Before I get into it…
First, I want to share the half-off e-book sale that my publisher is having until the end of August. Yes, you can get any of my books for 50% off. Woo hoo.
https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/authors/irisanya-moon
Back to the blog…
Exorcisms. Let’s talk about them. I’ve talked about them before when describing my Catholic upbringing. All of us in classes wanted to discuss exorcisms and whether our priest had done them. (The answer: yes.)
But this isn’t just something for school time. Nor is it only something for movies and dramatic effect.
I’ve got demons, too, you know. And they’re less of the pea-soup-spitting variety. Though, when I was shaking and crying so hard I couldn’t breathe, I contemplated the possibility that my head could turn around in circles.
What Resides Within
The low-level anger that came out of nowhere. The bigger reactions to things that didn’t require that big of a reaction. It had been building for months and months. Perhaps I was going back to compartmentalizing my feelings. Maybe I was growing, and it felt like destruction (as it does and is). Maybe it was the anniversary of the last time I shared a shadow on an early morning beach walk. Maybe it was a Sunday. Maybe it was time.
The ‘what’ doesn’t matter in the end. The ache does. The thing that kept poking from inside my ribs was insistent and loud and hungry. And I wasn’t listening.
You see, I’ve been lighter lately. I’ve let go and laughed. I’ve flirted and stopped trying so damn hard to be likable. I’ve braided my hair, winked, and smiled with most of my teeth. I’ve widened and let myself be as I am. It’s been a homecoming. It’s been a return from the depths, welcomed by the arms of friends in a sea of remembering that I am love.
(Cheesy, right? No. But sometimes, a small voice in my head still tells me I am lying to myself. I didn’t put that voice there. I didn’t make that update to my programming. It is a dusty old whisper. But it knows when to drop into my internal conversation. It knows the right buttons.)
I am still that lightness, but in the bright shine of being, I can see all the things that were hidden before. I re-enter my own life, recognizing how much more I need to do. I re-enter my life, realizing I am ready to do it.
Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash
Out Out
There is no one person to blame for the script in my head. It resides there because someone (more than one someone) said something, and I believed it. I could tell you who. I could give you their address, attachment style, and sun sign, but the devil is in those details.
Those things I still remember.
Out, out, I said.
I didn’t realize I was exorcising until I was. Like so many rituals I create, it came suddenly and specifically, but unplanned and unnoticeable. I was walking around my neighborhood when it happened.
I was sitting at my desk as the waters of words rushed across me, and I felt something pop. Disentangle.
Like a knot undone.
Like tension released with the right pressure of the thumb and finger.
Like a prayer answered.
As a neurodivergent being, I know my brain is different. And I know that some things that soothe look strange to others. (That said, I am WAY NOT ALONE in my neuro-spicy brain, so most of my worries about strangeness are unfounded. So many of my friends and I laugh and say, “Oh, you too?”)
I listened to a Taylor Swift song for hours. No joke. I barely knew the song, but I remember the lyrics coming across one of the zillions of TikToks of her on my FYP.
I put on my noise-canceling headphones and listened and listened and listened. I did other things, but mostly, I listened to this song take away the demons, the terrors, the lingering shadow-beings shaking me from head to toe.
I didn’t know their names yet. I just knew they were drowning.
I let them drown.
And now, days later, I am wet and wondering: what happens now?
I don’t know, but I know what I’ll listen to the next time I recognize the sharp tap of what I asked to stay hidden. I will turn around and turn up the volume.
Maybe even wink
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