My sister called me in tears and I answered before she spoke.
“You can’t beat yourself up. Don’t feel guilty about it. You didn’t do anything to be ashamed of.”
I could feel her feelings emanating through the phone.
“I feel so sad, I feel everything he’s feeling. I feel all of him and I want it to stop. “
She had sex for the second time in her life, and had been ghosted.
My sister and I are different in many ways. Her irish chin, my wide set eyes. I am always busy, moving around, productivity-pilled. She gets in the door and immediately lies down, surrendering to whatever atmosphere she is in. When Im hurt, I get angry first, sad later. She is the opposite. Water and Fire. I shield my vulnerability with overconfidence, she does it with nonchalance. My sister and I are different in disposition,in temperament, but we share one fatal flaw and insatiably important gift: sensitivity.
When I was 18, I snuck out a lot. Fiending the freedom in first kisses and first cars, clumsy in my trust. Had sex until it felt like my soul swapped homes. Was ghosted, dismissed, rubbed off, as if you can exchange fluids and atoms, ideas and atmospheres with someone, and it can disappear. It never does. So where does it go? Where does it all go?
Into us.
I was 21 before I stopped numbing out. I had to go to the ocean and sever ties with everyone I had been with, the salt water slapping my thighs, covered my palms in olive oil and read psalms to an imagined orchestra of Mid Men.
And this was before biochemical warfare.
She told me she absorbed everything he felt, and adopted it like sick dog. I do this too, and explain that girls like us have to be careful. We can end up accidentally superglued to someones internal terrain, and if they don’t garden it, were fucked. I give her herbs, a sparkler to make a wish, hot chocolate with adaptogens, a blanket. I cook her steak. Get her to text my healer. I am angry for her.
The climate of neurodivergence and inhumane interpersonal disassociation is a symptom. A symptom of a three generational spiritual war we are living in. She's feeling what he isn’t addressing. Women are stargates. Shes been detoxing for nearly six months, and what she takes on from him, she’ll have to transmute. A week ago, I felt the ancestors of everyone I’ve ever been with dislodge from my solar plexus, and hamper out like some sort of militant army. The level of aftercare it takes HAS to be worth the energetic exchange. Most 18 year old boys are shite and some of the older ones are worse, but you can't be bitter because it will make your insides rot. Bitterness will make you age faster and you have to fight off apathy with an open heart. You have to fight to stay vulnerable. Don’t be like them, the cold ones. They are liars. You can hold compassion and you can pray for them. Pray that they remember Love and therefore remember God.
I cry for her and I cry for me, because this isn’t how things are supposed to be, this is no rom com. It is parasitic heartless robots against those clinging onto the thread between body and soul for dear life.