Healing

I used to be so wild. A little girl with fantastic worlds in her head where she played the main character, usually as the witch, making potions with pond water and algae as the minnows danced around her spell work. Where did that young witch go? I grew up and left her in the woods to create her magick.

I should have stayed behind just a bit longer.

It’s hard for me to do any sort of meditation or work with my inner child. I feel like I failed her. I never knew exactly what I wanted to be when I “grew up” as I was interested in everything. I was quiet and spent a lot of time alone. I spoke to my toys and they comforted me. I did have a best friend and we spent weekends and summer days together, riding bikes and staying up late at slumber parties, but we grew up and apart, as most friends do.

I grew up a little more and became awkward, chubby with big front teeth, and my teenage years gave me a greasy face with zits and big glasses. In high school I was plain so I dressed in baggy jeans and big t-shirts, never really caring that I wasn’t one of the pretty ones.

Until I was seventeen when an older man lured me into his web of games.

I was naive to think he loved me, but even if he cared about me a little bit back then, I don’t care now. He knew what he was doing. He knew the control he had over me and that I would come at his beck and call with no questions asked. My parents knew about him, and I’m sure they had their suspicions as to what he actually wanted with me. I don’t put any blame on them. The age of consent in Texas was seventeen, so we all thought it was just fine. They don’t know everything that went on between him and me. They just knew that I loved him and they wouldn’t be able to keep me from seeing him. My parents have an age gap, too, but at least there’s love between them.

What he did to me, body and soul, that wasn’t love.

There were a few good times where he was nice to me, but I changed more than he did and he didn’t like that. I went to college and became more independent and hung out with people my age (including guys) and got up the guts to keep my distance and tell him ‘no’…at least for a little while. Our sordid connection was finally severed when he was killed in a car wreck. I was heartbroken at the time, and perhaps I still am, but not so much for him.

I feel for that little girl I left behind because she had to grow up quickly. She had to endure the leering of older men that stared at her developing body until she was finally sucked into the dark aura of one sixteen years her senior.

Age of consent was just an excuse.

If he were still alive today, and somehow found his way to my front door, I would punch him in the face. Not the balls; that’s too obvious even though it’s the very sac that fueled his lust for me. But his face held devious charms and empty promises that fed off my broken confidence. I will never forget that face for as long as I live, but I can at least punch it whenever I want.

I reconnected with Nature through Paganism one and half years ago. I turned 39 this past Friday. I sometimes wonder if I’m too old to pick up where I left off as that wild child from the woods. I have been quite a few Christian denominations but it came full circle back to the magick I held as a child. As the saying goes, “Gimme that old time religion…”

I am doing shadow work and practicing every day on how to let go of anchors that have held me down for so long: certain people, their opinions, their abuse, the abuse that I give myself. I know that in time I’ll reconnect with that wild little witch.

And I hope to make pond water potions with her.