“Karen’s smile is tragic because, in spite of its meaning, it succeeds in remaining so utterly beautiful.”

–house of leaves

–Intuitive knowing.
–I want space.
–break up with xxx.
—don’t date xxx.
–I don’t want to waste my time.
–Yemaya is 3 of cups tarot.

1/6/2017

Woke up at 2:30 my whole body tingling. I knew if I wanted to go I could go. but I was scared. Started seeing dark images. Saw Lilith in a red dress, long dark red hair. Was it the same woman as before? Saw the devil I think. Grounded. Dreamt of men. 

Feelings: relief. 

to do: look at syllabi, organize plan for January, PS outreach, pick up fruit. 

XXX emailed me some Na’ats she wrote for Fatima. I didn’t say anything back. 

1/4/2017

The next day I texted my ex’s mother who I was still leaning on at times to tell her that I made my friend leave and had felt guilty. She said that was good and told me to call on the Virgin Mary. She said I should watch my drug intake. I smoked three bowls but lit a candle to the Virgin Mary. I felt saints swarm the borders of the apartment building.  They were white and big. It was better than the black ghosts that loitered there some nights.  I got out all of my prayer cards from my dead relatives.  I felt rejecting of one of them. My uncle who killed himself. I put his back in a shoebox and hid it under shoes. My stomach began to protrude.  I could not shake the feeling of the two hands in the cabinet. I began to clean out more of my dresser drawers and started to get into the hair accessories in the bathroom. School was about to start and I was about to go back to work. Another girlfriend texted me to ask “how are you? It’s been awhile. How were your holidays?”

“My holidays were fine. How were yours?”

“Good!”

“Great!”

At 8:30 pm, I decided to do the third meditation with Lilith. 

I document it exactly as I feel it. Painful ejection and discovered the snake. Went straight to the source. I am God personified and love. Love love love. My throat was purple and upward purple. Heart was a gray leaf on a gray beach. Grief. 

That night, dreamt the owl was mixing in with me, blue slides. Dreamt my mother was trying to spend time with me. 

I go back and fill in what happened back in November. I do this a lot. Leave things out and try to remember them later. Not the best way to document, I tell my therapist. I have not shared my journal with my therapist once. Merely, tell her I am writing. 

(Lilith (kundalini #2, circa 11/13/2016)

. I booked an astrological reading earlier in the year and before this second meditation, felt it important to think about it. My Lilith is in Taurus. My north node is in Taurus. I had a vision of two owls: a white snowy owl and spotted owl. I felt that these represented the masculine and feminine parts of me. I began drawing a woman in trees and soon after constructed an altar to Lilith. Placed my mom’s owl on top and abortion herbs (black and blue cohosh, and angelica) and suddenly she was there. I continued to have visions of white elephants and dragonflies. Felt my skull give birth to sky. Felt pink light, flashing light, connected to Earth and directly to Source. I can manifest when connected directly to source. )

I asked my dream to show me Lilith before going to bed that night

1/3/2017

I have never trusted intimacy.

11/3/2016

My time with xxx was restless. I was contentious and paranoid. Hungry.  Living with people triggers me. I’m constantly cleaning up after us and I don’t want to eat anything in the house. I let him smoke my weed and limited what I ingested in front of him; only coffee and tea. He was immersed in Muslim culture now and wore a makeshift hijab and even though it was a sunny day, 66 degrees when we went out, xxx covered himself head to toe. I remembered this from when he visitedd me in Colorado. He had converted while overseas and I had talked him out of fleeing to Syria to fight in the revolution. We were both obsessed with Syria and walking around the graveyard discussing the impact of the Arab Spring. I understood his need to be there. I also knew his sister.

“I don’t think you should leave,” I said.

He showed me all of his relics of Fatimah in a wooden box like I had except mine was filled with little flecks of cannabis, a vape pen and a pink glass bowl I had stolen from one of the women I went out with. She had stolen it from another woman. He had tons of beaded red and turquoise bracelets with the silver hand, hamsa, representing the third eye. I still had some from years ago that he made for me. He showed me Moldovan coins. Talked about the strip clubs in the army. Told me he was transitioning into a woman. 

“Should I call you she?”

She blushed. I once asked her to finger me black out drunk shortly after she came out to me as being gay. I was on Four Loko. I had just declared to everyone at the party that they were scared liberals who loved abortion and stormed out into the night, xxx in tow. We walked the streets for a couple hours trying to put the fragments of me back together.  The next day we met for green tea and xxx told me I needed to get a hobby. I said I had a hobby: writing.

“Write more.” Today she said, “I want to help strippers,”  handing me a penny from England.  

 I had a hard time focusing feeling tiny breezes all over my shoulders.  She told me about working in the orphanage in Moldova and the struggle to get on disability from the army. She talked of her brain trauma and PTSD.  She attempted to bake weed butter in my kitchen as I watched but she also disappeared and spent twenty minutes in the bathroom as the whole apartment filled with the smell. The pot bubbled.

“The pot is bubbling,” I yelled.

“Just stir it!”

“Are you ok? What are you doing in there?!?” 

She said, “Hold on.”

When she returned, we didn’t discuss the mystery of the bathroom. She didn’t use the bathroom. I checked because I was overwhelmed with entertaining and control. Probably needed a place to hide and I related. During school, I often went to the bathroom to sit in the stalls or masturbate. I masturbated several times in the girls bathroom in high school and for me, I needed to lie down stomach on the tile to do it. Almost immediately, the conversation turned back to mysticism. I said I felt more premonitory.

“I have this strong sensation of death. I’m going to die young,” I say proudly, almost boasting. “At 34.” I pressed my hands into my cabinets and felt two hands press back. I winked but xxx didn’t see it. Felt like a deal. “My landlord will be here tomorrow to collect rent. It is written in the lease in big block letters; NO DRUGS. Even weed.”

“Well, we won’t tell him,” xxx said.

“Yeah, but the smell.”

Having to abandon the project midway through, we wasted most of the weed. This was not well planned.  She gave me a bottle of vegetable glycerin to bake with. I don’t know what to do with anything people give me but I sat it on top of my fridge and watched dust settle on the cap. My cat was moving stones all around and my friend told me she wanted to rearrange the house. I said she likes to cuddle a lot and she said she might want other jobs to do but XXX said it was hard for things to not want to be as close to me as possible.

“You’re a big light, Catarina, everyone wants to be next to you.”

This made me shiver. 

I decided being sober with her was smarter. We went to a show with my friends that night for the New Year and I wore a ballerina dress and a black top and felt separated from everyone. I sat on the couch for a while with a friend from P.S. and wanted to make out with her. Our thighs touched and she leaned close to me several times to tell me how much she loved a song. Her skin had pock marks from acne. I’ve always wanted a scarred face, I think to myself.  I did not want to feel my thighs with my hands and got up suddenly to dance. I swayed a bit and took a picture to remember.  That night I felt ok with xxx. We pet my cat together and she told me more stories of Fatima. How warm she is. How she blesses those who say her name. Told me about incantantations. Na’ats. Songs you can write. The night before I had a dream I was walking through a shadow and kicking him out. My men handed me three guinea pigs to take care of and I also found a woman killing people. I began to rescue cats in the dream and take modeling pics with a friend. 

The next day was long and arduous. The cat had continued to move objects and I left them alone only because xxx was there. She rolled my chrysoprase stone off the dining room table in front of the wooden altar in the living room. XXX asked what things represented. I said I don’t know but I had spent all of winter rearranging my house into altars.

“For Lilith. I just make them without thinking. My entire house,” I looked around. “ I started drawing pictures to her too. Pictures of her in a tree.”

I did not show her the pictures.

“I didn’t realize at first but that’s what’s happening. That it was her. The woman.  It started a few months ago.”

There were pictures and objects everywhere in my apartment. XXX entered a stark transition here.  I always liked things bright but suddenly everything was placed. Arranged. Nothing felt crucial but it felt set.  Candles everywhere. Relics like she had: old coins, an old Polish dollar, my nana’s old crucifix,  the booty she knitted me. Pictures of my dead dog. Rosaries. The penny from England XXX had just given me. Another hamsa near a shell from Norfolk. I was wearing my brother’s ashes around my throat again and then sometimes hiding the sapphire locket in a drawer, buried under socks.. Sometimes rejecting his spirit. Sometimes banishing things out loud and calling God out loud. Only letting that word in.  I’d wave everything else out.  XXX told me stories of himself sitting in Fatima’s lap and feeling light wrap around the two of them

XXX said, “Like heaven, one might say.”

She held her hands out to me. We were sitting on my couch which was more like a second bed full of pillows. The couch had no back to it. The mechanism to separate it from couch to pull out had broken. I slept there when I had insomnia. If you don’t fall asleep within ten minutes of laying down, you are supposed to get out of your bed and do something. Often, I will reopen Spotify to see what my friend feed says to me, but other times I just lay down on the couch out here and let the shadows move around me.

“How do you worship her?” She smiled, “You can become the apple of Lilith’s eye. She rewards her devotees.”

Shaking my head, I swallowed and could feel a swarm of bees inside of me.

“I just talk to her but I’m scared of her. Sometimes I tell her to go. Banish her.”

She looked puzzled.   I told her about the vision of the slaughtered pig in front of my bookshelf  when I laid down and the reptile thing pretending to be my brother.

“He pointed to that tree,” I pointed to the tree my brother had painted when he was a preteen.

“My oven timer sometimes goes off in the middle of the night also,” I said.


“Sounds like you might be possessed and need an exorcism. Have you contacted the Catholic Church?”

I shook my head and the bees dissipated.  I asked her to leave.  She had smoked weed so we had to wait five more hours. I tapped my knees with my fingertips on the couch. I could feel something towering over me. Not quite palpable but very very close. We made small talk as time passed. Refusing to discuss Lilith, we spoke of the tedium of my job, being a social worker, charity. She spoke of the video game she made about insurgent females murdering infiltrators.

“You’re an angel, Catarina,” she said.

Sometimes when I shifted, I could feel spiders move in my veins. If you asked her what I looked like, xxx would say vacuous and unmenacing. A cave in daylight. And alert like I’m ready to be punched. She left at 11:30 pm. I fell asleep almost immediately and in my makeup, just a little mascara and blush to perform myself.  Feeling worn out from all of the talking, I was asleep in minutes but woke up at 1:30 to the oven timer. I was getting used to it. I went back to bed and felt my soul leaving my body. Feels like a vibration moving through you and upward. I was getting used to it. I grounded myself by imagining my back planted firmly on the mattress. Being sewn in the mattress. Willing my skin to touch the sheets and grow up them like moss. I am menstruating. I am unfraid mostly. I fell back asleep and dreamt I was completing something with her and using crystals.  I don’t sleep soundly but hard. 

I wake up tangled in sheets like I had kicked about all night. 

1/2/2017

I felt it important to get rid of things. Anything really. Had begun to remove sweaters from my drawer, shorts that were very short or tight, anything that felt of no use. No use as in it fit awkwardly. I had gained weight from comforting myself with pizza and ice cream and generally vacillated between eating a lot suddenly at night and fasting any other time. When people asked me what I ate, I always answered I don’t know.  I was preparing for room.  And my friend xxx was coming. For New Year’s. I wanted no company. I wanted to slice my body into edges with a razor and let all the bad drain in a tub but I got a bunch of trashbags and began cleaning out my closet. 

12/31/2016

They sat at a picnic table under a canopy of white lights and green leaves in the far back corner far away from the wedding party. She took long drags of his vape pen as it suited her.
“How long ago?” he asked eyeing her bare and shimmered (just a bit of body glitter, nothing too ostentatious) forearm brushing his wrist bone as she placed it carefully back on the table next to his glass.
“Years,” she blew a trail of smoke in his direction, smirking.

She smirked a lot. That’s the first thing he noticed about her. Even as they stood at the ceremony watching the bride and groom recite their vows, high five each other, kiss and walk away, she had a cockeyed grin. Wearing sunglasses at the time, he couldn’t see in her eyes what he could now, but he could see those sidelong glances. Everything was done with just a twist of the neck, a movement of the lips, the upturned knowing. They ate pasta and she ordered Earl Gray and refused wine over and over covering her glass with her hand and allowing him to drink her share.

“I think it’s cool you came to the wedding,” he smiled wide showing her the large bite of sausage he had just taken.
She turned to watch her mug cool.

“There are no hard feelings between us,” she felt the edges of the mug cautiously with her fingertips. “I am happy for him.”

She finished the entire pot in under forty five minutes and joined the rest of the crowd on the dance floor. Swaying near the bar, stoned, she let the bartenders eyes befall on the stranger’s hands running up and down her hips. She tilted her chin upwards to elongate her throat costumed in sapphire and to gaze. Gaze up at the ceiling, at the lights, at the planks keeping the roof on this restaurant. She let her body undulate in slow waves. Absentmindedly, she would smile like the room was doing it to her. She would show her teeth with joy like the music moved her. Rock her legs like she was really there with all of them, really occupying that space. The groom interrupted a couple times and was gregarious and bubbly towards her, hugged her, thanked her and shook his hand.  When they finally left, she hugged each of the wedding party with sincerity and warmth, gripping them for seconds. Standing back and pointing to herself, she again commented on how she matched the groomsmen; blue and cream and floral and fingered her throat to show off her jewels (the glitter on her arm popped), but made no real scene about it. She twirled once before exiting and caught two servers staring at her. The stranger left separately and met her on the corner of Kent and Metropolitan on red.
“I’m just up the street,” she said, waiting for the light to change
“It’s 1am,” he grabbed her and led her to the other side. “There’s no one out but us.”
He followed behind her a few steps after that, bumbling and he let his hand rest on her lower back as she led him two miles in platform wedges to her apartment. He complained only a couple times about the length of the walk but she quieted him by pointing to her feet.  

“I’m the one in heels, dude.”

He held her hand and asked again, “How many times with the groom?”

She shrugged.

“You don’t know?”

“I didn’t count those things,” she let go of his hand and walked hurriedly.

He took big strides to catch up immediately. She glanced back at him.
“You’re a voyeur?”
He smirked this time.

“More of a friendly psychologist.”

She took his hand and turned the corner sharply.

“It was an on and off thing but mostly friendship.”

“”What does that mean?”

She led him to an unlit stoop.

“I once came to twirling in a pool in a prom dress on ecstasy in the arms of a man I was  not dating nor ever planning to date.”

He stood at the bottom of the step watching her walk up.

“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Now on the porch she reached into her slim silver pocketbook to grab two silver keys on a simple silver ring and approached the door.
“I think it does,” she said unlocking the knob without turning around. “Come now and be quiet. I think my neighbors are sleeping.”
He hopped up each step with precision, without missing a step or falling.

“Your wish is my command.”

Immersed in bath again. Tonight it is chamomile, yarrow oil and a sprinkle of angelica root. My Nana’s rosary is on the windowsill next to a hunk of tourmaline on the shelf that holds my razor and shampoo, and I have placed a rose quartz at the bottom of the tub. I am feeling superstitious. This will make it worse. Baths soothe me. Some call it depression or “seasonal affective disorder” or chemical imbalance or not trying hard enough.  I don’t know what to really call it but nothing could be worse than this.  It is 5:30 pm. If anyone asks how I am doing, I say fine. 

“Did you take your prozac? he asks from the kitchen.

I dug my nails into the sofa. My hair was combed. My lips were not chapped.

“Yes,” I responded immediately.

I kept my nails in the sofa. It was the mostly mocking tone I had grown so accustomed to hearing that triggered me. The medicine created a tense space between us and left me feeling like a new baby well of sorrow was building somewhere deep inside of me but couldn’t empty itself. Mechanisms related to crying had disappeared or been stifled somewhere in the bottom of a trunk I had no access to or had lost the key or motor skills to turn the lock so I just let it fill without my knowledge. It sat fat, plump with previous insult, previous assault or terror, ready to spill over if I had the wherewithal to sharpen my nails and eviscerate my body.  suffocate him, or the precious bottle of antidote, or the pillow I keep between us and  grip daily for comfort. I was growing pernicious in apathy. I’m a tepid lunatic that never grows to boil. I laugh and splash the top of the water. I am not panicking but three places at once again.  Here, in this memory, I was devoid of feeling but going through the motions, I was sitting eerily still waiting for dinner. He finished gelling his hair and I simmered. I was wearing a pink and purple striped sundress that tied in the back. I was wearing lip gloss to match. My purse was already on my arm and I had pinned a stray hair back with a blue and green caterpillar clip a girlfriend had given me to remind who I was, and mostly, I was trying not to check the time as I waited for the years to pass by.

My bottom lip is under water before I realize I am sinking. I shoot up with fake alarm. I will never drown like this. But I am stoned, I remind myself.  Better to be careful than feed your ghost regret. What is this? I look around my delusive tomb in horror. Lit with more than a dozen votives: all white and tall and leaving flecks of wax all over everything, the room smells faintly of fresh linen but it is a manufactured smell; plastic, not the way most fresh linen smells. My sheets smell blank. There was more than that too: lavender incense wafting from the dresser in the bedroom, the ylang-ylang that permanently coats the sides of the tub, and the faint remnant of vinegar from where I tried to scrub the spots off the mirror with my homemade glass solution. I am over stimulated. Wildly stoned and always coming back to myself in the middle of the same thought: maybe that’s where these hallucinations start, I feel uncomfortable. The voice from my bowels is starting again. Goosebumps dot my shoulder and I regret not making a fresh Earl Gray before I got in. Loscil is playing in the background from my bed and I want it louder. I want someone there to help with these things and I can’t tell you how long I sit upright in a fetal position contemplating that thought. I keep no clock in the bathroom. I desperately need the respite.

Sinking back to let my head rest on the peeling ceramic, painted over twice a year to hide it’s decay,  I sigh loudly in a way that tells the world, Nevermind, I am alone and I’m ok today. I’m going to make it. There is a way out.  I deeply inhale the green grass dotted by gray ash from the glass bowl I placed next to my nana’s rosary and I say to no one:

“I need help.”

 This is fine.  There is something about water that is so soothing to me. My whole life has been spent in water. As a child, my summers were spent outside with the Dyson sisters at the community pool; getting tan and bracing the high dive, guessing which lifeguards liked each other, giggling, showing the boys the banana Now-n–Laters stuck to our teeth. If it wasn’t the pool, it was at the beach chasing ghost crabs, learning how to body surf with Alex, being pulled under every time and miraculously standing to survive, the top of my bathing suit always twisted to expose one nipple before I realized. I was always keeping an eye on Alex from some distance. Even at the pool, in my accidental glow and popularity, he in his awkward pallid skin, we sometimes were distant but never separate. I always kept an eye on him. Some days my legs were beat by jellyfish, my toes were sore from broken shells, cut and pinched my crabs, but I always went back in. During storms, I scoured the block in the pouring rain looking for bugs or just letting the water baptize me. Even as a child, I showered whenever I was upset and the thundering tantrum couldn’t cut it, I needed a warm cleanse. In adolescence, baths replaced those as I needed more time to mourn the interminable unrequited love that I continually faced as my hormones grew into teeny monsters to match the teeny breasts that baited them closer. I hit that budding menses stage and sobbed into the pink drain at my bad luck; a woman?!?!  Everyone hates women. 

My mom called me a little water bug and those didn’t bother me either. I played tidal wave with the beetles that flew into our kiddie pool. I ducked dragonflies, watched them skim the tops of the water in the ditch when we played house in my backyard. I spent hours in the rain plucking worms from their hiding places; under bricks in neighbors’ gardens, my legs caked in mud as I walked back with a handful to feed to Michaelangelo, our alligator snapping turtle.  I never avoided puddles.  I jumped right into them. Water was my sanctuary. 

“You’re filthy, Catarina!” my mother would scream as I traipsed the wilderness all over our kitchen floor on the way to the tank, letting twigs drop from my knees.

“Look, Alex!” I would ignore her to drop a handful of worms near Mike’s head so he saw them instantly. 

The two of us would stand over him in awe as he quickly and with uncanny precision, devoured each one right after the other, little particles of flesh floating to the top. I pressed my palms together to stay grounded in the excitement.

“Get in the shower when you’re done!” my mom shrieked from the kitchen.

“Mom,come look,”  Alex pointed as I rolled my eyes.

“Cool,” Alex would say and I nodded.

I splash the top of the water again for my own enjoyment, getting the cat’s attention and letting the daydreams take back over. The weed was devouring every synapse. One summer, I had a sprained ankle. Who knows where I got it; probably doing gymnastics in the backyard, showing off, proving I was the best at something I was clearly a novice at, but I tumbled. My mom wrapped it carefully in an ace bandage for me. Some hot day we had gone to a party near a lake with their friends and their friends’ kids. No one packed a bathing suit for me because I wasn’t supposed to swim with my impairment but once everyone jumped into the water, I was immediately forlorn. My parents really couldn’t take my tantrums for more than a few seconds and I knew this was no place for screaming, that would lead to too much embarrassment. I had to beg.

Consumed by jealousy, I began,“Please please please please please please please please pleeeeease, please pleeeeeaase.” I repeated like that to my mom and began to hop on one foot. “I am fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine. Loooook, fiiine. Fine fine fine.”

My mother frowned.

“I’ll watch her Linn,” my dad, fun drunk hero, interrupted before she could remind me of the agreement and I began to quickly hobble and quickened the hobble to a half run, still in red sundress, still with barrettes in hair to the edge of the lake. I started wading to catch up to my new friends on the back of their dad’s raft before my mom could even consider an outfit for me to put on instead of the dress.

“Look, mom,” I shouted already caught up to the others. “I’m fine! I am using my right leg! I won’t drown!” I splashed for effect to show her I was the best swimmer out there.

My mom waved. I waved back. It was that perfect time of day in summer. Everyone had the day off. Everyone had eaten and drank their fill of wine coolers. The kids had plenty of soda and time to run around the house. We were settling but still excited; had worked some of that nervous energy out. The sun was beginning it’s journey to set, casting a yellow glow over the entire surface of the water and everyone was happy. I was in the water and everyone was happy. I was not alone.

I shoot up again with that thought. You’re stoned. I am stoned and sinking into the water again. I run my hands over my wet head and curl back into my upright fetal position to watch the nearest flame wink. 

“It’s so hard to stay present,” I say to the empty apartment. 

Tapping my fingers on top of the water to watch the ripples, I pretend the noises it makes are from someone else. Someone else’s hand on top of the water. Someone else’s eyes doused in flame reflecting back to me,“Have you ever tried telling anyone about your fear of drowning?”

Fuck. The imaginary man sitting on the ledge handing me the hot Earl Gray is right. I am lonely.

12/30/2016

Dreamt I blacked out and hit a cat and a squirrel. I was crying that none of my friends stopped me or cared. None of them seemed bothered. My car was dented and it had painted messages all over it. Thoughts upon waking up: I am trying to heal, be easy on myself.

I walked to the South Street bridge and over and back. I paused every so often to look at the water, up at the moon, the street lamps, a semi truck on the highway across that was noisy, almost asking me to see it. It was asking me to see it. I am thinking in fractions of things that I wrote down, “something’s leaving me. Parts of me.”  

I would sit on the cold bench and let time pass on the pier and then later on the river trail. Always the same spot. Almost began to mark the spot and watch the water ripple slightly. Vigilant, turning my head almost constantly to see if a biker was coming or someone was coming. This idea someone was coming. More like waiting. Waiting for time to pass. I was never cold but when I got back, my cheeks were flushed and I needed a hot bath to cool down. I began to drink copious amounts of black tea, decaffeinated and sometimes would bring my thermos with me on these walks. I was falling asleep by nine and waking up by dawn. I could pour ten cups of coffee into my system and lethargy would creep its way across my carpet, find me on the couch, attempting. Attempting motion. 

I didn’t wear gloves and if I did I took them off eventually. The metal thermos was warm and I put my hands in my pockets often enough to change the song. I was often taking my phone in and out of my pocket. I was no longer participating in the online world save to Google things which I did often. Meaning of stones. Meaning of colors. Meaning of Gods. Song lyrics. I became obsessed with song lyrics and titles and the order they played. Even when I make the playlist, I become obsessed with the order they play.  I made the first list to Lilith and the first song was “Happy Birthday” by Gia Margaret.  When I am back home, I find myself staring at the screen. Staring at someone’s name and the song they had played. They had played it many times that day. I could see every time they stopped the song and started again. I am thinking they are hearing that I am encouraging them to finish it.  I am thinking  I am touching the keys and they are receiving what I am sending.

“Happy birthday.” 

And with a wash of despondency, I am head back to the wall, eyes closed. 

12/29/2016