I’m thinking about my brother because I’m writing this, but I’m actually not thinking about him very much, considering a shaman just told me his spirit was pissed that I’m alive and he’s not. I don’t know how to process this news. I like the idea that it could be true, because it transfers the blame I usually save for myself because life isn’t how it should be to someone else, thereby absolving me of a little responsibility. It also confirms with freakish accuracy my suspicion that my “problems” are bigger than me, and maybe even located on another spiritual plane. What an explanation! I always thought the answer would be something more vague.

I went to see the shaman again. I didn’t have a particular agenda and I didn’t feel a profound change after I saw him the first time, but I liked talking to him. I don’t think his belief system is any less legitimate than the rest of them. In fact, I think it’s a good way to view things.

We talked for a long time, mostly about my feelings of “not being enough,” and things I’m uncertain about—all the topics that make me a broken record. I was annoyed to be discussing these things, but he told me not to worry about it, because what I was really talking about was myself. That’s the truth.

He asked me a number of times if I’d been jealous of my older sister when we were growing up. He’d asked the same question during our previous sessions. I said no. My sister is five years older than me, and when I was little we were so different and far apart in age, it never occurred to me to be jealous of her. Maybe I was jealous of the fact she seemed to never be in trouble, at least not the way I was. I was always in trouble. I was often doing something spazzy or dumb (because I was so worried about being in trouble that I had to make my fear come true just to get it over with). The shaman seemed to accept this explanation. Mostly.

I’ve recently realized that I’m really angry. I don’t always consciously feel angry, but my anger, stuffed in thick and deep, is always there. Even though I’m not always aware of it, I’m pretty certain I’m always communicating it.

In December, I went to see a shaman, and while he was looking into the flame of a white candle that I’d rolled all over my body (yup), he casually said something like, “You’re very angry,” or “There’s a lot of anger there.”  I was surprised to hear it. I came to discuss and purge lots of things, but I wouldn’t have named any of them anger. Sadness, confusion, jealously, longing…all of those seemed like a better fit.

Later in the session, after we did a guided meditation and talked a bunch, he had me stand in the middle of the room clutching a black stone in each hand. He asked me to send my anger into those stone while he performed a ritual that involved, among other things, spitting alcohol into my face and hitting me with feathers.