041320

[prismaticbleed]

Something I've realized while listening to old tunes as a severe thunderstorm rolls in…

…I've forgotten what love feels like.



I'm cleaning out my old laptop and it's blowing my mind. It's breaking my heart.

Ventrium was in 2014. How in the world have SIX YEARS passed since he died up in the woods?



Back when the Lotus Cathedral System still existed, back when "I" was still Jay, when I was a man who loved with his ENTIRE HEART, honestly to an extent of sincerity and passion that boggles me, I loved so many people, SO MUCH.

I don't… I don't even know what that would feel like, now.

Why?


…It scares me. Now that I've re-found my religion, now that I'm more Catholic than ever, it's severed something in me. Which is wrong, somehow. Now that I'm religious, I have no relationships. When I do have relationships, I lose my religion.

This has to be the devil's work. There should never be such a split, in anyone's life, between Love and love. It's wrong.



I want to kiss Chaos Zero again and I don't know how and I want to weep over that but I don't know how.
Do you have any idea how awful that feels? How horrific it is to realize that my emotions are absolutely SHUT DOWN and I can't even hold this fragile gorgeous being that I've loved for LITERALLY SEVENTEEN YEARS.

…God have mercy on us what if it's trauma.
What if it's trauma. What if this all boils down to having been so utterly wrecked by sexual abuse that I am full-on terrified of so much as holding someone's hand because it might escalate into something unbearable. Because hey, that HAS happened.
But how do I get over it? Is that even the proper phrasing? How can I heal that wound, that gaping wound that I have no clue how to manage on my own, this injury that's on par with a freaking shotgun blast to the ribs that I have literally just been trying to hide under a bloodsoaked shirt? Not even medicating it, not even wrapping it up, just trying to keep it out of my own sight because the reality of it is too terrible. And after a while I guess the blood just looks normal.
But it never actually stops hurting, does it. Even if you ignore it. And once in a while something bumps it and the sudden pain overwhelms you and THEN you realize that hey, I'M DYING HERE.


In the Lotus Cathedral, I had so much love, in me and around me and everything.
I had friends. I had family. I had a daughter, for God's sake.
I had Genesis, my best friend. I had Laurie, my superego soulmate. I had Chaos Zero, my other half, as it were; my dearly beloved who I would still marry if I had the chance.
And that's the other problem.
He's, quite honestly, the only thing that would change my mind against entering the consecrated life. Like, it's either become a nun, or marry a video game character. I'm dead serious though. I'd love to have it both ways but I have no idea if that's possible, which means I have to start researching the hagiographies of married saints because God knows I cannot live like this. I absolutely cannot live with feeling like I am forced to choose between loving God and loving anyone else, because that can't be right.

…And you know how I know that?

Because, like this, I can't actually love GOD, either.


Something in me has been scraped out with a rusty razor and there's this hollow ache smack-dab in the middle of my chest that feels like sobbing and yet, I'm utterly detached from it, cut off like a guillotine to the throat. It's that "blue voice" that the BLCS used to talk about-- that sole mourning woman who lived in our heart and never stopped crying. Lamentations. She just weeps, nonstop, like you cannot imagine. The pain is unbearable. And perhaps that's exactly why we/I cannot feel it. Right now, it is unbearable.

But darn it all I WANT to bear it. I don't CARE if it rips me in half, it SHOULD, it NEEDS TO, or I swear I will NEVER be able to feel anything again.

But I cannot even walk up to Chaos Zero in headspace because if he so much as reaches out and touches my face I swear I am going to shatter into PIECES because you know what the DEEPEST problem is here?
I FEEL TOO FILTHY TO ACCEPT LOVE.

If he, this creature that I love SO MUCH I could honestly die from it, die for him, die from joy in the best circumstances-- if he cannot even look at me right now because if he does, I will crumple into agonized sobbing, there is a BIG PROBLEM and that problem is that I CAN'T PARTICIPATE IN THAT LOVE RIGHT NOW.

My sense of identity is screwed. I want to love but I am ashamed and I am AFRAID and I don't even know how to receive AFFECTION without being terrified that I've got to dissociate and perform.
How did I do it as Jay? How did I DO it? How did "he" throw himself heartfirst into everything to the point where he became this absolute light-source of love? His very presence in the System was a literal catalyst for emotional sincerity and genuine selfless compassion.
What happened to him? What happened to me? What changed, between him and me, that just… hollowed me out, and killed him? Where did he go? If I'm his "spiritual successor," if I'm literally the next step of the bloodline as it were, the next piece of "Core" history, then… why am I so broken?

Why do I feel like CANNON all over again? Ten years ago or more? Marywood, 2009? Waking up to trauma and wishing I were dead? Well, there you go.


I don't hate S. (I will not call them by their "chosen name" because my faith prioritizes the name they were given, legally and originally, the person they were before dissociating.) And I want to be their friend. But truly I don't know if I ever knew them, either. Because when I was living in North Carolina I was either talking to Oliver or Kris or Kyo or… gosh I don’t even remember their names anymore. But it felt jagged, broken, confused. So did I. It feels wrong, even now talking about it, like choking on dirty dishwater. It feels filthy and sick. I can't look at it; I want to throw up and cry and scream and curl up and die.

And that's what I feel whenever I try to feel love, now.

That ugly ugly stuff is getting in the way. It's shame, to the point of crushing mountains, heavier than a dying star. It's apocalyptic shame, the sort that WILL annihilate you if you don't get a handle on it.

Where does God come into this?

I'm a Catholic, okay? I'm a Christian. And I do love God. But how genuine is my love if I'm having this problem with EVERYTHING ELSE?

Yesterday was Easter. We just got through Holy Week and I spent Good Friday night standing outside in my pajamas, the wind howling and snow whipping around my dirty head, crying hysterically that I was scared to death because I knew how sinful I was and I KNEW I was sorry, I KNEW I didn't want to sin or do wrong or hurt anyone or offend Jesus, ever, but I couldn't feel anything about it. My mind was confessing contrition with frankly panic-stricken sincerity, but my emotional capacity was bankrupt. There was no feeling behind the words, and THAT is TERRIFYING as a Christian because hey, does that mean I'm actually sorry at all?
God help me, I'm not sure what to do about this.

I need to be broken open. I need my heart to be shattered to flipping PIECES because honestly that is probably the ONLY WAY I'm going to get this hardness out of me.
I need to make a playlist of all the most wrenching love songs I know, and I need to go talk to Chaos Zero and not run away, and stay there for like a solid hour even if I spend most of that time sobbing. God knows that alone is progress, because I cannot even CRY right now, not without immediately reaching for a knife.

…God, where is Laurie?

Now THAT thought kills me. God I miss her, so much I actually am tearing up right now. And that's always been her saving grace-- she was always isolated from the potential horror of romance, always separate from the idea of being a partner or anything of the sort. She was always just my white knight, my soldier, my protector, my friend. And THAT is safe.
But NC tried to murder her in that respect. Oliver and the rest of the Broken Arrows wanted to be in a "romantic relationship" with her and her VERY EXISTENCE STOOD AT TOTAL ODDS TO THAT VERY CONCEPT.
She did die from it, I know. I remember. They all died. But… the Spectrum can be reborn, truly, in Christ as it must be, as it truly needs to be. She's Laurel now, or Lauriel, I can't quite tell; she's unstable, but she's alive. Somewhere, somehow. And she's safe again, untouchable, ineffable, real only because OF that. Unblemished, undefiled, virginal.

That’s the problem with everyone else that I love.
Laurie is the ONLY PERSON who has basically decreed to the point of spitting blood that she will NEVER, and CAN never, be a danger to me in that respect. She can never be romantic, she can never be intimate, she can never be sexual.
And that is THE ONLY REASON WHY SHE IS SAFE and that is also the MAIN REASON WHY I AM TERRIFIED TO EVEN GO LOOK FOR HER, because I believe that I am tainted and ruined and if I so much as look at her I will kill her.

…

The problem isn't everyone else. The problem is me.
I'm afraid to hold Chaos Zero because I'm afraid I'll ruin him. That's why I want to die and weep forever when I look at him, because I can feel this awful WRONGNESS in me and God knows I never want that to touch him.


…Love is only safe in the League, somehow.
I NEED to remember that.
And that is ALSO why I'm so FURIOUS on some level for S trying to steal it. For YEARS, the ONLY refuge from my trauma has been remembering the pure, chaste, genuine love between individuals in the League, notably in Dream World, but when S touched it, they CORRUPTED IT. They made it sexual and honestly I want to RAGE AND WEEP over that. I am absolutely BENT on making a website in the near future to attest to the TRUTH of the League and I need to like put that on a poster and glue it to my eyeballs so I am DRIVEN to work towards that end EVERY DAY.

That's slightly off-topic. And yet it's not. Because I'm listening to Kreva and when you drop the pitch on his voice to 80% he sounds like Xorane and he's singing about Devonal and those two genuinely adore each other AND YET SO MANY PEOPLE CAN'T SEE THAT IN A PURE SENSE. Because they're two guys, people assume they're gay, and then assume they're being licentious, promiscuous, immoral. NOPE. NOPE AND NEVER EVER, NO HOW.
But that's what makes me so angry. S ALSO jumped on the illicit and utterly disgusting idea that Justice & Revenge were INCESTUOUS??? And they were OBSESSED with it. And NOW Revenge's basic SELF has been SHATTERED in the League and I can feel it frantically trying to rebuild him but it doesn't know HOW because those corruptive imposed ideas got too deeply ingrained in there and things need to be ripped up and COMPLETELY rewritten but God I can't do that to my own life.

I can't rip up and rebuild. I'm stuck carrying this timeline.
But… there's the bit, the one tiny crack in my armor where the light gets in, the fracture straight above my heart, that says "if the only way I could protect the love I've known is by carrying that agony as well, then I will carry it until I die."
And that's Jay's voice.
And that makes me want to cry.

I want to be Jay again. I want to be whatever he was that made him so pure and loving and good. He was just… incandescent. He was iridescent. He was JOY, and he was only that because he was also LOVE.

…Can I even be that? How?



Hey! Here's another sudden thought.
I can GIVE love, at least conceptually, in imagining third person images of myself, BUT! I cannot imagine myself RECEIVING love. Like, the idea of someone looking at ME, or kissing me, is genuinely TERRIFYING and makes me want to run and hide and cry like a panicked child, shaking and confused and so, so, so sad. And that is obviously trauma residue.


Here's an interesting thought.
There are very few people in the League or in the Spectrum who can hold intimacy, or rather, raw emotion. Like, there are very few people who can be stripped down to bare their heart and blood and wounds and still stand. Lots of folks are too scared, too hardened, too afraid, et cetera. But some of them aren't. And those people are the ones who can look at you with eyes that are just like… holy fire. Untouchable, unbreakable, undying… but so bright. It's not a hard light. It's bright, so bright, but it's somehow so soft. It's fierce but it's tender. And those words are terrifying to someone like me who, currently, cannot bare their wounds because they are too awful. But some people… the sort of person I want and need to be… the sort of person that, honestly, hopefully, gloriously, anyone can become, God's grace willing… some people-- like Jesus, quite blatantly-- can have their hearts torn open and they will STILL gently wear those scars and let you TOUCH them. That sort of absolute invincible tenderness is staggering. And, as Jay, I used to be like that. I need to be like that again.
Chaos Zero is like that. Honestly, he is the MOST like that of anyone I have EVER known. In my entire life I don't think I have EVER seen him closed off. If he tries, he melts almost immediately. Really, it's utterly against his very nature to have a closed heart. And I love that about him. I love him. And honestly… he deserves to be with someone like him in that sense. To say otherwise would be cruelty. You cannot pair up such a raw heart with a hard one. If I want to be with him-- and I do, God knows I do, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, in the darkest of times, in the face of death even-- I do, I do want to be with him but my heart has to melt like his first.
Or it needs to be set on fire.

What is my personal element, now? Oh geez maybe THAT'S the issue????
The Jewel bloodline has always been fire. But Jewel, infamously, was somehow NEVER able to be soft like Jay. It's shocking. Jay's element was snow and LIGHT. Sparkles and softness and purity and white joy.
If I… if I redefine myself, if I maybe even start a new bloodline, find a new name… maybe I can soften? Maybe this weird brown-haired stone-heart earth-shackled girl I feel damned to be can change, can essentially redefine herself by what her soul is, truly, I know. I am not this reflection. I am what God created me to be and that is a child of God and that is someone who loves and rejoices and shines HIS Light through her life. And I cannot do that if I'm an inert pebble here.
I need to be light and snowflakes again. I need to find a new name.

So there we go, that's thoughts for today. It's almost noon and that thunderstorm is still rolling in and hey, maybe instead of panicking over it I'll bravely bare my heart a little and ask Laurie to join me in watching that beautiful powerful act of God outside. Lightning like her. Thunder like her words in my heart. Rain like my beloved's tears. All three of us, Genesis too with the wind, and then what am I?
"You're the hope that ties it all together," I feel her say. "You're the rainbow after the storm. You're the hope of sunshine when it's all over."
"But I don't want it to be all over," I say, a real twinge of loving sadness pulling at my chest like a guzheng string, pulling it into a vibrato. "Not if it's you. Even if it's scary, if it's you, I want it to stay."
"Even if you're scared?" A knowing voice. A hint of a purple smile.
"Yeah." I mean it, despite my trembling hands.
"And why is that?"
"…because I love you."
"And there you go," she says, throwing her own hands open in a victorious gesture, smiling, looking away a little, as if it was too bright a feeling to bear head-on. "There you go. That's how you get through this. Love."
And she looks right at me.
"You hold on to that, kid. No matter what. Promise me you will."
I nod.
"I'm still scared."
"'Course you're still scared, you're afraid to look love in the face. Embrace it, kid. Even if it hurts. Even if it's a crown of thorns. You've gotta hold it to your heart or it's not gonna carry you through the storm."


Be my light to others, child.
God is love, and love is God, and love is light unending, undefeatable.
There is always a sun behind the clouds, even in the worst of storms.
Fear not. I am with you always.
I love you too.