I started this a while ago, and I left it aside, doubting my creative voice here, and it felt more dramatic than I could write in a way that resonates with me yet still feels like a fitting tale. However, various events of late have brought back past memories and feelings, a sense as a friend has said of the universe throwing events out that echo elements of past occurrences – asking the question of me: “Did you learn the lesson at hand?” As such, I thought it worth finishing this little fairy tale story about resilience in the depths of pain and growing beyond those experiences. It is fiction and yet represents learning and catharsis with an emphasis on the lessons learned, as poor as I might be at expressing them. For me – it was almost like a journaling exercise to strengthen my own understanding. I can only hope it speaks to someone else out there across the ether as well.
What is love?
It’s an easy question. People speak about it confidently, certain they know and can express it simply. She, however, thought that the apparent ease was deceptive, uncertain the answer was simple or readily uplifting. The thoughts congealed into thick globules of disbelief in her mind as the Empress bled out on the floor.
Months prior – he swept her off her feet. She resisted at first, having come to believe that love didn’t matter after many a life adventure. He spoke of connection. He understood her in ways that others didn’t. He valued her for more than just her looks or her charm. He was captivated by her mind and heart, and he eventually captivated her in turn. The King of Fire wooed the Empress with charisma, confidence, charm, and passion.
Then the drama. On. Off. Up. Down. I love you. I love someone else. You’re the one. I prefer someone else. At first she was somewhat at fault too, but as it dragged on, any “both” or equality long went away. She was no longer seen. No longer valued. No longer understood. She was a nuisance most of the time, a shiny bauble to be remembered when wanted, and yet, she did everything she could to calmly and glowingly exude: “I love you,” to let it permeate and radiate out of every pore of her being. In seeing his darkness, she leaned into compassion, care, understanding, acceptance, and patience.
In truth, she was an Empress no more, beholden to desire, a reversal of energy, a misplacement of her way in the world. She had lost her self-worth somewhere along the way, the golden glow of the Empress.
Finally, he made it clear that she was no longer wanted, never again. He made it clear that he felt angered by her lack of respect for his other commitments, even though those activities and behaviors were precisely the last iota of self-respect she had: not willing to say that it was laudable to her that something and someone else would lead to the diminishment of and poor treatment from this former King who was no longer anywhere near such. That was the one self-abasement and self-negation too far – a stamp of approval for treating her like garbage. Something that leads people to be worse versions of themselves is not deserving of respect, especially at one’s own expense.
The last of this was separation followed by brief reconnection and an unwillingness to even take accountability to the extent of accepting that he no longer had or deserved her trust and that he had lashed out at her for her last grasp on self-respect, for her struggling to make sense of his slowly escalating self-righteousness. He twisted events into self-righteous dismissal and told her she was obsessive and lost in her own mind, while also lecturing her on topics she had studied for years and he had not studied at all. Even when the lightest of points were made that she no longer trusted him after such behavior, he puffed up and acted as though the need to rebuild trust was ridiculous and beyond the pale. He cut ties with an act as though their friendship’s ending deserved some sort of joyous funeral pyre and as though such a sentiment of joyous festivity would clearly be shared by her.
All of this left her questioning her feelings, her care, her intuition, the time spent, her openness to compassion and understanding, and most of all her ongoing connection despite being told she was wrong, confused, stupid, and lacking emotional depth. In short, she felt like she was mad – she not only didn’t trust others anymore, she didn’t trust herself – her mind, her read of others, and her own emotions.
The ongoing sharp pangs of this deep existential wound were why she decided to move into this moment of pulling out her sword of truth: cutting out the blackened heart of despair within herself. She screamed as she cut through her breast, bleeding everywhere, but she still reached into her destroyed chest to pull out her heart and passed out on the ground.
The Empress is a great being – one of abundance, of the ultimate power of love, not just romantic love – but the loving energy of life, of maternal nurturing, of the life force that loves to exist, grow, and flourish. As such, even cutting her own heart out may have ended her in a sense, but it didn’t really result in a final ending. Death, from her 3 to the 13, was a moving forward of the wheel of fate into an evolution, a transformation into something new.
She gradually, over the course of extended time, pulled herself off the floor, the hole in her chest fused closed again, and the doubts, creeping thoughts, and self-dismissal slowly faded, as the taint of the rot of a corrupted love, an addiction, passed out of her system. First, she gained her self-worth again fully, recognizing her own excellence and working again on growing it to its fullest. She lost her cares of worrying about outcomes or attaching to any intentions of trying to control. Rather, she began to flow with life again – the power of yin, rather than the selfish and short-sighted application of yang. Her doubts were last to fade, but in her healing growth, she eventually blossomed again, a lotus in the muddy waters – recognizing that she didn’t need to trust other people or seek their love again. No matter what, she was pure abundant joy in and of herself. She could give her compassionate love to others without clinging to them or to any story that dimmed her light or limited her.
Perhaps some day she would find an Emperor, balanced, giving, kind, empowered, and insightful, rather than a self-centered, power-based, controlling, egoistic king, but in truth, she knew the rarity of such a person, and would sweat not a single drop worrying, waiting, or even desiring that outcome. She would give her energy to herself, to the world, and to others – fostering compassion, patience, nurturance, and growth in all that she encountered to the best of her ability, listening and caring while no longer allowing anyone to diminish her.
She no longer sat in meditation, rest, and healing from her wounds. She stood up, walked out of her castle, gracefully strode down to the sea below, and rode off into the moonlit night on a giant turtle that surfaced in front of her as her feet touched the sand, her chariot to traverse the depths on her journey forward.
On the Way 
Recent Comments