I thought about my title when it comes to being a spiritual practitioner. I thought calling myself a witch would be too basic and eurocentric. Healer? Too vague. Rootworker? I don't think I'll get into that. Lightworker? Maybe. But after the start of my newest dark night of the soul, I thought "How about just human lol". Funny enough, I always tend to misspell night for knight. Maybe that's just a nudge that I'm kind of a knight throughout the whole process.
I started this journey when I was 16. I was going through a really dark place and quite literally did not want to live. My interest in life or even imagining a future where I didn't feel the way that I felt was not there. I went through a heavy existential crisis, being agnostic, many different suicidal thoughts, and I just didn't see my worth. How I viewed myself was similar to this dread I had when I was 12. I felt very isolated. This was my dark knight of the soul, that also led me to my very first spiritual awakening.
I began to see angel numbers throughout these periods where I felt like there was no hope. This introduced me to something that led me to believe in something bigger than myself. The world didn't feel so small to me anymore and life didn't feel meaningless. This was something that I couldn't get out of religion although I grew up in a Christian household. I never felt comfortable in churches, even with trying to read a Bible, I couldn't understand it, I just knew that there was no place for me in Christianity. Spirituality and the occult was just as expansive, however, not as restrictive. It drove me to find that excitement for continuing to live again because I realized that I really do have so much to live for with a whole team that wanted me to keep living in order to see it. Their encouragement started off with a variety of synchronicities, introducing me to a different kind of knowledge, occult knowledge where all things are considered taboo. First it was a small fraction about the universe as we know it, manifestation techniques, divination that led me to buying my first tarot deck, holistic remedies, different practices as well as different methods of energy healing (I became a reiki healer). While I was learning, I simultaneously did my part in spreading this knowledge and helping others with my own gifts.
Starting my journey was exciting at first but of course there were potholes in which it wasn't that I did eventually overcome. But i'm at this stage in my life where ironically, what took me out of the dark ages, has put me back in it. My burnout for this started a few months ago when I no longer had any enthusiasm to keep posting content on my Twitter account even though I was so close to hitting 2,000 followers. And with this splurge of people getting into spirituality and divination, some for the right reasons and some for the wrong, it honestly feels like I'm on this path where I take a deep pause waiting for people to catch up but that stagnacy turns into no desire what so ever in moving again.
Spirituality is no walk in the park, regardless of what is being presented on social media. The goal is to always ascend in some way with awareness. But I think that I've reached my limit and it all feels like a cacophony of anguish that I don't want to be bothered with right now. When you've made the mistake of being in the dark trying to rehabilitate with your demons for too long, obsessing over the next thing that needs to be "fixed" gets tiring. Unfortunately for me, it's not so easy to just quit, spirituality is something that will always find me no matter how far I try to run away from it. I'm at this point where I'm currently trying to ignore everything, the signs, the omens, the dreams, and the urge to never touch my tarot or oracle decks ever again. My happiness will always be my top priority and with my hiatus on Twitter, I feel a lot better, there's no pressure to pump out messages of guidance for the collective, and I honesty got tired of toxicity in the spiritual community, my patience for arguing with moronic people and their huge egos is super thin and I can't argue with what I don't see right? But as much as I try to put my focus onto other things, spirituality is still at my neck, it's like the minute I started this journey, I get this constant message that there's no going back no matter how hard I try to stray away from it. My life gets weirder and weirder as if it's trying to let me know that I can't pretend to ignore something that's pretty much destined for me. I recently learned that there's a matriarch in my ancestral lineage that was an efficient hoodoo practitioner, basically a priestess that wants to work with me to restore and maintain that tradition. I still have my struggles of being pressured over if I'll ever accomplish anything in this world that's worth remembering and what's to be expected out of me in this lifetime. I get overwhelmed with the different possibilities for me or the fact that I'm meant to fulfill multiple things in different areas but will I be able to actually do it? Maybe I will, but this constant fear of time slipping from my hands is a burden that I don't want.
One of the crucial things that I've learned from my spiritual journey is that at some point, you really are going to have to choose who you are and who you want to be in life, not anyone else. I've always had my own thoughts and beliefs but learning how to stand on them and to not be easily swayed by other people's perspective was something that I had to learn. My path may be crooked or not ideal but it's mine and unique like it should be. This habit that I still see people not learning from in these spiritual communities is that their own image of what spirituality looks like is not the default and will never be. The best thing that I'd recommend to a beginner is to listen to themselves, you are your best guide when it comes to anything regarding your life and growth. Your strength in navigating this world is from knowing yourself and not letting anyone tell you otherwise.
And who knows, maybe I will be able to do it all, then settle down in a modern lakehouse and raise like six babies. I've always wanted to do that.
