Pandemic stress is hard on a necromancer.

 I'm writing this here instead of my other witchy blog or my personal blog because I think it fits here better. I don't know.

We're a year and a half (a little over actually) into this pandemic business and I'm frayed. I am struggling on the spiritual level a fair amount because of the fact that I'm pretty isolated geographically from the pagan community that I was participating in before this thing hit. I was just coming out of my shell and stuff. Then Covid-19 arrived on the scene and everything went to shit.

Around the time of early January 2019, my guides and all of my ancestors were telling me not to do divination for the upcoming year. We all know what kind of a shit show 2019 was. I came out of 2019 worn out and confused by why the dead were so many and so restless. Now, I understand. The constant static of a ton of psychic voices was cacophony in my head to the point that I was a little worried that my depression medication wasn't working properly.

Under the guidance of the All-Father, I put up wards around my home to keep all but my familial dead out. Gradually, the psychic pressure of the restless dead reached a point that going out of the house was a literal headache. At that point, the wards got extended to include the entire property and a ward got attached to my medical id bracelet. It went from noise to silence. Again, I was left wondering if my medications were working properly.

I still feel them out there. The lost souls looking for their route to where they're supposed to go. There's so many of them. There's more than just human souls that are in this position. The mass deaths that have happened over the last three years have left an imprint. This imprint on the psychic level of reality isn't going away anytime soon. But, like any other hollow space, it fills up. In this case, with spirits.

I'm a necromancer. It's my thing to talk to and generally deal with the spirits of the dead. Has been since I was a small child (and I suspect it runs in the family). Shutting down this part of myself has left me feeling out of sorts and like I'm missing something vital to my being. But, I'm being cautioned against opening up because we're not done with this pandemic. The warnings I get is that this is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Those warnings set off my anxiety issues. Add to that the legitimate reasons to be anxious about Covid-19 and its possible influence on my family, you just get an emotional mess. Now, the stress of all of this got to the point where my sleep was screwed up. That's very bad for a person with bipolar disorder. It is equally bad for a person with posttraumatic stress disorder. I happen to have both in spades. So, my doctor put me on medication to help me sleep and tweaked my other medications to help me with the anxiety (and attendant depression). 

Here I am, a little over a year and a half later, I still feel that psychic pressure. When I go out, it's like static electricity all around me. It's only gotten more intense as time has gone on. I veil and that static like feeling is pushed back. The problem is, the people where I live are not ... tolerant of anything that looks even remotely Islamic. The veil style that provides the most shelter for me is the headrail, which looks identical to the shyla because there's only so many ways you can wrap a bit of fabric about your head. 

I wear kerchiefs but it isn't the same. I'm working on trying to come up with ways I can both not be overwhelmed by the restless dead's need for someone to point the way and still be psychically active. Right now, the only thing that I can do with out something going haywire is basic divination. But, even that is getting a little weird. Which means the pressure on the wards is getting higher. Which isn't surprising.

Covid-19 jumps and mutates incredibly fast. It kills easily and in a horrific way. It's a terrifying disease. The mass deaths it's caused is warping reality a bit because there are so many restless souls. I pray that with the Hunt season, those souls will all be brought to where they're supposed to be. At the same time, it feels like Hunt season from 2019 never ended.