nov 11

[prismaticbleed]

It's the last half hour of the day, our only free time, and i'm insane for not sitting down and actually resting but i need to type. i need to type. if i don't it will just perpetuate the problem.

We have turned prayer into an addiction.

I don't know how to type about this, coherently. in my head it works.
you know what, stop trying to be formal. stop trying to pander to an invisible audience. just list the problems.
- we spend 3+ hours a day in prayer and 3+ hours "faithpasting." it's utterly exhausting. yes we love God but this is draining all our reserves?? what are we doing wrong??
- we are so tired. all the time. mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually, we're EXHAUSTED, often to the point of weeping. we don't get to rest. we get ONE HOUR at the end of the day, if we're lucky, to collapse on the couch and cry from the pain & fatigue and basically just crash into unconsciousness until we have to do it all over again tomorrow. no breaks. no brakes.
- we are running away from our identity. we are denying our own existence. our sense of self is totally shut down.
- we spend ALL our "silent time" in prayer and THAT IS A CRUTCH. it is NOT HEALTHY. the instant we have ANY "free time" we PANIC and start to pray again, and although it's mentally justified as "using our time prudently" really dude you are RUNNING FROM SELF-AWARENESS.
- we can't feel anything but bitter numb exhaustion weeping confusion anger, UNTIL HEADSPACE KICKS IN.
- this obsessive praying is specifically trying to erase headspace entirely
- we have stopped writing. we have stopped drawing, composing music, reading books, dreaming, imagining, et cetera, because it's "all garbage compared to Christ" but dude DO YOU EVEN KNOW HIM???
- we are literally burying our talents six feet deep and claiming it's "God's will," that "they were a trick designed to see if we were brave enough TO bury them" but honestly it's just an excuse. it's an excuse to not feel our conscience nagging us about abandoning everything but prayer
- whoever the heck is spending all day in "prayer" DOES NOT KNOW HOW TO LOVE.

that's our dilemma.

oh of course we love God. but there's this bizarre and deeply distressing disconnect still. the thriskefoni either are afraid of God or they view Jesus like a fangirl. there's no personal closeness because those foni REJECT INDIVIDUALITY. anything that might let us in is VIOLENTLY DISREGARDED.


and right now we're listening to "sandım ki" again and i want to sob because i love everyone in here so much,
can we reconcile that with our religion?
are we allowed to exist and love each other? or is that a sin?
if we're all going to be destroyed when the body dies anyway, if no one is going to survive, if nothing is going to survive-- no art, no music, no writing, no hopes, no dreams, no memories, nothing-- nothing is going to survive, there's only going to be God. everything except Him will be annihilated forever. that's how it works. we have to be stripped completely, emptied out, made hollow and naked and helpless, with absolutely nothing to comfort or console us. just God.
...and then what?
He's supposed to "fill us with Himself" but we... we keep forgetting that God is Love and therefore that is a good thing, whatever He gives us in recompense will be infinitely better than whatever was destroyed because God is Love, He can only give Love,

i don't know what to do, what to think,
are we really all doomed to die?

i feel so guilty and filthy and dirty and wrong even thinking about love now
isn't that ironic.
when you "love God" all other love seems disgusting
that can't be right.
but the shame is unbearable


Not much happened today.
Last night nearly killed us from exhaustion. We couldn't get any extra sleep, we barely got seven hours. Our morning was busier than usual. Everything blurs together. Our mind just feels numb and rushed and constantly in a panic, "never praying enough," "never good enough," et cetera.
But. for some reason we ended up listening to Karen Clark Sheard on the drive to Mass and Knife loves that kind of music, it's adorable,
but the point is we could feel headspace and EVERY time we do our heart wakes up
and then the thriskefoni completely & angrily stomp it out

while we were saying the wall prayers tonight, we absentmindedly moved to rub some of the bloody-rough skin on our winter hands,
and, the action itself and the hands, the different harsh skin, the gentle gesture directly tied to it,
for a split second our tired brain literally thought it was laurie consoling us,
and we felt our heart just break and we nearly cried,
and then the thriskefoni shut it down
as usual

i'm so tired of not having any relationships anymore
i'm so tired of not being able to talk or think or feel or laugh or love anymore
everything is just prayer prayer prayer prayer hurry up pray more the world's gonna end if you don't pray you will die etc.

our OCD is really bad lately too. it's driving laurie up the wall.
we've noticed it's focusing on the body, on "cleanliness," just like fulton sheen said, it's the compulsive washing and scrubbing that can never get the "stain" out, as it were. it's all a physical rerouting of guilt. we did this as a child, too. we'll literally walk out of the bathroom then immediately turn around, go back in and repeat the loop helplessly, wanting to cry from feeling so trapped and powerless and terrified, the body feels so filthy and wrong, something is very wrong, YOU are wrong, it's your sin, your evil, your GUILT, if you sit down and feel dirty well then you're going to hell. it's a nightmare. we can't shut it off.
and of course the whole time we're repeating ritualized prayers with the same driving mindset
"if you say one word wrong, if you are distracted for even a second, you have to say the whole thing over," "you have to kiss the pictures on the wall a specific number of times in the way they tell you to or else you don't really love them," "you have to say these exact prayers in this exact order or else the whole thing is meaningless because you're shirking orders and insisting on your own way," etc.


i keep feeling infinitii around the edges. that's not hir name anymore, i know. but they're still just barely perceptible
the thriskefoni are terrified of hir. they hate hir but won't show it. but i can feel it, roiling beneath their emotionless facade like poison lava
i want hir back. i really do. ze is necessary for the health and proper function of my soul, and for healing trauma, and for feeling emotion at all. i know this.
i'm being mocked and jeered at for talking about hir, virtually spit at in hate
but i cannot be ashamed. i can't. i know ze loves God more than those pharisaical foni ever have or will or even can.
at least i hope so
am i being blasphemous
i'm sorry
no stop listen. you aren't lying. you aren't trying to be pretentious. you have seen infi in a church. you know how ze adores the Eucharist, how ze is able to forgive with a depth of sincerity you cannot fathom without hir. you know how ze loves, and how that love was taken advantage of by those who didn't know that love is God.
ze wants to heal, too. infi wants a new name and a new role and maybe even a new face as much as God allows and decrees, whatever happens, infi wants to be free of that evil history, free of the corruption, free of the sins and shadows, so ze can help you do the same. you are both supposed to draw closer to God together. that's the whole point, that's her real reason for existing, you know that too,

ten minutes. i need to get to bed.

here's our problem:
our prayer life is not genuine right now. not as long as it is tangled up in the OCD. and especially not as long as it is also being used specifically to run away from everything else in life.
to claim "religion is all that matters" to the point of refusing to be a person is not going to help you "have a relationship with God" and honestly, that is the BIG THING MISSING in this whole obsessive prayer ritual thing. we're just repeating words. we're not talking TO God. we're not even letting ourself have time alone to LISTEN because "God forbid," ironically, "that we have free time that isn't full of prayer!!" DEFINE PRAYER, PLEASE, because all the panicked recitation YOU'RE doing hardly counts at this point.

i'm sorry. i'm just so upset, so pained, so brokenhearted,
i want us to be A SYSTEM again, and STILL BE RELIGIOUS,
God knows we WERE, i know we were in the past, even if we did get lost and struggle many times, we still loved God and never stopped trying to draw closer to Him.
now what? now this stagnancy masquerading as piety?
if we've made any progress it's not through your obsessive faithpasting, it's through our RESPONSE TO IT,
and now they won't even let us do that,
i'm sorry. i don't want to condemn anyone. i don't want to give up this faith practice, this reading and learning, but, i think we're taking it to unhealthy extremes, it's not about faith anymore it's about that bloody OCD, it's about "i must learn everything," it's becoming an intellectual power grab, we're not internalizing anything, it's just mad hyperpasting like we used to do on Tumblr, we don't remember a bloody thing, we'd be so much better off just typing about God at this point.
"no," they spit, "that doesn't count because it's YOU talking. your opinions don't matter. self-opinion is of the devil. the only thing that can be trusted is church authority, which is NOT YOU."
we never claimed to be authority. we just... want to respond and not just read.
is that really a sin? i'm genuinely scared now

i want to cry and throw up and sleep forever
i'm already shaking again
the moral terror is unbearable. it never stops.


is it a sin to want to spend time with the system?
are we a sin by being a system? is that word evil?
are we evil because we're multiple
are we a sin because we are many people of one soul
it's only supposed to be one?? that one girl, but she's mean, why does she get to stay and nobody else?

are emotions a sin?
is it a sin to want to feel something? to want to cry, and laugh, and wonder, and ache, and love?
is that a sin to want to feel alive and moved and inspired and real?
holiness is detached, holiness is cold like a diamond, no it's not, jesus wasn't cold,
but he never laughed, they say. he never smiled. he cried and was angry. but no "warmth" ironically
something is wrong, our perspective has to be skewed, that can't be right,
God is Love but everyone always taught us that Love showed itself as dispassion, which is even more ironic
but it's so hard to even question
emotions are "sensory" things and therefore sinful, right? they are "of the body"
dude that's gnostic junk don't even go there

listen. we're not in the right mind to type any more about this right now we're too melancholic and distressed
besides it's 10pm buddy we have to get some sleep or else
sundays are burnout days and tomorrow is going to be even busier than usual so go catch some z's

one last thing

i wanted to type about this several days ago and made a note to but never did.
this is the big thing that our moral panic is hinging on, when you get down to it:
we only learned love and virtue through the system and the league.
it sounds blasphemous. it's awful. but it's true.
we learned compassion, and mercy, and hope, and joy, and forgiveness, and love, through the system and the league and GOD PUT IT THERE because our religious upbringing had stripped God of those virtues for the sake of discipline i guess.
but even now, even now, when we read about all the "positive qualities" of God and we have no idea how to understand it,
at least, the thriskefoni don't, go figure,
we can only grasp what God is like by remembering the innerworld.
i'm serious. i want to sob. i'm not lying. we miss it so much.
the other day i couldn't understand God's mercy, i couldn't understand how He could be kind even when i treat Him like garbage,
and i suddenly thought,
well, look at how Laurie loves you,
even after she's seen the absolute worst of you,
she literally carries your wounds up and down her arms,
remember how she sobbed when you died,
that's how God loves you.

and
that just turned the entire world upside down

but it's the truth
it's the absolute truth and i don't know how to deal with it
look at how chaos 0 loves you,
look at how HE looks at you every single night,
look at how he refuses to abandon you even after you've stupidly kicked him out, several times,
look at the past 20 years for heaven's literal sakes
you think God loves you any less than that??
and remember infi,
seriously that's WHY you want her back so badly

think of everyone. everyone.
julie, lynne, leon, scalpel, knife, razor, sugar spice, wreckage, algorith, mulberry, jeremiah, audrey, siobhan, shirley, sirius, penny, mimic, genesis, phlegmoni, xenophon,
everyone who is still missing and blurry and hidden and lost,
all the children, all the protectors & retributors, everyone,
and think of the league!
think of the friendships there, too, think of the love,
there's so much love that it sets my heart on fire,
in the spectrum and the spheres alike

could our life be a prayer too?

god please help us.
we need to sleep it's too late we need to get to bed

but please
keep us close to you
and to each other
please.

if it's possible at all
please let us love each other
and in doing so
let us love you.