by D B Nielsen
I do not need to be here.
But they’d refused to listen to my protests at home; arguments erupting as they’d force me to eat what they considered to be a healthy diet. I couldn’t convince them that the irregularities in my menstrual cycle and those few fainting spells could be attributed to stress, nothing more sinister. I get good grades. I try to make them happy. Why do they have to control what I eat?
And, besides, Sage and I are both naturally slim. It’s my natural metabolism.
Here in the hospital, I have to see a therapist every other day and talk about my disorder. They tell me I am in denial. They want me to be honest with myself.
This is not me. This is not who I am.
I am forced to finish everything on my plate at mealtimes. I am weighed every morning to make sure I am gaining weight. My daily food intake is recorded, calories amassed, attendance at group therapy, lectures on nutrition and good eating habits. I am denied watching Gossip Girl, Revenge and Australia’s Next Top Model.
A weight goal is set to be achieved by the end of the fourth week, only then maybe I’ll be permitted to go home. For when I return home, I am given a meal plan to follow to make sure my weight remains stable. I will see a therapist every week until I learn to manage on my own. There is no cure, only treatment.
My twin self looks hideous. Skeletal limbs, lank hair, dull eyes. This is the picture I have been hiding in the attic...
I have an eating disorder. No more lies.
I can finally admit the truth when I see Mum standing aimlessly at the kitchen counter, tears silently rolling down her cheeks. She feels powerless in the face of my denial. Doesn’t know how to reach me. Blames herself. I am tearing my family apart. I am making them suffer.
I’d never taken the time to stop and think about it. And now I feel ashamed. And afraid. Because I have a sickness. And I have to learn to manage it. I want to escape from myself, don’t want to think about making a choice, don’t want to talk about it, don’t want my words to shriek my pain, my fear.
But I find my way out of the darkness.
I turn my experience into therapy, therapy into art. My Visual Art Major Work for my Finals is a reflection of this truth. I capture my eating disorder and my path to recovery on film. This is my photographic treatment. The skeleton is out of the closet. I expose myself for the world to see.
I have an eating disorder. No more lies...
I was alone. The nightmare horrors receded; my twin self unravelled like a vine into its roots, evanescing into air. Only the faintest waft of incense lingered still, a breath of saffron.
I couldn’t take much more of this.
Gasping against the smooth stone of the wall, I paused to take stock as the last menorah’s flames lit the dread path ahead of me. I could no longer tell which way was up, standing at the threshold to yet another space which, from above, would hold me at its very core. Fanning out from this opening were two circles, one within another, a ribbon of symbols curling around the centre where I stood. It should not have been possible to remain standing with my feet planted firmly upon the ground as the threshold seemed to jut out at a ninety degree angle, so that in taking a step forward I would seemingly be turning the corner like walking the edge of a cube, though whichever way I stood I remained upright.
My journey had led me to where the gyre now forked into seven paths of polished obsidian stone. Their midnight sheen wore the same reflective polish of still water in a well. Mirrored symbols hung upside down, further disorientating the eye. The circles on the floor and surrounding the entrance of each path continued to writhe with the intricate patterns of interwoven silver-violet markings inlaid into seamless night. The embedded power of the Underworld pulsed as I measured what lay ahead, desperate to muster the frayed threads of my courage.
‘Oh God, I don’t think I can do this,’ I whispered hopelessly into the abyss.
Then I sensed someone there. ‘Do not despair, Saffron.’
The voice sounded in my mind strongly but strangely disjointed, like an echo in a hollow chamber.
‘Who’s there? Who are you?’ I asked hesitantly, fearing the answer.
‘Anakim. Trust in us. Let us help you.’
I relaxed as I heard Gabriel’s and St. John’s voices in my mind, layered behind a stronger, older voice, which I assumed belonged to Anak. It was disconcerting to hear the Anakim, like listening to a chorus of voices though each one slightly out of synch with the others, almost like an aural relay. I could imagine the voices covering vast distances, spaced out from one another like a series of telegraph poles.
‘Please. Yes. All right,’ I agreed, swaying uncertainly on my feet. Reliving my last nightmare experience made me realise I had to accept with humility when I needed help. And that time was now. ‘What must I do? Which path do I take?’
‘The path of Desired and Sought Consciousness,’ came the reply.
Remembering the same words spoken by the gypsy mystic, I shook my head in confusion, staring out at the options before me. ‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘Each of the Paths of Wisdom to the Tree of Life represents a different state of consciousness. Path twenty-one, Kaph, is that of Desired and Sought Consciousness. It is your path, Saffron. It is called this because it receives the divine influx so as to bestow its blessing to all things that exist,’ stated Anak, his tone solemn.
A second voice chimed in, stronger and closer, this time Gabriel’s, ‘We give and we receive. We set our lives in motion by what we take, and what we take is given by the Creator. The Creator gives us Life. Even when we’ve made a mistake, committed a great wrong, this too works mysteriously towards the ultimate good.’
‘How good is drawn out from the simplest choice is the key,’ continued St. John, taking up the thread. ‘This good is drawn from every decision, every action we undertake. All action must beget consequences. Everything is always flowing forward, always growing, continually becoming.’
‘“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards”,’ I said, repeating the words of the old woman.
‘Yes, it is your path,’ agreed Anak, his mellifluous voice echoing in my mind.
But still I hesitated.
Searching the paths ahead of me, I protested, ‘But there is no path twenty-one. There are only seven paths. Which one am I supposed to take?’
This time a symbol appeared in my mind, which I knew could only have been projected by St. John. It looked like a backward “c”.
‘“Kaph”. It is written in Hebrew,’ St. John explained.
Wiping sweat from my brow and ashy palms, I murmured sarcastically, ‘Of course. Hebrew. That makes perfect sense. If I ever get out of here alive, you’ll have to explain to me why all these signs are Judaic when I thought St. Augustine, a Catholic monk, brought the Scroll here.’
I thought I heard Gabriel give a brief chuckle, but my mind had already seized upon the symbol in front of me, easily read despite it hanging upside down and reflected in smooth, hard stone.
‘I see it!’ I exclaimed excitedly and would have rushed thoughtlessly forward if Anak’s voice hadn’t constrained me.
‘STOP!’ The urgency in his voice willed me to obey.
‘What? But why?’ I asked, floored, almost toppling over but managing to save myself from falling forward.
Anak broached the awful subject with a brutal candour. ‘The enemy you face in the Underworld is yourself. The path to the good is balanced against the evil. In facing yourself, know that you cannot change this, but must embrace it. The shadow is part of you.’
The enemy I faced was to be my own self, my shadow, my darkness. I now understood. But how could it be any worse than what I had just faced?
Mustering a semblance of calm, I nodded. The inexorable knowledge I could not turn back forced me onward.
Slowly making my way forward, I was surprised at my own steadiness, though perhaps this was the result of the Anakim encouraging me on my quest. I t
ook the remaining steps towards the path of Kaph as the featureless twilight around me surged with incomprehensible power.
But on reaching the mirror-smooth wall of Kaph, the symbol blurred as if a pebble had struck the still water of a well and with a high-pitched resonance, the polished stone shattered. As if it were happening in freeze-frame, the shards and splinters of glass-like rock imploded as the walls were rent asunder, and I beheld myself as a multitude of twin images, face after face, likeness after likeness, regarding me with sneers and mockery, bitterness and accusation, fear and anger.
As Anak had predicted, I had not vanquished my twin self who, instead, now waited for me beyond the path, beckoning for me to proceed.
She looked at me and smiled. I flinched. Even winter and fire would have frozen in her smile.
She was the Queen of Darkness and I had willingly entered her realm of forbidden return. I had wandered out of the mortal world. Now all I wanted was to melt into the solid stones behind me.
The Underworld held all seasons and yet none.
Her smile held within it a warning; I can keep you here past death. Your shade will wander forever through my realm, through my seasons. You will walk amongst the shifting sands of dead time, walk my endless corridors. Death leads nowhere but back to me. I will keep you here. You belong with me...
‘No!’ I protested loudly, resisting her seductive allure with the promise of tranquillity, ‘I don’t belong here. I belong in a mortal realm.’
Then why did you come? Why did you come if you don’t want to be here?
She smiled sweetly, pityingly at me.
You have always longed for what you cannot have, what you are not. You are not her and can never be. You struggle between desiring wholeness and separation. Even now you long to be part of her world. What coals of wisdom do you find in this earth, Wise One? Will it be enough for you to fashion a diamond?
Though her words were cryptic, I understood her meaning perfectly.
I had always felt second best around Sage. And though I loved her, at times I couldn’t help but be jealous of her. Sage succeeded in everything she did, whilst I never quite caught up. Before she was little more than a year old, Sage could talk in several languages, and not just baby talk but proper sentences; something that took me almost eighteen months to accomplish, and then only in English. In passing my milestones, I was merely on par with others my age, just average, whilst Sage could read and write well before nursery school. I was more dexterous, had better hand-eye coordination, could clamber and climb over the most difficult obstacles at Kinda-Gym, possessed an uncanny ability to navigate, could ski and surf and swim better than Sage. But Sage was highly gifted, intelligent, disciplined and principled.
I feared that I was only similar to Sage in DNA alone.
Even Gabriel had said that I was nothing like my sister.
There can be only one. Only one sage, one Wise One. There is no way out of the Underworld, out of my heart, for you...
‘Close your ears to her, Saffron,’ Anak’s voice commanded, ‘Close your heart. She will prey upon your deepest fears and drive you to despair.’
But his caution came too late. Her words had already made their way into my heart; insidious, poisonous.
‘What do you want from me?’ I asked hollowly. ‘What more can I give to you? Do you wish for me to stay with you always? Is that the price the Underworld demands? A soul? Like Ishtar? You are my shadow, the one thing I can never escape.’
Yesssss ... I knew you before you knew yourself.
‘What do you want from me?’ I cried aloud in despair.
Stay. With me. Here. My world. Your world. I know what your heart seeks.
But another voice whispered deep in my heart, “I need you...” and I knew I could not just give in, give up. I started to struggle, but her words held me fast, bound me to her, refusing to give way. I was trapped in this timeless nowhere, finding only darkness and illusion.
And then I saw the shadows move around me, as if they had been silently listening, waiting for the moment at the back of duration, when there were no more words to say and little fight left within me.
Then Gabriel’s voice resounded loud and clear, calling me back.
‘Know thyself, Saffron. Time pools here. Draw strength and understanding. Embrace what you are.’
Her hand moved towards me, outstretched, holding ash and bone. The shadows shifted and whispered.
But the Anakim spoke to me, a chorus of voices, bringing me peace.
‘“Sekhel HaChafutz u’HaMevukash. That my intelligence desires Life to ask You everything that is on my mind”, Oh Creator.’
Her eyes burned darker still.
I am you. I am your fate...
Her face, my own, transfixed me.
You belong here...
But the Anakim urged, ‘Let go, Saffron. Choose Life, Wise One.’
I made my choice.
Immediately there flashed a symbol in my mind.
St. John again now, guiding me through.
‘“Chai” is Hebrew for “Life”, Saffron. Choose Life.’
And I became the conduit, sharing the echo of a roiling force, of inexhaustible power, of pure energy, receiving divine directions that would lead us to the Garden of Eden in the real world, through space. I felt like I finally understood my purpose, as mathematical formulas flashed by, creating and shaping reality.
‘But there are no symbols. I don’t see any. Only numbers,’ I cried desperately.
‘Eighteen, Saffron,’ chimed in Gabriel.
And, as my mind seized on it, I was tumbled by an enormous wave. Then the wave literally collapsed, going from a state that reflected all potential outcomes to a state that reflected only one; the outcome perceived at the moment the universe was made. What streamed past, too fast for me to interpret, was imprinted on my mind, and on stone and papyrus. A transcript of indescribable complexity, much of it patterned in coded cartography, quantum physics, cosmology; curves, lines, angles framing a language too complex to grasp, derived from the mathematical universe.
My hand reached out and connected to something material and solid. Fingers curling around the brittle sheafs, I grasped tightly and tugged as the embedded power of the Underworld reacted.
My twin self shimmered, howled in loss and fury, lost definition at its edges. For one moment, transfixed, suspended, both out of time and within, I beheld the fracturing of my being, my fragmented selves, split into alternate images in parallel universes inhabiting multiple levels of space and time; my past self, which had no other choice but to move inexorably forward; the present self, ripped out of time’s continuum; and the futures yet untold and simultaneously preordained, which I shrank away from, fearful of laying claim to a fickle fortune, of owning the burden of fate, of an accountability to destiny.
Divided against myself, I floundered.
‘LET GO, SAFFRON!’ shouted Gabriel, ‘CHOOSE LIFE!’
Whichever way you choose, you are mine.
There was only one choice. My decision was immediate.
I chose Life, knowing that anything less would rend my awareness into irreparable fragments.
You will return soon to me, my own...
A razor’s edge of starlight burst forth, holding resolute against the darkness as I crossed the final threshold. The bonds tying me to the Underworld snapped and recoiled, a severance that made me nauseated.
I collapsed.
I scarcely felt the hands that caught my limp form in support, easing me to the ground. Reduced to a mass of circling pain, I allowed the Scroll to be removed from my paralysed grasp.
‘Oh God, Fi! I’m here! What have you done? Why couldn’t you have waited for me?’
I looked up into the face of my twin self, my sister, seeing her amber coloured eyes shadowed with fear and concern, and surrendered, finally letting go, allowing the encroaching darkness to swallow me.
SCROLL
CHAPTER SEVEN
I woke to t
he sound of Gabriel’s voice.
What Gabriel was doing in my bedroom, I couldn’t imagine. One thing was for certain, I sure as hell wouldn’t have invited him in. Then I felt the hard, cold bed which I lay upon, and lifted my head to stare at the open sky above. I dropped my head back again, groaning, unable to make sense of anything.
‘Fi,’ Sage pleaded. She stroked back damp tendrils of hair from my face, careful to avoid my scar. ‘Fi, please wake up.’
‘Let her be,’ murmured St. John, his deep, smooth voice barely concealing his weariness, ‘She’s been through a lot. She’ll be just fine with a little rest.’
‘Easy for you to say,’ Sage said, waspishly, ‘You’re not her sister.’
Woah! You tell him, girl! I thought, proud but disbelieving that Sage would have the nerve to stand up to her fiancé.
‘Sage, I only meant–’St. John began, but Sage interrupted him.
‘No, I know, I’m sorry,’ she apologised immediately, ‘I know you did your best for her in the Underworld. I know that it’s cost you; you both seem so drained. I’m just a little on edge is all.’
‘Tiens! Ça me fait chier! Aren’t we all? But try to remain positive, tu vois? This is what your sister wanted and, besides, it’s a journey she had to make alone,’ Gabriel replied, his tone introducing an element of calm. ‘But I think you’re right, we should wake her up. It’s been over an hour since she returned.’
‘Wouldn’t that be dangerous, to wake someone from a deep sleep?’ queried Sage, her voice now filled with uncertainty despite, moments earlier, voicing her desire to do just that.
‘Euf! Are you sure she’s asleep anyway?’ Gabriel asked, sceptically, ‘Does she normally sound like Darth Vader when she sleeps?’
Typical Gabriel! The bastard!
‘Besides,’ he continued, ‘I can’t read the markings on the Scroll and, unless you can read them, we need her to make sense of them for us.’
I sat up, so suddenly I startled him. Sage jumped back and Gabriel looked at me in alarm.