Pagan Coming Out Day - May 2, 2013

Today is Pagan Coming Out Day, a celebration that began, as far as I know, in 2011. It's become an important tradition for many Pagans of all different spiritual identities, and I feel that each year its importance grows stronger than the last. I've never had any sort of official "coming out of the broom closet," so I wanted to take some time today to write about my experiences and participate in the PCOD tradition.

As it seems with most people who are not born into Pagan families, I encountered Wicca through pop culture when I was around 12 years old. I saw movies like The Craft, or watched shows like Charmed and Buffy on TV. I was curious and started talking to a friend about it in junior high school. He also liked all the supernatural shows, but I had no idea that he had already began exploring Wicca as an actual religion -- I didn't even know it was an actual religion! This friend really changed my entire life because of a book he let me borrow one day, and I don't think there's a Pagan in the United States today who isn't at least familiar with it: Dorothy Morrison's The Craft. That book created something like a paradigm shift in me. I was completely fascinated and obsessed, I think I finished reading it in only two or three days before starting it over again. What followed is predictable. I moved on to Buckland's "Big Blue Book," made my way through Scott Cunningham's bibliography. I tried one Silver Ravenwolf book (but even back then, I knew I didn't want anything to do with her writing, hahaha). I dedicated myself, very privately and very quietly, in November of 2003.

Fast forwarding to the present, I no longer identify as Wiccan (the more I studied it, the more theological issues I had with it), but I am proudly Pagan, with a heavy focus on European witchcraft and a growing passion for Hoodoo and conjure practices. I suppose I officially work with the Egyptian pantheon, though lately I've been combatting a lot of deep spiritual issues when it comes to Deity. I don't want to get too side-tracked, however, I just wanted to lay down a little bit of my religious history.

It took a long time for me to really be a public Pagan, both in terms of people who knew and also participating in public rituals and holidays. I went to a Yule party once in a high school, and a few different rituals in New York after I moved there, but I didn't ever stay with a particular group. A lot of Pagan communities can be really difficult to break into, and I think that leaves a lot of solitary practitioners feeling lonely. I know I did, because while I was practicing witchcraft at home alone, I didn't get the kind of community that comes with holidays. Think about our sympathy toward those people who are alone on Christmas or Thanksgiving -- I felt like that every time I was alone on Beltaine or Lughnasadh or Yule. Ironically (perhaps) it took moving to the Bible Belt before I found a stable, wonderful, diverse Pagan community, and I'm proud to be a member of it.

And now that I am a member of a Pagan church, I feel like I'm more "out" than ever -- I have one of their stickers on my car and my laptop, I have their business cards, I talk about them frequently with my friends, both those who are Pagan and who are not. Since I've been attending their festivals and rituals, my first one being Samhain 2010, I've lived everyday as an out and proud Pagan.

Except with my family.

It's a strange feeling, not really lying to them, but cutting them off from what's become a huge focal point to my life and my identity. I did talk to my parents about Wicca occasionally when I was in early high school, but I'm not sure they ever took it seriously. When I went to that Yule party, my mom tried to convince me that that wasn't what they were actually celebrating and that I shouldn't assume. My dad once made a joke about casting spells on my brother with the clay pentacle I was making. Though, he also once brought me back a pentacle necklace from a business trip. I don't believe that either of them wanted to make me feel weird or bad about my religious interests, but I did anyway. I've never been comfortable with the idea of discussing that with them. And I don't really know why.

Last summer, I visited with some cousins in Texas and while I was there, one of them asked me what my religious beliefs are. I'm sure she knew the answer; I have them displayed on my Facebook page (where all my family can see it), but even knowing that she most likely knew, it still felt strange or foreign to say it out loud to her. I mean, it was also a little weird for me because her family is very Christian, which is fine, but I always get a little weird about discussing any alternative religion with most active Christians, but the discomfort I was feeling was also because she is my blood family. Maybe it's because of the obligations that exist between blood relatives, whether real or imagined, I'm not sure, but I'm afraid of their judgment. I'm not afraid of anyone else's. I feel awkward truly letting in any of my family. I don't hide from them, but I don't bring it up either. It's difficult and depressing.

And I don't want it to be that way. I want to be able to tell them about the awesome friends I've made in Kentucky, about the cool new things I learned from these friends, about how much I look forward to festival season and how happy my church makes me. I want to tell them when I finish my degree, I want to go through my church's ministry education to become a Pagan minister myself. I want to tell them about how much being Pagan means to me, how passionate I am about it, but they just don't get the opportunity to know that side of me. And for that, I feel guilty and dishonest, as well as sad because I don't think it's going to change. It's a conversation that I don't know how to begin and I've used that fear to block off a huge portion of my life. It also makes me feel like a hypocrite, because I believe the greater Pagan community should be out and public and known, when I myself am not those things entirely. Maybe someday I'll be ready to remove those self-imposed chains from my life. And wouldn't that be relieving?

Part of my temple room (and my dog who likes to hang out in there)

It's that's time of year again . . .

Life is returning to the world -- the trees are budding, dandelions dot the grass in my yard, there are birds singing and collecting nest materials, every night I see rabbits, every morning is sunshine. Persephone has returned! It is spring!

AND THERE ARE WASPS EVERYWHERE.  E V E R Y W H E R E.

They slam in to my windows, their abdomens pulsing on the other side of the glass; they perch on my car, a daily scourge mocking me as I try to leave my house. They hover at the exits, black and yellow, deep red, deepest black and metallic harbingers of terror. Bastards.

I have spheksophobia, the fear of wasps (and hornets), and my fear is extreme. It is my only true phobia, but one that interferes with my life daily. I can say confidently that wasps and hornets are probably the number one reason why I hate summer and prefer the colder months. They are everywhere, and as the heat rises, they become more prolific. It is completely impossible to avoid them during the day in summer, and it's become even worse since I moved down south, where it is hot longer than it is cold.

I was three or four years old the first time I was ever stung by a yellow jacket. We were visiting Florida and it was my first time seeing a nest. I was fascinated -- I had already developed a complete obsession with anything nature-related. I wasn't close to the nest, just watching from a distance, but I still provoked an aggressive response in one of the wasps, and I didn't understand what I had done.

Since then, I've been stung three more times, but all of them by honeybees -- once on my arm, and twice on the bottoms of my feet (I run around barefoot a lot and still do today). And I'll clarify here: while bees make me nervous, I can gather enough strength to tolerate them. I don't want them right up in my face, but I can handle them flying around a few feet away. If I can see a wasp and am  aware of them being there, I can't be in that area, whatsoever.

A few days ago, I was doing my dishes and looked up to see a black wasp sitting on the kitchen window above my head. A sight like that reduces me to complete flight mode. I wanted to be able to just grab a shoe and squash it, but I physically cannot make myself get that close to a wasp. It was 8:15 in the morning, I had to get ready for class, but I could not do anything knowing that wasp was sitting there. I called Clint, and he woke up and came over to help me. He squashed the wasp with his bare hand!! I was screeching like an old lady, just terrified. I've felt like wasps are crawling on me since seeing that one inside.

That isn't the first time Clint has witnessed my fear of wasps either. One time last summer, we were parked at a gas station. It was hot, we had the windows down, and I was sitting in the passenger seat of his Jeep. A wasp flew up to the window, right in front of my face, I could hear its wings beating. I hardly have a memory of what happened next -- it was a primal response, no thinking or cognition at all. Somehow, despite having my seatbelt on, I was able to slide out of it into the backseat, launching myself as far away from that wasp as I could. Clint didn't even know what was happening (neither did people outside of the car). I just remember yelling to roll up all the windows, and I couldn't calm down for several minutes.

Another time many years ago, I was at a barbecue. There were yellow jackets all over -- in the soda cans, flying around cake and other food. I ended up jumping in the pool with all of my clothes on, staying under the water as long as I could, to get away from the wasps.

Even last week, I was at the bank and when I came back out into the parking lot, there were yellow jackets flying around my car. I ended up walking all the way around to the back of my car, got in through the back seat and climbed to the front seat to avoid having to go near the wasps.

Furthermore, the past couple of days up till now, it's even becoming hard for me to go out on the deck to water my plants because of the wasps. And the cicada killer wasps haven't even arrived -- have you SEEN those things?!

By the way, this is a male, the small one. Females can be larger than 2 inches long. Image found here.

I first encountered them when I moved into my current house last summer. The males are very territorial and fly at anything that moves. They hang out on the railings of my deck and I just can't go out there. Everyday it gets warmer and warmer, and I dread the coming months. My phobia has really made me a prisoner during the summer. I've even been late to class before because I can't get into my car if there is a wasp sitting on the windshield.

And I'm not just plagued during the day by actual, living wasps. I have nightmares about them too, the most recent being a wasp that followed me around my house, stinging my back. I couldn't get away from it and it was trapped under my shirt. I've had other nightmares where I'm locked in a room full of swarming wasps and hornets, all different sizes.

How I hate this phobia...but it's really impossible to overcome. People say just be calm, keep your heart rate low, just ignore them and they'll ignore you. It really isn't that simple. I'm not just nervous about them, or I don't like them, or whatever -- I am absolutely terrified, as well as humiliated. And this fear humbles me as well. It has to, especially when both friends and total strangers have seen me run screaming in public, when fellow classmates have seen me leave the classroom because there's a wasp on the ceiling and the professor is saying it's not a big deal. I try so hard to control this fear, but it's a futile effort. The worst is when people tell me that I shouldn't be fearing any part of Nature, that I should respect it but not fear it. Especially when Pagans say this to me! It's infuriating. And this phobia is disrupting my life and preventing me from doing a lot of the things I want to be doing.

It makes me feel a lot of shame as well. I've spoken to people before who have had terrible wasp experiences, things like stepping on a rotten log housing a hive and being attacked by that entire hive simultaneously. Hornets flying up shirts and stinging people repeatedly. I haven't had these experiences, yet I'm more terrified of them than any other person I've met. I don't think I have the strength it requires to ever control this fear, and I really think I'm missing out on so much because of it. It is beautiful outside right now, warm but with a cooling breeze, a little cloud cover so the sun isn't so intense. Birds everywhere. But I can see the wasps, flying around my windows, landing on my deck. And I remain stuck inside. I'm always stuck inside.