my mind, my internal process, my thoughts, feelings, drives, and impulses. When I next had sex, it was with my husband with whom I continued my self-discipline. There would be times, we’d be engaged sexually, and past memories would come into my mind. I’d have to work at staying present with him and not be drawn away internally.

One of the most frustrating things in the world to me is to be so self-aware and to be so clear about who I am in my communication and to still be so god-damned misunderstood. Go back and reread my stories about my sexual journey through the Zodiac. Now, instead of feeling the pulse in your pants and imagining I’m some sort of sex goddess or sex toy, look and see if you can pick out my heart. My maturity. My integrity. My wisdom. My care for the other. I have told you all who I am and who I am has very little to do with sex. That sex is all any of you have cared to see is more about you than me.

I know the god-damned work it takes to be right. To build the habits of being that make one present and aligned.

Later, after social media started to be a thing, that young man found me and reached out. I apologized from a place of actually knowing what harm I’d done. Later, I ran into his eldest sister, the one who was most mad at me and the one whose friends had been behind my high-school nickname. I apologized from a place of real understanding and humility, and she forgave.

I give space to people because I know what it is to be really wrong. I know what it is to have to face consequences. I know what it is to face judgement. And far more importantly, I know what it takes to deal very deeply with what made me wrong and the work it takes to make it right.

That is why I’m gracious. That’s why I give space. That’s why I’m kind. That’s why I’m understanding. That’s why even in being really, really hurt by others I still love them and still have hope. But there comes a point in which things must be exposed regardless of the love and hope. Anyone can survive any exposure. Because other people aren’t our judge. Those who were judging me? I’d like to see how they hold up. “The ground is level at the foot of the cross.” We’re all sinners here.

But there is work involved in being better. And it’s not work that can be forced on you externally — legally or from other people’s disapproval and judgement. You have to choose it. We’re only likely to choose that which we identify as being worth it to us to do and that, only what we come to see as not being good for us.

My judges saw who I am and sent an apology. They know I’m not perfect and I’m sure some of them wish there were things that I would care more about changing, but they saw that I am who I say I am and they apologized. It’s OK judges. What someone meant for evil, God meant for good. I got something from you and, hopefully, you got something from me too — truce, go in peace and leave me to mine.

Listen up world.

You can shoot people you think are wrong. That isn’t going to stop ideas you don’t like. You can speak up publicly about what is wrong. You can gang up on and publicly shame people for their ideas. You can put them in jail. That isn’t going to stop things you don’t like or agree with even when they’re really wrong and you’re really right.

All of us need to accept that wrong exists. We can’t stamp it out. The world isn’t going to be clean, right, good, and just. All any of us can do is be as good as we can be, learn the lessons we’re individually here to learn, and speak the truths we know.

If his story ever changes and I’m made aware that it does, my words will change. Until then, he has to live with the judgement I made for myself and that I told my story that involved him.

If you don’t want to be the villain in someone else’s story, you have to not be their villain, but here’s the truth: He doesn’t have to care that he was my villain. He doesn’t have to be better. I know my story, my words, are mine and that they only mean what they mean to me. He’ll either be better or he won’t, but it’s not my problem anymore. Truce. I let you go in peace, and I’m going in the return of mine.

I have had the God-damned weirdest experience of my life. This summer was a fucking cauldron of intensity and healing. Let me say something unapologetically:

Narcissism is evil.

It’s not just ‘evil’ in the sense that it is ‘not good’, not healthy. It’s evil in the sense of demonic like, of the devil, who is the ‘Prince of the power of the air’ — the one who has free reign for a time, down here with us mere mortals. There is evil all around and I’m both tired of feeling it and giving it my energy.

There is SO MUCH that happened. It’s hard to know where to start so, I’ll start at where I’ve landed thus far:

I believed a lie.

Lies are the opposite of truth. They are not God-like. They are not good. They are harmful. Lies are evil. And those who tell and believe them are trapped by them. Trying to get out of lies is the most soul sucking, draining, God-damned waste of mother-fucking time, energy, and potential. It’s utter nonsense.

I’d say, don’t come at me if you like your lies but, after this summer? I’ll feel your darkness, see your lies, and want nothing to do with you so, come as you are. I’m responsible for myself and love myself enough to not give two shits about you if you’re not coming with anything true, healthy, and good.

I believed that he loved me. I believed ‘it’ — as in the chaos, the never-ending hurtles that had to be overcome before we could get to anything peaceful, secure, healthy, and beautiful — was just that he was working through his own external and internal battles, it wasn’t. He wasn’t facing his demons, and they ran the last six years of my life. At one point he may have felt feelings about me, but it never was love. I was only a source of comfort in his discomfort, a release for the pressure of his oppression.

I believed that once the demons were cleared, we would be able to purposefully and meaningfully build together. However, ultimately, he didn’t want to clear his demons though, for a short time, I think he tried to, but his demons are too hard to face — it easier for him to give into them. My love didn’t bring light to his darkness. I went into his darkness with him because I have similar darkness and demons. I know how to go into that darkness and face those demons. However, my intents and hopes weren’t to stay there but, to dispel the darkness the demons were hiding in — to come up out of the darkness and be in the light together. We may have similar darkness and demons, but he and I are not the same.

My love and energy just fed those demons until they got tired of sampling the taste of my light. My light and love were never what his demons really wanted. They wanted control and to taste my destruction, to taste the power of being able to snuff out my light. And my God, did they get a good sampling of that.

I go into the dark to see what’s there and drag it to the light. He goes into the dark to play games — to see if he can win in, with, and through the dark. He does often have ‘wins’ — he can be powerful over others. However, he always loses light, health, healing, and love to get his win.

Why the spiritual language? Because what transpired this summer was spiritual. It wasn’t just psychological. I was aware of the psychological lessons, experience, and healing as it was happening in me, but it came through stories of the spiritual that were really happening outside of me. A story being written in real time by living it because it was the literacy I’ve been learning to understand and speak in a different dialect than Christianity. Though, I was and am thankful that I knew that dialect as I went through the summer.

There’s a lot of balance happening in me through what I experienced. He is not the devil, but he is absolutely caught in evil. He’s trapped in the darkness. I was trapped there with him. I do love him, but I absolutely don’t want to be trapped in his darkness when he wants to stay there. When love isn’t enough to get someone to release their demons — to look in the mirror and break it — to save your own soul, you have to get to a place where you let them go — at every level — to be controlled, consumed, and eventually destroyed how and in whatever way they’re going to be. Do I care? Yes. Can I do anything about it for him? No.

I had to save my own soul because I wasn’t able to bring him to the light. He won. He was more powerful. He brought me to his dark and I followed. He wouldn’t come back up to the light with me but bound me in the dark with him and fed off my energy until I was drained dry. All I’ve been doing all summer is trying to get my light back (and get back to the light) as I’ve battled through a very spiritual cutting of the cord, a meta and quantum-physical breaking away from a bond that existed despite having had no verbal or physical contact with him since June.

The story I have to tell sounds crazy — I’m well aware. It made me feel crazy, isolated, and drove me to the brink of despair. At first, what I was experiencing was scary. Really, really scary. I’ve never been so scared before this summer. However, at a certain point, when I realized I couldn’t make what I was experiencing stop, I had to turn around and face it with a level of detached curiosity. Instead of blocking, fighting, and running from it, I had to accept that it was there, that I couldn’t do anything about it. So, I embraced it and went through it, testing it to understand it.

I became an observer of what was observing me, accepting what had attached itself to me until I could break the mirror and be free. I had to accept that I had no power over it but, also, come to accept that it actually has no power over me but what I was giving it.

I am not certain of how this all happened, but I am certain that it did. I don’t need to be certain of the how or even the intent of participants outside of myself. What I needed to learn is that I see what I see, I feel what I feel and that’s enough for me to decide how I need to move regardless of how anyone else thinks I should view it and feel about it. I don’t have to figure it all out — I can’t by myself, none of us can, and even working together, some things will remain unknowable in their absolution. All any of us, and/or several of us working together, can do is discover parts of the unknowable. This I now know with certainty, and it’ll become clear why I’m making this judgement: a lot of us need to have more respect for the unknowable and more humility as we explore it.

I have some parts of knowledge now that aren’t just about untangling myself from the sticky psychological web of a narcissistic trauma bond though, the knowledge came through that experience. To unravel and tell this story will take more than one post. It could be a book but, I don’t have time to go through the typical channels of publishing. I have neither the time nor the desire to work at that. I’m just going to tell my story here and it goes from there where it will.