Wild Recognize Wild: Coming to Terms With My Darkness

Growth is a strange beast, isn’t it? You think you’re all love and light, and then you wanna cut someone. You think you’re free of the anger and melodrama from your past and then this dark demon shakes up your insides. On my journey into clarity, balance, and alignment with the source of my energy, my innermost being, the instincts I arrived in this body with, I have found myself in various stages of self reflection, self discovery, and self awareness. The crazy thing about it all is that I never know which stage will strike when. Lately, I have been dealing with my wild side.

Battles and Blood

Yes, there is still a part of me that has blood dripping from the corner of her mouth, a part of me that has a dagger hitched to her thigh, a part of me whose irises sharpen when they witness a challenge. “Do not fucking challenge me,” that voice says. “I will win.”

At my happiest, most blissful moments, when I am feeling carefree and lighthearted, I think she’s gone. I’d swear I’m not that person anymore. “No,” I’ll say. “I haven’t felt that way in ages.”

I am in a place now where I am comfortable putting down my social justice warrior weapons. I have dropped my big bad sword. I have retired my throwing stars and my battle axe. I have absolutely realized beyond doubt that my work to make the world a better place is not nor will it ever be through fighting the battles of others.

There are people who are happy with that work, who take it on willingly, who do it much better than I ever could. Because my heart was never really in it. Because I never really saw what good it did. I was simply a fighter ready for a fight, and I chose a side.

Because in my mind I couldn’t see the good, it finally no longer made sense to do it.

Those battles are behind me, a whisper of a memory that now I look back on now with a simple smile. I was doing the best I could with what I had.

Triggers

So I thought I had rid myself of that part of me, the warrior, the dark witch.

Come to find out that bitch is still around.

I’ll be triggered on a personal level, either myself or my children, and the fangs and claws come out, a reflex.

I was out running the other night, and a series of songs blasted through my headphones from my playlist, and that perfect mix of angry powerful vengeful anthems triggered me.

I’m her. She’s me. Just because I don’t walk around looking for a fight, doesn’t mean I’ll ever be able to kill that part of me.

And I’m finally coming to realize that I don’t want to.

The dark part of me is a long lean snake coiled around my spine. She slithers out or springs forward when I need her. My problem in the past has always been that I was unintentional and completely chaotic in my rage.

I would strike, snap, bite, slice at a moment’s notice without thinking, ripping open wounds in even those closest to me.

Multiple Personalities

Years ago an aunt I’m really close to was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder, what is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder. She had experienced severe childhood abuse, and so her identity fragmented, forming multiple personalities with their own roles inside her psyche. This fragmentation typically occurs as a way to protect the person being abused. One personality will take the pain and abuse while the other(s) do not have to witness or experience it. Essentially, those other personalities black out.

In therapy, she learned that the best outcome for DID would be to integrate all of the personalities so that they worked together to function as one.

Interestingly enough, I have come across many people who, like me, find they have a much much milder version of this fragmentation, where certain personality traits are stronger in certain situations. I always thought it must have been related to childhood trauma of some sort, but lately I’ve been questioning that.

I wrote about my first and only experience with a medium recently, and one thing that stood out to me from that experience, and has stood out even more as time has gone on, has been something she said:

“Oh,” as if this realization just struck her. “You match people’s energy. That’s what you do.”

Matching Energy

And it’s true. I can thrive in any environment. I can be the life of a wild party. I can be sophisticated and intellectual. I can laugh and play on splash pads and have dance parties with kids. I can match the energy of a teenager in front of me or a much older woman in a bookstore next to me. I can be a wild, untamed, evil bitch with a dagger in each hand, a bruise under one eye, a shirt sleeve torn, and a dark grin on my lips.

This has always been true for me.

I was giving love advice to grown women when I was 12. I was chasing much older dangerous men in my teens and being chased by much younger, quieter men in my twenties. I was the best student in most of my classes in college. I rise to management level in every job I have ever had longer than a few months. (I’ve had A LOT of jobs.)

Today, one of my jobs is as a life coach to a male small business owner in his 50’s who happens to be a Jehovah’s Witness, and we click perfectly.

It is why content writing, copywriting, and life coaching is such great work for me. I slip into the personality that best fits that client and become that person, writing from his or her perspective but using my own skills as a writer, a salesperson, and a storyteller. And as I’ve journeyed through my self awareness, I have learned not to absorb the energy of the other person. Not to get emotionally involved.

So what I have come to terms with lately is that I don’t actually want to kill the vicious viper inside me. She’s part of me. I love her the way I love all the other parts of me.

What I want to do, and what I think I’ve done quite well so far, is to integrate her into the rest of my space.

Who Tells You?

“Who tells you, when you’ve been abused as a kid, who tells you to be intentional about your actions? Who tells you that you’re in control of your emotions? That you have unlimited power to do whatever you want, to be whoever you want?” My husband was asking these rhetorical questions one night recently as we sat up late talking over red wine.

“At 15, at 10, at 5? Who tells you that you don’t have to lie, cheat, steal to survive? Who helps you with that?” He was demanding to know. Demanding of who I’m not sure. The universe? A god we don’t believe in? Maybe.

“No one, Carlos. No one tells you.” I said quietly, sipping from my glass.

I went on.

“No one tells you. In fact, the whole world tells you just the opposite. ‘Sit still, shut up, listen to me, focus, play by the rules, you’ll never understand these rules, you’ll never be anything, do what I say, don’t follow your instincts, you have no power.’ That’s what we’re told.

“And fortunately, when we both broke, we shattered into so many pieces at such a young age, that we, you and I both, put ourselves back together in ways that allowed us to someday figure it out. That we are masters of our own destiny. That we have all the power. That we can live the lives we want to live. And what a happy coincidence that we found each other, and recognized each other, along the way.” I reminded him.

Wild Recognize Wild

The music, the medium, this conversation with my husband, all brought me to the stunning realization that it was that wild, dark, untamed part of me that responded to Carlos, that recognized the wild, dark, untamed part of him.

“You’re like a savage still.” I’ve told him many times, laughing, joking.

My husband sleeps odd hours. He’ll sleep from 9PM to 2AM and then be wide awake. Then nap from 3PM to 4PM in the middle of the day. Alternately he’ll stay up til 1AM and then wake up at 5AM and workout for two hours.

He likes to sleep on the couch, not because it’s so comfortable but because he just has this habit of not always sleeping in his own bed.

He is the kindest, gentlest, most laid back, most loving person you’ll meet. But there’s this one long lean trigger deep inside of him, coiled around his spine, that when tripped brings out this battle cry warrior I’ve only seen a few times in our 12 years together.

It is why he is so soft with our kids. He lets them run all over him. “I don’t want to snap at them and hurt their feelings. What if I’m mean to them? What if I scare them? I can’t let myself go there.” He’ll tell me.

“Ah,” it finally hit me, out on my run, Eminem and Skylar Grey singing about tragic endings. “I am savage too. That is in me too. And my wild recognizes his wild.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJuwvkQV1gE

Integration

And it’s so funny that we live these relatively peaceful, normal lives, burying these wild warriors, hiding them in our dark places, barely acknowledging their existence, or their importance.

It is only through this journey that I have come to allow my wildness to begin to integrate with the rest of me. I can love all of me. I have nothing to be ashamed of. That part of me has her own reason for being. And I don’t have to know what it is right now, or ever.

Letting her be a real, shared part of my existence makes me feel more whole, more me, complete.

Today, as I was going through my fall plans for homeschooling Celaya, she and I were discussing math, reading, writing, and some extra curriculars we had agreed on.

“Do you want to play any sports?” I asked.

“Hmm,” she thought. “Can I play soccer with Malia?” She asked.

I messaged Malia’s mother, who directed me to the league she had enrolled her daughter in. I searched the website, found that registration had long since closed, and that there was a chance for a wait list.

I emailed the address listed on the site, acknowledging that we were way late, but just taking a shot in the dark. “Any chance?” I wrote.

A few hours later I received a reply.

“Sorry. Registration is closed. Check with Hayward Soccer League. They may still have an opening. If you want to join next year please register in April.”

Slap Slap Slap

I felt the sting of the woman’s curt words and repeated reminders that I had missed registration.

This is when the evil malicious bitch in me would normally respond with a scathing, cutting reply to put this woman in her place. Snark and sarcasm screamed at my seams, the snake uncoiling, forked tongue flickering, aching to strike.

“Yea. I saw that registration was closed. That was not my question. Thank you for emailing me to make that clear though.” I wrote back.

I went on to clarify what my actual question was, whether my daughter could add late, but that the answer to that question was now clear as well. I thanked her again for reminding me of the rules. And I assured her that if my daughter wanted to play next year I would be sure to pay close attention to the rules.

I signed off with love, light, and appreciation.

I felt bad for a split second. I should be above it all. I should have just not responded at all. I should have should have should have.

But then I shrugged. This is who I am. I am integrating all the parts of me, and that will always include the wild, untamed bitch. The love and light part of me is learning how to temper the savage, but I’m not sure that I ever really want her tamed.

She’s gotten me this far, after all.