I used to see magic in the world. I experienced it too. Despite so much trauma and loads of personal fears and doubt, a thread of connection to that which lies beyond this material world has always tethered me to something ethereal and something unquestionably real beyond myself. I don’t know where it came from because it was always just there. As a young child, it connected me to the nature around me. It spoke to me through the birds. As a preteen living on the fringe of society, it whispered to me on warm breezes as I sat on water’s edges. As an early teen, it pulled me through a lack of will to live. In my early twenties, it called me back from brinks of despair and carried me through an era of jaded bitterness.
The magic was more than just a feeling. It was tangible experiences and actual people. It was the budding of a life long best friend out of early tragedy. It was the instant recognition of a kindred soul at a random audition in a brand new city resulting in a pivotal friendship. It was the overwhelming presence of Love and Reassurance on a solo road trip to southern Florida to confront my past. It was a stranger sitting by a pool in Key West delivering a message of forgiveness. It was a kind and gentle palm reader who read much more than the lines on my hand. It was always the message of hope delivered by dolphins in the distance when I sought refuge by the water.
I knew the magic. (I bet you know it, too.) I recognized it when it arrived, like a dear old friend. I knew that it lived somewhere in me.
It was one week out from my Independence* when I discovered it. I went to my sacred place, the place I’d always gone when I needed to connect to that inner voice and find clarity: to the beach, to the water’s edge. It had been more than 5 years since I was last afforded the opportunity to seek refuge there. I couldn’t even remember when the last time actually was.
(*What the heck is my “Independence”? Be patient…we’ll get there.)
I was sitting by the water when the dolphins came, as they have always done when they were needed. I gasped, just as I have always done when they arrive. And that is when I realized it…. I could not hear the dolphins. They were no more than a flat, dull picture set against a painted sky. My inner ears were deaf to their message.
The magic had died. I was shaken to my core. I’d forgotten that it once lived in me. I wondered, “Will I ever get it back? Will I ever feel it again? Or am I too damaged, too scarred, too far gone for magic to now inhabit?”
If I hadn’t been so overwhelming numb in that moment, the word I would use to describe this realization would be: devastation. Somewhere in all these years of running and striving and trying and buying every last lie, the magic had died. How could this be?
In reality, I know how it could be. But that was a long process that will take time to explain, to work through. And that is what I will now be doing here. Working through that, processing it – not just understanding how the magic died, but coming to terms with why.
Over the past 14 years, as I supposedly worked to get closer to the Truth (before, during and after my writings on this blog), I got ever increasingly closer to utter darkness. I did everything I thought I was supposed to do, everything I was told to do, everything I believed was “right,” and everything I was taught was necessary to “challenge my fears,” choose Truth and commit wholeheartedly to my spiritual path.
The only problem was, the voice I was listening to did not have my best interests at heart, had an effortless knack for lying and had a whole lot to personally gain from garnering increasing control over my personal sphere. And listening to that voice meant foregoing my own Inner Voice, that inner knowing and Intuitive Guidance System we all have. It meant betraying myself, over and over.
So, the harder I worked and the more fully I committed myself to that pursuit, the darker and smaller my world became until there was nothing left but my immediate surroundings and the dictated activities of my every day experience. My whole world revolved around a small handful of people, a bedroom, and a store. The light was almost out completely.
One of the hardest points to reach was the acceptance that it would just never be enough. No matter what I did, or how much I did, or how good I was, or how obedient, it would never be enough. Just like when I was a child, I would never be able to satisfy or please the people closest to me. After all, how does one satisfy the deep, endless needs of narcissism?
But I did not know that then. I thought it was me. I thought I was not enough. That I was not good enough, smart enough, strong enough, capable enough, AWARE enough, empathetic enough, defenseless enough. I drank the Kool-aid, down to the very last drop, and bought every last lie about what must be wrong with me and my issues to result in total and utter darkness surrounding and closing in on me. By the end, it was a struggle to breathe.
When I finally found the strength and courage to pull out of this darkness and rescue myself from an endless cycle of despair, one might have expected sunshine and rainbows to rain down on me. After all, shouldn’t that be the reward when you actually DO face abject terror and do the ACTUAL right thing? But while there is no doubt that a tremendous sense of relief has prevailed, there also now stands before me the daunting task of facing my life: What I chose, what I gave up, what I experienced, what I lost…and so much more. That alone is enough to keep many folks running on the perpetual treadmill I just jumped off, and that is something I can understand. After all, facing these things feels like an overwhelming feat on a good day.
So on the day I realized the magic had died in me, I was too exhausted to weep. I just noticed it and mourned it silently. But my eyes stayed glue to that horizon. And I still searched for the next glimpse of those curved fins until I couldn’t see them anymore.
A couple more weeks passed in a gray fog as I stumbled through the earliest days of my recovery which has as yet only just begun. Then, on one sunny afternoon not very long ago, I found myself walking through downtown Charleston, seeking remembrances of my previous life (before the isolation began) and attempting to piece back together just a few bits of me that had been lost along the way. As I began to work my way back to my car, I passed a convenient little lunch spot. I stopped to consider, then headed on my way. But then, for some inexplicable reason, I turned back and decided to go in.
Just as I began to eat the slice of pizza that was delivered to my table, I noticed the news story playing on the TV across the room. Another day, another shooting… My heart sank. I looked around with some disbelief and there was another woman, now seated at the table next to mine, also dining alone. She caught my gaze with an expression that shared my own reaction.
We began to talk, effortlessly. An electric vibe swirled around me. Here I was, out on my own, talking to a friendly, and kindred, stranger…a stranger who told me how unbelievable and magical it was that we, two grown women, who had both gone out to explore on their own and taken themselves to lunch, would be seated next to one another at the same time and place. A stranger who had just moved to Charleston, by herself, 10 days before. A stranger who shared the same name as me. As we continued to chat, further synchronicities unfolded, and my new friend’s enthusiasm and awe was utterly inescapable. The electricity shot up my spine and I knew she was right.
The impact of the encounter could not have been known to my new friend at the time. But I left that restaurant and headed home with a buoyancy and electricity that I’d thought may be lost to me forever. The signature of the experience was palpable. The magic had returned.
I have a long way to go to work out this knot that my life became. I don’t expect it to be easy. Few things ever have been. But I already know it is the most worthwhile thing I have ever done. And now…now I know that my Life will return to full scale, pulse pounding technicolor, for…
…The Magic Lives.
The Journey 
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