knock knock, who's there?

Let me open with this.

“An optimist is someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it's more like a cha-cha.”

...Now for our first dance lesson.




I've been eating little besides rice, lettuce, and unholy amounts of curry powder for the past three days straight. I've been spending hours on end in the kitchen, cooking up several batches of each and eating them spasmodically throughout the day, often to the point of pain. Today this behavior coincided with deep fatigue and I asked myself, exhausted, why I was forcing myself to cook and eat all this food when I wasn't enjoying it whatsoever; on the contrary, it was making me very ill. Almost immediately my thoughts insisted, almost desperately, that it was "because I was terribly hungry." I reflected on this for a moment, confused, as my stomach was telling me the exact opposite, to the same extremes.
Then I realized, with a feeling like the floor falling through, that feeling of starvation isn't coming from my stomach at all.

I'm trying to structure my thoughts on this situation before I discuss it openly, so I'm hesitant even to post this here. The motivation for that is the nature of the situation itself, and one facet of this starvation problem, which I realized today. Let's start there.
I'll refer you all to this entry for a quick rundown, as it's still 100% relevant, but let me give you a refresher here as well.
Back in July, I realized that I had acquired a sick sort of "spiritual hunger," like having a black hole in the center of my chest. This was shocking as I had felt the opposite for several months prior: no need or want of food at all, without the hunger pains. Now it was just the ravenous pain, without a want of food, and the switch was disorienting, sudden and strong. This hunger ached, it gnawed, it drove me mad. I couldn't make it go away. As the months went on, this hunger drove me to become almost obsessively spiritual-- reading hours worth of articles online every day, attending every church service I realistically could, and seeking discussions with anyone and everyone willing to participate. Talking to my headspace family also helped this, as they exist on that "level" and so interaction with them is roughly equivalent to meditation in terms of the effects it has on my soul. Regardless, the hunger stayed, and paradoxically, the more I tried to "feed" it, the hungrier it got. It wanted more and more of that divine supermango, to reference Huxley as always.
Now, almost four months after its inception, I swear I am being eaten alive. It's no longer a grumble, a yell, a roar. Now it's a cancerous scream.
The hilarious thing is that it's not necessarily a "bad thing." It's hungry for the things that bring me to life, after all. The real bad thing, the real problem here, is the fact that it still exists at all. And that's what I realized today. I'm binge-eating on the physical level for the sake of numbing the pangs of emotional hunger... psychological and spiritual too, maybe... either way that is obvious, but it never quite hit me that it's not exactly hunger anymore; it's MALNOURISHMENT. It's like eating reams of paper; there's choking amounts of substance, yeah, but it's not giving me what I need. It's like gasping for air when there's no oxygen in the room. You can breathe all you want, but...
And you know what? That fact is utterly horrifying. Because I'm eating a LOT, on every level. I'm attending mass three times a week, talking to missionaries, going to Bible discussions, studying Scripture, checking spiritual newsblogs hourly, visiting holistic healers, meditating, praying... yet there it is. But the feeling kicks in most loudly after I talk to Chaos. Note the word after. When Q or Mel channel him, he's THERE, so his energy is getting through, and the way it resonates with mine is all but an absolute freaking religious experience. It's direct love, direct divine compassion, echoed. It's what I glean from chats with psychic-shop employees and discussions on the Psalms every Wednesday, but concentrated to a mind-numbing intensity. So being with him here brings me to a feeling of deep balance, HERE. That's big. So when he leaves... it's the equivalent of stopping up this voracious inner pit, then yanking out the plug. There's an instant feeling of something being jarred and then I deflate somehow, like a homeless man thrown out of the first banquet he's seen in years. There's a moment of shock when you hit the sidewalk again after having tasted real food for the first time in so long, you know?
So yeah, I think that's an accurate description of how I'm feeling right now. If this is what the tar is going through, then it has my empathy. It's definitely just as hungry as I am, maybe in a different sense, I'm not sure yet... but this is not something I'd wish on anyone, metaphysical waste-lock or not.

Anyway. Long story short, I'm still starved, and I'm acting like a glutton in the physical to desperately try to alleviate it.
And at the moment, as far as I can figure, the reason WHY I can't seem to ever feel satiated is simple... there's no food I can digest here.
Ridiculously simple, isn't it? But why else would I be stuffing myself yet remaining empty? My body/mind/spirit must not be able to "metabolize" what I'm eating on that level, somehow. So either I need to figure out digestion, or find a new food source.
I will work on both, but I can't ignore the fact that I've also been dreaming of Pennsylvania virtually every single night since August 15th.
I also can't ignore the reason this entry happened.

After realizing that no matter how much food I forced myself to eat, I wasn't going to feel any less desperate for nourishment, I collapsed onto the couch in the living room and called my grandmother.
I cried over the phone for an hour.
And it helped.

Whatever brought me to Utah, I'm wondering if it hasn't already been accomplished, or if it isn't going to be soon. Because now I keep getting pushes that "you can't stay here; you're not supposed to!!" The hunger is making it worse, but I need to be patient. After November 3rd, we'll see what happens. Until then I have to wait, and maybe learn to fast, or find something new to eat, you know the drill. Something.
But I am wondering, seriously, now. First, I wonder about my job/career, both now and in the future. I'm currently unemployed, not just because I just moved but also because I now have transportation problems. In any case I also know I cannot force myself to work a cashier job at the moment; I tried it back in September and had an emotional breakdown for a week. I thought we were over those, but apparently not! So that's one big option out. As a result I prayed about it, and kept praying about it, and last night I got an answer.
Apparently I need to work with kids, and I need to bring my creative works into that?
What shocked me the most was that, when I got that response, it CLICKED. Prior to last night I had balked at the idea of working with kids, but all of a sudden it felt like "wow, I could really do that!" I actually cried, haha, it felt pretty big. So yes. That's a step I need to take. The good thing is that I can do that anywhere, so even if I move back I can continue that line of work just as well if not better.
As to why I've been considering moving back to PA in total seriousness again lately, it's not just because of the nagging push that I need to "move" in general, which also strongly feels that even if I do move back, I won't stay for long. It's not even mostly that. My urge to move out now is tied directly into the starvation thing.
This house, this environment, and these people I live with, cannot fulfill my needs. I realized that back in August, and it's only been strengthened since then. Now I need to get the guts to admit it, actively, and take steps to fix it. Consider this step one.
I don't feel at home here. I don't feel safe here, somehow... not in a "danger" sense, but in a sense that it's lacking warmth. I feel like a throwaway, an extra, a drifter relegated to the broom closet to sleep. I don't feel like I'm part of a family here, I don't feel recognized, and that is strange because I KNOW Mel and Q try their absolute best towards that end. But that's just it... it's like eating paper. For some reason their sustenance doesn't feed me at all, and I'm slowly becoming skin and bones. I love them and I care for them deeply, but it can't be right for me to stay here solely for that reason. I need to take care of myself for once. I haven't been doing that very well lately.
It's also probably why I feel like I'm "using" them when I ask them to channel Chaos... it's because I'm getting something life-giving out of something that simply keeps me in stasis while I slowly stagnate. I am using them, simply because I can't use what they can give me anymore, but I can use their ability to open a door temporarily, to sneak back into the banquet hall and nab just one piece of mango before I need to return to the streets...

I still miss the trees and fresh water and mountain air. But now, more than anything, I miss the people.
I miss having brothers and grandparents to talk to, and even more, I miss being there for THEM to talk to. Sure, it's nice here, to have Q and Mel to talk to, but really... how often does that happen? And when it does, how often is it substantial? It's awfully frustrating, to live with two people who swear they are trying to make you feel loved, and yet are incapable of fulfilling that need by virtue of their own life responsibilities and seeming incapability to speak my language. I have no desire to make them change their lives to fit mine, and the more days pass, the more I realize that ultimately, that dilemma is going to force me to leave sometime soon. It's inevitable. I'm starving, damn it, and I'm tired of being able to count my ribs when I look inside.

In happier news, I'm trying to catch up on RCRDLBL's beautiful archives, and I also found TWO websites full of free music two days ago! As a result, as of today I have 672 new tracks in my library, haha. I haven't listened to most of them of course, but I'm looking forward to the process. There have been some absolute gems in here already, most notably THIS and THIS, which is great. I'm also pleasantly surprised by how much I like this and this song. Neat stuff, huh?
Oh, Smiths' was playing Andy William's version of Moon River over their speakers this morning when I went to buy some more leaf lettuce (I've been craving it like a mofo lately), and DUDE his voice is just pure warm happy nostalgia. It's something about the total quality of it, it feels like an autumn morning or something. Lovely stuff. So of course I went and downloaded one of his greatest hits albums, ahaha, I'm ridiculous. Totally worth it though. Also THIS!
(I do have to confess, though... hearing his voice, which I associate with my childhood & grandmother, HERE, where I'm stranded across the country and where my soul is starving to death and missing my family so much it's destroying me... I broke down sobbing in the produce aisle, haha. The dissonance cut me open like a knife. That's when I knew I had to do something, to change something... or I have to leave.)
Also, I'm trying VERY hard to get back into art, and I did succeed in sketching a few Jewel Monsters 2001-style yesterday, as well as finding a new bee monster species! I'm not quite 'tuned in' to their energy yet-- if I was I wouldn't have been so utterly burnt out today-- but it's a start, and a beautiful start at that. I'm never lost, remember?

I think that's a good note to close up on.

See you next time, kids. Keep on dancing through the waves of life.