the spectrum heart cathedral system

Hey there internets. I've been home now for a full year, and I'm honestly happier now than I have ever been.
It's been quite a journey. I endured a lot of loss, and disturbances, and upsetting realizations about myself, et cetera, in the past 365 days or so. But, although most of my past has been burned up, taken, or otherwise released, I'm left in the present with very little and a huge sense of joy. Yes, truly. Even though life is still stressful, especially with my poor schizophrenic brother, God bless him... even though life will always have stress in it, I am just... so happy now.

Last year, I returned home after a very disturbing and disorienting year living in North Carolina with an old friend who, unfortunately, I realized that I never actually knew in the first place. (This was a pattern with me.) They had D.I.D., as I did, and as it turned out, my minimal awareness of their life via their online journals was based on the logs of an alter of theirs who no longer existed. And I did not know that. So the person I met upon moving out there was a total stranger, more or less, and whose personal life, morals, interests, obsessions, values, etc. were in stark contrast to mine, to an extent that was honestly caustic and killing me, and yet which I shoved aside and justified for the sake of making them happy, for the sake of "being a good friend." According to what I last heard from them, months ago, I failed miserably at the whole friend thing. This breaks my heart, but upon literally printing the evidence from both our online journals and presenting them to several therapists I have been repeatedly reassured that, like it or not, my friend was a big part of the problem. It wasn't just me. I refused to accept that my friend held any blame, to the point of compulsively murdering my own identity while I lived with them for their sake... because I loved them, and just wanted to be like them, so they would love me. Again, I failed miserably at this. But that's a story for another time. What I want to say here is that, although I deeply regret the time I spent with them, I did learn one huge lesson from it all-- I learned that the person I became for them was NOT who I was, or wanted to be. At all.
And so, when I got home last October, I threw off that persona completely, and started over.

My friend took this as abandonment. They said that I "didn't have the guts to tell them it was over." But that's something they could never understand. It wasn't over. I didn't want it to be over. I DID lie about one thing, and I regret that, but I felt forced to do so-- when they asked me "when I would be coming back," I couldn't break their heart by telling them, "I don't want to come back here. I never wanted to stay. I always wanted to go home and I've been hinting at that for months but every time you got wind of it, you shattered. So I cannot tell you now, flat-out, that this is the last time you will see me in person. I want to go home. This is not my home. I'm sorry." And yet, I couldn't tell them it was over, either. Because for me, things never really end. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's just my affinity with time, thanks Celebi, that makes me feel like everything is happening forever all the time. Like beginnings and endings are both vaguely defined. And honestly, what if a few months into coming home, I wanted to go back and visit? Like in the summer, to go to the beach? If I had said "it was over," what would have happened to our friendship? No, it wasn't over. But it wasn't ever going to be how it was, either-- because that wasn't friendship. I had, quite honestly, lied about who I was, what I felt, what I wanted, et cetera. Everything I did, felt, said, and chose was anxiously crafted to "fit their liking," to the point when I couldn't remember who I was when they weren't around to appease. Once I had enough alone time TO remember, I started feeling some disturbingly intense rage at how much of myself I had annihilated, plus an absolutely lethal homesickness that had me begging my family for airplane tickets every time my friend left the house and I could safely use the phone. Regardless, I cared for them. Even if we were utterly incompatible, I cared for them, and I still do. Even if their lifestyle always was absolutely inhospitable to me, still is, and always will be unless they experience a dramatic metanoia, I still pray for them, and wish them well.
They were a southern thunderstorm, and I was a northern blizzard. They were cornfields and broad horizons, while I was mossy valleys and ice-capped mountains. They were trumpets and chiptunes, yet I was cellos and choirs. They were cotton candy, I was peppermint. They were water, I was fire. And none of that was bad! There's beauty in all of it. We just... didn't jive. At all. And I kept shoving myself under the rug, forcing myself to like brass music and Y2K aesthetics and ice cream because they did, and I was just weeping inside the whole time, but telling myself "love is sacrifice, this sorrow is just personal death, it's better to live for them," not realizing that if living for someone means murdering yourself you're still breaking a commandment. And that's bad.
The true fatal flaw was how we opposed each other in the serious ways. They were hypersexual, had a vulgar sense of humor, used profanity, often walked around naked, practiced witchcraft, praised revenge and spite, loved games and childish toys, et cetera. All things that jarred painfully with my own deep values. I am asexual, with a goofy sense of humor, clean language, traditionally feminine clothing, go to church at least three times a week, try to forgive and serve at all costs, spend my free time studying Scripture, et cetera. And this is not a "superiority" issue because God knows and can attest far more clearly than I how many good things my friend did, how kind and thoughtful and creative they were, as well as how stupid and foolish and ignorant and volatile I can be. I'm, quite frankly, a mess of a sinner, and in my friend all I saw was good. Even when I can point out the aspects of their life that I strongly believe are morally wrong, I know they aren't choosing to do those things because they are wrong, but because they believe they are right and cannot be mistaken. They are trying their best even if I'm afraid they're still headed down the entirely wrong road. But I know when I do something idiotic and I still end up being a moron most days.
Nevertheless. I'm home now, with my family, and although I am honestly so happy now, it took some time to get here.
And step one was cutting off all contact with my friend.

I have to thank the hospital, actually. I went to the ER within the first week of returning, to try and get my insurance issues fixed (long story), and get whatever medical help I could get in the meantime... and they put me in the psych ER, and they took my phone. And suddenly, for the first time in over a year, I was alone. I had no contact with my friend. I was able to sleep alone, and think alone, and BE somebody other than a mirror image for their sake, a pet for their pleasure, a toy for their entertainment-- all of my own appeasement panic, mind you. But... I spent that night happier than I had been in months. It was, frankly, life-changing. Suddenly I realized just how miserable I had been and how I had been lying to MYSELF about it more than anyone else.
The security guard who walked me out the next morning was wearing a huge crucifix ring, and when I told him how beautiful it was, starting a small conversation about what had brought me to the ER, he-- suddenly and eloquently-- began telling me how God had given me a second chance at life, a new birth almost, and that I was morally obligated to live it to the fullest, for His sake. The words of the conversation have faded into time but the impact of them has been pressed upon my heart indelibly since then.

That was a year ago tonight. October 9th, into October 10th. Happy rebirthday. Thank you God.

So. Since then, I've had to heal, slowly but surely. At first it was hellish-- I had so many symptoms exploding at once, as my D.I.D. had utterly vanished after having been turned into the biggest trauma trigger of my life thanks to how it was linked to some terrifying appeasing/ miming experiences in North Carolina. But, now that it was suddenly gone, for the first time in over 10 years, I was alone in my head and although that was JOYOUSLY FREEING it was also AGONIZINGLY SAD because it felt like all of my friends had suddenly been murdered. And in a sense, they were. They died, in the wake of that disastrous year.
Lately, a few of them have come back. They came back different, and they are no longer "alters"-- they were never meant to be, truly, as my past clearly proves. North Carolina mutated and mangled their function and it destroyed them. But ironically, it allowed them to die to all that mental-illness nonsense, just like I did. So now, if anything comes back, it won't have anything to do with that.
Even so. Recovery took a long time. It still is! It's a process. But at first, it was like... losing all my limbs, and having to learn how to use prosthetics. Like, I should know how to heal, what to do, how to fix myself... but somehow things just weren't working right. I was too deeply damaged on some level.
Yet nothing is impossible with God.
I realized, almost immediately upon leaving my friend's driveway last October, that the utter lack of religious freedom in their household-- something they couldn't understand and denied causing, as they couldn't see it, yet it gutted me-- had been the #1 factor in my suicidal depression. And the instant I left, I went right back to prayer, and Scripture, and Mass. And it saved my life.
Now, a year later, I'm back to cantoring in church. I'm growing my hair back for the first time in ten years and wearing modest feminine clothing that I haven't worn in just as long and it is SO NICE. I'm speaking more modestly, I'm praying more than ever, I'm spending my ENTIRE weekends in church, I'm reading the Bible every single day... and I am, legitimately, happier than I have EVER been in my life. I've never been this close to God.
And yet I'm still such a sinner. I'm still a mess. I'm still struggling with the last brutal vestiges of an eating disorder that I've been warring with for 15 years, and which exploded in North Carolina as a desperate anti-sexual coping method and suicide stand-in. I still have sudden bursts of unbridled rage and grief and violence that frighten me, but God is helping me release that pain, and truly forgive and be merciful. I'm still learning how not to treat myself like utter pond scum, learning how to see myself as something other than garbage, as filth, as a rejected failure of a human being, as a toxic sludge waste that deserves to burn in hell. God doesn't think like that, and neither should I. It's a process. But with prayer and hope and faith and love for God, I'm getting better every day, by His Grace.

I'm happy. I really, truly am, to the point where I could (and do) cry with the wonder of it all.
I'm remembering how to love, how to be imaginative, how to be optimistic. I'm remembering how to write poetry, and paint, and play music. I had it all sucked out of me due to that year down south but I'm praying for it to be healed and restored in truth, no longer as a false mess cobbled together to entertain others. I'm doing this for God, and when I do that, the bliss just pours into it. It's wonderful.
I love my family so much. We're ALL closer than ever, kinder than ever, and if my poor brother wasn't so utterly wrecked by schizophrenia things would be amazingly good. But it is how it is, and even this is teaching me patience and mercy and humility and prudence more than ANYTHING else could. Trials are a very powerful way to strengthen virtue, which I have been praying for. I just need to face it with God, because without Him I will and do fail miserably. Faith doesn't make things easy, it just makes them possible.

Tomorrow, I have choir practice, and I have to run errands with my grandmother, after I take her to get her hair done. I love these days. I truly do. Despite the stress, my life is honestly so good now. Even with legal and financial and physiological issues and all that. (Doc found several lesions in my brain and I have no idea what that's about!) I'm looking into convents for the future, still, but right now, I'm happy with my family here in the forests of Pennsylvania. Today I helped grandma cook dinner and bake dessert, and clean the kitchen, and make legal phone calls, and I even got to stop at Wegmans (which I left very quickly because hello residual trauma panic attacks) and smell the essential oils because I'm currently fascinated by aromachology and I want to "reclaim" it from the witchcrafty mess I keep finding it in online and use it for God's glory with the help of Scripture and my God-given blessing of imagination. It's fueling my hope, this creative gift, this broad and beautiful world, and the hope of heaven. Until then I must take it a day at a time, because tomorrow is never guaranteed, but I'm alive right now, and I thank God for this second chance, and I want to please Him with how I'm living it. God help me to do that ever the more, no matter how hard it is to release the pain of the past. I want God, nothing more. Easier said than done, or is it? I want to prove that it is the easiest thing in the world... to choose God and never look back, because all the joy and peace and love I could ever want or need is right there in Him. Such is my life now, and yes, it's the best it's ever been, and as long as I keep my heart fixed on the Lord it will continue to get better.

As for now, it's 10pm, and I must get some sleep, and set my heart with determination to do better tomorrow.

Have a blessed night, everyone.