#im going to crumble to dust on November 1st and i welcome it

[blueberryfruitbat]

Me: haha! i can take a break now that ive gotten through my commission backlo- Every person i know in a 5 mile radius:

[dark-canary]

I’m Alive! I Live!

(Queue the Sia song or Mushu from Mulan, I couldn’t decide which was appropriate so I used both.) Hello, my darlings! (To those who don’t mind me calling them that.) And my fellow witches and followers. (To those who do in fact mind?) This has been a long time coming. The last several months of my life have been crazy. Not crazy as in unbelievable, but crazy as in lacking severely in sanity. I needed to take some me time. I know I dropped a few messages saying I was going to get back on here, be more active, start up tarot reading and spell making again. But honestly, every time I said that something new would crop up and I just couldn’t do it. I was not in a good place. I’m not really in a good place now but I’m getting better. Not only that, but I have changed. (We’ll get to that.) For those of  you who may be wondering, I’m still a witch of course. That’s in my blood and bones, teeth and hair. Nothing will change that. I’ve just become more focused. So first off let’s give a brief overhaul of the last few months. My anxiety and the stress of life had forced me to disconnect from basically everyone I know. Old friends and new. Despite missing those friends and thinking about them, actually talking to them became extremely difficult. So I basically became a ghost. In doing so, my craft became very quiet and based internally. Lots and lots of meditation and quiet contemplation. My changes began before November, but really started to take hold in that month so that is where I will begin. For the months before November and well into it, I had stopped dreaming. If you know me, you will know that this is very, very unusual. Much of my craft takes place in and is inspired by my dreams. It is where I most often spoke to Loki (my patron God) and where I received answers to questions, and questions that needed answers, as well as predictions of how the next week or month or year would go. So losing my ability to dream was like having a limb cut off. It was terrible, physically and mentally uncomfortable. And while I stopped dreaming I also stopped sleeping normally. I still don’t sleep right, I wake up at the same time every night (between two and three in the morning) with a physical shift happening inside of me. The lack of dreams began shortly after I lost my cat (Mine) in September. I don’t remember if I posted anything about that here but it was absolutely tragic and traumatic. And that is when I grew terribly quiet. It is also when I started to work on my art. It started out as something I did in honor and memory of her. I painted a picture of her soaring through the stars. I felt a need, bone deep and shaking, to take up pen, pencil, paint, and tablet (any medium I could find really) and being to sketch, draw, and paint whatever I could. It was like a compulsion. In November I began to work on digital art with a sense dedication I haven’t had for anything except writing and my witchcraft in many, many years. I felt there was something to it. Something I needed to do with it. I still feel that way and I’m still trying to figure it out. So aside from the last few months of me trying to change myself and the day to day stress of life, that is what I have been doing. Drawing for hours, studying art, finding different ways to express something inside of me. Now I know I keep talking about changing. It isn’t a physical change but a mental, emotional, and magical one. One of a witch’s most powerful tool is their will. It is what breathes life into spells and wishes and magic. It is what allows us to change the world around us, concentration of will is key. Well my will was and has been weak. In magic I was able to exert that will, but in literally every other aspect of my life I could not. I let people walk all over me. I let them get to me. I never finished or stuck with anything. Especially not something like art. All of my stories were left unfinished to gather dust. My muse was fickle, my inspiration started to become nonexistent. And it was at that point that I stopped writing completely and felt half alive and stepped on that I needed to change. I also used to have a bad temper. Not the kind of rage and violence but the kind where when I was being attacked or FELT that I was I would jump and snap and snarl, speaking without thinking and saying everything I felt or that came to mind, even if it was hurtful. Now in some cases this was not uncalled for, it was necessary. But I couldn’t distinguish the difference. I am empathic. So when someone came at me I tended to throw the same nastiness back in their face. While this can be a useful tool, it is just that, a tool, and I had absolutely no control over it. I was pure chaos in those moments. As I often am in everything I do. But I realized (with the help of Loki) that I needed not just chaos, but also the control to USE that chaos at the appropriate times. When someone would hurt me I would let it fester inside of me for days, weeks, months! And it would ruin my mood, drive me into depression and anxiety. It would keep me from finishing things. It would keep me from starting new projects or caring about finishing the ones I had already started. And not being able to finish them would add to that rotting spiral of self doubt, self hate, self destruction. With this change, I let myself realize that I am not always going to finish the things I start. And that is okay. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up completely on doing anything. With this change, I realized that I was expending MY energy and power, letting it be eaten up by USELESS arguments and angers and hurts that I could not change. I cannot make people stop hurting me, I cannot make them change THEIR behavior. But I can change my own. I could learn to let go. And I am learning to do just that. I am learning to take that hurt and anger and pain and use it when appropriate and letting it evaporate when it is not. Chaos and control. Those are the two things I live by. By the end of December I became more passive. Instead of becoming submissive and meek or lashing out when someone would say something cruel or do something that was typical of them but something I would dwell on for weeks after, I let it roll from my bod in waves. Waves of energy that I could harness and USE. In my art for example. Or in my craft. By the end of December my dreams began to come back. They were hard to remember at first. But they are becoming sharper, clearer than they ever were before. And something new happened. It was on very rare occasions that I could speak to Loki outside of a dream and hear him echo back. Now I am not only able to speak with him on a more regular basis while awake but he has taken to guiding me in a stronger manner. He has also helped me to let go, to have control, and to develop my sense of will. For which I am eternally grateful. This last month has been insanely difficult. For many reasons. My relationship, if you could call it that, is on rocky and crumbling ground. Has been for a while. Will be until I’m standing on my own two feet. I have absolutely no money right now. Which means very little food and necessities. I won’t have much of anything for the next two - three weeks. Though I will get a small amount on the 1st of February to help pay for food. This has stressed me out to no end. Add to that my relationship being what it is. Which at times you could hardly call it a relationship. The one saving grace is that with these internal changes, I am able to let some of the stupid and hurtful things he does not get to me. In fact it only enforces my sense of will, drives me to do better, be stronger. I am not grateful to him for that, but I am grateful that I am able to do it. So that is where I am at now. My art and my craft have become the two most important things in my life right now. And they are not separate. There is something of my craft in my art. Some purpose for it. Much of what I draw are things that I see in visions while meditating, things I find in my dreams. There is a deeper connection that I am looking for. But now that I have begun that journey and have gotten to the point that I have a better control over my chaos and what I feel, I feel comfortable coming back here. Back to you. So! My asks are open again. My inbox, my IMs, all of it. I will start creating and customizing spells again if you need them. I’ll give some tarot readings too. I will answer your questions and even just talk to you when I get the chance. So don’t be shy. Feel free to talk to me. Ask for advice. Or just unload. I’ll be more than happy to dedicate my time to you. I want to thank the followers who have stayed with me so far. I want to welcome any and all new followers. And I want to be more active, so I look forward to meeting you and letting you know what’s going on, on a more regular basis. I know this was long.

tl:dr - These last few months have been a bitch. But I’m here now (for real this time) and I want to be more active and a better part of the community. So my asks and inbox and ims are open. The crazy has become more manageable and it is in my power to use it for my own purpose now. So feel free to message me or ask for tarot readings or any of that. I may be slow on getting to it but I promise I will get to it!

Thank you for your time!

Ydra