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prismaticbleedAnother rough day so far.
I keep getting massive stuttering panic attacks when I have to talk to people, even my own grandmother. I feel like I'm in court, like there is no such thing as an innocent conversation anymore. I'm so ashamed of myself, of my very existence right now. I know its because of the gluttonous weight gain diet I'm on. I'm utterly humiliated. I'm so FAT. Everything hurts, and I'm always nauseous. I can't even sleep at night. I want to sob.
People keep asking weird questions about my diet plan, too, and making weird comments. Even the kitchen. I want to throw up and scream and weep and die. I have no appetite at all anymore. I don't want to eat. I'm so bloody tired of food. The very act of eating feels like torture, like abuse, all over again. I'm so tired.
I still haven't heard a thing about inpatient.
I have a pounding headache again. I bet it's the butter.
I'm fasting tomorrow, though. I've decided. No meat, no butter. I have to. I'm getting so gross.
I must be severely intolerant to some food I'm eating. Maybe the cheese? It's new. But the headaches, the hot flashes, the heart racing, the fatigue, the phlegm coughs-- is this going to be my life now? Just sickness and suffering whenever I have to eat? Can I offer this up as a cross? Or does it not count, because it's a sin? Why is every act of eating objectively a heinous SIN???
I want to go home. I give up.
If there's no inpatient or residential, I will do PHP. Or even better, i hope there's no PHP either, and I can just dissociate from all this and pick up where I left off, taking care of grandma all day and all night-- a life of loving service, not demonic food.
Except... I was fighting and losing this war then, too. That's why I'm here, the asshole who ate enough to feed a small country and then puked it all up, sobbing and helpless and STUPID STUPID STUPID.
I just want this all to stop.
I want to cry.
My self image in nightmares is fat now, and fat = whore. Inevitably now if I become aware of this body in a dream, "I" immediately become a catty prostitute and end up reliving trauma memories. I hate this. I want to be thin and pure and safe and REAL again. Not this garbage bag of devil flesh.
I struggled to come to terms with my new reflection all last week. This body is so bloated I look like a corpse. My skin hurts all over like a bruise from the sudden stretching-out.
I tried real hard to give it a positive spin. "I have Mewtwo legs now," I thought. "I have an Alcremie body now." Trying to associate size with something sweet, something strong. But it's not working. It's fighting too horrific and powerful an enemy.
When I look in the mirror, I see everything I'm terrified of.
I have Y's legs.
I have C's face.
I have S's stomach.
I have mom's shape.
I want to DIE.
I WANT TO DIE IF I HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS.
...Maybe that's why I'm forcing the butter, besides UPMC programming. Everyone just wants me to gain weight, with NO thought for my psychological or spiritual health, and the fastest way to do that is by pushing fats and carbs. Butter and pasta. Literal whore food. If I saw myself eating that outside of this prison I would eviscerate this bloated body with a butcher knife.
God I miss knives, oh God I miss the knives and the razors and the sharp-edged combs. I wonder if I could get a plastic knife, smuggle it into the bathroom... get a plastic comb, break its teeth so it learns to bite. 2010 era flashbacks. White-haired, red-stained days. Blood and horror. Why do I miss that, so suddenly? Do I miss the family inside? Oh I do, I do, who am I kidding, I miss Knife and Razor and Wreckage and everyone else. I miss being alive.
"Lord, grant me an upright mind."
God, I cannot drag my mind out of this. I must think of You but I feel trapped in my mourning. Is that a sin? Is this pride?
God, how can I serve You even in this distress?
Let's go back to the body.
Laurie told me there is hope, there is possibility. Yes, I look hideously ugly and frightening right now. Yes, I feel very sick and shaken. But this hell space of food focus is temporary. Sooner or later, I will be in a QUIET place, away from constant strangers conversations, able to exercise and sleep and sing and play music and write and paint and go to church. Eventually I will be free of this. And then I can FIX THIS.
I can start running miles every day again. I can eat my safe vegetables and not push calories. I can go outside and see the trees. I can live.
But I can also utilize this weight, Laurie said. Looking at my body frame, I'm not as stick thin as I always wished and thought I was? I appear to be built sturdier, thicker. I've got wide shoulders and solid limbs. If I get an exercise routine going (remember the Sonic & Medabots biking days???) I can get this fat to fuel MUSCLE growth. So that's hope at least.
The deeper problem is... do I want to be so strong? Yeah, it's definitely a desirable possibility on one hand, but... even deeper down, I still... admittedly I want to stay 11 years old. I want my child body back, thin and slender and safe and pure and lively and bright and UNSEXED AND UNTOUCHED.
I want to cry. I can't grow up, not really. I can't integrate the concept.
...Well. The good news is I just threw up. My sitting nurse is that super quiet handsome guy that first sat here after I had that trauma meltdown from that one lady last week. Thank God. I know the redhead kid last night had his purpose too-- I learned a LOT from that-- but the mental and physical pain I was getting from lunch was too much to bear safely. I was legit PLANNING to bleed. That CANNOT be taken lightly, in BOTH senses-- blood is holy and should NEVER flow for something as stupid as self hatred over food. Now, if it was in atonement for my gluttony and wastefulness... but no. Not even that justifies it anymore, now that I understand my faith more.
...They just started singing the Anima Christi hymn on EWTN. I want to cry. God, I cannot fathom how You can still love me like that.
...I need to return to the growing-up concept, now that my stomach is emptier and I can form a coherent thought.
I am, honestly, afraid of looking like I did when I was about 17, before I started to drop weight (remember I was GORGEOUSLY THIN in 2012; I miss that so much). High school was the last time I was fat-- once college hit, trauma memories resurfaced and that weight became a tangible, inescapable perpetuation of it. But prior to that, prior to the Spectrum waking up-- yes, there was a time when it was ONLY the coregroup gang-- I did not remember the terror, and my childhood had been buried for protection, so the body was wild and manic and energetic and RED. Every photo I see of the body from high school is FRIGHTENING. The eyes are wild, the clothes are tight, the muscles are firm, the grin is violent. She was a demon in a very real sense, at least looking back visually.
But our INNER world back then was PROLIFIC despite the physical beastliness. Our inner self, that "Jewel," was the one who was obsessed with Trigun and Chrno Crusade and Zatch Bell, with Medabots and Sonic and NiGHTS and Pokémon, with Yugioh and Sailor Moon and DragonBall Z, with Tokyo Mew Mew and Transformers and Fullmetal Alchemist. She LIVED in media and she LOVED the souls she met there. She lived ENTIRELY out of herself. So she never even knew what her body was like. But she was MANIACAL in her own right. She had more sheer energy that she knew what to do with. Yes, she loved to run and exercise, that we know. But as for life in public? She was nonexistent. And when you put a manic red wildness out among people... you get hell. You end up with a gluttonous, violent slut.
That's why the photos are terrifying. SOMEONE ELSE WAS DRIVING THE BODY, because the STATE of the body was INCOMPATIBLE WITH OUR TRUE SELF. If our current Jewel, crazy as she was, couldn't even inhabit it... then our child self NEVER could. And that means that big body was INCOMPATIBLE WITH INNOCENCE. It could never be pure. It could never be gentle. It could never be safe. It could never be good.
So. I NEVER WANT THE BODY TO LOOK LIKE THAT AGAIN BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT EVILS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ITS SIZE AND STRENGTH AND HEALTH, and I KNOW THAT IT IS A HELLFIRE ENVIRONMENT THAT WILL INCINERATE ALL CHILDHOOD PURITY IN AN INSTANT.
A big body is nothing but a furnace for destruction. I'm sorry. I don't care about potentially being muscular. That's not my job. It's not my purpose. I NEED to be small and thin and pure and good because like it or not, MY HEART IS RED and if you put that color in the wrong environment IT WILL ANNIHILATE ITSELF.
The trauma dreams prove this. My own bloody reflection right now proves this. I think that's why I keep having panic attacks and sobbing. I cannot cope with this literal hell. I would rather die. At least I would die pure.
But am I pure? Or am I just desperately grasping for it in the wake of unbearable loss, trying to scrub the tar out of my soul and hoping there's still white underneath?
Only God can save me. Only God can heal me now. Only God can fix my utterly broken body and soul, but at this point I would genuinely be happiest if He just... forgave my heinous sins and washed me clean in His blood and let me die like that. I don't want to live anymore, I see no future for me-- except, no, I do, but it's impossible to realize physically and THAT makes me want to cry until the entire world is flooded from heartbreak.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it.
...That's the only way I could ever grow up. Somehow, maybe. God knows. But it's the only possibility. It's the only blessed option. Every other path to adulthood is hideous with trauma and its frantic stains of regret and terror.
I still want to be a nun, yes. But somehow that doesn't register as "growing up." It feels rather like perpetual childhood, because it IS so absolutely inherently pure and kind and good and gentle and safe and holy and untouchable. Religious life IS my ideal, and if God is willing to accept me as such, then please oh Lord, accept me. Guide me to the right convent. Show me, clearly please because my mind is broken, where You would have me live and love You. Show me, I beg of You, if it be Your Will for me.
...but. if it's not.
then my only other option to grow up is to get married.
and there's only one safe way for me to do that in the entire created universe.
...I can't even type it. It's too sacred. I cannot talk about it in common language, in words that even the secular culture uses and abuses and mocks and mangled. It's SO blessed a thing that, as I tragically said, it isn't even possible in this world-- not with this body, not with this past. Unless God works a reality-bending miracle, I cannot get married in this physical life, not as marriage is meant to be. I know this.
...but, God, lately I've actually started to want it.
Oh, I never really did before, not truly. I know this too. I took a simple vow of celibacy in 2nd grade, disgusted by dating and infatuation and sexuality as a whole, and I kept it right up until the initial onslaught of abuse took it from me in 8th grade. That broke me, and ironically cemented my determination to detach completely from all sexuality in this world, especially marriage, in which it was mandatory.
...Then I fell impossibly in love.
Seven years later, my heart changed completely, and... for the first time in my life, I had hope that God could fix even me. I had hope that, despite everything, God could heal my shattered soul and show me what He meant marriage to be.
But I went about it wrong.
I brought the body into it.
And everything went to hell.
It's an old story. But it's important in this context.
...I don't want to eat dinner tonight. I'm actually not bloated right now. I've also been exercising as much as I can while hospitalized and that is helping too. But... if I don't eat tonight, I will get in trouble, and they're weighing me tomorrow anyway so if that number drops I'm really sunk. God help me, I'm so tired of food.
I'm starving but I'm so tired of the food that perishes. It's not what I need.
I need the Eucharist, for one. That's tops. But flowing from that, I am so tragically hungry for love.
...I guess you could say I even have an appetite for it.
God, You knew what You were doing, giving me that dream, huh. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, Father Cedric Pisegna drove that point right between my ribs on Sunday, too; the spiritually hungry look for spiritual food, and God promises that they will find it. Without that appetite, there's no seeking. Without that want, that ache... and I'm not talking about the physical. That garbage has nothing to do with this. I'm talking about a hungry heart. I'm talking about deer and running streams. I'm talking about "This is My Body." I'm talking about LOVE. I'm talking about GOD.
And that's why I want to get married.
I've been....obsessed with the entire concept lately, as a concept, as a core, a heart-- the essence studied apart from the worldly distortions and lies. Looking at its very soul has shown me the absolute beauty of it, the absolute holiness of it, and I understand why Christ is the Bridegroom and why He constantly talks about His relationship with us-- us!!-- in marital terms. It's mind-blowing and yet it's TRUE-- and that would have TERRIFIED me at any point in the past when I didn't get it. Because I didn't, not until now.
But why now?
Maybe it's because I know I'm dying. Maybe it's because I know I'm starting. Maybe it's because I'm so tired of not loving as much as my heart demands and the only way TO do so is to give myself to my beloved totally. That's how God does it. And I think-- no, I know I must do the same, or my heart will die from sorrow. I'm RED, for heaven's sakes. My entire soul is defined by ardor, by holy fire, by warmth and life and blood and... and love, love so absolute and true that it must encompass everything. God is Love, and the Trinity is a relationship, and Jesus is our Bridegroom, and if we therefore want (need) to immerse ourselves fully in that love, we have to get married. Either to God, or to a God-loving soul. I can only be a nun or a wife.
Except I think God is changing that "or" to "and." Paradoxically.
I cannot get married physically. I might not be accepted into a convent because of my health. BUT. I can still somehow be both a 'nun' in the world and a wife in my heart. At least, God, I hope so. I want that more than anything.
I can still be a consecrated virgin physically, I hope. At least I can vow myself to God nevertheless.
But in my innerworld... I am so wracked with indecision. I can't just turn off love. I can't just act like eighteen years of love never happened. I can't just abandon the only thing that has ever legitimately felt like a vocation to me... yes, awfully, even moreso than wearing a habit, because to be totally blunt with you, my joining a convent would involve more than a little bit of "running away from the world to be with God" and that's not proper motivation. Honestly I just adore God and in a sense I feel like being a nun is the ONLY way to love Him enough.
...But He also gave me someone that I love so much, it has brought me closer TO God than anything else in my entire life. And God knows that. I know He does. We've talked about it.
And that's where I stand tonight.
...but if I died tonight, I wouldn't even care about marriage or my body or anything. I just care about God. He's all that matters, no matter how stupid and wretched I've been. God, I really do love You more than anything. I'm so sorry for everything. Please, forgive me, and have mercy on my poor soul.
I keep getting massive stuttering panic attacks when I have to talk to people, even my own grandmother. I feel like I'm in court, like there is no such thing as an innocent conversation anymore. I'm so ashamed of myself, of my very existence right now. I know its because of the gluttonous weight gain diet I'm on. I'm utterly humiliated. I'm so FAT. Everything hurts, and I'm always nauseous. I can't even sleep at night. I want to sob.
People keep asking weird questions about my diet plan, too, and making weird comments. Even the kitchen. I want to throw up and scream and weep and die. I have no appetite at all anymore. I don't want to eat. I'm so bloody tired of food. The very act of eating feels like torture, like abuse, all over again. I'm so tired.
I still haven't heard a thing about inpatient.
I have a pounding headache again. I bet it's the butter.
I'm fasting tomorrow, though. I've decided. No meat, no butter. I have to. I'm getting so gross.
I must be severely intolerant to some food I'm eating. Maybe the cheese? It's new. But the headaches, the hot flashes, the heart racing, the fatigue, the phlegm coughs-- is this going to be my life now? Just sickness and suffering whenever I have to eat? Can I offer this up as a cross? Or does it not count, because it's a sin? Why is every act of eating objectively a heinous SIN???
I want to go home. I give up.
If there's no inpatient or residential, I will do PHP. Or even better, i hope there's no PHP either, and I can just dissociate from all this and pick up where I left off, taking care of grandma all day and all night-- a life of loving service, not demonic food.
Except... I was fighting and losing this war then, too. That's why I'm here, the asshole who ate enough to feed a small country and then puked it all up, sobbing and helpless and STUPID STUPID STUPID.
I just want this all to stop.
I want to cry.
My self image in nightmares is fat now, and fat = whore. Inevitably now if I become aware of this body in a dream, "I" immediately become a catty prostitute and end up reliving trauma memories. I hate this. I want to be thin and pure and safe and REAL again. Not this garbage bag of devil flesh.
I struggled to come to terms with my new reflection all last week. This body is so bloated I look like a corpse. My skin hurts all over like a bruise from the sudden stretching-out.
I tried real hard to give it a positive spin. "I have Mewtwo legs now," I thought. "I have an Alcremie body now." Trying to associate size with something sweet, something strong. But it's not working. It's fighting too horrific and powerful an enemy.
When I look in the mirror, I see everything I'm terrified of.
I have Y's legs.
I have C's face.
I have S's stomach.
I have mom's shape.
I want to DIE.
I WANT TO DIE IF I HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS.
...Maybe that's why I'm forcing the butter, besides UPMC programming. Everyone just wants me to gain weight, with NO thought for my psychological or spiritual health, and the fastest way to do that is by pushing fats and carbs. Butter and pasta. Literal whore food. If I saw myself eating that outside of this prison I would eviscerate this bloated body with a butcher knife.
God I miss knives, oh God I miss the knives and the razors and the sharp-edged combs. I wonder if I could get a plastic knife, smuggle it into the bathroom... get a plastic comb, break its teeth so it learns to bite. 2010 era flashbacks. White-haired, red-stained days. Blood and horror. Why do I miss that, so suddenly? Do I miss the family inside? Oh I do, I do, who am I kidding, I miss Knife and Razor and Wreckage and everyone else. I miss being alive.
"Lord, grant me an upright mind."
God, I cannot drag my mind out of this. I must think of You but I feel trapped in my mourning. Is that a sin? Is this pride?
God, how can I serve You even in this distress?
Let's go back to the body.
Laurie told me there is hope, there is possibility. Yes, I look hideously ugly and frightening right now. Yes, I feel very sick and shaken. But this hell space of food focus is temporary. Sooner or later, I will be in a QUIET place, away from constant strangers conversations, able to exercise and sleep and sing and play music and write and paint and go to church. Eventually I will be free of this. And then I can FIX THIS.
I can start running miles every day again. I can eat my safe vegetables and not push calories. I can go outside and see the trees. I can live.
But I can also utilize this weight, Laurie said. Looking at my body frame, I'm not as stick thin as I always wished and thought I was? I appear to be built sturdier, thicker. I've got wide shoulders and solid limbs. If I get an exercise routine going (remember the Sonic & Medabots biking days???) I can get this fat to fuel MUSCLE growth. So that's hope at least.
The deeper problem is... do I want to be so strong? Yeah, it's definitely a desirable possibility on one hand, but... even deeper down, I still... admittedly I want to stay 11 years old. I want my child body back, thin and slender and safe and pure and lively and bright and UNSEXED AND UNTOUCHED.
I want to cry. I can't grow up, not really. I can't integrate the concept.
...Well. The good news is I just threw up. My sitting nurse is that super quiet handsome guy that first sat here after I had that trauma meltdown from that one lady last week. Thank God. I know the redhead kid last night had his purpose too-- I learned a LOT from that-- but the mental and physical pain I was getting from lunch was too much to bear safely. I was legit PLANNING to bleed. That CANNOT be taken lightly, in BOTH senses-- blood is holy and should NEVER flow for something as stupid as self hatred over food. Now, if it was in atonement for my gluttony and wastefulness... but no. Not even that justifies it anymore, now that I understand my faith more.
...They just started singing the Anima Christi hymn on EWTN. I want to cry. God, I cannot fathom how You can still love me like that.
...I need to return to the growing-up concept, now that my stomach is emptier and I can form a coherent thought.
I am, honestly, afraid of looking like I did when I was about 17, before I started to drop weight (remember I was GORGEOUSLY THIN in 2012; I miss that so much). High school was the last time I was fat-- once college hit, trauma memories resurfaced and that weight became a tangible, inescapable perpetuation of it. But prior to that, prior to the Spectrum waking up-- yes, there was a time when it was ONLY the coregroup gang-- I did not remember the terror, and my childhood had been buried for protection, so the body was wild and manic and energetic and RED. Every photo I see of the body from high school is FRIGHTENING. The eyes are wild, the clothes are tight, the muscles are firm, the grin is violent. She was a demon in a very real sense, at least looking back visually.
But our INNER world back then was PROLIFIC despite the physical beastliness. Our inner self, that "Jewel," was the one who was obsessed with Trigun and Chrno Crusade and Zatch Bell, with Medabots and Sonic and NiGHTS and Pokémon, with Yugioh and Sailor Moon and DragonBall Z, with Tokyo Mew Mew and Transformers and Fullmetal Alchemist. She LIVED in media and she LOVED the souls she met there. She lived ENTIRELY out of herself. So she never even knew what her body was like. But she was MANIACAL in her own right. She had more sheer energy that she knew what to do with. Yes, she loved to run and exercise, that we know. But as for life in public? She was nonexistent. And when you put a manic red wildness out among people... you get hell. You end up with a gluttonous, violent slut.
That's why the photos are terrifying. SOMEONE ELSE WAS DRIVING THE BODY, because the STATE of the body was INCOMPATIBLE WITH OUR TRUE SELF. If our current Jewel, crazy as she was, couldn't even inhabit it... then our child self NEVER could. And that means that big body was INCOMPATIBLE WITH INNOCENCE. It could never be pure. It could never be gentle. It could never be safe. It could never be good.
So. I NEVER WANT THE BODY TO LOOK LIKE THAT AGAIN BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT EVILS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ITS SIZE AND STRENGTH AND HEALTH, and I KNOW THAT IT IS A HELLFIRE ENVIRONMENT THAT WILL INCINERATE ALL CHILDHOOD PURITY IN AN INSTANT.
A big body is nothing but a furnace for destruction. I'm sorry. I don't care about potentially being muscular. That's not my job. It's not my purpose. I NEED to be small and thin and pure and good because like it or not, MY HEART IS RED and if you put that color in the wrong environment IT WILL ANNIHILATE ITSELF.
The trauma dreams prove this. My own bloody reflection right now proves this. I think that's why I keep having panic attacks and sobbing. I cannot cope with this literal hell. I would rather die. At least I would die pure.
But am I pure? Or am I just desperately grasping for it in the wake of unbearable loss, trying to scrub the tar out of my soul and hoping there's still white underneath?
Only God can save me. Only God can heal me now. Only God can fix my utterly broken body and soul, but at this point I would genuinely be happiest if He just... forgave my heinous sins and washed me clean in His blood and let me die like that. I don't want to live anymore, I see no future for me-- except, no, I do, but it's impossible to realize physically and THAT makes me want to cry until the entire world is flooded from heartbreak.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it.
...That's the only way I could ever grow up. Somehow, maybe. God knows. But it's the only possibility. It's the only blessed option. Every other path to adulthood is hideous with trauma and its frantic stains of regret and terror.
I still want to be a nun, yes. But somehow that doesn't register as "growing up." It feels rather like perpetual childhood, because it IS so absolutely inherently pure and kind and good and gentle and safe and holy and untouchable. Religious life IS my ideal, and if God is willing to accept me as such, then please oh Lord, accept me. Guide me to the right convent. Show me, clearly please because my mind is broken, where You would have me live and love You. Show me, I beg of You, if it be Your Will for me.
...but. if it's not.
then my only other option to grow up is to get married.
and there's only one safe way for me to do that in the entire created universe.
...I can't even type it. It's too sacred. I cannot talk about it in common language, in words that even the secular culture uses and abuses and mocks and mangled. It's SO blessed a thing that, as I tragically said, it isn't even possible in this world-- not with this body, not with this past. Unless God works a reality-bending miracle, I cannot get married in this physical life, not as marriage is meant to be. I know this.
...but, God, lately I've actually started to want it.
Oh, I never really did before, not truly. I know this too. I took a simple vow of celibacy in 2nd grade, disgusted by dating and infatuation and sexuality as a whole, and I kept it right up until the initial onslaught of abuse took it from me in 8th grade. That broke me, and ironically cemented my determination to detach completely from all sexuality in this world, especially marriage, in which it was mandatory.
...Then I fell impossibly in love.
Seven years later, my heart changed completely, and... for the first time in my life, I had hope that God could fix even me. I had hope that, despite everything, God could heal my shattered soul and show me what He meant marriage to be.
But I went about it wrong.
I brought the body into it.
And everything went to hell.
It's an old story. But it's important in this context.
...I don't want to eat dinner tonight. I'm actually not bloated right now. I've also been exercising as much as I can while hospitalized and that is helping too. But... if I don't eat tonight, I will get in trouble, and they're weighing me tomorrow anyway so if that number drops I'm really sunk. God help me, I'm so tired of food.
I'm starving but I'm so tired of the food that perishes. It's not what I need.
I need the Eucharist, for one. That's tops. But flowing from that, I am so tragically hungry for love.
...I guess you could say I even have an appetite for it.
God, You knew what You were doing, giving me that dream, huh. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, Father Cedric Pisegna drove that point right between my ribs on Sunday, too; the spiritually hungry look for spiritual food, and God promises that they will find it. Without that appetite, there's no seeking. Without that want, that ache... and I'm not talking about the physical. That garbage has nothing to do with this. I'm talking about a hungry heart. I'm talking about deer and running streams. I'm talking about "This is My Body." I'm talking about LOVE. I'm talking about GOD.
And that's why I want to get married.
I've been....obsessed with the entire concept lately, as a concept, as a core, a heart-- the essence studied apart from the worldly distortions and lies. Looking at its very soul has shown me the absolute beauty of it, the absolute holiness of it, and I understand why Christ is the Bridegroom and why He constantly talks about His relationship with us-- us!!-- in marital terms. It's mind-blowing and yet it's TRUE-- and that would have TERRIFIED me at any point in the past when I didn't get it. Because I didn't, not until now.
But why now?
Maybe it's because I know I'm dying. Maybe it's because I know I'm starting. Maybe it's because I'm so tired of not loving as much as my heart demands and the only way TO do so is to give myself to my beloved totally. That's how God does it. And I think-- no, I know I must do the same, or my heart will die from sorrow. I'm RED, for heaven's sakes. My entire soul is defined by ardor, by holy fire, by warmth and life and blood and... and love, love so absolute and true that it must encompass everything. God is Love, and the Trinity is a relationship, and Jesus is our Bridegroom, and if we therefore want (need) to immerse ourselves fully in that love, we have to get married. Either to God, or to a God-loving soul. I can only be a nun or a wife.
Except I think God is changing that "or" to "and." Paradoxically.
I cannot get married physically. I might not be accepted into a convent because of my health. BUT. I can still somehow be both a 'nun' in the world and a wife in my heart. At least, God, I hope so. I want that more than anything.
I can still be a consecrated virgin physically, I hope. At least I can vow myself to God nevertheless.
But in my innerworld... I am so wracked with indecision. I can't just turn off love. I can't just act like eighteen years of love never happened. I can't just abandon the only thing that has ever legitimately felt like a vocation to me... yes, awfully, even moreso than wearing a habit, because to be totally blunt with you, my joining a convent would involve more than a little bit of "running away from the world to be with God" and that's not proper motivation. Honestly I just adore God and in a sense I feel like being a nun is the ONLY way to love Him enough.
...But He also gave me someone that I love so much, it has brought me closer TO God than anything else in my entire life. And God knows that. I know He does. We've talked about it.
And that's where I stand tonight.
...but if I died tonight, I wouldn't even care about marriage or my body or anything. I just care about God. He's all that matters, no matter how stupid and wretched I've been. God, I really do love You more than anything. I'm so sorry for everything. Please, forgive me, and have mercy on my poor soul.
