Samhain is an ancient Celtic festival celebrating the start of winter and of a new year. The Celts traditionally began at the end, with days starting at sunset and years starting with the darkest days.
Most modern pagans celebrate Samhain on the night of October 31st and the day of November 1st. While I do love Halloween, I prefer to celebrate Samhain based on the solar cross-quarter date, meaning that this year I celebrated on November 6.
I adhere to the solar calendar partly because the Gregorian calendar is less than 500 years old, thus post-dating the Celts by about a thousand years. It seems silly to me to celebrate a Celtic holiday based on a calendar the Celtics never had.
The other reason I prefer to celebrate according to the sun is because the four quarter celebrations are tied directly to the sun (the solstices and equinoxes) so it seems only rational that the cross-quarter festivals should also be celebrated according to the sun’s position. Doing so places the cross-quarter festivals midway between the primary quarters, thus dividing the year into eight equal parts.
Equality and balance are very important to me.
Samhain is traditionally celebrated with bonfires and feasting. Once upon a time people would take flames from the large communal bonfires home to light their own hearths to protect and cleanse their dwellings. I don’t have a fireplace, so I left the flames in the bonfire.
For the first time since I stopped pretending to be christian I will actually get to have a Samhain bonfire, complete with friends and feasting. I finally found some people who are not only cool with my paganism but are also happy to participate in my celebrations. Particularly the ones that involve fire, because who doesn’t like burning shit?
Last winter, out of sheer desperation to have someone who regularly acknowledged my existence, I texted a woman from work and told her that I liked her and that I had decided that we were going to be friends.
Much to my surprise, that approach actually worked.
Lily is not a high engagement friend. There are no extended text chains arising out of hours of incessant back and forth messaging. Oftentimes she doesn’t answer texts at all. But the tenuous connection seemed to have as much meaning to her as it did for me.
More importantly, Lily’s reception of my friendly overtures gave me the courage and confidence to reach out to others.
When I heard another coworker say she was lonely, I gave her my phone number. I collected phone numbers, started group texts, and encouraged everyone who didn’t already to talk to each other outside of work.
There are mixed feelings in our society as to whether it is good or even acceptable to socialize with one’s coworkers. One woman said she found it “sad” when people invite their coworkers to their homes.
We don’t invite her to anything, so it works out for everyone.
But where else are you going to meet people in a tiny rural town? So I started trying to get to know the people I work with a little better.
There have been lunch dates and after work drinks. One time I asked if anyone wanted to go bowling and it turned into a whole thing. Ten people showed up. We had a wonderful time. And I learned that jello shots in Kansas are not at all like jello shots in Louisiana.
When I was finally able to go to New Orleans to get the rest of my belongings from Bitsy’s garage, I didn’t want to go alone for fear I would do something stupid (meaning try to see Charles). Dahlia came with me. We made the whole trip in two days, not stopping to do anything fun or see any sights.
It was so nice not to be alone. I only cried once, when we were passing the town where I lived with my children.
As Mabon approached, I decided to take a chance and try to arrange a holiday gathering. I told Lily that the autumnal equinox is one of the druidic sabbats, celebrating the second harvest. With her open mind and open heart Lily immediately agreed to be part of my celebration.
Mabon is about celebrating the bounty that the earth has given us, and beginning preparation for the long nights of winter as the balance of the day tips from light to dark. Mabon is a time of gratitude, of reflection upon the accomplishments of the past year and beginning to consider one’s intention for the coming year. It is celebrated in part by shared feasting.
Mabon is basically the witch’s thanksgiving, and I wanted a real thanksgiving feast.
When I left Norman, I took the fondue pot we had received as a wedding present but never used because Norman doesn’t really like fondue. I decided to eschew traditional Mabon feast foods, and instead have a fondue party.
I invited Dahlia as well, because anyone who will spend nearly 30 hours in a car with you deserves some melted cheese. Then I invited a couple of other people from work, because I like them and wanted to get to know them better.
All of them came. The plates didn’t match. I only have two dining chairs so we had to use my desk chairs as well as a folding chair that Dahlia brought.
It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t dignified. Norman and Mrs. Bates would not have approved.
It was fabulous. I felt connected to my community, and grateful for the progress I had made over the proceeding months in making my life something I can endure.
After the success of Mabon, I started talking to Lily about a Samhain celebration. Lily has a house with a backyard and a fire pit, and was willing to let me use both. Then another of our coworkers heard us talking about it, and volunteered to have a bonfire on her land for the holiday.
Because my little social circle is drawn from my job attendance at different gatherings is largely driven by what day of the week we do it on. So other than Lily, the people I with whom I celebrated Samhain were different than those with whom I celebrated Mabon.
There are so many lonely people, seeking a something outside of themselves. There are so many people being told they are wrong to want a community. Modern society has become obsessed with the idea of extreme independence, of doing everything for ones self, of learning to be alone.
Modern life seeks to strip the very humanity from our souls, leaving us empty shells walking the earth, merely surviving the day until finally, at last, there are no days left to survive.
I can’t change the world. But I can make sure the people around me feel a little less alone. I can try to ensure that the people around me aren’t ashamed to want to connect with others.
It’s nice knowing that I now have people who will notice rather quickly if I vanish off the face of the earth. Better yet is the discovery that people are not a finite commodity. We live in a world of forced isolation, and all it really needs is one person willing to walk up to someone else and start a conversation.
Lily once called my ability to make friends a superpower. Other people have remarked on my willingness to simply walk up to a relative stranger and start talking.
I wasn’t always like that. All those decades of listening to men tell me how inappropriate and deplorable I was made it difficult for me to talk to anyone, even people I had known for a long time.
But then I broke into a million pieces and I realized that all the people who ever claimed to love me didn’t really care that much about what was going on inside my head.
The rejection and isolation nearly killed me. Literally. I talk to everyone because it’s impossible to tell just by looking who else might be feeling like a ghost.
I want the people around me to feel like they exist. Because I know how difficult–how dangerous–it is to feel like you aren’t really there.
Human beings need to feel REAL. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I have also discovered that for me individually, having a community is not enough to secure my mental stability. I require a constant influx of new information.
I need perpetual learning. It’s a fundamental part of my being. I think I always knew that. From the moment my downward trajectory started I was insistent to everyone around me, especially Norman and Charles, that I needed to go back to school.
I’m almost to a position where I am able to do so. There are just a couple more wrinkles to iron out.
In the meantime, I am searching my life for new opportunities for growth and advancement. I started the new year by learning several new skills at my day job.
I had been resistant to the new training, believing that what I needed was to just coast through the busy season. The relief I felt when I finally acquiesced and agreed to learn new positions is what made me finally realize that my brain is not set up to coast through life
I have hope for the coming year. Some days, anyway.
There are still far too many days when I walk through the world feeling like I’m simply waiting for death. That’s not great.
But I have established a comfortable enough cave for myself that I am finally able to breathe deeply and wait out the bad days.
Grounding exercises work a lot better when the panic is caused by the past instead of the present.
I have accepted that Charles1 meant it when he said that the only reason he brought me into his life was to get revenge on his wife and my husband. He felt wronged by them, and he wanted to wrong them in return. He recognized my vulnerable state, and used it to what he considered his advantage.
Dahlia asked me once if I thought Charles targeted me. When I told her what he had said about me being his means of revenge, she asked me why we never listen to or believe the horrible things men say to us.
The answer for me was simple: whenever I told Charles that he was hurting me he would say that I focus too much on the negative and that’s why people can’t stand to be around me. Besides, we weren’t fighting when he said it; he was cheerful and laughing, like it was a shared joke.
His promises and lies meant everything in the world to me. I needed the good things he said to be true in a way that I had never before needed anything. Unfortunately, to him it was just a game, and I was merely “a pawn in a game of jealousy and spite”2 to be sacrificed to his whims.
That’s a pain that’s going to last a long time.
Oddly enough, the realization that Norman always had the capacity to help me and take care of me when I was struggling doesn’t really cause that much pain.
I always knew I wasn’t a priority to him, that he only wanted me around as an atm and an incubator. After all, he only agreed to commit to our relationship when I promised that I would support him financially and have two children for him.
I always knew that he doesn’t believe in mental illness, and that his acceptance of me was conditioned upon my hiding my trauma and behaving the way he believed I should. He told me these things outright, and punished me with silence whenever I didn’t do as he pleased.
I didn’t leave him because I suddenly realized who he truly is. I left him because I suddenly realized that I deserved better out of my life.
How surprised he must have been when he was no longer able to bully me into submission.
Neither of those men will ever acknowledge that they treated me poorly. In their realities, they only ever tried to help me and I am simply too crazy to see how noble they are.
In their minds, in their stories that they tell the people around them, they are my victims.
The world is full of men like them. Humanity as a whole has spent the last six thousand years (at least) cultivating a reality where there are far more bad men than good.
All I can do now is speak openly about my experiences and hope my children listen well enough to be better men than either of those that I foolishly devoted myself to.
Little boys don’t need male role models to grow into good men. Little boys need mothers who refuse to suffer in silence, as women have done for far, FAR too long.
This year, I resolve to learn. To grow. To seek out new experiences. To be open and honest about the experiences of the past.
We are less than two weeks into the new year. It’s far too soon to tell whether the year will be good or bad. But one thing is certain, this year will be a genuine one.
Lonely No More
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