The Dark Night

“The Dark Night of the Soul is a phase of passive purification of the spirit in the mystical development.”

“The Black Sun (The Dark Night in Esoteric Tradition) is a Psychological Spiritual Condition &/or Energy we have to go through as part of our development. It is the inward and downward pulling force that brings us to confront our fear and our shadows. We have the choice to heal or remain fragmented and in pain.” — Gigi Young

“There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.”― Hazrat Inayat Khan

“Oh, the heart, it hides such unimaginable things.”- Florence + The Machine

THE EXORCIST

Into the Abyss…

“A woman who has denied her childhood reality, in order not to feel the pain, is perpetually fleeing her past with help of men, alcohol, drugs, or achievement. She needs a constant thrill to keep boredom at bay; not even one moment of quiet can be permitted during which the burning loneliness of her childhood experience might be felt, for she fears that feeling more than death. She will continue in her flight unless she learns that the awareness of her old feelings is not deadly but liberating. What often does kill is the rejection of those feelings, the conscious experience of which could reveal the truth.” - Alice Miller, The Drama of The Gifted Child

It took 44 moves, every single relationship I had ever known falling completely apart in brutal fashion & a total nervous breakdown for me to finally get myself to a point where I said, “Ok. I’ve got to really stop and look at what the fuck is going on.”

One of my boyfriends called me out once. He told me, “You’re running from something.” His words struck me so hard. I knew he was right. I responded, “I know. I don’t know what I’m running from, though” tears rolling down my cheeks. And that was the truth. I really didn’t know what I was running from. All I knew was that I could not be still.

During my Saturn Return I was pulled out of the domestic apparel production world in Los Angeles and into the world of energy healing and farm life in Northwest Kansas. Rather than go with the flow and face the demons that were coming for me I attempted to banish them and fled the farm. My subconscious was not yet ready to face my demons. It was too much for me at that time, my system didn’t feel I had the support I needed. I fell into yet another relationship with a man. This time it was with a man who raped me. An all time low. I stayed with the rapist for 3 years. There are reason’s why I stayed for so long but that’s an essay for another day. Towards the end of our relationship, a trip with my sister reminded me of the hidden pains I had been running from.

My sister and I had decided to go on a camping trip together. For our entire lives we had been pinned against each other (Scapegoat and Golden Child, respectfully) and I think we both felt like this trip could be a way for us to reconnect. I thought I could bring my sister along with me on this whole awakening journey, that we could do it together. I had been away from “home” for so long and forgotten how bad things really were with my mom. My parents had a nasty divorce when I was 17 (my sister was 11) and I went to live with my dad while my brother and sister stayed with my mom. A few months later I moved to LA. I think maybe I came back to visit twice. Almost ten years had passed by this point. My sister didn’t even want to tell our mother about the camping trip because she knew my mom wouldn’t like the two of us spending time together. One day my mom called and my sister put the call on speaker phone, letting me hear the terrible things my mom was saying about me. I cried. My sister told me, “Mom would say things to me like she was trying to get me to hate you”. It hurt me so much. Psychologists call my mother’s actions “triangulation”. Triangulation is a divide and conquer manipulation technique used by narcissistic parents, like my mother. My sister also made the observation that I was scared of my mom. She said to me, “You’re scared of her” and I was like, “YES. I am scared of her. She used to beat the shit out of me.”

Complex PTSD

“Your body is simply biologically wired in protective mode and responds very quickly, below your awareness, to anything that is a reminder of childhood abuse. In other words, you don’t choose a reaction that may be extreme or frightening to yourself and others. Your response is automatic and somatic (in the body).” - Mother Hunger, Kelly McDaniels, Third-Degree Mother Hunger, pg 140

Like many a Golden Child, my sister had taken on a lot of my mother’s thoughts. She triggered the shit out of me and I’m sure it was the same for her. All our trauma got lit the fuck up and neither of us had the language or composition to move through it gracefully. Very big feelings were coming up for both of us. My rage lashed out. She gave me the silent treatment. The trip only lasted a week and ended with me screaming at her and her dropping me off at the Greyhound bus station in Denver. Even though at first I knew my reactions were valid, as months went by I began to realize my sister was not going to forgive me for screaming and that our relationship was most likely over for good. This wasn’t our first big fight. For her 21st birthday in Vegas we got into an actual physical altercation which ended with me in yet another bus ride out of town. It was hard for me to accept that we weren’t able to work things out. As a way to try and gain control over what was happening in my life I subconsciously blamed myself for everything. I made it all my fault. I never wanted my relationship with my family to be severed, that was never my intention. All I was doing was standing up for myself. And yes, because I had been taught my entire life to bottle up my emotions, they exploded when I was pushed too far. Making myself the “bad” one somehow made these losses bearable. I knew I only had control over myself and fell into intensely harsh self-punishment. The guilt & blame I put on myself ate away at me from the inside. My joy was lost. Grief hit me like a big ass sledge hammer to my chest. My heartbreak felt like too much to bear and I collapsed. I didn’t want to feel like I was “going against” my own mother and sister. It felt like I was always going against everything. I felt like I kept “losing” people I loved and cared about. It was extremely hard for me to face the lies I created about my family, myself, and Life. How I had made myself the problem as an attempt to gain love and acceptance… when the truth is I wasn’t the problem at all and it wasn’t all my fault. These are extremely painful truths to bear… My heart was crushed. I was devastated. I didn’t want to live anymore. I experienced intense grief for years. I ran back to the rapist.

The Stages of Grief:

denial,

anger,

bargaining,

depression,

acceptance

For a while, denial was a way for me to take my power back. I put all my most painful experiences in a dark, hidden corner of my being, pretended I was unaffected, and used drugs to cover up the physical pain.

“What is it like not to feel anything?”

“Let’s say there was a little girl. And from the time she could understand she was taught to fear… let’s say she was taught to fear daylight. She was taught that it was her enemy. That it would hurt her. And then one sunny day you ask her to go outside and play and she won’t. You can’t be angry at her, can you?” - Estella, Great Expectations, 1998

I was taught to fear my emotions.

When I was young and expressing my true feelings I experienced disapproval, and subsequently, loss of love & connection. I learned at a very young age that how I felt caused me to experience loss and pain. So I learned how to suppress how I really felt and take on the feeling that I believed would give me approval, which in turn would give me love & connection. This is how I got my need for connection met as a child.

Katherine May put it like this in her book, The Electricity of Every Living Thing: A Woman’s Walk In The Wild To Find Her Way Home:

“But I was a master by then of the surface appearance, I had watched, carefully, the way that other people behaved and mimicked it precisely. I had all the social errors and graces, encouraging smiles, and the kind inquiries and I could chase the lineage of each of them back to the person I stole them from.”

Alas, it was not true connection, as I was not being my true self. I mostly chose characters from books and movies (I feel like I could have won an Oscar) and played the part. Because I had been playing Life this way since I was a kid it felt completely natural. I had no idea what I was doing. Throughout my life, after each one of my relationships ended, my subconscious, untended rejection wound took it personally and as further proof that I was indeed unlovable. The coping mechanisms I developed as a child in order to survive; choosing others over myself (betrayal bonding), playing different characters (fantasy), self-regulating my intense emotional distress with addictions & having no boundaries (co-dependency) kept me in a trauma loop, a kind of prison where I continued to experience the same trauma’s over and over and over again. And because one of my main trauma responses was making myself the problem (this was the only way I was able to find connection in my original family system), each breakup pushed me further into unconscious shame. Each time a relationship ended, I made myself a little smaller, punished myself a little more and slipped deeper and deeper into self hate, becoming more & more fractured. My true Self energy was buried under some seriously deep childhood pains.

“According to Freudian psychoanalysis, a person who encounters challenging events may revert to an earlier stage of development as a way of coping. Psychologists call this age regression. Age regression involves a person adopting the behaviors of someone younger than themselves.”

I was in a serious age regression.

“Peter’s archetypal quality is his unending youth. In Peter and Wendy, it is explained that Peter must forget his own adventures and what he learns about the world in order to stay childlike.” — Peter Pan, Wikipedia

Remembering everything made me feel enraged. I was in victim mode for a while. Victim mentality is tricky when you actually were a victim. You have to grow up. One of my big things was I didn’t want to grow up. I didn’t want to have to take care of myself. I didn’t want to do the work. I thought I deserved to have someone else to take care of me. I was a Disney kid and grew up with Happily Ever After. The idea of the Knight in Shining Armor who would come and make everything better. When I was young I told myself the rest of my life would be good because this early part had been so rough. I felt like I was just an innocent child with no one to protect me, no one who had my best interest at heart, and now here I was, the one suffering, the one who was going to have to do all this work for something that wasn’t even my fault. They hurt me and now I have to be the one to heal myself? What the fuck. I got stuck on how unfair it all was. My Inner Teenager was reminded of the power struggle I experienced with my parents and I projected my parents onto the Universe. I went into fight mode against The Universe.

“When something unwanted happens, especially when that unwanted thing alters life in a way that a person interprets is really bad, people automatically go into resistance to what is and what was. Instead of accepting it they go into an automatic fight against what cannot be undone. All of this leads to an obsession on a mental, emotional and physical level, with trying to change what has already happened. It decreases health on all these levels. It leads to a desperate fury, it leads to denial, it leads to slipping into protector personalities, it leads to depression, it leads to confusion, it leads to bargaining.” — Teal Swan

I didn’t want to see the bigger picture. I didn’t like what I was learning about the truth of this world. I wasn’t interested in Higher Purpose or Spirituality or Initiation or Healing. I didn’t want to do emotional work. I didn’t want to grow up. It all felt like too much. I wanted to run and hide. I felt like I would rather die than do this work.

“To die would be a great adventure.” — Peter Pan

The Straw That Broke The Camels Back

I remember the rapist was mad at me for spending money on a series of herbalism classes being offered at The Dhyana Center, an Ayurvedic center in Sebastopol, CA. A woman named Michelle was teaching the classes. She gave me this very real hug and I felt a connection with her. Things were really bad with the rapist and I shared with Michelle that I was going through a hard time. She asked if I wanted to take care of her cats while she was out of town. This is where I met Gypsy the Wagon for the first time. A few weeks later the rapist kicked me out. Along with being a rapist he was also a drug dealer and owned illegal firearms and I was so full of rage I threatened to turn him in to the police if he didn’t give me money. I believe they call this extortion. I had become an extortionist.

Searching For The Mother, The Need for Nurturing

I had nowhere to go and remembered the Gypsy Wagon on Michelle’s property. I thought maybe she would let me stay a few nights while I figured out what I was going to do. I showed up at her house, tears in my eyes, and told her I had no place to go. She hugged me so warmly and genuinely and told me she was glad that I felt she was safe person to come to for help. She was an angel in my life, and continues to be. After two weeks of staying in the Gypsy Wagon on Michelle’s property, I decided to drive down to LA and try to start over there, yet again. One of my closest friends said I could stay with her for a few days. Another friend said she would be leaving town soon for a month and I could house sit while she was away. I thought this would give me enough time to find a job and save up first and last months rent for my own apartment. My friend Selene was working at a shoe store in Beverly Hills which happened to be hiring, and she set up an interview for me at the shop. All my friends were kind & generous. I was just a complete and total mess and needing professional help. I felt like although I knew they were trying to help me, that they no longer knew me, and it just didn’t feel right. I had been away for three years. I had changed. I was a different person. My friends cat, Sebastian, her child, died while I was there. He had been very sick for a very long time and died in my friends arms. Understandably, she wanted a night at her house alone. She told me I could stay at one of her friends houses whom I had met the night before but I was in such a tender, broken place and the last thing I needed was go stay with someone I had only met the night before and barely knew. I said I would find another place to stay and decided to drive out to Joshua Tree. I was taking spoonfuls of kratom to cope with my overwhelming emotional state and don’t remember what was said because I deleted the conversation but whatever it was ended our friendship. I decided to add gasoline to the fire (an old pattern of mine) & pick another fight with Selene, ending our friendship as well. My two closest friends, gone. I told my other friend that I no longer needed to house sit. I cut all my LA connections. I stayed in Joshua Tree for a few nights and found a cute, tiny house to rent and a job at a vintage store but both fell through. Falling into yet another panic, I drove off.

In The Depths of My Dark Night, When Love & Light Feels Like A Gaslight

My dad’s best friend, Brad, had always told me if I ever needed anything to call him. I was too ashamed to call my dad and I knew he wasn’t the type to be able to offer emotional support, anyway, which is what I was really needing. So I called Brad. He told me to come stay. I drove across the country to Ohio. When I arrived I had only $200 left from my extortion money. Brad’s house was clean and there was an extra room he had set up for me. He ordered me a pizza, I grabbed the six pack I picked up on my way into town, and went to take a shower and go to bed. I was completely deflated. This was my lowest point. My kratom intake hit an all time high when I was in Ohio. It was the only thing keeping me going. I was exhausted, burnt out, angry… depressed. Unable to feel the immense grief that was buried within me. Brad went to work all day every day and got home late so I had the entire house to myself most of the time. I stayed in bed all day. I made myself cookie dough for breakfast. Around 4pm I would grab some pizza and beer and binge watch Gossip Girl. I still wasn’t crying at this point. I was just in a kind of shock. I would lay in bed for hours in the morning just staring at the ceiling. I thought about killing myself a lot and started to really fantasize about it, doing suicide research, trying to find the perfect way to die (hint: there isn’t one). Nothing seemed to provide certain, painless death. It’s hard to actually die from slitting your wrists and I didn’t want anyone to find me all bloody. I didn’t want to fuck up anyone else’s life. I thought about cutting some arteries in my legs in a forest somewhere but was afraid that before I died an animal would come and start eating me. Not how I wanted to go. Overdosing on pills felt completely impossible as my entire teen life was pretty much dedicated to that exact attempt with no luck. With the pills I had access to then, and the amount I was taking, if pills were going to kill me, it would have already happened. To hang yourself you need to get the knot and the position of the knot just right. Hanging yourself properly is like a science. I didn’t trust I would get it right. Jumping off a bridge felt unreliable. Brad had a garage and I started to do the gas thing one day (where you close the garage door and start the car) but I didn’t want Brad to come home and find me dead. He had been so nice to me. So I turned off the car and opened the garage door. Michelle and I had been in contact. I thought I was going to be living in LA and able to drive back up to Sebastopol for an emotional healing workshop she facilitated. When she emailed me about it I told her that my plans had changed and I was now living in Ohio. No longer wanting to live. She offered me her support. We did a couple of video calls. I didn’t feel better. She loaned me some money to drive back to Sebastopol and have a longer stay in the Gypsy Wagon.