I was just reading a blog post about being ridden by Frigga, in which the author described the process of letting a god in as going inside herself and opening a door:
Somewhere, deep inside, where the mind, the soul and the body meet there is a door. A quiet little backdoor. I do not know if everyone has this door. I do not know if anyone can find it. I do not know if everyone could open it. I do not know if anyone could close it back up again. I do know it wouldn't be safe for most people to try.
It's a pretty good description of the way I used to let people in. Odin in the guise of Professor Dark taught the way to the door at about... oh, probably nine or ten at the oldest. That was how we went out and how people came in.
That note above about "I don't know if anyone could close it"? Yeah, I had that problem. One of my regular visitors decided that she should have an in whenever she wanted, and so she basically jammed the lock.
I didn't have any control for a long time, and nothing I did fixed the door. Probably if I'd been in the right place at the time, Odin could have offered some kind of fix, but he was MIA at the time. I might have ended up owing him, so maybe it's for the best. More than once, I put a call out into the universe that I would do anything for whoever could fix the damn lock. The first time I did that, I got Delirium. The second time, I got my Lady of Suicidal Ideation. I tried one thing after another, and finally there was only one solution.
I stopped asking. I did the brickwork myself, essentially sealing off the door, Cask of Amontillado style. I broke the screen and blew up the battery and my godphone is permanently offline.
There's a small amount of coming and going among us still, but it's very, very limited. There was probably a point where I could have gone down the priest/horse path. I'm not sure if I left it when she broke the lock or when I closed off the door, though I'm pretty sure that trying after the lock was broken would have ended badly.
Sometimes I wonder what my life would be like if I'd gone that way instead. Presumably Odin would have stepped in and done the fix, and I'd owe him big-time for it, though it's possible someone else could have. Pretty much anyone who did would have owned me when they were done. It's strange to think about it.
I always visualized the door as being at the base of my skull, if it were to be physically located on my body. When I had my brain surgery a couple of years ago, it felt like the final act of blocking out that possibility, even though the actual incision is a little off to the side.
It's also strange to think that the anniversary of my surgery is coming up. As always, the year is flying by. We're up to R already! It's almost September, and it's started raining again. God, it'll be first New Year before I know it. I don't have time to worry about what might have been; I need to worry about what comes next.
I have the blessing of a life that remained my own. That's worth appreciating.