Rescuing Mike D.

You may feel that I have covered much of what follows in my Being Pagan series.  I am sorry if I repeat myself and bore you in the process.  I like to think of this blog as the stories I would tell you, if you and I were sitting at my big, old, wooden kitchen table.  On our first meeting I would not have started with my birth and worked up to today.  I would have told you stories, that are cyclical in nature, covering different periods of time, and you would make your own timeline, in your head after some time of us talking.  Well that is if you are paying attention, and I think you are.  I am glad we are having this talk.  I am glad to be heard. 

I have been rescuing dogs for a long time.  That need to rescue over the years turned into rescuing people.  Sometimes it works and sometimes they end up biting you.  Mike was most definitely the later.  Years later, I have come to believe, that if you find someone whom you believe you can help, leave them there.  The Goddess is trying to teach them a lesson.  You are impeding upon that lesson.  Almost no good deed goes unpunished.  Even with the relationships I have now, I keep a wary eye out to see if and when they might bite me.  Kind of nervous, kind of cynical, but sorry that has been my life. 

For a long time I felt my life ended when Momma Muriel died.  I was lonely, alone, and depressed.  I turned to my new found pagan community to fill in where I felt my family was lacking.  I have spoken to you of Mike D.  We had met at a PNO and soon I was going to his rituals.  Momma Muriel knew all of this.  We attended his annual Halloween (Samhain) party at his house in 2008.  Maddie gave us a tarot card reading telling Jay he would soon lose his job.  Maddie is seldom wrong with her cards.  Jay lost his job the next day. 

A few weeks later Jay started at Dollar General doing the same thing.  Jay always worked hard for whoever he is employed for.  He still does.  For years and years he had worked during Thanksgiving.  He hired on to Dollar General with the understanding he would get Thanksgiving off.  As usually they betrayed him and made him work.  He was so mad he cried.  He just wanted to be with me for Thanksgiving.  I told him to quit his job and he did.  We had already received part of Momma Muriel’s estate and we were as they say, “not hurting for money,” at that time. 

My parents decided not to cook that Thanksgiving. Since we were alone that year, we decided to spent it with Mike D. and his group at an interfaith dinner at a local church.  Since Samhain we had been talking about Mike D., his family and his animals coming to live in Momma Muriel’s house.   At Winter Solstice (Yule) he asked me to watch over his house and his animals while he and his family traveled to New Orleans to see his superior, Velvet.  I remember telling Jay that his house was just too small for his growing family, that we should ask them to come and live with us in Momma Muriel’s house.  Jay thought that was a fine idea. 

Although it had no utilities on, I had for the past few months been trying to clear out Momma Muriel’s stuff, with little success.  We lived to far out for any local charities to come and get her things, and I did not know about estate sales then.  I called Mike D. on his way back from New Orleans.  I told him that we wanted him, his family and his animals to come and live on our place with us.  He pulled over the car and cried.  I told him that he would have to help us clear out her things, but he and his family could move in whenever they pleased. 

We all spent Christmas of 2008 together at his mother’s place.  I was in the kitchen, washing dishes when Mike D.’s wife walked in.  She was all red and crying.  She said, “Mike just choked me.”  I was shocked.  I didn’t understand what was going on.  He was an acting High Priest.  How could he do this?  I spoke with his wife.  I asked her if she wanted me to call the cops.   I asked if she wanted to leave him.  She said, “No.”  I told her just she and her children could move in, that she did not have to bring him.  Again she said, “No.” 

Because she wanted me to do nothing for her, I did nothing.  What I should have done was confront his sorry ass, call the cops and tell him the deal was off, but I didn’t.  I felt I had already given my word and I could not go back on it.  I worry sometimes that my fear of being alone, made me also continue with my plan. 

When I had watched over their house that Yule, Mike D. said, “We made a mess in the bedroom.  Would you mind cleaning it up for us?”  He was my high priest.  I said, “of course not,” and did as I was told.  What I cleaned up I now understand was from violent fight, where Mike D. had thrown a hairbrush at his wife so hard he had put a whole in the wall.  He had knocked stuff off the night stand and there was broken glass everywhere.  But I did my duty and covered his tracks.  I continued this for many years and did not tell the High Priestess in his coven about the abuse until recently.  I always guessed she knew.  She did not.

I did not know that Mike D. had hit his wife on more than one occasion.  I also did not know, until later that there had been a domestic abuse charge against him, in his home state of New Jersey.  He had broken his wife’s arm.  The charge had been dropped and so may never have appeared on his record.   I was told, when I began to hang out with his coven, that all official members of the group had back ground checks done on them, prior to being admitted.  This is why you had to pay so much money to join them.  If they did do this, I do not understand why he was not immediately flagged.  My guess is Velvet took the money and never had the check done.  I feel, because he had a prior charge like this on him, he should never have been allowed to become clergy. 

In this coven they liked to have a High Priest and a High Priestess.  That’s the way they had done it for many years.  Just prior to Mike D. and I both coming into the community, the High Priest of Mike D.’s coven had died.  A man neither one of us had ever met, but a good man by all accounts.  When Mike D. entered the coven, a power struggle in sued, by the men of the coven to fill the old High Priest’s place.  I’m still not sure how it happened, but Mike D., a man with no prior pagan experience, was able to become the acting High Priest.  I don’t know how he was able to ascend to this position.  Mike D. became a 3^rd degree in three years.  To obtain this rank, usually takes many, many years of practice, study and elevating others.  He did none of that.  Many of us in the community feel he was simply given this title, for one reason or another. 

In January of 2009, Mike and his family began to help us move out Momma Muriel’s things and bring in theirs.  In March of that year we threw the first, of what would become, our annual crawfish boils.  In April we threw a birthday party for the High Priestess of Mike D.’s coven.  Most of the pagan community was here.  It was one of the first times I had gotten to really talk with Boogie and Rovena.  That night we held both a Croning and a Maidening ritual.  It was at this ritual the honorary title of Maiden was bestowed on me.  I never officially joined his coven.  I do not believe religious orders should charge to train their members, other than for just the bear cost of materials.  Mike D.’s coven charged excessive rates to learn to become a witch, and where there money went I was never sure.

I was not even sure that the ritual was going to take place.  I had been in a horrible fight with Velvet, just a few hours before.  We were discussing the war in Iraq.  I stated that the Iraq people were in a better place now, then when the war had started.  They had more schools, better utilities and no longer lived under an oppressive government.  At this she blew up at me.  It would not be the first time.  She asked where I was getting my information.  I said, “From the soldier across the street, who has served two tours in Iraq.”  She then proceeded to scream at me and tell me that he was a liar.  You can do a lot of things to me, but you never, ever disrespect a warrior in front of me! 

I left Mike D.’s house in a panic and went to Marie’s house across the street.  She gave me a valium to calm down.  It was her husband I had been speaking about.  It took several hours to get me to calm down.  I did not want to ruin the High Priestess’ birthday party by telling Velvet to, “Carry her crazy ass off my property.”  I knew to kick her out was to ask Mike D. to leave.   I did not want that.  I did not want to be alone again.  I also did not want to upset the party goers.  So I swallowed my pride and went back across the street and rejoined the party.  If it had happened today I would have told her to carry her ass.

In May of 2009 I attended my first Pagan Unity Festival (PUF) in Tennessee.  I went with Mike D. and Velvet.  It was at this festival that I met my very first heathens.  I had spent two years on-line talking to other Heathens around the country, but had never met one in person.  I met Father Dave first and then he introduced me to his student Mother Mari and her student Mother Gloria.  They were a group out of South Texas.  They defined themselves as Wayists.  They were essentially Druidic Heathens.  They were also, unbelievable, devotees of Holda’s as well.  I was so overwhelmed I cried.  I thought at first they were apparitions, or spirits made flesh, a gift to me, from Holda for having been faithful.  They have indeed become gifts to me.   I remain in regular contact with them today.  I consider them part of my “elders”. 

That had been a miserable trip for me.  Meeting Father Dave and his group was the only bright spot in that trip. Velvet had a friend get murdered during that weekend.  The last night we were there she lit a white candle and placed it on the stove.  All night long I heard Holda in my head saying to go outside, and gather some of the rose petals, growing in the front yard, and to put them around the candle.  After a few hours of this I finally gave in. 

In the morning when the Velvet came in, she was furious.  She started screaming who had put the rose petals around the candle.  I told her I did it to honor her friend.  She yelled at me, for what seemed a half an hour, until I began to cry.  She kept screaming at me, “Who taught you to do magic?  Who?”  I finally told her Holda had told me to do this.  I still don’t understand why she became so upset.  As I have told this over the years, theories have varied.  One elder said, “You should never have messed with other witches spell.”  I agree.  I would want no one messing with my spell.  But then if it was a candle to honor her friend, and then the rose petals would have meant love, whatever I did would have been benign. Right? However if it was a bad spell, which I don’t know why she would have used a white candle, unless it was the only thing she could find, perhaps the roses negated what she had done, and that is why she became so irate.  She was like a powder keg.  You never knew when she was going to go off, or what would trigger her. 

Mike D.’s wife gave birth to a baby boy soon after Summer Solstice (Litha) 2009.  Six weeks later by Lughnasa ( August 1^st), I have been asked to stop working on forming my own Heathen group by Velvet or resign my title of Maiden.  I refused to stop the work I was doing and I resigned.  I begin my own group and we held our first ritual.  I continued to help coordinate Pagan Pride Day (PPD), with Mike, for that year.  I invited Father Dave and Mother Mari, my friends from south Texas, to speak at the event.  They came and had a lovely time.  Well until Velvet decided to insult and attack Father Dave.  I thought for a moment it was going to come to blows.  Mike D.’s son’s Wiccaning was held at PPD, and Father Dave played his flute.  Mike D. later makes disparaging remarks about Father Dave.  Living around Mike D. was getting harder and harder.  I was starting to see a man, whom I once considered a friend, turn into a rude and arrogant asshole. 

Ilsa