WWWD?

This morning, I imagined myself going into my interview for the “Gold/Coal” job tomorrow morning. Going in as I felt at the moment I was reflecting, hunch-shouldered, weary. Why do you want this job, they’d ask? For the money, I’d bite into a lie that would instead say something about supporting the education of children, though I would have zero direct influence in that education.

I imagined the gray, and lonely march, with the exterior painted for display.

Somewhere in my reflections this morning, I remembered what I always seem to forget: I am a witch. 

I am a shaman warrior goddess. And like many of the women I know who are, I do not fold into a box of forget-me-yes’s.

Raise your brows if you like, but I forget, with apparent force, that I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to subsume my person. I don’t have to abandon myself.

What would a witch do? She would see opportunities. She would create them.

I don’t know in this instant what that is, but I have remembered that I am a healer, and that I love helping others to heal.

When I was sick, and was tired of others bringing me things and taking care of me like I had nothing to give them in this world, I hosted my workshop. My workshop called, Creativity and Spirituality. I sat for an afternoon with 5 women, and helped them find something in themselves they’d lost or thought they had to abandon. I am a witch. I am a healer.

I am six feet fucking tall. I don’t have to hunch my shoulders, and roll over dead for anyone, including for the spite and ire and bile in my brain sometimes.

It’s shorter, these lapses in memory. And today, I finished my journaling and meditation with a smile of confidence I haven’t had in a bit. The smile itself may wane, but I hope that the centering thought does not.

And here’s where the real miracle is: The thought hasn’t waned. For years now, I’ve eventually come back to that centering truth that I am not powerless and I am not worthless. Sometimes it takes longer than others. But after seriously considering this morning whether I should go on meds, something else happened. The bottom dropped out of my short-sightedness, and I remembered that I am not as narrow or narrowly defined as a drone, the drone I’m trying to prove to someone else they want to hire me to be.

Who knows. Is that more school in some kind of healing art, is it running my workshop again just to get some spiritual juice flowing, is it looking back into working with kids in a direct way, revisiting my idea for an after-school program for them?

I don’t know. But I remember.

And I’ll show up tomorrow, and I’ll place on my lie. I’ll do it because that stability could finance further education. I’ll do it because I show up to things and never know how they’ll turn out.

But, unlike when I took the job I have, and cried mercilessly after work while waiting for the unfailingly 45-minute late bus, after earning a master’s degree through words and performance that I created, after accepting what I thought I had to at the moment (and perhaps did) – and one month later developed cancer … Unlike then, I seem to be remembering that I have power. That I don't need to accept a life sentence of menial work, or define myself under such disparagement.

I’ve been depressed because I have thought that to be what’s happening again. Once again applying to things I don't want because I want to afford healthy food and visit my mom in New York. Once again, I'm poking around the internet half-heartedly saying, yeah, sure, I can answer your phone and type up your emails. I can hack away my power so you can look good. ...

And if it weren’t for cancer, this time might indeed be that away again. But because I am hyper aware and viscerally afraid that subsuming my light in pursuit of “stability” can cause repercussions of atomic scale, it is top of mind to not allow myself to shrink into that dull, flatlined human who trudged her death march to Muni every morning.

What would a witch do? Firstly. She would remember she’s a witch. Then she would put on high heels.