Why I Had to Quit Being a Priestess

I had reached a point in my life where I couldn’t tell someone “no,” and couldn’t turn down a person that was in trouble who cried that they needed my help.  I was surrounded by sad, lonely individuals who constantly cried to me how they neeeeeeeeded my help and gosh, I was just so understanding and always made them feel so much better.  And for a while, that was good enough for me.  I was helping (or at least was trying to help) these poor lost souls who felt as though they had been pushed to the edge of society where no one cared about them, except me.  Sure, it was nice for the ego, but I also truly and honestly wanted to see these people get better. 

The problem – they weren’t getting better.

Instead, they were draining me of all my energy and all my time.  I would spend hours on the phone or sitting across from them while they told me how awful their lives were, how everything in the Universe and every person in this world were obviously working against them, just to destroy their lives.  They would ask for cleansings, blessings, spells, rituals, amulets, talismans, anything that would fix their problems.  But Bob forbid I should suggest ways they could make changes by themselves!  That would mean taking responsibility for their own actions and realizing that maybe there weren’t supernatural powers out to get them  --  because that would also mean they weren’t special.

Even the people I considered good friends would come to me with all these problems that were certainly never their fault, always someone else’s.  They would also spend hours telling me how awful their lives were because of someone else or some corporation that they were just sure had singled them out so they could destroy their lives.  After listening for hours upon end, I would gently suggest maybe THEY make a change instead of expecting everything around them to bend to their will.  What the hell was I thinking???  I must not be as good a friend as they thought if I really believed they should be the ones to attempt some sort of change in order to better their lives.  Sheesh….

(Does the sarcasm show through that last statement?)

One day, a little light bulb went off over my head.  Here I am, trying to suggest to these people that maybe if they changed their attitudes a bit or changed the way they handled certain situation so their lives might be better, and I wasn’t paying any attention to those suggestions myself.  I was surrounded by so much depression and darkness, but I wasn’t really doing anything to get myself out of it.  It also occurred to me that all these people who begged for my help and my counsel never actually seemed to be doing anything to improve themselves.  I started to see where they needed to have all these horrible things happen to them so they had an excuse to stay right where they were and never have to worry about actually making an effort.  And I was getting sucked into their little dramas and feeding into their need to be a victim.

So I quit.  I started saying “no.”  It was probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done.  But it was totally worth it.

My whole life, I thought I was supposed to be in some sort of service to humanity, but I’ve done a lousy job of it.  Maybe I didn’t understand exactly what it meant.  Maybe I just had the wrong idea altogether.  Whatever the case may be, it is safe to say that I burned out – hard – and as it stands today, I can barely even deal with the thought of trying to offer counsel to someone.  I feel like throwing up when I consider it.

The worst part of it all is the fact that I was using all these other people and their problems as an excuse to not deal with my own.  That was a rough span of time.  Once I started working towards focusing all that energy on myself, I saw some pretty icky crap going on in my own life.  There have been oh, so many changes since then, and there are still many changes to go, but I am very happy with where I am and where I’m going now.

And sometimes, it’s good to remember where I was, and not even that long ago.