Rewilding: Leaving Abuse and Finding Me
On The Undoing, Silvernose, and the Queen of Wands. Yellow Brick Road.
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Today’s newsletter is a bit of a winding road, as it always is on the Yellow Brick Road. I’m going to be discussing courtroom drama, retelling the Italian tale Silvernose, musing on the hottest bitch in the tarot deck - the Queen of Wands - and talking about what I’ve learned since exiting an abusive relationship this year in the middle of a pandemonium. I’m issuing a content warning. For the safety of anyone who may be healing fresh or even old wounds like mine, I grant you the opportunity to opt out of this reading for the moment - or forever. I won’t be detailing anything super specific for my own privacy and sanity, but shared experience has a way of piercing our core and causing seismic shifts in how we interact with our own truth that simply can’t be undone. To my survivors - this is for you and me and us.
First - have a TikTok.
The Undoing of Silvernose
Last fall, I gleefully binge watched The Undoing, a courtroom drama in which Nicole Kidman parses through the wreckage of her formerly pristine Uptown-social-committee life after her beloved husband is accused of murdering his mistress. I devoured each episode to gear up for the season finale airing the next day, preparing for the moment of fantastical retribution when I get to watch the one percent’s own so seldom pay for the consequences of their actions. Surely, this storyline has absolutely nothing to do with me - a fat, Black, bisexual artist with thousands of dollars in debt and a stomach full of boxed cabernet sauvignon. Wrong, bitch! In an ending that no one sees coming, and sorry if this is a spoiler - the violent, rich white man is revealed to be the murderer. What makes the ending so bone-chilling is the audience’s (read:my) own gullibility. The ability to be mystified by whiteness, wealth, and perfectly-timed tears of faux remorse long enough to believe absolutely any character in this show could be guilty but the white man with blood on his hands. Feeling totally undressed by being duped by a fictional character in a melodrama just as I had by an actual human very recently, one word echoed in the silence of the credits rolling - over and over.
Silvernose.
Somehow two cautionary tales I had consumed in the same week, originally told hundreds of years apart in different corners of the world, reflected back the truths of my own heartbreak I sought to escape. Escape was kind of the problem to begin with, though.
In the wreckage of a breakup and complete dark night of the soul moment, I deepened my relationship with tarot which lead me to folktales. The imagery, the choice of color, every animal, person, and object in each card is intentional, as to drive the point home that nothing in our immediate environment is without meaning or impact. A simple spread will make a fool of you should you forget. The tarot lives with me, it inhales unseen and seldom-explored life and exhales patience, retreat, heartbreak, solace, diligence, and starts all over again with an entirely new narrative just as I do when cycles come to a close. You are always a student of the tarot, as you are of your only life, and the only true mistake you can make in observing either is forcing will where there are answers in magic and unknown. Almost all old tales lead us back to this - the humor in forced will, how easily we fall prey to our own desires and avoidance of them. There was one tale which haunted me each day since I’ve read it - known in many Germanic translations as Bluebeard, this story is an Italian adaptation called Silvernose.
The oldest of three daughters to a single mother is approached by a charming and fine gentleman who has a startling silver nose. He takes her on lovely picnics and adventures, and promises her a life of comfort. Despite her internal wisdom and sharp perception of the fact that no human bears a silver nose - she says yes when Silvernose asks for her hand in marriage. He whisks her away to his castle where she is provided for in riches, entertainment, and service beyond her imagination.
Silvernose allows access to every room in his castle with a ring of hundreds of keys - access to all, that is, except one. The smallest key on the ring, gold and sparkly, was not to be tested for any reason at all, or it would cost his wife her life. Silvernose is called off to duties in a distant place, and leaves his wife with a kiss on the forehead, a flower pinned to her dress, and a warning to not enter the forbidden room. Of course, this would not be a story if her urges didn’t get the best of our protagonist, and they did.
When she opens the door to which the key belongs, she discovers a burning room filled with souls of her husband’s past wives. Silvernose returns the next day, and even though his wife lies, the burned flower on her dress betrays her and he throws her in the burning room to die. Silvernose returns to the single mother for the second eldest daughter, who suffers the same fate. Then Silvernose returns for the third and youngest. She suspects the morbid fate of her sisters, wets the lavender on her dress before entering the room while her husband is gone, and opens the door to the forbidden room just long enough to save her sisters.
Silvernose ends up dead or alone, depending on the adaptation.
How I Found Myself In The Fiery Room
When we date from a fearful space, my therapist explained, we will seek in new partners what we didn’t find in the last person who hurt us while disregarding the majority of our non-negotiables, if we have them, because we’re just so exhausted by disappointment. This is a therapized version of saying “the bar is in hell.” With enough grace for myself to admit where I was when I entered this relationship, the bar was indeed in hell. Repackaging the hurt of emotionally managing my caretakers in childhood, and doing the same for prospective partners in adulthood, I adopted your typical Girlboss skepticism that love couldn’t be much more than an achilles heel for a woman in her power. I’d only seen women demoting their interests, passions, and actual loves out of exhaustion for doing everything alone, like the eldest daughter in Silvernose. Quite the contrary, women in their power are harvested from love, and love alone. I would find out the hard way.
I had been on two legitimate dates my whole life, and the folks who I dated in my younger years lacked motivation, drive, laundered bed sheets, and a certain fire in their belly. They weren’t hungry to know more, see more, be more in the way those of us who have to build a new framework for love, success, and fulfillment must be. When I met my most recent ex, he was all hunger. In fact, he was insatiable. He would describe his type jokingly (but very much seriously) as “juicy,” and I should’ve known then he intended to consume me and spit out a pile of bones in my place.
These sorts of relationships always start like a dream in which the haze of projection, illusion, and could-be’s make it impossible to tell it’s actually a fucking nightmare. In the beginning, I was utterly swept away by being courted for the first time after years of being perceived as undesirable, friend-zoning myself, and feeding my anxiety of being vulnerable over my silent yearning to be in partnership. He and I both envisaged a life of simply everything the world has to offer, appeared to understand happiness on the same terms, and wanted a partner of equal intellect and capacity to conquer the world with…allegedly. We went on obnoxiously cute dates that always ended in a perfect sunset kiss, and I would leave starry-eyed and curious how someone could be so “perfect.” No human bears a silver nose, my instincts chimed and gripped at my center for my attention. I ignored myself. It turns out all you have to do to catch prey is to listen closely enough for signs of loose boundaries, grit, and willingness to be thrown to the wolves to find home.
Our earliest days together were mostly spent performing trauma show and tell. One-two-step, we glided and twirled effortlessly around each other’s 20 year old baggage to an airy melody curiously incongruent to the weight of the words leaving our mouths. And yet, I felt freedom naming insecurities, challenges, and regrets in the presence of another without feeling ugly for it. In fact, I believe it made me more desirable in the eyes of someone looking for brokenness, while I thought I was sharing my wholeness. Thinking back, he was often somewhere distant when I talked about my goals, dreams, and aspirations, and would snap back into trance when I was musing on shame, blame, or torment.
The unfolding of his story felt like an anvil being placed on my chest. I thought to myself…”the ease with which he talks about so much tragedy”…it must be just a bit lighter for his own chest to rest these stories on mine. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had recited his origins a hundred times, and I would find out he had - that’s how he convinced dozens of empathetic, kind women to spend time with him. Pity is a strong element in the art of performance. He grew up with a small army of kids he was secondarily responsible for as a consequence of two neglectful and abusive parents. He was the only family member to go to college, which was a fiercely traumatic time in its own right. The years that followed, spanning the entirety of his 20’s, were mostly characterized by a series of relationships. In fact, he departed from a serious relationship just a year prior to our meeting. The tepidness of his tone with the first two girlfriends disappeared, and turned into a burning so visceral I could see embers in his pupils. Third girlfriend entered the room with us then, a summoned ghost of girlfriend’s past, and she never left.
The part of me who still believed love was a prize, best won and captured, licked her chops having sniffed out the game. All I had to do was prove myself, and I was used to it. “Now that I see you stripped down, you actually look a lot like her.” From then, I was always her, and he was acting out any perverted fantasy of vengeance or absolution he could through me without my consent.
Only after we professed our love for each other did complete praise and adoration slip into light negging, and quickly devolved into something much uglier. I was expected to listen to him for hours on end, and if I shared something vulnerable, I was met with ice, condescension, or rage. First came forceful suggestions about how I should dress, wear my hair, run my business, all of which is deeply personal to me and my creative process. Comparisons to models and other women who he was secretly dating turned into “worry his vanity would get in the way of commitment to me,” and that I was the most beautiful girl he dated “in the face” which he carefully mentioned while I was completely naked. Then came the threats to leave if I didn’t get a boob job, and eventually weaponizing my body’s inability to feel safe around him as an excuse to cheat with over a dozen people. We stopped going on dates, unless they were to make up for explosive fights, and when I invited him to work events - my sacred place - I would be bombarded with criticism about what I said and did wrong as soon as we walked away. When I defended myself, I ended up being the person in the hot seat. Nothing I did was ever enough, and everything I asked for was too much.
His actions were never the problem; my react was. The way I held him accountable for saying mean things to me? Treating him like an old boyfriend. The way I asked to not make every victory and disappointment in my life about him? Expecting him to be my therapist. The way I defended my love for him? I didn’t know how to love because I hadn’t been in love enough. The openness we established our connection on was used as ammo to drive me deeper into service to his ego, and farther away from service of my own needs. Trauma bonding.
I did not know this person intimately, only intensely. Stories in which he was the victim and the world his perpetrator, stories of a past self when he was filled with less hate, stories in which everyone owed him something, I was awarded access. His perception of himself as an irresistible Casanova who needed to be fawned over every waking second to fill a void, and anything else he needed to create in his world to help him sleep at night, I could access. Some of these rooms in his castle were filled with beautiful things, like his record collection, his affinity for children, his archival memory of literally anything he loved. But the truth of him, the parts he would have to stop hiding away and running from in order to be a compassionate person, a gentle partner, and a healed soul who didn’t use and dispose of people for energetic source - his fiery rooms - remained guarded by shame and deceit. The difference between intimacy and intensity is our familiarity with our fiery rooms. I tried to know and kindle and tend to his, but ended up being thrown in. Alone.
Toward the end of our relationship, I couldn’t reckon with the person I believed myself to be and the person who I had become to endure and tolerate my relationship. What I haven’t decided to banish to the darkest corners of my psyche, I have nearly forgotten because of how disassociated I was from my knowing and truth. By the time I started to muster up the courage to truly leave, he didn’t need to tell me anything at all to make me feel horrible. I was doing his dirty work for him. The amount of space my voice occupied waned until it was but a faint whisper, and all I heard, thought, and dreamt of was his venom.
While I felt I was lightyears away from any sense of belonging in love, I knew exactly what needed to be done. I had to enter my own fiery room, which now included the ghost of ex’s past, the resentment for my childhood that I refused to face, the impulse to abandon myself and sacrifice my intuition for knock-off love, and mourning the loss of my innocence - what some call rose-colored glasses - left to ashes.
In any telling of the story, Silvernose ends up alone or dead, just as Nicole Kidman’s husband in The Undoing is sentenced to a life in prison. But that’s not the point - is it? Because most predators, liars, abusers, and cheats don’t get any version of restorative justice we can see with our eyes and settle into our minds as right and good, and we can’t waste the rest of our lives wondering if they might. They will hopefully heal and stop harming, but more often than not, end up morphing and adapting to continue to live without consequence. Violence is not inventive; they will hook up with your friend, your coworker, the girl you caught them texting if they could, and it’s sadly not the point.
The point is, the sisters continue to live. WE continue to live in mistrust of our internal compass, of what love actually looks like, of whether goodness truly exists because even in plain sight, we seldom see what’s just before us. Perhaps more often, we see what we want to see, following trails lined with glimmering grandiosity and charm, and ending up trapped in the fiery rooms of others because we want to avoid foraging in the blazing heat of our own. The heat of our own past heartbreak, our own bitterness, our own toxicity and venom.
There is no reason to package up abuse and tie it with a bow. There need not be any takeaways from violence but the recognition of a horrible situation that should’ve never been. But there is another truth outside of the relationship itself. Me. She’s the only thing I have control over, the only person I have to take care of each day and shepherd back to safety, and she deserves more than to be left in ashes and dust. She deserves to find her instincts again, and to quote Clarissa Pinkola Estés in Women Who Run With the Wolves, to trust in taking “the world into one’s arms and to act toward it in a soul-filled and soul-strengthening manner in a powerful act of wildish spirit” again.
The QoW
All of the queens in the tarot (Queen of Wands, Queen of Cups, Queen of Pentacles, Queen of Swords) have seen some shit. They’ve been through the roughest conditions of their respective elements (fire, water, earth, air) and learned mastery of them through failure, resilience and compassion. The Queen of Wands sits on a throne of desire, passion, charisma and warmth. After being burned by others’ fiery rooms, where she lost her innocence and naivety, she learned to face her own, and now she is lit from the inside like stained glass.
Beautiful, magnificent, and begging for a closer look. Her magnetism is rooted in a kind of re-wilding. She has rekindled what her younger self understood before being tempted out of her knowing - her carnal desires and instincts and ability to wield them and revoke them just as quickly is nothing short of divinity. She is understood to be a bit of a showboat and vamp, but her courage speaks for itself. She is a witch, and confidence in her magic, but the confidence is not unfounded. She is willing to march through the fire of change, life’s only constant, to be reborn.
She reminds me of what becomes of a person who faces a Silvernose. With courage to be transformed by fire, she is known.
Here are some resources for emotional abuse:
How to Recognize the Signs of Mental and Emotional Abuse
A special thank you to HGA, my therapist, who let me break into a million pieces and taught me how to put them back together again. xx
Beautifully written. Ever since signing up, I'm always looking forward to seeing your newsletter in my Inbox xo
as usual, your words are everything. I love you