Yesterday, I swam in the lake at my parents’ house, the place where I am most at peace. And as I dove beneath the surface, the light glinting against my closed eyelids, I thought, “I’m afraid to write to them because I’m not worthy of them.”
Hello from the depths of a depression that has gripped me most of the summer. The spring, even. I wrote to you in May saying I didn’t know how to navigate this post-vaccine life, and I will admit, it got the better of me. The high-high-highs of time spent with friends, on the road, screaming songs out the window into the whipping highway air. The low-low-lows of those past-midnight hours, unable to sleep, mulling over the “what-ifs” of who I’m going to be now. Now, that I get to be myself again.
When you have low self-esteem, I think it can be nearly impossible to honor your talents. And in the depths of my self-loathing, I think I pushed away the one thing I’m truly good at. Having a talent when you don’t like yourself is hard, and I don’t think we talk about that enough. “Woe is me, I have a gift.” It sounds crass in motion, but I now know that feeling so intimately, it feels like a phantom appendage. Who am I to deserve to read for you all? Who am I to deserve your trust?
The last few weeks have brought a barrage of signs for me to return to reading. Friends telling me, “A friend of mine asked where you’ve been, if you’re okay.” Another sent me the notes taken at a reading from January, which perfectly predicted her year. I was surprised at these signs, of these affirmations of my work.
Witchcraft, like any spiritual practice, is hard. I am often met with people — on first dates, at work, at parties — who ask me, “Do you truly believe that’s real?” Even on the days of my deepest conviction, it can be hard to give an unequivocal "yes.” Is any of this even real? Money, love, the path. The fates are fickle, and I’m just a messenger. And to even anoint myself as such is uncomfortable, because who am I to divine the universe?
In May I started seeing a new therapist, one who challenges me as much as she comforts me. Last month I told her I missed reading, but I didn’t know how to start again. We talk most weeks about my eating disorder, and the sneaking effects self-hatred has on your life.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked me, the late morning light slipping through the slats in my windows, traffic rolling off the BQE in sheets. I don’t have a concrete answer. Afraid of providing misguided council, afraid of giving hard news, afraid of being tied down to a practice. Afraid of what we might find on the other side.
But most of all, afraid of myself, and afraid of what it means to be me. I’ve spent a lot of days the last few months wishing I was someone else, someone who’d weathered COVID better, someone who’d found themselves and was unafraid to live life as such. I think I found myself in this practice, in reading for you, in keeping this newsletter, in building a community around my work. And at the end of it, I didn’t feel worthy. I felt burnt out. And it’s easy to walk away from the feeling of unworthiness and exhaustion, onto the path of being blissfully unbothered.
Of course, none of this is to say I’m seeking pity or affirmations. I think it’s important that we talk about when we’re feeling low, acknowledge the times where we feel like we’ve lost ourselves. If anyone else is feeling like this, I want you to know you’re not alone. It’s been hard on many of us in a variety of ways.
I want to thank all of you who have reached out over the course of the last few months because you are who brought me back to my keyboard. In this life, at this time, words of encouragement are a lifeline. And I encourage you now to give them freely: tell your friends, family, lovers, that you’re proud of them. It might not be enough to keep them going, but it will be grounding at the moment. I can’t express how much your words of kindness have grounded me.
It is hard to be open to the fates. I want to thank all of you who’ve subscribed to this newsletter, whether for fun or for guidance. Your trust in me does mean the world. As I work in therapy to regain myself, however that looks, I know you all, and this practice, will remain an important part. And to honor that trust, and to honor my own work, I want to return to it.
I want to believe in my divination because you’ve believed in my divination. So here I am, waving hello, laying my literal cards on the table. I look forward to reading to you again, to tempting fate.
‘Til next week, when we read again. (I’m not sure where my cards are, and I’ll have to tear apart my room when I’m back in New York this week. Oops.)