Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Detox and a dilemma

Usually when I take in excess negative energy, I can just sleep it off. It's a trick I learned years ago. I lie down for a couple of hours and it just dissipates. But that's not working anymore. For whatever reason, it's not leaving, and instead of dreaming it away, I'm having nightmares and clenching my jaw all night long. So I'm getting little sleep and my mouth and head are killing me. And so, out of necessity and sheer desperation, I've decided to take matters into my own hands and see how much of this crap I can ditch.

One of the first things I decided to do was to cut out watching the news and true crime shows on television. I am far too well aware of "the evil that men (and women) do", and to continue the daily diet of violence and stupidity would have made me feel infinitely worse than I already do. So I've ditched it. If I have to fall asleep watching the Weather Network, so be it.

Secondly, I'm going to finish up the food in the house (not all at once, mind you) and then put myself on a "back to basics" diet. I've seen some articles on "internal cleanses" out there, but I think that might be just a little extreme for me. Instead, I'm just going to cut out processed foods as much as possible, and severely limit my intake of salt and sugar. We'll see how that goes.

So that's the detoxing of the mind and the body. Now I need to look after my spirit.

The first few steps are easy. In fact, keeping this blog is one of them. It's helping me keep in touch with a part of my self that was being neglected. One of the problems with being solitary is that you often feel totally alone. This blog, however, is allowing me to open up more, and that's good.

I'm also going to start "being witchy" more. More reading, more practicing, more tending to that side of me. I have yet to cast a circle and perform a ritual, and I would like to be ready to do so by Litha. I think it's time. Up until now I've been doing divination, candle magick and small spells. I'm ready to move to the next phase.

The fact that I've chosen today to start all of this detoxing is no coincidence -- I'm counting on the energy of the waning moon to help take away these negative influences in my life.

But here's the hard part. There is someone in my life who is the embodiment of pure, unadulterated negativity, and I have to get myself free of her.

It's so much easier when you're a kid. Your parents see that someone is having a negative impact on your life and they forbid you to play with them anymore. And then, if you've been looking for a way out of the friendship anyway, you just say, "My mom says I'm not allowed ..." All done, with an easy scapegoat. But it doesn't work so well when you're in your thirties.

We were friends, and I think part of it was because of my tendency to root for the underdog. She has some serious quirks, including thinking that the entire world is out to get her and being very offensive as a means of defence. I used to like her, and she can be a very kind person. But she literally sees the world around her only in terms of her own perspective and does not care what her actions and words do to other people (but heaven help anyone if she perceives them to have done something against her).

She hasn't changed. She's been like this since the beginning of our friendship, and although her attitude towards those at work (and her workplace) might be getting steadily worse, it wasn't until last Yule that I saw and felt just how negative, self-centred and selfish she really is. It's a long story, but basically there was a mix-up -- one of those stupid things that would be hysterical in a sitcom. I was supposed to pick her up to go somewhere and we kept missing each other either on the phone or at the front door of her apartment building. Finally I went without her because I thought she wasn't going, and when she eventually showed up at our destination, she didn't bother to walk the ten feet to let me know what had happened. Instead she did what she had to do there and then stormed out the door with a red, angry, tear-stained face. And then she let me sit and stew for two weeks believing she thought I'd left her behind.

Well, as someone who is probably too concerned with the thoughts and feelings of others, being left blowing in the wind made my blood boil. I ignored her eventual email, and avoided her phone calls. I wasn't working a whole lot, so I could avoid her there. And when she finally did catch me on the phone, I finally told her how I felt. Her response? It basically boiled down to everything about her needs, without an inkling of understanding about why I might be upset.

I'm not the sort to hold grudges. Really, I'm not. If someone says they're sorry, then I say "great!" and we move on. But with her, her apologies are always in the same flat tone as the one she uses when she farts loudly at the Dollarama. (I kid you not.) It's not a sincere "sorry". It's more like a "I don't care if you care or not" deal. Going through the motions. And I didn't even get that much effort from her. Consequently, the situation between us is not "all better", and it won't be because she simply doesn't see the need to meet half-way.

And, to be honest, I'm done anyway. I was probably done at Yule. All of the little things that used to bug me about her (bellowing my full name across the staffroom, butting into conversations, telling me I look like hell in the guise of being concerned, and that my legs look like ice cream cones ...) have become completely and totally intolerable. I put my gaze to the floor when she walks in the room, and cringe if she approaches me. I humour her when she wants to talk, mostly because I feel sorry for her a little because she has alienated everyone else. But mostly I just want her to go away and leave me alone. Permanently.

(I even have dreams in which we have a big, major confrontation, and I wake up disappointed that it didn't actually happen.)

And yet ... She doesn't pick up on subtle hints. She doesn't pick up on non-subtle hints. She is so wrapped up in her own little warped reality that the only way it will register is if I say something to the effect of "I don't care about your life. Go away and leave me alone. I don't want to talk to you anymore -- ever." And I know that will hurt her, and I can't reconcile myself to that. I can't bring myself to deliberately do something that I know will hurt someone else -- especially someone who might just be unstable enough to take herself out.

I keep hoping she'll go to another school, or that she'll decide to go back to Holland to be with her family. I keep hoping for an easy way out. But I don't see any on the horizon, and this situation is making my job a misery. The kids even know I'm not myself, and that's not fair to them. They deserve the best I can give them. And hell -- I deserve the best I can give myself.

Maybe I should be looking into binding spells.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"binding spells"...actually, that's not a bad idea. Not spells to hurt or name her in any way, of course, those will just make the situation worse...but aren't there any sort of protections you can use on yourself against negative energy in general? In conjunction with the general detox and consequent lifting of your body/mind/spirit, it may be enough to get you through the workday. If my understanding is correct.

I'm not a witch, but I like one a lot,
-L-