Escaping the Song of the Siren

I was hit this week full force between my eyes by the stark contrast of the

choices in my life.  Taken down to the mat and pummeled by both of them.  Wonderful multiple opportunities synchronously occurred opening up paths, inviting me in, shoving me firmly forward.  The very same day, the day job’s status quo – if not incremental progress, “success” if you will, that I thought I had achieved – was stripped away in several painful harsh acts of sabotage and reality.

With all my insight, all my work on acceptance of the situation I must endure, I was still not fully “getting it.”  I was still trying to fit in, trying to find acceptance, validation and meaning there.  I stoke those fires of engagement,

allow that I am after all asking myself to give up a “career” not just a job.  A career I fought very hard for and will die financially still in debt to.  A path I once very much believed in, one that held me, nurtured my growth and development, sparked my intellectual curiosity and went a long way to satisfy that incessant craving.  At what point this path led to a snake pit and left me there, I don’t really know.  How it became “normal” to live in that snake pit I don’t understand.  But one

day I finally awoke and saw where I was; being taken further and further down every day.  I struggled to the ledges I thought could hold me, that led to a better way, but they soon crumbled beneath my weary feet and I fell, attacked and poisoned by a thousand snake bites every time.  And still I fought to find yet another ledge, a home.

That land has been ravaged and there is no place for me there.  There is nothing I can do to fix it.  The indigenous people have been murdered and the conquerors still fight over morsels of spoils.  To be there means to join them, to live in the revolting mire and call it Life.  If I don’t, I am a traitor.  A traitor who has seen too much, knows where the skeletons lay and who put them there.
 
The Muses tried to show me my path all laid out just for me, a road to follow to reclaim my heart and soul.  Maybe they had been too subtle they figured, so

here – here are back to back undeniable (even by you) incredible things just for you.  A synchronicity of remarkable events and invitations rolled out right in front of me.  And still I clung. 

So this week they have had enough of me, of my ambivalence and lack of full commitment, and screamed in my face.  “You will never belong there.  You will never be included, wanted.  And, you fucking idiot, YOU DON’T WANT TO BE THERE, REMEMBER?!”  Oh yeah. 

One path broke my heart.  The other can heal it.  I can’t keep it torn in two between them.

Along the broken path are Sirens.  There, a soul-sucking succubus lurks feeding on my spinning, ultimately wasted energy, ensuring there is nothing left for any other path, for what really matters.  The Sirens clung to my shoulders for years, singing promises of fulfillment, riches, respect and membership into the inner-sanctum, blinding me to the reality and cost of that path.  Through the cracks, the Muses fed me hope and glimpses of options of another way, the path to places where I belong.  This ceaseless whirling from one seduction to the other, trying to appease both sides, live in both worlds, has now finally come to a climax.

In their desperation to counter the truth illuminated by the Muses, the fangs of the Sirens have emerged; the songs have turned to a screeching of the million souls entrapped within.  The thick bile of their breath which had me

enshrouded, blinded, is dissipating, revealing the jagged rocks where demons await to finish me off.  I have blindly sailed into them and turn to find the wreckage has already crippled me.  In the rubble a final war is waged for my soul.  Snarling furious howls, snapping fangs glistening with the poison of lies, claws slashing at my heart; a Muse throws herself in the path before they can rip it out completely – her sacrifice for naught if I can’t correct my course immediately.

My vision clears.  I can now see and fully embrace my true course.  I have to abandon the ship of fools; I get to abandon it.  I may still have time left to serve, the unwilling price negotiated for my eventual freedom, but now my role there is clear.  No more lies.  I am now a part of the underground, those of us with secret lives.  I’ll learn from the others, I’ll follow their covert routes, speak in code, exchange knowing clandestine winks.  I have discovered where the light is hidden away and how to get there, how to access it every day, even in prison. 

And there you will find me happily living my real life while the insanity swirls

around me, while minions shriek and claw at one another, retreating bloodied and torn at the end of the day only to return and engage it all again the next.  For eternity this will continue, for this is hell.  The only way out is to realize where you are.  Do not forget.  Keep moving.  And never look back.