time to Go.

an ask for prayers + support for the healing i am Choosing

we don’t have the story, the story has us, my teacher martin wrote, and says.

it is me, in tears, noticing all the tiny signs along the rainy walk back home from the store, my ex and longtime friend on the other end of the phone, reminding me how joseph campbell’s voice spurred him Onward. how the stories spurred him Onward.

2017 was the year i inked LIVE YOUR LEGEND into my flesh. a talisman that burned red for days, the only one of my tattoos to ever do such a thing. joseph campbell, in 2016, when eric and i met and started falling in love and Alchemical Work— joseph campbell telling the grail legends— years later, in 2021, the first long old story i ever told— parsifal.

parsifal who was shielded by the world from his mother, his mother who had been hurt. his mother who lost his father to the war, who did all she could to prevent her son from going the same way. her son whose destiny Found Him, in the shape of the knights riding through his everyday-familiar dappled forest landscape, the knights he thought were Angels, the knights he immediately Knew he wanted to Be, as soon as he saw them.

he began to live his mother’s nightmare. his mother’s nightmare, his truest Dream.

i remember this was back when my own mother was still attending my storytellings— before i realized that when it came time to ‘feed the story,’ all she could do was change the details she didn’t like.

i remember how she changed that parsifal’s mother dropped dead when he left. she brought her back to life. // i wonder and barely even want to type, i wonder if she will do that for herself, Now.

what is my responsibility, what isn’t?

what was parsifal’s responsibility, what wasn’t? isn’t?

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we all love the stories wherein the impossible things happen. the hero leaves, hearing the call, seeking that Something Else. stumbling into destiny, picking up the feather that brings all the Trouble; Grace.

these stories have been the voices of my True Self. singing me Back, singing me Back, to Life.

singing to me with voices i can Understand— that allow me to share myself without shielding, allow me to cry and bellow and be Big and soft and tender. Huge. intimate.

everyone comes, bringing you something, showing you something.

eric in 2016 brought me joseph campbell, brought me his love of the old stories— moreso, brought me the map that would save my life. brought me the light half and the dark half of the circle. brought me the topside world And the underworld. brought me stories that held the world together, that made sense of brutality, of suffering, made sense of things beyond comprehension— when i say ‘make sense’ maybe i actually mean, just Meeting. just Sitting With. just associatively, imagistically, Connecting To. creating new Pathways For, and Towards.

i am not a storyteller simply because i ‘love stories.’ or because i was a writer/poet/performer/etc since i was a child— i’m a storyteller because they continually save my life.

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there is a story, simultaneously, Though, that has been killing me. we swap stories for other stories, contexts for other contexts.

tell me how i feel, this morning, pendulating from the lightness and alignment i feel in talking with my friends to the absolute utter crushingness i feel from my mother’s emotions, projections, fears, guilt— tell me how i realize in this moment, i don’t think i’ve ever wanted to die. i think it’s been This. i think it’s been This Feeling. this feeling for which the only response is laying down Dead. not getting Up. feeling utter worthlessness, like my Dreams are Entirely Wrong, like being Myself is Entirely Wrong. like i have let down the One Person, the Exact People, it was my job to make happy, to Protect.

could it have been This, and all rhizomatically connected to it, All Along?

was the kabbalah teacher right when he told me, so soon after meeting me, you don’t want to kill yourself. // you haven’t done anything wrong.

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what does it mean when the person who birthed you doesn’t believe in any of your dreams? that root, when you travel it downwards, and inwards— that foundation built on shifting sands. suffocating, smothering, Quicksand. the conditionality of support. of love. we will support you— writing, drawing, playing video games, working, doing plays, giving you what you want, getting good grades, ‘excelling’— as long as you do it within this prescribed box, the geography of our comfort and choosing.

when staying alive meant busting the sides of that box open— the next crises began to unfold that had never unfolded in such a way, Before— especially for a golden child, eldest child, mediator, Listener, watchman, Hero; those of familial belonging.

over and over i trace my path, i trace my divergences out of Necessity from the world in which my mother, father, family, live. the lack of understanding— that if i Stayed There, i would be Dead. if i Stayed There, i would be Dead.

i cried into the phone, in the rain, what if i can’t make it to the day i’m choosing to leave? what if i can’t get there? i’m so tired. i’m so tired. that’s how this feeling makes me feel. like i want to lay down, and not get up. ever again.

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at the beginning of last year, the white wolf emerged. i had been walking with the black wolf for years— the one who had become the king on my heart-throne, the animus, the one who learned the underworld alongside me— i thought i knew the white wolf, i thought i knew the topside world; i don’t. i know their conception of the topside world. of my past, of what they want(ed) from me. i was told i couldn’t go any further into the direction i was travelling; there would be only death. i had to come back up to the surface, resisted coming back up to the surface.

2025, ten years marked, since the year this all started. it wasn’t just the surfacings of my crises and suicidality— it was the year i walked Into The Wild.

somehow i forget that. somehow i forget it.

that clarice lispector quote, something about— she went out to look for herself.

the thing that i was told did not exist.

2015 didn’t just bring crisis, rupture, heartbreak, the beginnings of Descent.

it brought an Opening unlike any i had experienced.

it brought the Grace of letting myself Take A Chance— and seeing, Seeing, how Quickly— things Change.

from wishing into the ocean that i’d drown— calling off my engagement, trying to fit back into my previous ex’s life, disappointing and confusing my parents, and Everyone, it seemed— from the Mess of it, the inescapable-seeming Mess of it—

to waking up in a tent on a tree platform. and for the first time in days not wanting to die.

being in the heat, on the land, in the moonlight, in the sweat, in the field. bug sounds, bird sounds, Silence. pitch black save for fire with a voice asking me if they could tell a story. two boys i had just met singing matisyahu’s ‘live like a warrior’ and nahko + medicine for the people’s ‘wash it away,’ two voices and acoustic guitar.

and all the other things we/i did that summer. my sister and i. myself. the Chance I Gave Myself. to Live The Life I Wanted.

can i connect these threads? my beloveds are telling me they are Already Connected.

10 years onward. your steps then. your steps Now.

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only those who are adult children of dysfunctional families will understand the annihilatory feelings associated with making a choice for the True Self. adult children who are highly sensitive people, who are empaths, who have huge hearts. who know their parents are traumatized narcissists but take the bait and want to keep loving them, at all cost, Anyway. it is a Visceral thing. that children growing up with fear and control will understand. those punished for individuating, for Wanting More. those for whom natural expansivity of heart and spirit are blasted as selfish, insatiable, reckless, unstable. who take on, absorb, live by, die by, those stories. those who want to Explore. crushed under the weight of expectation, of family. viscerality of what it feels like in the body to try to let go of what you’ve been holding up your whole life— and survive it. how impossible, at times, it feels to take responsibility for Yourself— and not the emotions, lives, destinies, of Everyone Else.

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there is something in me that has always Believed in that Something Else.

in probably my early 20s i remember standing in front of a subway ad that was just a big image of hermes’ legs and winged ankles.

i remember the words lilting through my head ten years ago when i first began trying to make decisions for my own autonomy:

someday you’ll know why you were never satisfied.

it feels somehow like the much more recent words i ripped from my notebook and taped to my wall in this family home:

in the future i will look back on this time and remember the choices i made. that as hopeless as it seemed, we re-membered.

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i ask for your support, friends. i ask for your mothering and fathering. i ask for your laps to cry in. your Seeing me, Softly, as i see you. i ask to know your homes, your lands. i ask you to travel with me. to hold me when i’m scared. i ask you to rewrite the voice in my head telling me, over and over, i’m doing something wrong. that I am something wrong. that my Dreams are something wrong.

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the white wolf wears the swan cloak. the white wolf knows a topside world i have never fully allowed myself to live in. the white wolf knows Love, Is Love, beyond my current conception. the white wolf is Peopled. is Community. is New-Old Ways. is Asking For Help. is Joy. is remembering Dancing. is remembering sharing breaths. not feeling bad for merely Existing. the white wolf is not ‘being positive all the time.’ the white wolf is the Real light.

the white wolf grows old over and over and becomes La Loba. becomes grizzled. becomes scour-er of the desert to find the soul bones. when i sit in the cave of myself, she is there, probably with yeshua and miriam of magdala. with my 2015 self who thank-all-the-gods was reading for the first times women who run with the wolves. who felt Herself in that story, those Stories— telling me that i was not bad. i was not reckless. i was not selfish. i was rhythmic. i was Honest. i was Listening. i was Curious. i was Exploring. i was Expansive. the stories gave me the landscape in which to Move.

tears edge my eyes as i type. for all that we have to create, from Nothing, from Wasteland. parsifal as a youth stumbling backwards into the grail castle and stopping himself from asking The Question that would have lifted the enchantment— parsifal stopping himself because he had received the advice, from someone elder to him, outside himself, well-meaning— that knights didn’t ask questions.

i sat at the intersection on the block my mother grew up today, waiting for a breakfast sandwich named ‘the upstate.’ i watched the crossing guard, a young guy— greeting everyone, not just greeting them— but really Connecting with them. remembering them. remembering the kids’ names. saying hello to them by name. going out of his way to Be Present. not just doing the job, holding up the stop sign. but changing the Grace around that radius. i told him so, that it made me tear up watching him. thank you for the kindness and care you bring, to what you do.

the white wolf— i Know she wants me to be soft. softer and gentler than i’ve ever been able to be, in the life of my familial context. my ex + dear friend jez reminded me this morning, when i said that i feel like i hate the person i have to become in relation to my mother— reminded me that those parts kept me alive, reminded me that they deserve care and kindness, too.

it breaks my heart that it is so impossible-feeling to love the people who raised you.

i write that sentence and i am stopped— did they raise me? did i raise myself? did the dark raise me, and stories, and ‘playing pretend’? the moon and the light splitting through the water in our backyard pool? the stories that returned to me at 28 years old, 10 years ago— when meeting with them Again meant the thing that could save my life.

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i dreamed last night of averting various kinds of Terrible danger. the one most palpable was a building i was in, going to get a scan or test of some kind— the ceiling started leaking, and then the building started collapsing. i managed to escape the collapsing building. the entire time i felt the sheer tenacity of my want to Stay Alive. Stay Alive, no matter what. i slid, dodged, ran, Moved, broke through a pane of glass, avoided the shifting-ness, breaking-ness, of Everything around me.

There Is A Want To Stay Alive, Here.

a scream that ripped through me, from the bottom outwards, in my kitchen, yesterday. a scream i was wholly justified in making yet felt guilty for. i felt a dual self in the woods. i felt the way the trees, the moss, the ground, would receive my screaming.

i ask for your prayers, friends. as i Go.

so much has changed, so much is the same.

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i ask myself, have you suffered enough, audrey?

the childlike empress, crying into the screen, bastian, bastian,

Why Won’t You Do What You Dream?

there is joy in me that is still unfathomable.

there is Love in me that is still unfathomable.

there is so much i want to Explore.

there is so much i want to Know.

this want for death has never been mine.

this crushingness, this weight, this Burden i have shouldered, i place down— i place Down, Right Here, where it all started. in this house, 38 years ago.

i pick up my backpack. i pick up my drum. i pick up my journal and my pen.

i pick up my stories. i pick up my songs. i pick up the map that exists, Inside Myself, from the past 10 years. the Real origins of which my child self knows better than anyone. i pick up all the dreams that have come true, beyond Wildest— when i have chosen to follow my Own star. when i have Allowed myself to Live. allowed my breathing, my dreaming, my Existing— to be so Good. so good for me, so Good, for the world.

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if you’d like to contribute to my ‘saving my life by travelling and visiting my friends’ fund: venmo Audrey-Dimola or paypal.me/audreydwrites.

to those of you who know what this is like. i promise you, for you and for me.

it’s never too late. it’s never too late. It’s Never Too Late.

thank you for reading.