Torch in the Labyrinth

Part II

I've been confronting a lot in myself recently. Things I buried. Things I was gaslit out of feeling — by the world, by others. We come into this life wide open, impressionable. And the world got to me early. Shaped me before I knew I could shape myself. Until we learn to steer, we're at the mercy of the current — trying to stay afloat in waters not our own. But eventually we grow wings. We plant our hands on the rudder. We begin to choose how we move through the river of life.

I didn't know better back then. I was naive, wounded, attached. I hadn't yet received the teachings I now carry. My shaman Don Gino once said, "We begin the journey with no tools. We pick them up by walking lost," moments before sending us into an Ayahuasca journey. That was me. Walking blind through love, hoping it would show me the way. And it did — but not in the ways I expected.

I remember the quiet. The way the world hushed around her. I remember the tenderness, the laughter — two inner children meeting in a moment of unexpected grace. There was a sweetness to the way we leaned in, the way our guards fell like old cloaks at the door of something ancient. For a time, it felt simple. Safe. Like the sun warming a meadow we never knew we'd find ourselves in.

But it didn't last. The meadow. The warmth. The grace. Something shifted. A coldness crept in. A change in the wind. I felt it before I could name it. Even in ceremony, Ayahuasca whispered, Be mindful with this one. There is darkness ahead. Not as a warning to turn back — but a call to walk with eyes open. The path had already been chosen.

It was a gravitational pull into one another's depths. We became obsessed. Entangled. Our wounds began speaking through us before we had the words to speak them aloud. We didn't just fall in love — we fell into shadow. And we unknowingly both consented to it. A soul-contract to walk each other into the places we couldn't yet go alone.

When we enter deep connection — especially in the realms of love, intimacy, and soul growth — we're not just meeting someone's light. We're also brushing up against the parts of them they've yet to meet within themselves. If you're empathic, if you walk with an open heart, you don't just receive love from others — you also receive shadow. Unconscious projections. Inherited stories. Energies in exile. And the more devoted you are to your own healing, the more you'll feel the tension when someone resists theirs. When a person refuses to meet themselves — and they meet someone who does — their disowned parts become like a hot potato they try to pass on. Their pain wants somewhere to land.

When someone says, "I don't want to face this in myself," their soul hears, "I can't be me." So a mask is formed — a strategy to survive — but it costs them their authenticity. That false self might keep them safe, but it fractures the field around them. And in that split, communion becomes impossible. Souls cannot truly meet through masks.

I've come to see that this piece — this whole story — is part of a soul contract being burnt through. Not burnt at someone, but burnt for the sake of growth. Because when we hold on to old identities, and false selves — and when we share deep connection without being willing to face them — they don't disappear. They accumulate. They take shape. And eventually, they begin to crack and the truth is revealed.

This writing is a ritual of release. A fire to burn through the karmic fabric of a relationship that no longer serves. Not to hurt. But to transmute. To move forward, I have to name what was. To move freely, I have to honour the weight I carried. That is my responsibility. That is my liberation.

I honour her, still. I do not wish to paint her as a villain. But I can no longer silence my process to protect someone else's self-image. This isn't about blame. It's about truth. A mythic account. A testimony. Notes from the underworld. The torchlight I carried through the dark revealed the entrapment — where her Becoming had quietly taken root on my shoulders. And in that descent.

This is what I found in The Labyrinth In Her Eyes.

⟐

The dynamic of our relationship grew from the container of what we called "heart shares." She introduced me to this practice early on — something she felt safe within, something that gave her permission to open. I was apprehensive at first. I'd only done this kind of deep sharing in men's work, not one-on-one with a woman. It was too intimate at first. But I opened. And we'd take turns sharing, listening deeply. At first, it was beautiful. But over time, the heart shares slowly turned into her venting — and then the venting turned into projection. Her pain started being directed at me, as if I were the source of it.

I started becoming her emotional punching bag. Her pain, her rage, all the unprocessed experiences from her childhood that were never truly seen — I became the outlet. She desperately needed to be seen, and God knows, I would've seen her. I did see her. I accepted her, honoured her, loved her. But she couldn't place it all on me like that. You have to face it. You have to hold it. And I was holding her — I had always held her — but I was also being mistreated, bullied, blamed. It wasn't nice. It wasn't kind. And it wasn't conscious.

For so long I was just drowning constantly. And I couldn't let go. I lost myself in her, and I was so afraid I'd never get this piece of my soul back. So I held on for dear life. Trying to help her. Trying to ground her. Trying to save her. Trying to serve her. Trying to hold space for her. Trying to worship her. Trying to honour her. Trying to empower her. Trying to see her. Trying to hear her — in her glory and in her pain. I did my best, but it was never enough for her, and I could never let go and move on. I so wanted to save her. I still do.

And when I tried to express how much it hurt — how deeply I was affected — I was shut down. Told I was projecting. Told it was just my trauma toward the feminine. As if the way I'd been treated didn't matter — as if my pain was just a distortion, never valid in its own right. Despite the fact that I've never been treated so badly by a woman in my life.

And when I finally got angry — when I raised my voice, not to dominate, but because I had no other way left to say "I love you so dearly, but this is hurting me" — the entire dialogue would shift. My anger became the story. Suddenly I was the abuser. There was no curiosity, no reflection, no moment of genuine inquiry — just a shutdown, a bypass, a narrative spun to avoid the mirror. And I was exhausted. It was like hitting the same brick wall over and over again.

I loved her. I wanted her. I wanted us. She wanted us too — at least, part of her did. But every time I tried to bring truth, every time I asked for communication, for mutuality, it was like walking into a minefield she wouldn't admit existed. And when something inevitably blew, I was blamed for the detonation.

I wasn't trying to punish her — I was trying to help us stop hurting. I kept saying, "I hear you. I love you. But this is hurting me too. Please, can we meet each other in grace? Can I be held, just once, the way I've held you through storm after storm?"

I just wanted her to see that I wasn't her enemy. I was her partner. I was the one staying, listening, holding, through it all. But there came a point where I couldn't fight anymore — not with her, and not with the silence that followed.

Because every time I spoke the truth, she turned her back. And I would eventually collapse. I would stop fighting. Because there was nothing left to fight with. When I gave up trying to be heard — she would glow. Euphoric. Lighter. As if she'd just purged something heavy. And she had — she'd purged it into me. All her pain, all her shame, all the energy she couldn't hold — I had absorbed it. I had become the container for it. And now, relieved of the weight, she could return to softness. She would stroke my hair, whisper sweetness into my brokenness. But beneath that sweetness was control — emotional intimacy as a way to reset the cycle.

I was always there. Always by her side. Still doing heart shares. Still loving her. Still carrying it all — and she knew it. I was her crutch, and she was mine. She had found a way to release her pain without ever taking responsibility for it. And I had internalised it all. Absorbed it. Let it eat at my worth. Until I believed the stories: that I was the problem. That I was toxic. That I was never enough.

I remember a moment when I collapsed onto my knees before my altar. I ripped the tapestry from its place, sweeping everything from its surface in despair. My anchor undone, I broke in front of the only witness I thought I trusted then — the woman I had once called home.

I buried it all. For over a year, I carried the pain in me, tossing and turning with nowhere for it to go. Eventually, I tried to bring it up again — because I thought maybe, just maybe, she was becoming ready. I thought: if she really cares about me, she'll want to hold this. She'll want to know how I felt. She'd never want to hurt me on purpose — she said that herself. So if she truly meant that, then surely she'd want to hear how I was hurting. Surely she'd want to meet me in it. But when I finally brought it, I was met with: "That was a year ago — how are you still letting that get to you?" and "You've got to forgive me in your own process." And I said: "Because you wouldn't hear me. You never heard me. And now I need you to." But she didn't want to. Didn't want to look. Didn't want to say: yes, I treated you badly. And you didn't deserve it. And that's when something cracked in me. Because if someone won't even acknowledge how they hurt you, how can you trust that they ever cared? How can you believe it won't happen again? Eventually, I drew the line: "If you can't apologise for what you put me through, then I can't keep doing this." And finally — after blood, sweat, and tears — she said the words: "I'm sorry for pouring my darkness into you." But by then, it didn't mean anything. Because I had to drag it from her. She didn't arrive there herself.

And that matters. It's not just a childlike demand for an apology. The child feels. It's the fact that if someone can't name what they've done, they also can't see the root of it. And if they can't see the root, they'll keep repeating the same harm. Without awareness, without ownership, there's no trust. Because there's no true change. It's not about punishment. It's about safety. If she couldn't own it, I couldn't trust her. And without trust, there's no way forward.

And I let it all happen. Because I thought that was love. Because I thought if I just held out, if I just proved I was safe, she'd finally see me. Finally choose me. Finally soften. She crammed her darkness into me. All the wounds she never met, all the pain she couldn't hold, all the shame she refused to name — she projected it all onto me. And I took it. Again and again. Because I loved her.

⟐

One day I set off on my usual walk, a sacred loop around the Tor that I'd walked in prayer and devotion for years. It was on that walk that I listened to some voice messages from her. She was opening up — sharing where she'd been, what had been on her heart. I was following her voice, and I could feel the rhythm and the weather of her emotions. And then she arrived at it: she told me she had kissed another man. I collapsed in myself. A silence haunted that hill. The kind of silence that's hard to hold. It echoed with all the longing I'd clung to. The fantasy. The belief that if I just worked on myself hard enough, healed deeply enough, we'd make it. But that belief — it was a false prophet. Because if salvation is pinned to the arc of a romantic relationship, especially a toxic one, we are doomed to walk in circles — forever waiting for someone else to complete the journey only we can walk. And in that moment of collapse — not in rage, but in resignation — something in me finally broke. I tripped, literally. I fell. My foot twisted beneath me, and I broke the fifth metatarsal in my right foot. The fall wasn't just emotional — it was physical. My body echoed what my heart already knew: I can't keep doing this to myself.

It wasn't just a kiss. It was him — the same man she had slept with during an early passage of our relationship, when our bond was already forming, deep and sacred. When I was opening my heart like a temple and placing the key in her hands. When I believed I was the only one walking through that threshold. There was devotion, tenderness, laughter, soul. I offered her my sacred yes, not knowing I was receiving a love already fractured — still tethered to old threads she hadn't yet released. Threads she later told me were toxic. That she had been trying to claw her way out of his grip, but didn't know how. And all the while, I kept wondering why I felt something was off. Why the ground beneath us kept shaking.

⟐

I see my part now — the actions I took, the patterns I repeated, the places I abandoned myself for love. And then I was in crutches. I couldn't run anymore. I was forced to stop — to sit in the ache I'd spent so long dancing around. And there, in the stillness, I met the grief. I let it swallow me. I let it strip me bare. I wept for the boy who thought this was love. And slowly — so slowly — I began to gather myself. Not in triumph, but in truth. I saw how I had bent myself to be chosen, how I bled hope on an altar someone else had already left. I saw how I'd clung to what depleted me, hoping it would finally fill the hollow inside. And so I stopped. I let the ache become my teacher. I held the loneliness like a child, whispering, You are mine. And I am here.

Something ancient stirred beneath the silence. And so I waited. Broken, but listening. Biding my time in the slowness. Pressing my ear to the ground of the labyrinth, listening for the thread — the quiet hum beneath the noise. I had lost myself in her story, yes. But this time, I was finding my way home.

Because the truth is — she didn't drag me into the labyrinth. I followed the echo willingly. And now I see: the labyrinth was never hers. It was mine, all along. For every part of me she touched, she awakened — not to heal it, but to show me where I was still bleeding.

They say the light gets in through the cracks — but I've come to see: the crack is the beginning. The wound itself is the chrysalis. And when you stop trying to seal it shut — when you soften, and listen, and let it split you open — something ancient begins to stir. Like wings pressing against silk. Like a phoenix remembering the fire. That's when the real becoming begins. Not through saving her — but through returning to the part of me I'd left behind. The part that always knew the way home.