Here's my real down to Mars, MESSY story of healing, hopelessness, and homo homecoming

You may have noticed I took a nice long break from updating you with findings and stories. That’s because my whole life took a turn I never thought it would.

You see, I manifested my ideal life. It was everything I wanted on paper - I was in a relationship with a man who loved me very much, I was in a beautiful home, doing my dream job - and, My Love, I was not happy. I felt like the biggest, most ungrateful wretch of a human.

I thought:
It must be unresolved trauma! I need to HEAL this! How come I can’t receive all this beauty around me?

So, me being a proactive son of a bitch, I got to work.

I did MORE breath work.

I busted out MORE journals.

I did MORE classes, workshops, etc.

And it seemed to be getting worse. I was depleted, overwhelmed, and felt like if I didn’t get a hold of this it was going to crash and burn.
Well - it did. Hard.

My whole life that took me three years to build came crashing down in about three months.

I found myself ass over tea kettle in complete shock. It gets worse. Get a load of this:

This annihilation looked like…
-losing my job, house, and daily life as I knew it
-a reckoning with sexual trauma and abuse I thought I healed YEARS ago
-ending my 3 year relationship moving in with family for the first time in a decade
- my ex partner moving on in about a week and falling madly (and publicly) in love
-…with a hot IG famous fitness model, revealing every insecurity and self-hating belief I thought I healed
-facing terrifying thoughts that were so strong that none of my usual tools worked to clear them
-a complete and total crisis of faith, not believing anything I so passionately believed and stood for
-Constantly checking out, and feeling a repulsion of sexuality and my body….and if we’re being real my whole self. And if we’re being really real… life itself.

All that work to NEVER feel that shit again, and there I was again. And so I entered the good ol’ fashioned Dark Night of the Soul. AKA - that experience where you have that BIG kinda loss - (your identity, faith, career, relationship, sense of self, health, and one or more blow up in ass-kicking ways)

Then after the annihilation, there’s the humiliation, rage, fear, hopelessness, and the deep pain. The brutal nights of social media comparison and God-awful stories and meanings you create about yourself, your life, and what’s going to happen next.

I was mad at Life. At myself. At Humanity. At God, and mostly at all those teachers, wellness influencers, coaches and healers that PROMISED that life was going to be SO good if I just did their protocol.

I spent months in complete distress. Was everything I knew a lie? Am I just like..this absolute fucking disaster?

I felt too old to be a beautifully broken hot manic pixie dream girl… I was a 27 year old hot ass mess who slept in her tear-streaked mascara for the third night in a row and got an eye infection from it. No seriously — I looked like emo Winston Churchill for like two whole months whilst mainlining Oreos with Will and Grace on in the background trying to feel something and aggressively comparing new look to this hot IG influencer.

And, as it always ends up - these feelings of distress had little to do with that, and everything to do with a reckoning of life itself. Do I matter? Is life suffering? It this it for me? Why does this “healing” shit work for everyone but me? Are people better off without me? Am I some sort succubus? I did “right” - I did “good” and all the people who have caused major abuse and harm in my life (note - not my last ex partner, he was great) when I was younger seem to be doing great. Is there no such thing as punishment and reward? Then WTF is this shit? And is being a miserable succubus who looks like Winston Churchill my baseline?

I went into the belly of the beast. I asked myself the hard questions - about life, death, myself, love, God. And I spent months like a ghost - being a shell of who I was, empty AF, giving people vague feelings of discomfort just by existing because of how miserable I was.

I felt like every single thing I’ve ever done is in vain. All that fucking work to end up exactly where I always had been - alone, bitter, and completely disempowered. Laying on my bedroom floor unable to feel anything other than complete shit.

Despite my attempts at getting my shit together…I just kept falling. No amount of faking it was going to work. I had nothing left to give.

Then one night, I tried to go to a Led Zeppelin Cover band concert and get all dolled up, only to have to leave midway through Kashmir, which if you knew me, was a cardinal sin. l left because I was about to break down again. I could feel the tears stinging my eyes and the sharp breaths stabbing through my chest. And if Led Zeppelin couldn’t save me - wtf could? I know this sounds benign, but when you actually can’t feel comfort or a spark from even your most favorite things in life, and it actually causes more hurt than healing… It’s scary. Terrifying actually.

The mascara, eyeliner, and glitter I meticulously applied before was running down my cheeks, my velvet was matted with snot and tears.

…And that was the moment it all changed.

…Kinda

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in my living room and had one of the most profound realizations of my life:

I am a fucking mess.

My beautiful outfit was now covered in my fucked up makeup, snot, and glitter. Streaks of it all burning my face. And I laughed. For the first time in MONTHS.

Because HEY… I’ve been here before.

This all too familiar place didn’t feel like backtracking the way it has after the big losses… it felt like a homecoming.

This girl who I have tried to run desperately from… the messy bitch who never fucking gave up despite blowing her life up over and over again.

Here she is.

I’ve missed her.

And in that moment, I came home to myself. Which was Messy. And Magic. Like…the kinky kinda good.

I started to see that I gave up my humor, personality, and opinions in an attempt to rid myself of ego.

I gave up my gasping-for-air belly laughter for serious, intense breathwork.

I gave up my mini dresses and motorcycle boots and sexy, flirty, fun for monochromatic outfits and nights of serious eyegazing in sacred sex workshops with people I didn’t wanna freaking eyegaze with.

I gave up delicious Italian gluten-filled food for raw kale bowls that made me fart more than I blinked.

…What I thought was growing up was really growing further away from myself. What I thought was healing was really just self- abandonment.

And it took my life being bulldozed to see how the endless hamster wheel of “healing” was the quest of perfectionism and self-hatred in a sexier outfit.

I was trying so fucking hard to not suffer ever again, that I was stuck in a loop of disconnection and low-level suffering till it all broke. I thought I could “out-heal” my humanness and pain - and by doing that, I didn’t even feel like a human anymore. I lacked nuance, soul, personality, vibrance and became super rigid, disconnected, and BORING/BORED AF. And I completely lost myself and used “self work” to control a future I can’t fucking control, no matter how magical I am. Because we’re in the mystery, baby. And If suffering is going to happen, I’m going to try to enjoy myself when I can, and how I am.

So now, if I wasn’t what I thought I should be, and I was this Messy, Hopeless, Emotional Human - what now?

A few weeks later, I met with my trauma coach Corey, was helping me slowly cope with all of this.

“Corey… what if this is it?” I ask.

“Explain that, Ani.”

“What if this is my baseline? What if no matter what happens, I’ll always come back to this? What if this is who I really am, how I really am? What if this is what life is, unfair and unexpected, and there’s no such thing as actual safety cause everything will leave you anyway? What if life is like the myth of Sisyphus, the guy who rolls a boulder up a hill for no reason only to have it roll all the way back down?” My words tumble out of my mouth like the rocks I imagine rolling down the hill under Sisyphus’s feet .

“Well, Ani… what if it is?” She pries gently.

Her question actually stunned me.

I’m very rarely speechless.

But here I am, with my mouth hanging open, only little croaks escaping my throat.

“Umm?” I ask like a high school Vally Girl who just heard someone say her hair was frizzy.

“What if this is it? What if that’s what life is, Ani? Now what?” I don’t understand how her voice could sound so gentle but her words feel like the first gust of the harsh winter wind when you open the door to leave the warm cozy restaurant in New York City.

As many times as I have asked myself that question, I never paused to think of what the actual answer would be.

If I was Sisyphus on the mountain… then what am I gonna do about it?

I think of when I moved into my first place in Ashland, Oregon - it was covered in animal feces, hasn’t been updated since 1955, and had a cat infestation. (Yeah, not rat…cat.) I one time even fell through the bathroom floor because of how rotted it was.

I made that dilapidated house into a decked-out disco home. That home became a Mecca for all who needed a place to be held in any way. It held Bri after her boyfriend cheated on her… again, and she was finally done and took a bunch of Molly and only wanted to have a sleepover and watch Gilmore Girls and snuggle in my bed.

It held full moon dinners, where I would cook a massive meal and invite the all the older women I knew to come have dinner with everyone my age and would share stories and we would all laugh as received their wisdom, lessons, and blessings.

It held Trey as she stayed there for two weeks while she changed depression meds and couldn’t stop crying and puking, until she felt like a human again. It held MASSIVE themed parties, new friendships coming together, and me as I set boundaries for the first time in my life. It held my tears, my clothes, my twinkly lights, and enough glitter to be the sole reason global warming is a thing.

And if I could make that house into that kinda home… maybe I can make life into it’s own disco-driven dream.

Maybe all Sisyphus needed was to just stop for a second and give up hope that there is another reality, that somehow this is the time it’s going to work, and he could get that boulder up the mountain.

Maybe what he actually needed to do was take that energy build a Studio 54 from the broken rock around him.

Here’s the thing… I’ve spent MONTHS lamenting over how I’m not supposed to be here, that I worked too damn hard for this, that life can’t be this way. But actually… what if this is it?

And something about this hopelessness was actually the most insanely liberating breath of fresh air I have had in months. Because there was no *should* — “should” has been like a shackle around my ankle anchoring me to a reality that isn’t happening.

What if this was it!? Life can fucking suck!

Which means every beautiful moment has become this act of rebellion!

Every single belly laugh was a big middle finger to the baseline!

What if the beauty of life is that it isn’t beautiful at all — everything and everyone you love will die and every time you love you’re just setting yourself up for pain, and if you choose not to love then you spend life dead anyway! But the beauty is laughing and dancing anyway!

Life isn’t beautiful — but we sure as fuck are.

And I couldn’t trust life or even God or the order of things.

But I could trust that despite it all, we will dance again.

“Well… if this is it…I guess I could make it work.” I said after what was probably the longest pause in any conversation in recorded history.

“…But I’m going to need a disco ball.”

And thus began the journey of homecoming…. And for me, that was a homo-coming.

And I had the disco ball as my North Star - AKA, I found these little things that gave me a small spark of light-up. I found myself buying a pair of white cowboy boots after watching a Dolly Parton interview in the hopes of distracting myself from the existential terror I was facing. Then, I started to travel to different 70s Love Motels because I simply adore the kitschy interior in my white cowboy boots. Next thing you know, I am visiting my friend from college on one of my journeys, and with her was a woman that made me realize I am SO unbelievably gay. And we got together. And I realized what was missing. Were there hints before? Yeah! Of Course! But I thought it was what everyone felt. I thought everyone was turned on by all genders to a certain degree. And I was always too scared to let myself explore it, because I didn’t want to hurt anyone if I didn’t end up being gay. And I was terrified of any vulnerable sexual situations because… sexual trauma and overall terrible self-esteem for the longest time. But I had nothing to lose now. Because - fuck it- I was already in the pits, and as long as I’m clear with where I’m at I’m in integrity. I was completely transparent. I was vulnerable. And she was down. And I went on the ride of a fucking lifetime that led me back to living in New York, and feeling more alive and expressed than ever, while still honoring all the messy magic and not striving to stay in any state (metaphorically, mentally, emotionally, physically, etc). And I will go more into that as time goes on, I promise. But -

Here’s the deal, I don’t believe in silver lining shit. It’s annoying and not helpful when you’re in it and usually used to bypass. And I will say….

That annihilation was actually the beginning of a reality so beautiful, I couldn’t even fathom it at the time.

It turns out - I wasn’t miserable because of some deep, unhealed trauma (at least not fully) - I wasn’t broken. I didn’t need fixing. I was not happy because the life I built was one that I was told I should want, not what was real for me.

I was in a straight relationship when I am super queer. There was so much genuine love in that relationship, and that love is real. And, I couldn’t even fully fathom me being queer at that time because I was white-knuckling that reality so much.

I was not happy not because I was some squidward-esque, wounded beyond repair ingrate — I was trying to be this perfectly healed and integrated human with no triggers or negative feelings ever, and if I felt negative feelings I had to fix it immediately. And I leaked a lot of that on people in my life, too.

That fire of annihilation also burned away the illusions of conditioning and showed me MY truth. It lit up stories that kept me small and scared until I actually saw what was holding me back. It consumed any delusion that I could “rid” my humanness, and incinerated any ounce of stuck emotion and showed me who I TRULY was and what I was made of.

Pre-annhilation times weren’t wasted - I got a lot from all that self-work, healing, and magical trainings… and I totally abandoned myself. I gave up my humor, personality, and opinions in an attempt to rid myself of ego, and my gasping-for-air belly laughter for serious, intense breathwork. I gave up my mini dresses and motorcycle boots and for monochromatic outfits. I gave up true flirty fun for false and forced connections.

…What I thought was growing up was really growing further away from myself. What I thought was healing was really just self- abandonment. And it took my life being bulldozed to see how the endless hamster wheel of “healing” was the quest of perfectionism and self-hatred in a sexier outfit.

This touched every part of my life.
What I learned is that the Sacred was also in the Profane.
And that Magic was actually in the Mundane.

And that the chase for the perfect life, for total happiness and safety, for total self-knowing and healing and empowerment… is HELL ON EARTH.

Listen, I don’t have it all figured out.

But I think that’s what actual freedom is.

I’ve found that being alive is a LOT like good sex… it’s never clean, pristine, linear, and by the books. It not something you can figure out or be good at. It’s a big ol’ messy, MAGIC experience.

And if it’s all magic - You can’t fuck it up. You’re not broken. There’s no big thing you’re missing.
You came for it all. Life will transform you, and it will take you EXACTLY where you need to be.

Life can be a cruel teacher sometimes, but you are a powerful fucking student.

And you will come out the other side more radiantly powerful than ever before.

And I’ll hold you through it as your underworld guide, walking with you through the gates of transformation as you step into the deepest magic imaginable.