From the Wild Collective Heart series

Content Warning: Candid reflections on trauma, grooming, coercive control, dissociation, and spiritual manipulation.

He knew me intimately. We’d met on a chat site where people listened to others to support them. Something about his attention broke me from my sleep on the inside, and I began trying to speak with him. I had no understanding of current events. My age. My circumstances. He really valued my spiritual and divine nature, and this flooded me with good feelings I wasn’t prepared to manage at all. I could barely form sentences, not used to communicating. I stuck to single words and built up to three words and then eventually sentences. It was difficult because I could see what I wanted to communicate in visions, and I had no words to speak it.

I was dreaming of him each night and felt it meant our meeting was by divine design. My spiritual framework from childhood in full effect, guiding me safely and securely into his hands. All he needed to do was be there, and I practically handed myself over to him. The overwhelm was so much. He loved my name. He saw value in my spiritual visions. I needed a replacement for the man who had been my god, my first husband, my whole world. Without him, I felt very lost, and the sadness made me tired.

He understood me. When he told me I was not as important a part of us inside, I went back to sleep for him and would not hear from him again until four years later.

Four years later, I woke up and we were with him again. I knew him immediately. He had laid enough familiarity and groundwork of his own that first time we’d met for me to do so. It took surprisingly little.

-Star