The Leaving

"I am a Selkie. No amount of wishing will make me a Satyr. This is what I am. Selkies stay until they leave, and the instinct for leaving is so powerful in us, far more powerful than the instinct for the sea. ... I long for the sea, yes... but more, I long for the leaving. I am restless, I am ready, and the leaving whispers to me at night. It says that I will breathe easier when the air is full of fog and seafulls, that I will breathe easier when I am at the start of a store, rather than at the end." -from "In the Night Garden", by Catherynne M. Valente



"When I am at the start of a story..."

In the past few weeks those words have found a firm home in my heart. A great deal of my time recently has been spent soul-searching, path-finding, shadow-working. Everything in me screams for a new direction and for change.

Stagnation leads to decay, and my life feels like it has been still for far too long. Like the Selkie-boy I am connected in part to the water, and like the water I cannot be still for long. A closed pond breeds nothing but sickness - health is impossible in a state of disconnection.

The worst of that feeling of disconnection is over. I'm healing. I'm beginning to let myself experience others again, but I'm still having trouble reforging a connection with myself. I feel lost. I don't know where to expand my Craft, and when I find an area to be expanded I don't know how.

Enter the wanderlust, the leaving. I need a drastic change in scenery. New experiences, new places. I need some time alone. When I say alone, of course, I don't just mean away from people. I can get that often enough, and sometimes more than I would like. What I need is to get away from the familiar. My life is feeling so stagnant and unchanging that sometimes I can't tell one day from the other. I've never wanted that for my life.

So I'll go. I'll seek and experience.


"The leaving had me, and I went with it."