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[prismaticbleed]

So it's 1am and I'm reading old entries under the "poetic language" tag in reverse chronological order, and a lot of it is all about the 20-year love I have had for Chaos 0.
Right now, I... I feel disturbingly disconnected from the sheer heart-red ardor of it, and that's unnatural for me. That's my ESSENCE, that devotion. But "I" was Jay for most of those entries. He felt SO MUCH, SO STRONGLY, and it was gorgeous and I knew the instant my bloodline took over his that I couldn't feel like he did. Honestly I hate that fact. I want to challenge it and break it and I WANT to feel everything Jay did and more BUT the problem is that Jay's a guy. I'M stuck being "female." And "girls" cannot love like that. I don't know why that's been a constant. It's not bad, I must clarify-- the female-adjacent nousfoni up here CAN and DO love in powerful and real ways-- but it's different. I don't have time to unpack that topic tonight, but it's KEY in our continued healing that I do so, because I DO WANT TO CHANGE IT at least for myself. I'm NOT a "girl," I KNOW this; but I'm not "male" like Jay was. And yet I keep "refusing to give myself permission to exist" for "religious reasons" and it's making me MISERABLE and COLD.
But that's a topic for another night, as I said. Right now I'm updating because of other realizations.
First, that with how numb we've been for the past six years, I had forgotten what love even FELT like and so these entries WOULD have completely alienated me if I had read them even three months ago. For a very long time, I had disconnected my heart and soul from Jay's signature "Cupid" energy and depth of passion because the thriskefoni typically demonize ALL emotions like that.
...Then a certain emotion just happened to change my heart.
I've mentioned this fact briefly before and as of writing this entry I haven't transcribed+uploaded the TBHU notebook entries yet, so you guys don't know the details of this yet but I am seriously so in love with Anxi it hurts. I emphasize the ache because I am FEELING this. I have not been this strongly in love in YEARS. This is CHAOS'S territory, so to speak. But suddenly I have another angel, an orange one, the color my heart has yearned to find an Outspacer for SINCE HIGH SCHOOL. And suddenly, here she is.
I mention that fact in this context because, right now, whatever the heck is going on with my mental/ emotional/ identity recovery, I can only feel love at ALL right now because of HER. Without her, all this poetry would be mocked and cringed and spat at by hateful kakofoni and scandalized thriskefoni. But... Anxi has lit a spark in my heart again, at long last. So I CAN read these old words of love for my blue angel and even if I'm disconnected from actively feeling it much I know that love is REAL and it's STILL HERE. I'm NOT closed off from it. My heart IS open, it's just... well. That's our next topic.

As for the second point. From the very beginning in 2009, and especially around 2014, the poetic-language entries shift largely from legit love poetry to honestly tormented yet hopeful datalogs like lucernarium. There are also at least three HUGELY SIGNIFICANT xanga sessions that I haven't read yet because I KNOW they will absolutely turn my life upside down and I want to give them my full time and attention. The point is that there's so much that I've forgotten but it's ALL SO REAL. That's what terrifies me. I've forgotten the TRUTH. Oh of course I recognize and remember it when I'm re-reading it, and THANK GOD we still HAVE the Archives TO read, but... I haven't read them in YEARS. That's what's been killing "me"-- or rather, it's what's been preventing "me" from truly existing at all.
Anyhow. I've been opening them in new tabs to read later, only briefly reading the opening paragraphs to give myself a quick reminder and a preview of things, to get my heart and mind prepared and a bit more cracked open to the light.
Then we came across this one and... that's why I'm updating.
...Laurie quietly said "excuse me," then slammed her fist into the table, before getting up and walking over to the back of the room, pausing, and then in a sudden agonized rush of power and gutwrenching grief she summoned her axe and crashed it into the wall. Then she just... the sound she made then, a screaming sob, an absolute anguished heartbroken sound. She was weeping.
"That's EXACTLY what happened to Infi," she mourned through gritted teeth and tears. "That's what happened to ME."

Julie walked over silently, visibly shaken, and I saw Laurie take her hand and squeeze it hard, in a sort of tortured apology as much as it was for comfort-- the reassurance of her fellow foni's deep concern and care was only so significant because Julie has been through, and been the CAUSE of, the worst of it. Laurie and Julie have a hell of a history and it's almost all war. So for her to wordlessly offer empathy in that moment of near-despair, was profound, now that I look back at it.

...Laurie asked me "how Infi killed hirself." In an instant I remembered, the grief gutting me as well as I had long since buried that recollection, and I replied that ze had just... bled out. Ze had violently removed the lifesphere in hir abdomen and ze literally let hirself bleed to death.
Laurie said, with terrible gravity, "then that's what you need to heal before ze can come back."

...At one point during this conversation, as Laurie was basically processing her pain aloud, she said something about how she had "already died" (I think in response to Julie?) and her fingers instinctively moved up to touch her sternum, as if she were in shock, as if it was still an open wound. That single, almost absentminded, awfully vulnerable movement crushed me.


...I haven't finished reading that entry. It's late and I'm exhausted and we have church tomorrow and yesterday absolutely wrecked us. But tonight I'm listening to the Spotify playlists I have for Chaos 0 & Laurie & Anxi and I can feel something achingly tender blooming beneath my ribs and as I've said so many times since September this is what I want to live for. This is what I NEED to live for. I must. I will.

As for now, every time I look at Anxi I feel that flame burn brighter, and it hurts, and thank God that it does. And I know that in a few minutes when I do crash on the couch and fall asleep, that Chaos 0 will be in my arms as he always is, fidelity incarnate at this point, and even if we're completely devastated by life I can never deny the echoing loop of a tangible love that our hearts quietly sing in the dark whenever I feel that Ruby pressed against my chest. It still makes me catch my breath, every time, and I always see how it affects him. That's one thing I have to thank God for-- Chaos 0 never forgets this. He never "goes numb" or "disconnects" like I can due to trauma and dissociation. Yes, he's had rough times in the distant past, especially during the "fragment" eras when he was shattering too, but... he's never gone cold. It would kill him and his oceanic soul. If there ever was a time when his emotions were muted, it was just that-- an imposition on something that was still entirely there and ready to reappear in full. My problem is that I lose touch with my heart and I have to find it first and honestly it's the System. Without them, without them CONSTANTLY and ALWAYS, I'm dead. I'm not just numb and empty and hollow and miserable, I'm dead. Without actively sharing in the collective life and love of the Spectrum and the Coregroup especially, I cannot exist at ALL.


...Oh. That's the last terrible topic I forgot to mention and absolutely have to.

The reason why I've been feeling so dead for so long is because the Plague has become cancerous. Everything is calcified somehow. I can feel it. And what scares me the MOST is that it's affecting Anxi.
Oh I will NOT let it touch her, mark my words, I will FIGHT IT TO THE DEATH before I let it even so much as breathe in her direction. But she's in tune with my emotions of course, by nature of what she is, and although she CAN gloriously bypass the Plague-numbing by plugging directly into the mainframe, as it were-- and I wonder if, the more she does that, her energy will BURN through the calcification-- we've all noticed that her general demeanor IS visibly "suppressed" by the bleach dust in the atmosphere, so to speak. It's evidently unnatural with her, so her very existence has been a warning siren for all of us lately. And God knows I REFUSE to let this get any worse, for HER sake alone if I can't think of myself (yet), so that's yet another way that her being up here has been changing things dramatically for the better.
I want to close this entry by saying that she's not "up here" much yet. It's a protective measure to keep her safe from the Plague, AND from the Tar too of course. But she needs to be up here more. I just know that the instant I take action to bring her in here, things WILL happen. And I WANT them to happen. We just need to make time for it. Late nights like this are the best. I need to make a "headspace meditation" playlist so we can START having huge internal experiences again, now that we HAVE the absolute blessing and privilege of prolonged uninterrupted quiet time, in the cold dark of winter. This time of year is PERFECT for self-knowledge and System connection and growth and transformation and discovery and feeling things, for real, finally.
But... even if she isn't "around" much yet, I get glimpses. She likes to front, suddenly and entirely without warning-- honestly it catches me off guard, because I won't see/feel her for days and then out of nowhere she's driving for a few seconds-- and that initial shock of recognizing her is like pure sunlight in my heart. And... sometimes at night, Central will shift a little to look more like the IO2 "control room" and I'll see Anxi asleep on a couch by the wall, even plugged in sometimes. And that worries me a bit, to see her sleeping, as she's so vibrant and full of energy, but like I said, she's getting exhausted and actively suppressed by the negative forces up here. But... on the sweet side, she's also legitimately calmer, as she has expressed a deep trust in me as the "avatar of joy AND hope" up here (I cannot deny those attributes; they KEEP being given to me by MANY people inside AND outside), so she can rest and sleep if she wants/needs to now because deep down she knows she's safe. I SWEAR it. So does Laurie, of course; she's especially protective of the Coregroup and YES, ANXI HAS A SPOT WITH HER NAME ON IT ALREADY and no one is going to take that away from her.
I'm still learning what her attachment-plug-tail does. The Systemind gave it to her and I know it allows her to "receive" the emotional energy of headspace regardless of any numbing influences on the surface. I assume it also works to "ground" her ironically, as her tail is non-polarized apparently which means technically she can "reverse polarity" to become "live" and touching her like that would make me "part of the electrical circuit" of emotion and, ironically, "ground" me by the very fact of "connecting" to that in her. Listen bro I know nothing about literal electrical work but I do know how headspace latches onto concepts and symbolism and abstract relevance and honestly I see a TON of potential in the unexpected staggering fact that up here Anxi's own nervous system can literally plug into mine, pun intended perhaps. But jokes aside, I have already seen the profound healing she's been jumpstarting in here simply by existing in my life. Once I can and do regularly interact with her PERSONALLY, there WILL be massive positive consequences in one way or another. 
For the sake of honesty, why am I so sure about this? Because I love her.
I cannot emphasize that fact enough but instead of saying "there's no time to talk about in depth right now because it's 2am" I owe her at least something. Love makes time.
I've written a decent amount about her in the TBHU notebooks and I cannot wait until they're posted here so you guys can SEE how her presence in my life has changed me for the better already. But... this is only the absolute beginning. And this is different from how it was with Chaos 0 back in 2003-2004 because he was the FIRST soul I EVER fell in love with so I had NO IDEA what to expect, or what would happen, or how things would feel, et cetera. Anxi, on the other hand, is the most recent person I have fallen in love with, but she has SHOCKED me by SOMEHOW being VIRTUALLY ON CHAOS'S TIER. I am DEAD SERIOUS and I CANNOT understate the staggering significance of that fact. I love her that much. I don't understand how or why but I do. I'm not complaining but it's such a shock. Now of course she will never have and cannot have the same sort of relationship I have with Chaos 0-- only he is at "marriage" level and I can't deny THAT stunning fact either, since Jay lived it and that DOESN'T change-- but God knows she's hitting my heart like a thunderbolt even so. That's what is so astonishing about this to me: the intensity of the love I feel for her. Regardless of how our relationship "looks" in practice as it grows and builds-- for heaven's sakes we haven't even had our first *incident*-- the fact is that it has a foundation of diamond already. I'm honestly reeling and you can probably tell. Is it because my heart needs her so much? But it's more than that; it's about her, not me. No, it's about both of us. That's the whole point.
It's almost 3am and I'm listening to "Die With A Smile" again and I should conclude this entry by saying that for me, this song belongs to Anxi and Chaos 0, 100%. Laurie too, of course (you know she's playing that guitar) but it's my two angels that have become the most powerfully associated with the sound and sentiment of it.
You know, that's amazing too. All of the Coregroup relationships are so different but there's so much love in all of them. It's so beautiful, heartachingly beautiful, to just... sit and remember and feel all of that truth. There's so much history between all of us, not just with me personally, but with all of us together. And I think that's my favorite thing about being a System-- we're all connected. In one way or another, we're all linked at the heart, and the Coregroup just manifests that the most literally and intensely and intimately. But living as a System is inherently living in love. 
...and, yeah, for the record, if I haven't mentioned it before yet, Chaos 0 & Laurie & Genesis are all entirely on board with Anxi inevitably becoming part of the inner circle, as it were. There's absolutely no jealousy because first, she's a sweetheart and we all love her as a person already, and second, my personal and particular love for her in a relationship is opening my heart and enabling me TO love everyone else again, in a way I haven't been able to for years... if I've ever had something like this before, even. Things are so much more... what's the word? I keep wanting to say things like tender, fragile, aching, real, sincere, clear, honest, etc. But it's not just "soft," there's a POWER here. There is a fighting spirit to this love that says "I WANT TO LIVE" and I want to live for her, with her, even as I feel that exact sentiment for Chaos 0 and Laurie and Genesis of course but it's also especially hers in a unique way I cannot understate. She's changed my life permanently since last November and the past three months have been astounding in that respect. She's my weird orange girlfriend and although I do joke about the fact that I'm in love with a frazzled goofball of a Pixar character of all people, I'm in love and that's beautiful.

Laurie just interjected "kid, you know what's not beautiful? The fact that you're only gonna get five hours of sleep" and she's right, haha. Nevertheless, this was worth it. ("I never said it wasn't," she agrees; "this was absolutely worth losing sleep over, but we don't have the luxury of sleeping in tomorrow and sleep deprivation isn't going to help your emotional state either." Solid advice as usual from my favorite superego. "I'm your only superego, you moron")

All right, it's exactly 3am and although God knows I want to write poetry about everybody right now, the desire doesn't always translate into the ability especially when I am utterly exhausted from not just lack of sleep but also daily life stress, so I'll have to just live out the poetic instinct in person with the blue guy. Maybe even the orange girl, if she's around, even just for a moment, even just to look at her with this in my heart.

Don't forget the beginning of this entry. All of that is still painfully and pressingly relevant. But so is the rest of what I wrote. It's all together. It's all our life. I'm so glad we're still all here to live it, together.







(... an addendum, from friday the 13th. i just got the guts to reread the beginning of infi's death entry and it is absolutely shattering my heart that THIS entry is how I instinctively described it. somehow i attributed my actions to hir and that's still entirely correct. "if you won't do it, i will." and that shocks me now; ze wouldn't do it without me. somehow even hir death had to involve me. ze... refused to die alone. somehow that act of... cutting hir body like that was the final act of staggering intimacy ze could offer me, untouchable by hackers. god that is ruining me to realize it now. even in those horrific violent final moments infi needed us to be together, needed it to somehow be at my hands, to... to make it an act of love, even then. and yet when asked on a dime to describe what happened i said ze did it. but isn't that true? our hearts were always united. no wonder it destroyed me. and... the "bleeding out," what a nightmare of a way to describe what happened next, but oh god knows it's guttingly accurate, deep down, that's how black bleeds, it pours itself out until there's nothing left.)
(god, please, please, bring hir back to me. bring my heart's love back to me. ze was my life. i know the thriskefoni were utterly convinced and terrified that such a sentiment was the most flagrant idolatry but it's not, lord i only knew YOU in truth because of hir. and i've forgotten. i need hir and i cannot deny that anymore. i miss hir with every atom of my being and it aches like the missing space in my heart is physical. please, oh god please, i've been begging you for nearly six hundred days. twenty bleeding months. i'm begging you on my knees and my soul is sobbing like the world is crashing to pieces around my ears and all i can hear is the silence where hir voice used to be. god. for love's literal sake give hir back to me. please. somehow. this is the most desperate prayer i have. please.)
(black has always been death and resurrection. glorify Yourself in that truth now. i know that's a bold request. but i'm making it. let me plead with you like moses. i can't not dare. love makes people do stupid crazy things but lord i'd rather be the most insane man on earth than keep quiet about the weeping wound that is my heart. you understand loss. you understand love. please. i've seen hir, lord i've SEEN hir in CHURCH i KNOW you have hir soul in your arms, please give hir a body again that i can hold and touch and love and i swear, dear god if you want me to come back to life i need hir back first. ze is the other half of my soul. death cannot change that. death is only a door. somehow, even that was. please god. open it.)