Sylvanna Devlin

There’s a mistaken philosophy that austerity and doing without elevates on spiritually. No. Having the privacy and comfort to pray elevates one spiritually.  Just trying to survive might get you to church but it might just make you forget gods exist while you jostle for change.

There are those who think I was too proud to beg while homeless and living in my car. EBT takes an address and while a friend was letting mail go there I was too stressed out and confused all the fucking time to just call, wait on hold and explain my circumstances. So I asked my brother for help. Just occasionally. Enough for gas and apples and peanut butter. My friend let me stay there during the day and offered food while I was there. I had access to a bath. But that apartment was too small for four adults and one teenager so I left in the afternoon and stayed in my car at a rest stop. My poor cat going from bathroom to car every day. She’s calm about the carrier but not fucking amused to be in one. But I let her out while driving one day and that was an error.

On weekends I would try anything to beat the heat. Moving the car. Going to a park and finding shade. It was a miserable shitty existence and I didn’t consider praying at all.

I talking to the gods all of once and couldn’t feel them. My emotions were too tied up in waiting for housing of some kind or other. I was hounded by reality abuse which goes beyond gaslighting and dealt with the very real threat of rape by being the biggest fuck off dragon a fat 5’3 woman could be.

That’s actually quite a lot of fuck off.  I was the rest stop egg head. The

“decedent” because I swore my great grandfather was a settled Irish gypsy. But I was also the draw for noise and commotion, attention others didn’t want and some I did and some I didn’t. It was all very well for the sherif to have a soft spot for me it did not help my popularity. But he woke me every morning that it was safe to move my car and I did.

I’ve had a weird life.

During this time what I could pack of my belongings were spread to the friend and lingering, drying out, suffering the heat of a California storage unit sans conditioning.  I had very little packed away. Ornaments and books mostly. I had been suffering such daily psychological torture beyond regular imagination that I could barely pack. I couldn’t think. I could write. I lay around. Sylvanna with her head in the ground.

The circumstances were against me and I have no idea what I saved and what I didn’t. I needed a new hope candle and when I finally ended up with my own room in a woman’s building I had to get an electric one.

By then my parents were more generous and opened up their wallets again. Their austerity driven by too many bottles of wine apparently over. The grudges gone. The ogre settled and fae again.

That late summer my soul floated to others in a weird collocation thing astral projection does. I was all over. A ghost. An Angel. A cuddle buddy. A sex toy. But those faded with medication that packed on the pounds. But when I went into a room Allah tapped me on the shoulder to tell me he existed.

Who the fuck ignores Allah?

Well actually me. I still didn’t pray, but he wrapped himself around me until I was to safety. But then the gaslighting and psychological torture began again and lives were lost almost my own. But he’s patient. He allowed me to see the end of the story and then come back in this world to help others reach the good versions. Nirvana or Heaven your faith will pick. But it’s not just a case of believing.

Once in a room I slowly collected “stuff” and after my attempt my mum showered me in packages. She couldn’t come up and hug me so this was what she did. I have a home wax kit. Foot bath. Furniture because my mum wanted me to be okay. My sister is similar and made sure I was okay in Section 8 housing in a “alright” neighborhood. My cat furniture and recovery from surgery and a coma have been thanks to her.

It’s enough to make you thank Allah for family and friends. Bard twenty minutes away who let me come to his house every week day, Mary down the hall. I was looked by two of the same name. One in a car the other a shelter. A lovely lady of the houseless but wealthy history was a sweetheart to me too. A lifelong friend looked after my cat for six months, Brother Crow helped settle me in and get the cart I really needed. I fucking had help. People miracles.

That’s not including those whose job it was to help me. Particularly the one who risked her job to get me a place to sleep when my roommate became psychotic and scary – blaming me and vindictive enough to prove she may have indeed been dangerous.

I tried with her. I really did. It worked for a while but then she spent a night out and came back different. She was escaping a cult though so I am willing to give her some room her head was messed with a bit too much.

I sure know what that’s like.

The Petaluma problem was a father who consulted for the NSA, My hearing and calculations, general hacking, the water running low and a realty issue, the Sonoma situation with sex trafficking, and a neighborhood going insane from idk what, it practically formed a cult through punishment.

Add the gaslighting and thievery and it’s no wonder I couldn’t rescue everything. And since it all landed on me and I spent my nights with a metal spike in my hair I’m not entirely surprised a paranoid father found my problems too much.

But you pile that onto a woman and she becomes homeless life gets very fucking interesting. It took a real death before harassment eased and I relaxed, praying my hair would grow back. Then it began again.

Does this remotely sound like spirituality was a concern of mine anymore? No. I lost talking to my small god Bran. I lost calling on the archangel Michael. I lost the hugging gold energy of Abba I was lucky I still had love in me. But unless numb as fuck that’s not leaving my soul.

Now I’m trying to return to my spiritual life but found I needed an alter to pray before.

Back to materialism. And the flaw of abstinence. The view of most religious individuals praying to gods involved homeless and poor gathering in Catholic Churches. But a hell of a lot of us need a sacred space to focus our minds and our thoughts.

That’s what an alter is for. Focus. Of energy. Of Magic. Of Will. Of prayer. Of worship. It helps you enter a separate mind-space. Which costs money, is highly personal and requires some shopping around. These days on Etsy, before city to city esoteric shop if you could find one. Materialism. It plain is a flaw to view wanting things as evil. Some of those things soothe, some of them help you pray, some of them comfort in other ways. Life is difficult enough without the judgment on stuff.

Selfishness, artificial scarcity, excessive wealth concentration, those are problems and thanks to the eighties we think of pink Cameros as materialism, but that is not it at all. It’s an appreciation for the material. Which helps the divine not hurts it.

Buy your pretty painting. Support the artist. Buy your cookie cutter, cookie cutter, support the factory. Society formed as a way to exchange goods and we are part of the world now. It’s miserable to be entirely without. To want comfort. To need money. Not elevating. Don’t conflate fasting with going without the option of food. And don’t conflate clearing clutter as clearing the soul.

As a final word. Don’t forget materliams is about nesting not capitalism.