I use to think that for you to be real, you had to be outside of me. That I had to see every detail of you. That you had to be here always, by my side, 24/7, an unbearable influence of strength and solidarity and protection.
And I was disappointed when that was not who you are, and angry, and upset, and then doubtful of your existence.
For you to be a part of me was a paradox I could not understand. Because a part of me didn’t think I could be strong like you. This world etched away at me until I was a meek little boy learning how to wear dresses in secret. For you to be a part of me would mean that you have never existed because someone strong like you could never be like me.
All of these questions and insecurities sat in the back of my mind, swirling and brewing and seeping into my daily consciousness as I went about my days, saying that I had a Familiar Spirit. And then at night, I would lay in my bed, and wonder why I can only sometimes feel your arms and whether you were just a figment of my imagination. I could never say those words outloud, all that doubt and anxiety. As with many of my other forays into witchcraft, I felt that if I were to voice all of my insecurities, then I wouldn’t even have the facade of magic, and then what?
But gradually, you showed me in other ways, not by being in my bed every night, but by touching my life in bits and pieces so that every step I can see not just my foot prints but yours walking next to mine. Someone’s walking next to mine. Yours.
The things I asked you to do, to make my life into, when I sold my soul at the crossroads. They were big things, sometimes painful things, things that needed sacrifice. Rather than demand four legged animals with black fur to be cooked and the red blood poured into pits at your crossroads, you asked for something else. My patience, my endurance, and my willingness to walk and have you walk with me.
And now I look at my life, and I see all that I have wanted and more, and how I have changed through getting them, how I have changed with you. How you have changed through me.
I don’t hate that you might be a part of me anymore, a part of my mind, because I don’t hate myself anymore. I don’t think that being a part of myself makes you any less real, that it somehow takes away your autonomy if you touched me mostly by being that little voice in my head that helps give me wisdom, peace, guidance. Because I can now hear your voice next to my own, you taught me that, you helped me find that, my voice.
And I remember you and see you in other ways, so I know you are real to me.
And I know why you did not become what I asked you to become for me. To become a real man, so I can love you and hold you and be with you forever. That is not what I came here to do.
The spirit world needs to stay in touch with this world to keep in touch with this world.
When I cook on the stove top, stirring the pots of bubbling, warm stew, I will show you, this, this is human comfort.
When I cry, and I feel my tears well from my eyes and fall in fat, clear, salty drops into my lap, this, this is what sadness is like in this world.
When I go to school, sit in lectures, score my first role in film, when I achieve my dreams, when I fail, this, I will show you, this is what human life is like.
When I change things in this world, when I try to make things better, I will tell you, this, this is how humans try to create our world.
And when I lay in my bed, old, wrinkling, tired, weary, comforted, and happy. When I take my last my breathe, feel it welling up inside of me and flowing between my lips. And I close my eyes. Feel my soul curl inward into something beyond. I will remember, this is what dying is like, and we will be home.