Please be mindful of the future when dabbling with Witchcraft in your teenage years.
A lot of what you can try out is easy to undertake. Your efforts may well be successful, and you may not even suffer any immediate negative effects.
Instead the real concern is what you achieve may well endure for the rest of your life. Do you really want to live with the decisions of your teenage years until the grave? Would you be happy with your choice of forehead tattoo if you had picked one at thirteen years old?
My problems began thanks to my love of golf simulator computer games. Or rather, the landscapes surrounding the digital, fully franchised players. Beautiful blue skies, and fluffy digital clouds. Crowds of people murmuring the same sound files. Clubhouses and trees that had never known living beings. A perfect weekend afternoon forever.
Here was a peace there that took me far away from the classroom, homework, and the stress and noise of the schoolbus. I wanted the calm of the imaginary golf fields to last forever.
My dream was possible, and required few overheads. Some candles, and broken glass across skin. Specific marks drawn on the floor with chalk. Afterwards a great squeezing from no obvious source had grasped my limbs.
But it worked. I gained the ability to go back to those courses whenever I wanted. When everything got too much, or the name calling began, I rolled back to acres of green grass that had never known water.
One oddity were the grey faces in the top windows in some of the nearby buildings. But you did not need to go inside them to achieve peace. Nothing about those cold eyes affected the calm of the murmuring crowd.
The problem is, everything has changed. My job is busy, but rewarding, and with decent financial gain. I spend my evenings watching the sunset from my balcony with a glass of red wine. The nearby cycle routes are great, and my bike is top of the range. So many nice restaurants exist within walking distance. Exhibitions, shows and music gigs are one taxi away.
But they raise the same bland emotional involvement of the supermarket queue. I will be on a date in a place with great whisky sours, talking to someone I thought I had a connection with, and everything is a wall of grey.
Despite my best attempts, reversal of those words incanted long ago is not possible. It seems that what you embrace in those early years form synapses in your brain that cannot be removed.
So I have had to learn to live with my decision. At least the spell still works. Soon I can be back on the golf course, listening to the crack of the ball. Watching those gentle clouds float through the air. The grey faces still watch from the window, their expressions grim and sour. I have had to make peace with them. This was my decision after all.
Line: Do you really want to live with the decisions of your teenage years until the grave?
