Echoes and Patterns

I doubt many people online know this, but I work with people who have persistent mental disorders; persistent meaning for a long time (the shortest is about six years, with no sign of it going away) and mental disorders meaning thought patterns and ways of approaching the world which are incongruous and impede the person's ability to navigate the world independently. Primarily, though, I work with people - people with problems, people who struggle, people who are very individual, which means in a given day I can move between friend, confidant, priest, mother, case manager, therapist, watcher, surrogate brain, diplomat, and quiet blob of human. Sometimes several at once.

Some days I feel the priest part of it more than usual - days when I have clients walking the lines between life and death - walking that dark gray line of suffering where I spent so much time as a teenager. There is something in that darkness which draws me; I have been called bright and sparkling, warm and comforting; I can be volatile - but what people almost always see is the hot - frustrated, happy, angry, funny. I keep the cold to myself, the moments of pain and loneliness, the sea of tears cold as the northern ocean, the darkness which subsumed my life from ten to sixteen. But I remain comfortable there, whether alone or with someone else walking along that lonely spar of sand; I can walk the mordant seas, joke with death sitting across from me, wish for his loving embrace without wanting to die.

One of the interpretations of being a priest or shaman is that the person can move between worlds, comfortable in life and death, in this world and the spirit world - and in my case in the worlds of sanity and insanity. There are days when I struggled to find my balance, but more and more I find the dance I play between worlds to be more and more invigorating, my balance set, my center found and sure.

( More pictures here. )

Credits:

Skin: Grey Skin
Eyes: Ruin, Elemental Snow: Ice 2 (VIP gift)
Ears: Illusions, Mystic Ears
Eyelashes 2: *X*plosion, PrimLashes - tinted white
Eyeshadow: Adam n Eve, Winter Garden
Eyeliner: Adam n Eve, Hepsut
Lipstick: Croire, Glittery Gloss
Hair: Wasabi Pills, Monique Mesh Hair (promotional item)
Wings 1: Fancy Fairy, Azarelle Wings
Wings 2: Favole, Heaven's A Lie
Gloves: CCD, Melli Butterfly gloves
Bracelets: Kyccies, Hopeful Flower - pink diamonds
Necklace: G Field, Holiday Gift Flower Necklace (holiday gift)
Dress: G Field, Classic Dress "Julia" - black/white
Stockings: Heartsick, Divinity Lingerie - cornflower blue
Ring 1: Earthstones, Eternal Blossom Ring
Ring 2: Alchemy Immortalis, Nestling Finger Talisman
Heels: G Field, Bow Strap Shoes - white

Poses: Glitterati

Location: Empyreal Dreams
Light Settings: AnaLutetia - Avatar Opt - whiter

Photographed by Deoridhe Quandry
Post processing: Cropping only