After the End: Yggdrasil

I finally managed to begin getting through to and integrating the six-year old part of myself after ten years of some of the darkest, worst struggle of my life. How am I supposed to squeeze that kind of struggle and change into the next few hours?

And the truth is, I can't. It will take the time it takes. I will succeed on my own terms, in my own time and there is no fast forward button. A life is lived out over the course of a lifetime.

So, this wonderful woman will have to be wonderful just a bit more and make room for me falling to pieces as my internal Ragnarok knocks my foundations out from under me. But then, I don't suppose there's any other time Ragnarok can be expected to arrive.

She's the perfect chaos, the beautiful upheaval of love that makes me feel so safe my demons storm down from my mountaintops and knock everything down. Looking inside I understood, I choose her over stable stasis. And I realized, that's the point. With her, and with that ten year old in me. Kids, pets, friends, lovers, spouses—they make one's life messy. Your cats destroy your sofas, your dogs destroy your carpets, your kids destroy every material object you have and even the least friend brings a mess into an otherwise orderly little life.

And so, yes, the ten year old is Loki, is Fenris, and is Ragnarok. But after Ragnarok, Baldr and his brother return from Hel and the spring follows winter. Love is giving those you love the power to destroy parts of your life, with the confidence and faith that you both can rebuild whatever is shaken to ground.

So, I know the ten year old needs an opponent. Someone to face off against, and hold the line against him. Someone who will oppose without being an enemy. He needs a father. He needs me to stand up. And the little wolf being what he is, he needs me to finally embrace that wolf energy inside and stand in front of him, on four legs, head down, shoulders up.

On the day all this started to fall into place, I rode my bike across town. Twice I saw prairie dogs. Close at hand, not fleeing, which is uncommon. Regarding me as I passed within two feet of them. They were burrowing under a new bike path, the one I was riding on. They'd hollowed out underneath the path enough that the concrete had begun to collapse, so that their burrows peeked out from rubble. They'd destroyed a paved road. They suddenly seemed like that ten year old in me, not strictly the squirrel he'd wanted to be when younger, but close. Prairie dog and squirrel—not the same, but ringing the same bell inside me. And being a force for Ragnarok as he was, he was also the squirrel Ratatoskr slowly destroying the world tree, which would herald the coming apocalypse. And that nevertheless, he was joy and triumph, embodied. That one thing could be both.

Because the forces of life are the forces of death. Autumn leaves and the winter's Ragnarok unmakes the whole of nature's bounty, until Baldr returns to herald the spring.

And I knew then, I could rebuild. And welcome the uncertainty of the coming winter, when all my best laid plans will crumble. Even, perhaps, my own Yggdrasil, the very center of my own world. I might lose my center, entirely. But so be it.

S, I very much hope you're still with me at that point—I'd like very much to plant a new world tree with you.