As a witch, I naturally love places that feel haunted. Those places that seem lost in time, and make you wonder what kind of stories were forgotten here. As a reader of my blog, you probably remember when I showed you my haunted historical fiction place, right?
Good, because I need to talk about that place again. I recently had the chance to show it to someone very close to me. I took someone into my haunted world, and I kind of thought it would be a nice thing to do. Yes, there is a big but here.
The reason might be that the person was my mother.
„Being the mother of a witch is never easy“, my witch giggles into my ear as she steals the cup of tea from my hands. „While you wait for her to get married, she changes her hair colour every few weeks and hangs out with those that you thought were getting hanged.“
Yes, our mothers had it tough.
Still, I was taking my mother to my favourite field during sunset, showing her one of my most loved places in the world. A place that had given me moments of relief in the pandemic, and a place were all kinds of stories came to me from between the trees and balls of hay.
Already while walking there, my mother complained because it was such a lonely road. A beautiful lonely road, though, where you walk on a patch of asphalt between a forest hiding a highway bridge to your right, and an old power pole connecting old houses to your left.
When we arrived at my field, I heard the cows in the distance, a few cats were relaxing in the last sunlight, and a deer was running towards the horizon.
It was magical.
But my mother did not even see the dear, when I tried to show her.
She was upset with me for knowing such a lonely place, because apparently, a decent woman does not go such places. „This is were you end up raped and murdered!“, she would say and demand that we leave.
As someone who survived one of those two things (guess which one), I feel rage starting to rise, since it was not a lonely place nor a stranger that had done this thing to me.
While my mother was getting even more upset when a car was driving too slow (while ignoring that the driver was aiming for a parking spot in front of their house), I felt something inside of me snap and I screamed at her.
I screamed at her for making me believe that everyone out there in the world was evil, while the real monsters had lived with us and been at our weird church with us. I screamed at her because she invents problems instead of seeing the real one, and I screamed at her for not seeing the dear.
„I still don‘t know how someone can be so blinded“, I tell my witch as I get my cup of tea back. „Always making up dangers were there are none, while not ever talking about those that are real.“
„Because admitting that your husband, your friend, or your cosmic Daddy is abusive can be heartbreaking“, Layla says and I role my eyes. Some hearts deserve to be broken.
I still think it is highly unlikely for me to get murdered on the field next to my house. I also was never scared to take the train in Hamburg at night, when I came home from a party. I simply kept my belongings safe, and when someone felt weird, I changed my seat. Gut feeling is a life saver.
And the real danger does usually not come from strangers. Those that harm you the most know you the best. Statistics tell you that family members are more likely to hurt you in the middle of the day than strangers at night.
I have often felt the most content when out in the night, making it through the dark hours at a Starbucks in a train station, reading my book.
Emilie Autumn once wrote in her book „The Asylum for wayward Victorian girls“ that she decided to walk in the middle of the street rather then hide on the side, because this way, people at least see when something happens.
I feel these words more than ever.
Mistress witch writes 