7/21/2021

I’m not going to lie; I needed some rest.

After I met with Hekate, which was really just getting her approval to start connecting with the witches’ community as I was able, I was too drained to be productive in terms of writing more deity interactions. At the time, I felt stuck; like I had done all I could and it was time for me to focus on being human. I spent the week filling out job applications for call centers in the area trying not to succumb to the anxious feelings and self-doubt that filled the silence that followed.

Well, near silence. The Greeks recognized my need for a break, gentle as they were, they vacated my mind and gave me some space to rationalize my options. However, Loki had become nearly as pervasive as the demons. As a rule, when I started recording my Shadow Work for this project, I retreated from all forms of social media aside from Discord to talk to Murphy and Cassia. All other interactions had to be with flesh and blood people to avoid disassociation.

“When you have dissociation, you may forget things or have gaps in your memory. You may think the physical world isn't real or that you aren't real. You may notice other changes in the way you feel, such as:

Have an out-of-body experience

Feel like you are a different person sometimes

Feel like your heart is pounding or you're light-headed

Feel emotionally numb or detached

Feel little or no pain

Other symptoms you can get are:

Have an altered sense of time

Not remember how you got somewhere

Have tunnel vision

Hear voices in your head

Have intense flashbacks that feel real

Become immobile

Get absorbed in a fantasy world that seems real.”

Yes, that was quoted from WebMD as opposed to a medical text, but it is succinct and to the point when it comes to what I have to watch out for when I spend too much time with the deities. I already know that I have mental health issues that I deal with in my own way. When it comes to therapy, I did what the vast majority of Psychology students do. I began studying it from medical reference texts to figure out what was wrong with my ass. I went to school for all of one online class and failed out because the first session of class happened while I was in the hospital having emergency surgery. I took that as the universe telling me that school wasn’t part of my path. But one of the Rules of Being Human is that the learning will never end and I needed to understand what I was dealing with. Part of the reason I chose to do it on my own was, in fact, because of the stigma. I was raised by Boomers if that helps the audience understand a bit better in that department.

I have learned since then that any good therapist will recognize Spiritualism as a part of human history since the beginning of time, not to disavow or force an atheistic point of view on others, but to better work within the patient's delusion. Even if they don’t believe in it, only a fool would dismiss something they don’t fully understand if it’s truly helping their patient. I have also discovered that therapy is more to have a guide to facing the roots of your behaviors and cognitive functions so you can face how they relate to your relationships and decisions. Spiritualism is for those that have either grown as far as they could in therapy and are craving a deeper understanding, or are unaware/refuse to face that their mind is fractured but still have a sense of something more to the world than what is in their perception. And, unpopular opinion for some, I know for a fact that all minds are fractured, save for those too young to understand. It’s called inherited trauma, compounded by world events that have traumatized every living being on the planet in varying degrees based on their circumstance.

So, I don’t have a doctorate but I went to the school of the gods, got my degree from the demons, and came out the other side, ready to remember all of the rules I had to live by and embrace my Greek heritage as a spirit. The tradeoff is that my knowledge comes from a literal self-study as well as the information I have researched from the medical texts I have had access to, which means I have no human accreditations. I understand but am not qualified to diagnose or treat any patients.

Once I dissected myself psychologically, had a few theories confirmed by medical professionals as far as the effects of my past on my behavior, as well as the physical reactions my body had in response to certain situations and emotions, we came to the conclusion that the best way to describe what I have is CPTSD. “CPTSD occurs in people who have been subjected to ongoing traumatizing experiences.” And that one comes from The Braden Counselling Center. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up. However, I have learned how to quiet the symptoms. Slowly, but surely, I have been tracking my moods and reactions, analyzing how certain stimuli affect them. I, once again, turned myself into a guinea pig in an attempt to remember how to at least act like a human, even if I didn’t feel like it.

With all of the work I had put into remembering how to be human, I had yet to truly practice. On my own, I was calm on the outside as the internal struggles raged on, and the rationalizations started to unravel as I realized I couldn’t plan for anything without planning for everything, and sitting there planning while I was waiting for what felt like my life to start was only making the depression worse. This, of course, brought Loki in, who started suggesting I make TikTok content. That fight lasted for three days before I finally caved, primarily because Deimos and Phobos pointed out that it would be a way to face my agoraphobia. Like the student I have always been, I sat down ahead of time to try and figure out how to introduce myself, which became a disaster because I approached it as a way to bring more people to this project, getting nervous and coming across as a needy mess.

After the fact, I was able to calm the mess down, digest what I was doing, and realized pre-planning would do nothing more than showcase that I have no idea what I am doing. I have been dealing with demons for over twenty years, ever since the first time I started dabbling in witchcraft and opened myself up to the spirits. Witches are grown in three stages. The first stage is being open and willing to receive that kind of spiritual understanding. This stage is when the baby witches are meant to receive their mentors. However, in the current day and age, finding mentors can be difficult, especially for those that come from the Abrahamic religions looking for the place that feels right for them, away from the beliefs they were raised with. With a mentor, during the second stage, they would have a human sounding-board while they were in the process of doing research on their tradition’s mythos and spirits, building a foundation of communication with the gods and doing their Shadow Work as they explore how those stories relate to themselves as they are present in the moment, instead of getting lost in it.

Without a mentor, I had the Demons. It took me a bit longer, but I got there. A spiritualist moves to being a witch when they begin utilizing magic to change their circumstances. Magic is the energy the spirit naturally produces when inspired and stimulated. It is used by focusing one’s intent based on the emotions they feel during this stimulation. If inspired to dance out of pure joy and excitement, one can latch onto that feeling and direct it into different people and things.

Example: You made me happy or you inspired me, when I dance, I send to you that positivity, that love, and gratitude that I have for you in that moment because you helped me feel better, even for just a moment. To reinforce that, I hang out with Aphrodite a lot.

*****

"So, I finally looked up demons with the spelling on my deck,” Iona said with a nervous giggle as Aphrodite flashed full Lady Dimitrescu for a second grabbed her by the ear with the tips of her vicious fingernails to pin hard enough for her to feel it physically.

“You have had that deck for how long and you’re just now looking into it?” she hissed as Iona’s giggling intensified and she started to laugh at her own stupidity, knowing it was her own fault for not doing her research. “And what did you learn?” Aphrodite snapped out as she let go of Iona’s ear harshly and flicked her fingers as if to relieve them of any blood she might have gotten on them.

“Daemon - noun, (in ancient Greek belief) a divinity or supernatural being of a nature between gods and humans,” she dutifully recited and was surprised by the frustrated groan that emanated from Dark Dite. “What?” she asked, not sure what she did that time.

“Now, look it up again with the same spelling, but include ‘in ancient Greek beliefs,’ dumbass,” she said, causing Iona to laugh as she looked it up as instructed. The fact that she had gone Dark Dite so quick meant that she had either been hanging out with her boys for a while, or Iona has straight pissed her off with her thick-headedness.

“A Daemon is a semi-divine spirit, usually created when a noble person or a hero dies. These beings act as a go-between for gods and mortals, delivering divine messages and blessings to mortals or reporting bad behavior to the gods,” she replied, reading it off, then snorting a laugh as it clicked into place. “You mean all the grief I put myself through by using the term Diamonas was useless,” she said in a flat tone as she realized her stupidity. “Fucking Hell,” she said, her head dropping forward on her shoulders as Dark Dite started to laugh in triumph. “Ok, so, if I had done my research before charging forward, trying to stay in total control of what I was getting into, I would have never had to suffer the anxiety over worrying about people thinking I’m making shit up.”

“Yup,” Dark Dite said, letting the last letter pop.

“MOTHER FUCKER!” Iona swore at herself, internally throwing a fit and berating herself for being a total dumbass. “I blame Lucifer.”

“How?” Aphrodite asked, flipping instantly back into her normal rosy form.

“He taught a Daemon, who was taught by Demons, his lesson and then told them to go teach it,” she said bluntly. “How do demons teach their lessons?”

“By providing the worst examples of humanity,” Aphrodite said with a small rapid nod. “So, we get the students that never really learn more than they need to pass the test instead of excelling,” she said with a groan as her skin greyed a little before she reigned it back in.

“You know he’s cackling right now, right?” Iona asked. “Somewhere out in the cosmos, I can feel it. My stomach dropped and I felt a few years slip away under the weight of his sadistic sense of validation. If I didn’t know why he was laughing, I would be afraid that I was about to die.”

“I am well aware,” Aphrodite said. “He’s been doing that a lot the last couple of days.”

“He’s laughing at my epiphanies as I’m realizing my own ignorance in a lot of subjects,” she admitted. “Every time I curse myself for not doing my research and how much grief I caused for myself, he just about dies guffawing in the trademark Daddy Demon Cackle and sends all the Nymphs scattering thinking they're about to get eaten and not in a fun way.”

“How you can handle that so much, I will never know,” she admitted.

“I’m used to it,” Iona said easily. “He’s been calling me a dumbass a lot longer than you have, remember? I’ve only been talking to you guys for three months, at this point. Regardless of how long y’all have been around.”

“You weren’t even talking to him, if I’m not mistaken,” Aphrodite pointed out.

“Nope,” Iona said with a smug smile. “I resisted the devil’s temptation for over thirty years. Asmodeus on the other hand,” she said with a snort. “I would say, ‘poor guy’ because he got roped into all of this from a gaming aspect because I was researching the D&D lore for my campaign. Then, I remember the fact that he capitalized on that to teach me his lesson.”

“Oh, this I have to hear,” Aphrodite said.

“You are worse than the demons when it comes to spilling the tea,” Iona said with a chuckle.

“The fact that you learned any lessons at all is astounding sometimes,” Aphrodite pointed out, “forgive me for being intrigued as to how Asmodeus managed to teach you his lesson.”

“Possessed some poor bastard I was doing smut research with by hijacking his imagination while were in an RP session online after the guy invited me into his head to set the scene for him,” she said. “He started ramping up the long-distance connection between spirits and whispering suggestions in his ear, then made sure I didn’t back out of our first meet-up. Then, I had to face the crisis when I did meet up with him and realized what happened when it became obvious that the guy in front of me was not the same one from the sessions. Would it really be worth it for me to go scorched Earth while I was still married to John Boy even though we agreed to separate emotionally on a romantic level? No, he’s way too sweet and kind to make a random hook-up be the one I move on with. I respect him too much to cheapen what we had by dating while still married to him.”

“Ouch,” Aphrodite said with a wince.

“Beware of lusting to excess, allowing desires to dictate actions without thought to the broader picture,” she recited with a sigh. “Then came the aftermath of trying to disentangle me from someone who was a decade younger than me and was still very much in need of maturation. I know age is just a number, but,” she said with a pause as her lips pursed. “Overall, as an adult, he was fine. He paid his bills, worked his job, balanced it with college. But, emotionally, he was still very,” she said with a pause trying to think of how best to put it, “young. If two people are insulated and on the same maturity level when there’s such a large age gap, that’s fine and more power to them. But when as much life happens in a short amount of time as it does for me, and has in the past, I need someone who can recognize and account for the fact that I may only be thirty-five, but I have an absurd amount of emotional life experience. Hell, just thinking about it makes my stomach hurt.”

“The trauma of the past?” she asked and Iona shook her head.

“How the events of that relationship unfolded,” she admitted. “I know I have a type, as much as I hate it. I’m always attracted to the smug, self-confident bastard that comes across as being able to handle anything, no matter what’s thrown at him, and be able to handle himself in any social situation. I can relax with the kind of guy because I know he’s got the situation under control so I don’t have to be the one in charge all the time, so I can cut loose and have fun. Unfortunately, that typically carries a high risk of being toxic as I learned with my gaslighting first husband.”

“I’m not sure I like where this is going,” Aphrodite said seriously. “I have enough trouble with you giving up on love, even when you don’t want to.”

“The repeated disappointment will do that to you,” she pointed out with a sad sigh. “When Asmodeus got involved, and I met this guy, I just thought of him as a friend that was fun to flirt with online. If it had stayed that way, it would have been fine, but the way he acted, even in private messaging, he came across as my type to the point where I was genuinely attracted to him, even though I wasn’t really looking to date anyone with the break from John Boy still being so fresh. But, he caught me on a day where I was down, made me laugh, helped me feel better, and I thought, you know what, I wouldn’t mind meeting him in person if hanging out with him was like this. Then, we started flirting and I thought, sure, why not? I like him as a person, I trust him not to be a psycho-stalker/abusive asshole. If things went that way, I could see myself hooking up with him and enjoying it. Then I met the real him and not the character he was portraying. After that, it became apparent that he was still immature and refused to see how his attitude was causing problems. He called me ‘Boomer’ and ‘Edge Lord’ when he knew I was raised by toxic Boomers and was struggling with depression. You and Lucifer calling me a dumbass doesn’t feel like an insult because I can agree with you when you do it. I was a dumbass for not doing my research. But, when I genuinely don’t understand something and ask a question, getting called a Boomer, then being ignored when I’m trying to learn, made me feel worthless. If I started getting emotional, he called me Edge Lord and made fun of me for it, completely dismissing what I was going through and then telling me I was too sensitive when I voiced how much it hurt when he did it. Then, he’d turn around and start throwing a fit about something petty that he could take care of himself and expect me to be sympathetic.”

“Wow, when Asmodeus teaches a lesson, he doesn’t let up, does he?” Aphrodite asked.

“Nope,” she said shaking her head. “I had to see it through from beginning to end to make sure the lesson got stuck in my head. From the thrill of having sexual/romantic attention after those needs being neglected, to the excitement of exploration and having something new, to the struggle within when it came to emotional attachment, to the inevitable disaster caused by my own poor decisions. I tried to salvage the friendship after, but to disentangle myself from his emotional baggage, I had to slowly fade out of communication. I’m not proud of it, but I ended up ghosting him.”

“Why not tell him the truth?” Aphrodite asked.

“Number one, I didn’t want to start a fight and that’s what it would have turned into,” she said. “He had a lot of pent-up anger and tended to target anyone that pointed out his bad behavior. Number two, if I had offered him my council as a friend to help him mature and act more like a man as opposed to a boy, I would have never gotten away from it. It would have been a one-sided grind of me being his Mommy as he refused to change or offer the same support in return. If he’d kept up with the insults and asshole behavior, it would have become a watered-down version of what happened with Darren.”

“Ah,” she said with a nod. “So, to teach you not to let your desires drive your decisions, he sent you a toxic potential to see if you’d get caught up or if you get away from it.”

“Yep,” Iona said with a nod. “Ok, we need to get off this depressing subject before I put on early 2000’s horror movies, again,” she said.

“I still don’t understand why you like those,” Aphrodite said. “Psychological horror, I can see, but,” she added with a questioning shrug. “And you always pick the worst ones.”

“That’s because they’re so bad they’re good,” Iona argued. “They’re like the cinema equivalent to an anti-depressant for me. I watch them, they’re absurd, sometimes a bit META, straight-up over the top in some situations. But I have an extremely dark sense of humor, so they make me laugh. Laughing releases endorphins, which makes me feel happy, which is the biggest problem I have with depression; hence my stance and argument that early 2000’s horror movies are one of my favorite anti-depressants. No fuss, no muss, no pills, just straight-up train wreck entertainment. Before you guys started popping onto the scene, punching me in the feels-dick every time I sit down to entertain myself, I used to laugh all the time with the demons. And it wasn’t even petty, it was the sound of pure relief and validation as I realized I wasn’t a crazy person.”

“I thought that was Lucifer,” Aphrodite admitted and Iona snorted a laugh.

“That was me hanging out with the Demons,” she admitted. “Luci bolted as soon as Phobos connected because he knew I’d be in good hands and I’d been dominating his time for a while. He was the only one I would call to because he and Loki were the only ones that I trusted could get through to me, but I was in constant search for control, so Luci got stuck with me more often than not. And I pushed him hard, testing his patience and then daring him to abandon me just like everyone else. I was nasty."

“That actually explains a lot,” Aphrodite said. “He looked like he’d been put through the wringer every time I saw him for a while there.”

“Yeah,” Iona said. “What he didn’t understand was that I never wanted a contract with him. When he first offered to give me my heart’s desire in exchange for a contract, I thought up the one thing he could never deliver, but was the one thing I wanted; the perfect companion. I told him I would be a Priestess for him exclusively if he could deliver that all on his own. When he finally admitted he couldn’t do it alone, I admitted I never wanted him to because I’d rather help because I love him and he’s my friend than because of a contract. I don’t mind helping people if I’m capable of it. But, when I help the people I love, it makes me feel better. I have no problems running errands for y’all either, by the way. As the Baron impressed upon me with Cassia, sometimes people need to hear it from someone in the flesh before they’ll believe it.”

“A Daemon to the core,” Aphrodite said, shaking her head at her. “Have you looked up any more information about them in the Greek belief system, or did you get side-tracked?”

“I got sidetracked,” Iona admitted as she turned back to her computer. “A Daemon is a semi-divine spirit, usually created when a noble person or a hero dies. These beings act as a go-between for gods and mortals, delivering divine messages and blessings to mortals or reporting bad behavior to the gods,” she read out loud, then stopped, blinked, groaned, and turned on a horror movie to play in the background while she continued to read further into it.

“I’m surprised you’re not just taking that at face value,” Aphrodite said with a slightly smug smirk.

“I learned my lesson,” Iona said, her hand unconsciously touching her ear.