#jay bleating

I am 26 years old.  I live with my parents between semesters at school.  It is currently summer “vacation” which means from early May to mid/late August I am living with my parents and working.  My parents are horrible people, let’s just go ahead and put that out there from the get go.  In the past, summer vacations have been hard, but they haven’t been unbearable because I could either stay at my boyfriend’s to escape them or I was working close to 40 hours- mostly at night so I didn’t have to interact with my parents more that completely necessary.  On top of that, my mom used to have a job that she put 40 hours into as well. 

With new laws “full time” is considered 30 hours which means my hours have been cut to 28 hours at best.  On top of that my mom doesn’t work anymore and stays at home constantly and I have literally no where else to go to get away from her.  I have considered working another job but at this point, I’ll only be available to that job for a month and a half so my chances of getting hired are pretty slim plus this is supposed to be a break for me before I go head-first into a 15 hour semester with lab monitoring duty.  I want to relax, I want to do my own art, I want to chill out, and most importantly

I want to do my own spiritual stuff.

My parents and I have a long history of disagreements and quite a few of them center on religion.  A prime example: when I was 18 or 19 I made the mistake of hiding one of my “witchy” books under my bed.  It was discovered and while I was at work, my parents ransacked my room, packed everything “questionable” (in this case well over a couple hundred bucks worth of books and around 8 tarot decks I’d been gradually building up since I was 15) in trash bags and took it to the dump.  Unfortunately behavior like this is pretty par for the course with them even 7-8 years later.

Since then my parents have taken a more head-in-the-sand approach.  We don’t talk about it and they pretend they don’t know and don’t remember which works fine by me.  Trust me, we apparently have so many other things to argue about.  Unfortunately during all this I got comfortable- my mistake.  I have a very simple altar in my room, nothing overtly pagan.  A couple of crows (one of which is wearing a sparkly green top hat), a couple candles, a nondescript box in which I keep offerings for Faelen, a vase, a cute reindeer candle holder, and a bottle of brown liquid (a gender euphoria/masculinity potion).  My altar has looked this way for many years now and I haven’t gotten much reaction from my parents on this other than my mom learning that I will put my laundry up faster if she puts it on this weird shelf.

Over the past two weeks things have gotten tense.  Mom came into my room while she was high and said she wouldn’t stand for “this sort of thing” in her house while motioning to my altar.  My mother is a fickle woman. She will be your friend at one moment and your worst enemy the next.  She will feed you with one hand and slap you with the other in the same instant.  She is completely unpredictable so when she said this I automatically went into panic mode.  I’ve hidden all my tarot decks in random places - coat pockets, inside shoes, under art supplies.  I’ve hidden my runes inside my guitar, my books underneath piles of fabric, smaller objects have been hidden under stuffed animals on the top of my bookshelf.  That being said, my altar remains mostly unchanged because I know if I change it my mother will know I’m hiding something and it will basically give her the ‘warrant’ she needs to go through my things again.

That was 2 weeks ago.  So far nothing has come of her threats.  She hasn’t brought it up again.  I’ve just chalked it up to “mom was high and just spouting off at the mouth again”.  My things have not come out of hiding, just in case.  My practice has become very limited because of this.  I don’t leave food offerings anymore- that could draw suspicion, all my divination methods are hidden and I don’t want to pull them out for fear of being discovered.  The only thing I have been doing that may be noticeable to my parents is I light candles on the rare occasion that they are gone and blow them out when they get home. 

Today was one of those days.  I lost track of time and didn’t blow out the candles til they got home.  Dad came in and instantly starting asking questions. “Have you been burning something?” “No.” “Candles?” “Well yeah.” (I used to burn incense and thought that was what he meant) “That’s burning something.” He then walked into my room and started interrogating me about the altar and as much as I hate to, I lied. “What is that?” “It’s a shelf.” “The things on it.” “Just stuff.” “But why is it there?” “Because I like it there.  It looks nice.” “This doesn’t have something to do with rituals or ceremonies?” “No.” “No talking to deities.” I slipped “Not really.” “What do you mean not really?” “No.” “So is this-” “No.” “It’s not-” “No.”

He knows I’m lying and if he tells mom about the conversation I know shit will happen.  I am pissed off on so many levels.  When I started working with Loki one of the key points was no more hiding, no more lying, no more shame.  When my parents asked me about my gender and sexuality I told them the truth which was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.  In this household, you don’t tell the truth, it will be used against you.  When I was younger if my parents knew what I liked or what I was doing it would be used as a bargaining chip against me, it was something to be taken away or to be made fun of.  Because of that I learned to lie about everything- the books I read, what I was doing, where I was going, who my friends were.  I wasn’t doing anything bad or wrong, but I lied because I knew what they would do with the truth.  When Loki came into my life he put an end to that- don’t coddle them anymore, you’re an adult with your own beliefs, identity, opinions, and emotions.  Lying should help you, not hurt you and lying to your family is hurting you.  All of this is what got me through the hell of coming out to my parents.  No more lying.  No more shame.

-squints eyes-

I’m onto you, buddy….

I finally woke up but moving was difficult. Turns out I had only been asleep for half an hour. So I thought to myself, I know what this is. This feels like another fucking incubus/succubus attack.

Well of course I couldn’t have that,so I sleepily got up, threw some weak wards up and lazily tossed a handful of salt….

Directly into my bed….