Is this thing on? (Man, I’m hilarious.)

Here’s a thing.

I was perusing the same shelves of books I had perused every day for months as I tried to find some sense and meaning in my life after realising (not for the first time) that I had neither of those.

It was on the bottom floor of the shop. Tucked in the darkest corner, away from the light and sensibleness the ground floor above offered its patrons. I don’t even remember the name of the bookshop… but I won’t ever forget the smell of those particular books at that a particular time, and the comfortable seats that were on offer for those of us with nowhere else to be and no money to spare.

On this day I was knee-deep staring into the middle distance and not taking anything in. You know, a normal Tuesday. It was sunny outside, but from my special corner of the world it felt comfortingly overcast. I was 19 years old. I was small. I was pretty much socially unfiltered, but clearly had set myself up with numerous masks and protections so that (so I thought) no one would see me for who I was: a very broken girl.

He saw through those masks and protections. He clearly had done so with others. What he saw was a Very Broken Girl with No Sense or Meaning, and he saw a way to make her feel a little less broken for long enough that she would get very, very, dangerously stuck.

One enlightened conversation on those comfy seats later, about the pillars of our existence and the innate ability for some people to wrangle and negotiate with them, and I was walking alone at 1am to an all-night cafe that I didn’t even know existed to meet an absolute stranger for some unknown reason. The cafe was a little too far from my inner city flat to feel comfortable, but far enough away that it truly felt like a spiritual journey. We drank apple tea, he drew symbols on scrap paper with a pen he got me to borrow from the guy at the counter, he pointed out how the flames on the candles at the table were moving just for me - with my intent and power. He made me promise to be there at midnight every day to continue our studies. He was going to teach me the things I wouldn’t find in the books on the shelves of that dark corner in an essentially light bookshop that still had hope for people other than broken girls like me.

There was nothing handsome about this man. Nothing at all. Not to me, anyway… I thought he was just an “old dude” - no magnetism at all as far as I was concerned. I was interested in knowledge only, and especially knowledge that I couldn’t find in books I couldn’t afford. The fact that this knowledge could only be given when everyone else was sleeping was just a bonus; I was a severe insomniac and hadn’t slept more than a couple of hours a night for years. I spent those remaining hours sitting on the concrete floor of my room painstakingly hand painting oversized product labels on the back of cheap wallpaper I found at op shops with the cheapest primary coloured paint I could find. I insisted to myself I was lucky because I got those extra 8 hours a day to do whatever I wanted without having to deal with other humans.

Lucky, lucky me.

The first time I went to the strip club after-hours, having gained permission after months of studying and signing my name on a piece of paper declaring my intent to initiate to the ‘church’, I had to call a number from a payphone over the road at 1am, say nothing but “I’m here”, and watch and wait for the door to slowly open to reveal the dark, steep stairwell I was to silently go up by myself. This was the routine every night for the next I-have-absolutely-no-concept-of-how-many-days/weeks/months. I would spend until the sun came up being physically instructed in the ways of witchcraft with two men who barely talked, and walk back home to my flat before everyone woke up. I would hide in my room until my actual friends went about their relatively normal days and then would sneak back out of the house to try to put what I learned into action around the city, ensuring I was home in time to go back out to the payphone over the road by 1am.

Sometimes a sex worker would be asked to stay after-hours for me to use ‘my powers’ to try to heal them. ‘My powers’ only worked when I was naked, apparently. For the most part I managed to convince the men that ‘my powers’ would probably work ok with only my top off. I don’t know how much I helped, but I do know how much I wanted to. Those women needed and deserved to be helped… properly. Not by the dubious powers of a 19 year old ‘high priestess' who had ultimately just wanted to find her place and reason for being.

And a 19 year old woman who, in retrospect, was being drugged via the weak tea and goats milk she was forced to drink at 1:15am every day, combined with being fed diet pills and starved (she was too fat), exhausted beyond measure (no time to sleep when you’re saving the world), and being completely and deliberately isolated from her support system.

A highlight was the time the two men took me by taxi to a central cemetery to sit in the bushes naked and try to draw insights into my mind and body about what the universe wanted to use me for. It appeared that, after an hour sitting naked in a bush in a cemetery in the middle of the night, the universe sort of just wanted me to be food for the numerous mosquitoes that took that meditation time to bite the absolute shit out of me. I was told that was very fortuitous… the fact they bit me between my fingers said something magnificent about ‘my powers’, that I no longer recall.

I graduated from only being able to meet the man at night to being allowed/required to meet during the day. He was preparing for me to marry him and for us to head to his property Up North, where we would continue as high priest and priestess to help all the women who inevitably would trek for miles to seek us out for me to heal them. This daytime, we were on a bus. He held my hand too tightly (he was ‘protecting me’) while we drove to the jewellery store over the road from our original bookshop to pick out the ring I was going to wear at my last initiation and the crown I would wear at every ritual afterwards. I was assured I was already high priestess, but hadn’t connected properly to the god (assumedly, him) as we hadn’t completed the ‘great rite’. That time was swiftly approaching and I needed to centre myself for it. He told me he would always feel what I did to and with my body from now on - we were already connected so deeply that I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere or do anything without him knowing about it. My body and soul was his. He also told me he was only 29 years old, even thought he knew he probably looked older (he did).

This tipped me over. I stopped going to the payphone over the road at 1am. I stopped going to the all-night cafe. I stayed well away from the bookshop, the jewellery store, outside in general. He called my flat (I hadn’t given him my number) and my friends said I wasn’t available. I organised to meet him one night, with my friends as my bodyguards, to tell him I couldn’t and wouldn’t do this anymore. He wasn’t having it. I said I needed a break, at least. He allowed it, as long as I agreed to keep the necklace he gave me that would keep us linked - reminding me that meant he would still feel everything I do. He added ‘everything I think’ also, just for fun I guess?

My friends were fucking incredible. I have never felt such love and safety before or again as I did that night with my chosen family sticking by and fighting for me, even after months of me being completely absent and a pain in their literal asses. I don’t know how I can ever repay them for that, or everything else - above and beyond - they have done for me over the many years I’ve known them. The guilt I feel about about this still eats at me every day.

Following this properly awful confrontation, we booked flights to head out of the city for a few weeks; this was already planned for two of my friends, but it was timely for me to tag along to try to make the break stick. Until that terrifying winged escape, noting he could apparently still hear me think, I lay on the concrete floor a lot. I wrote in my notebook a lot. I stared at the ceiling in my room, curtains open, windows open, mind shut - a lot.

I also spent hours online talking to:

• kids on the Undernet to help them through their angsty adolescence (there were of course riot grrls and grunge guys - including, controversially, a celebrity grunge guy’s uncle)

• famous witchy authors about what I was going through as a ‘high priestess’ (who assured me it was completely normal, and I was very fortunate that ‘my powers’ led me to this), and

• a person I thought I would spend the rest of my life with (spoiler: I didn’t).

While I was away I pierced my ears an additional four times on one side, and two on the other. I hoped he would feel it. It bloody hurt.

I did see him a couple more times walking around the city before my friends saved me yet again by calling my parents and suggesting they took me back to my home town because I was an absolute wreck. He didn’t see me… I liked to think that was my powers finally coming into their own and shielding me from what I believe to potentially be the literal devil. In actuality, he probably just needed glasses.

You know, cos he was fricken old.

Good times.