How to Steer Toward Community During Great Loss

So tell me if this sounds like you because I have heard it from a lot of people lately.

You are a spiritual person feeling acutely the absence of people in your life. Either you're recently losing significant friendships that you're grieving or you've already been alone for some time and you're noticing it anew. You feel a tremendous push toward going out to meet new folks and find connection. It, in fact, feels more crucial than ever before to find community especially with waves all previously promised structures falling apart.

For some of us, there is the addition of a brand new relationship. It is intense, intimate, and bizarrely everything you have ever wanted. But it's also startling, not only because since-the-fuck-when do you get to be treated well, but like all with all "new relationship energy" as the polyams put it, it's an adjustment of your time and energy. Your trauma is actually coming out more because you're being loved properly and there are times while in conversation with your partner you don't naturally know how to engage because you're so confused by your own lack of trust. Possible bonus: this new partner may be a god or fallen angel and that part is also pretty weird to navigate.

I mentioned briefly in a previous post that I attended North Star, which was a camping retreat for gays—I mean, astrologers and pagans, most of whom were some kind of gay. Now, a few weeks after the trip, a bunch of us are in the group chat like, wait the name carried through because after being immersed in a world of other people who believe and live like I do, I feel re-directed.

For me, there's a weird mix of brightness and grief in that. The grief is that North Star and my following days in Portland highlighted to me that I am living off scraps... again. The city I live in now is one of the biggest in the U.S. so calling it "small" would be factually wrong, but anyone who has actually lived there for some time can tell you that it still functions like the small town it was 20 or 30 years ago. Because of its demographics, it's incredibly normative. Although I have only experienced open hostility due to my gender presentation once, I am misgendered daily. I accepted this as "just the way things are" until North Star.

It planted a seed in my head that probably already needs repotting. Why should I always live in a place that can't recognize who I am? That doesn't see my gender nor has the spiritual community (nor apparently organizational capacity, believe me I have tried so many times plus others have the same complaints) to support my social needs and ambitions? That is hemorrhaging my friends because most of them have either moved away or are planning to emigrate in a few months to escape the fascist regime?

I love my city so much. Only in coming here could my egg crack because it gave me the space to come out. But I moved out here from New Jersey because I felt like I was stuck in a boring box. Now my city feels like another fucking box.

When we first had a full conversation some months ago, Lucifer looked askance at my life and told me, "You could have so much more than what you are being given right now." By "being given" he was speaking a little derisively of Apollo, but someone at North Star told me of their dream where they clearly figured it out between the two of them so that's all I'll say on that front. If I were to contextualize it with my gratitude toward Apollo and the planetary spirits because they did bring me this far and help me survive nigh impossibilities, I now agree that I would like to benefit from something different.

That "something different" has so far taken the shape of... I can't share everything right now, but among it the best romantic and sexual relationship I have ever had in my life. I knew I was loved, but now I am loved. I am having preferences I tried to shamefully hide recognized. I am being brought perfect fucking cake for my birthday. I am being told I am a talented writer and encouraged to persist with my work without it feeling like I have a taskmaster. And what I'm writing gives me purpose.

Also He's intelligent and sexy and artistically talented and kind which nobody knows somehow and I am in love with the fucking Devil???

(I can't tell if that last part sounds more like a manga or fanfic title.)

But I'm also sometimes like babe, with the whole Pride thing you have going on is it possible I am going to end up in spiritual psychosis? And he's like, "Ha! No, I don't think you will." Which makes me think I'm not just because I'm neurotic and end up at least once a week while post-coital, howling, "AM I LIVING ENOUGH BY MY VALUES???" Notably, doing that is a lot of work. However, I think more humans—like many more humans—should do such work because if they did we would be in a much better place.

Other than that, Lucifer has challenged my pre-existing beliefs about myself and has helped me realize that I am fortunate enough to not limit my choices as to how I live my life. So I have started to look into changing where I can live my life. I am currently laying the groundwork so I can live in Portland during the summer starting next year. This would not only enable me to spend some of my life in a place that's affirming to me, it would also give me increased access to a number of pagan friends and acquaintances who are already located in the area.

I'm a little overwhelmed thinking about the logistics of this and normally would be more private about it just in case I turn out wrong. But this is something I think I really do want. In fact, I think it's something my soul needs. I'm not meant to stay in the same place my entire life, my being needs to bounce (hence the name of this blog!)

I hope that whoever you are, wherever you are, you understand that you are not alone in this very weird, loud time of great contrasts. I hope you know that you can look at more options too. I hope you find the new community you're searching for. I hope you find balance in that new relationship of yours. And I hope you get to find a place to live where you can thrive. It's terrible out there and we all deserve something a little different.