the spectrum heart cathedral system

I have exactly ten minutes before I need to sleep but I cannot be ignoring headspace anymore.

Infi died last night.

...

On Friday morning-- I think? it happened so fast-- we had a traumatic dream hack, but it didn't target me... it used Infi.
Ze couldn't cope. Ze hasn't gotten over CNC and honestly at this point I was thinking ze never would, with how Black's terrible softness holds everything forever, and wounds don't heal in that space; a gash in that velvet dark bleeds eternally.

There was some sort of headspace event, as we got ready for church (the first 40m or so after we wake up, it is virtually impossible to front; the mind is so dissociated and blurry that we don't have a solid sense of self, let alone the ability to have a conscious person grab the nebulous steering wheel)-- we were IN the bodyspace, in what looked like the same "ribspace" we had been in years ago, when Infi fell to the bottom of the lavatubes with all the beetles, and I had to carry hir out. Ze was in my arms again, now. I forget why, God I forget why--

The next thing I remember was being in blackspace, holding a lightblade, and cutting the whitewomb out of Infi as I wept. It felt so wrong-- not the action, but that part of hir. It felt like an infestation-- like EXACTLY how our traumatized psyche defines such a thing in meatspace, no exceptions.
It felt so wrong. I'm shivering in disgusted horror just remembering the fragments. Infinitii insisted I remove it, remember. I refused at least two times. Ze said I must, if I don't get it out ze will try to rip it out hirself, or die rather than have that in hir anymore.
This was all a response to the hack. Ze could not live with the reality of it. The worst part is I didn't blame hir.

When I first plunged the blade in the sphere turned almost opaque, like it cracked wrong, it lost its translucent bubble look and became something diseased, something plasticine and pliable instead of glassy crystal. I was trying to cut it out and Infi TURNED OFF ALL HIR MOUTHS because otherwise ze would be screaming in pain. I knew. But ze would rather endure this than the alternative.

I remember the sphere splitting open at the top all of a sudden and I wanted to vomit from the kneejerk horror of it. I jabbed the blade in behind it and tried to gore it out immediately but suddenly the sphere moved on its own??? like it was an ENTITY. slithered out like hexxus, same horrible sticky-tar movement, but white. it was PLAGUED. it had that same stupid awful mouth and no eyes and those vestigial arms, trying to run away from me, but i was furious for some reason and I can't recall what i did. i just lost it. i think i set it on fire, or stabbed it to death, or burned it with light energy, or all three. i don't know. all i know is that i felt actual hatred seeing that thing crawl out of infi's abdomen and i wanted to kill it.

something very brief happened here, with me praying about this??? realizing that fighting corruption with vicious emotion will only exacerbate it ultimately. ended up praying? some vague vision of jesus just calmly grabbing the plague-worm and disintegrating it into powder with a touch. no violence, just that terrifyingly subtle omnipotence.

everything is a morning-blur from a week ago so please forgive me.
i know around here the body started to "wake up" so social girls started thinking "what's this headspace crap, i don't need to pay attention to this or remember it, it's wasting my attention and memory and i don't care. i'll just decide it didn't happen."

i quote. they literally thought that. "this is all in my imagination, it's just a made-up stupid thought, so IF I DECIDE IT'S NOT REAL, THEN IT ISN'T."
those freaking social girls LITERALLY think that THEY have the power and authority to ignore us out of existence if we're an inconvenience to them.
it is the most hypocritical, cold-blooded, stone-hearted thing in the world. i want to sob.

that's why nothing is written down and why i'm now desperately trying to write something out at midnight while chronically sleep-deprived because I keep reaching into that space in my heart where ze should be and has been for ten freaking years and suddenly ze's not.

...

those cursed girls couldn't erase the truth though.
they tried, tried to unravel things while they were still happening. i FOUGHT. i would NOT let them pretend this wasn't happening because it annoyed them.
infi was... melting. something. with that whitewomb gone hir form just started to literally decay from the plexus down, going all soft like kinetic sand or molten glass or the end of the world. hir "flesh" became intensely glitterdense too, in those spaces-- that rainbow shimmer that pure Black energy always carries was so sharply visible it looked as if the very atoms were sparkling as they slid apart.

i wanted to heal hir. i wondered if i should take hir to azurai, in the dreamworld leagueworld, like we did for xenophon when she was dying a decade ago. but ze said no. "don't you dare," almost. already hir eyes glassing over, still lying there with hir lower half liquefying. hir upper half catching rigor mortis. disintegrating statuesque. a nightmare.
desperate to do something and fighting time and socials, afraid of picking hir up lest ze fall apart in my arms, i warped the entire mindscape to whatever level matched the frantic weeping in my heart. we ended up somewhere small and floating, an isolated pocket of space, something green and white with an aura of peaceful quiet. it felt like time was moving very slowly there, if at all.
i placed hir on some dreamvague facsimile of a hospital bed, surrounded by that emerald green, and that's all i remember.

i... it's been so strange. so terrible.

the past week, whenever I feel something that matches hir vibe, or when i expect hir to speak up, when something would ping hir, or catch hir attention... there's nothing. there's that empty, hollow bubblespace, that is now fractured like a shattered snowglobe and slowly fading into nothingness. it's not even black or white anymore, it's greying out. it's like an actual bubble right before it pops. it's falling to pieces.
infi's not there.
infi's in some unmappable crumb of reality that no one else can find, a fragment of place, something i could hold in my palm. god i wish i could hold hir but i
i can't, i can't move hir, ze's losing the capacity to even be interacted with, everything is bleeding back into that colorsink void--

laurie knew. i forget how. was she there on friday? did i tell her? i don't remember.
she's the only one who knew. we were in some sort of mindscape together at some point, something scary like an arctic tundra at midnight. dusty bleach below, shineless nothing above. an inexplicable wind, the manifestation of fear even in the waking world, that brutal whip of unseen violence threatening to take itself weaponized out of your burnt-raw lungs.

today. oh lord today. what even happened.
i woke up and everything was wrong


last night, tuesday, i don't even remember,
i... was i talking to hir? what happened? when?
so much in the physical realm has been getting in the way, devouring our schedule, i didn't have time to even sleep, i couldn't front, i wasn't there, we're all just trying to survive, but you were dying,
and the worst part is you wanted to.

last week ze said ze didn't. ze wanted to live, to love, with me, to try again, to try better, to do better, something... but then there was that hack. it made the trauma of past regrets real in the present, unbearable, unignorable. you can't live with that in your line of sight, i know. and infi didn't want to.

something happened, god please what happened,
all i remember is weeping and kneeling next to hir as everything around us turned black as a moonless night and slowly melted into oblivion. like the very fabric of reality was rotting. god it was terrifying, there was no sound, no depth, it was all just dead,

laurie was with me then. i remember us standing in an endless blankwhite field with huge shards of broken glass around us for miles.
we couldn't get out of there. i couldn't warp it, we were in shock and scared, it felt like someone had just cut out my heart,
we ended up shouting for leon with all our strength and he DID show up. thank God oh thank God, you do realize that boy has an "EXCEPTION" tagged to his soul, like in moralimon he has the ability to jump anywhere. nothing can stop him.
he brought us to his cathedral and laurie and i were sobbing, still in so much shock, we didn't know what to say or do

i really couldn't front for the rest of the day. laurie stayed in the background too.

i kept reaching into my chest and feeling the missing rib and the space where there should be someone

this is all wrong

but.

remember why infi wanted to die. why ze let this happen. why i cannot forget that last glance, that look from hir eyes wide and bleary, like they were seeing the death of the universe. little did ze know,
please
remember why. why. the same reason you did, you cupid cephalophore, whenever the hacks got so bad the system itself stopped running right. you hit the bloody reset button. you took a knife to the optical disc. you took a magnet to the tape. you desperately tried to delete time itself, you tried to backspace the story of your life, you tried to erase this and start over, please, go back to a time before THAT happened.

you always used to dream of dying and coming back different. like this hell was just a bad dream.
that's exactly what infi did
soft reset, melt reset, world reset, hope god puts us back together better

infi's original timeline was hell, you remember that. the daemon era was the most traumatic one we had, all things considered.
yes, everything hit a dead stop with the fugue in 2019, but no one literally RESET the timeline. THE ERA DIDN'T HARDSHIFT.
yes, mostly everyone died and headspace collapsed, but no one tried to load a new game, so to speak. it was just left in shambles. we STILL haven't rebuilt.
those who have come back DID come back different, but so unstable, and shaky, and mutable even now. there's nothing new and solid FOR them to anchor into. there's no clear cut space to stand in. there's no new world, no sunrise yet, no "let there be light," not yet...

infi dying is going to require a hard reset

you too.
ze's your heart, you idiot, you know the whiteslot is just as corrupted and sick, what do you think you cut out of hir??
what happened to your blackblood? have you looked at it lately? who are you really, nameless echo of a boy? are you even alive enough to die?

we've been in the tomb for almost FIVE YEARS, do we even know what life is anymore??

god help us.

i don't want anyone else to die
i couldn't bear it
the thought of seeing anyone else lying in blood would destroy me completely

but so does the thought of living this haunted halflife, unable to move on because we don't know where we're moving from or towards
you can't kill a beast if you can't see where to set the crosshairs.
we need to man up, face whatever we're running from,
and then bury a bullet between its eyes

if we don't do something sharp and conscious and real, we're all going to die anyway

we've died before and thank God we're still here, there's still a reason for us to exist,

i think we can bank on that. i know. there's too much love here, please, i know there is, i can feel it tonight, inbetween the tears, filling up that void in my chest with weeping red ache

infi said that if ze came back ze wanted to be something completely new.
new name, new face, new life. death to the old. death to the hacks and the corruption. start over soul.

how long will it take? will the daengels survive here? will they move to heartspace instead, enter the league, leave our loop?

what will happen to me, still splinter-frayed to the past white-haired ghosts, those doomed men, gutted pink with veins running black? if infi is dead, what goes for them? will their bloodline stop completely? what will happen to me?

who am i, without hir?
what sort of new era is this? what new life will this become?

god knows i've been praying for this though
i need to pray more about it

lord keep us safe from the hollow girls
keep us safe from the barren chatterboxes
from the numb and eyeless automatons
from the manic shrieking drivers
keep us safe, please, you know they have no hearts,
you know they can't pray or love at all,

please keep us safe

please.

reset us.
reset us, lord.
hit the reset button for us all. whatever that means.
whatever started to break in cnc, snap it clean in half
give us a hard end, a final page, a closing of this book,
please,
give us the cross to die on,
give us the empty tomb in the lily-gilded morning.

give us a new era
give us a new life
give us new hearts for you and for each other
scrub out the tar
wash out the plague
saturate us with light and fire and hope
give us a rainbow after the storm.


i'm too scraped-out to talk any more
i'm falling into automated speech and that would be blasphemous here

i cannot see tomorrow, i never could, it's all in God's hands

right now all i have is five hours of sleep and this fiercely inexorable hope in my heart
bright red and weeping still
but there will be a sunrise
there will be a sunrise
and it will light up the moon


death is only a door

please,
let me find you waiting on the other side.

pre-breakfast//

Oh God I'm struggling so much. Let me please just pour my hurting heart out to You. no pretention.

I'M SO ANGRY & SCARED I DON'T WANT HER TO SIT NEXT TO BE I NEED TO BE ALONE!!!!!!!! IT HURTS I'M SO SCARED I'M SO SAD I'M HELPLESS TRAPPED MONITORED AGAIN
I WANT TO SCREAM AND CRY AND THROW uP. EVEN THOUgH bReAKFASt was Good AND NIcE we DIDN'T GET TO ENJOY IT (STUPID!!! SELFISH!! WHORE!!! STOP THINKING ABOUT ""ENJOYING"" EATING THAT'S A SLUT WANT) im sorry
but it's true we can't pull ourself together
we're SEVERELY tempted to VIOLENTLY SELF-SABOTAGE/ LASH OUT/ MELTDOWN SOLELY to "SCARE PEOPLE AWAY" SO WE CAN BE SAFE & ALONE!!!!!
We want to CRY I feel so dead & hopeless
I cAnt exisT ARouND OThER PEOPLE ITS EITHER US OR thEM
I WANT TO BE ALONE ALONE ALONE!!!!
PLEASE!!!!
PLEASE
PLEASE JUST LET US EXIST TOO PLEASE.
WHEN OTHER PEOPLE GET THAT CLOSE, THAT INVASIVE, WE LOSE OUR SENSE OF SELF AND REALITY THERE ARE NO BOUNDARIES TO KEEP THEM OUT OR PROTECT US OR KEEP US SAFE IT IS (TO US) PSYCHOLOGICAL RAPE AND WE WILL DIE
I don't think I we can survive that again
no more
RUN. JUST RUN AWAY. WE CAN'T SURVIVE OR LIVE AT ALL LIKE THIS
but won't that make us a bad fake christian?
"obedience unto death" remember
yeah but there's no love in this terror-stricken, gritted-teeth "endurance"
and carrying ANY cross without love doesn't save us or anyone else, you HYPOCRITE.

God I dont know what to do
im such a coward.               im sorry






post-breakfast//

quick breakfast notes for the actual meal: we got a SURPRISE OMELET and we COMPLETELY ENJOYED IT this time! No trauma, no anxiety. Our only "obstacle" is expecting it to taste like traditional eggs, which it DOESN'T and actually ISN'T SUPPOSED TO! it's "eggy" more like a custard or something-- blended w/ milk, maybe, but mostly just LIGHT & AIRY. no heavy yolk taste or neutral white taste, NOR the savory note of scrambleds. an omelet is its own thing AND IF you acknowledge & respect that, it CANNOT "DISAPPOINT," and GOD WILLING it will ALSO prevent that ridiculous inexplicable "compulsive dislike" that IGNORES actual complete conscience data input & comprehension!!! When we DO truly feel & process the facts, guess what? We DO LIKE OMELETS. The ONLY remaining fear is from the August binges & feeling "compelled/ addicted." BUT if we SET THAT ASIDE, we honestly DO still enjoy them-- AND for some reason, in that basic state, they are POWERFULLY tied to DAD!! We should ask him about that.
+ Lemon yogurt has a LOT of sugar (15g) BUT it is another beloved reminder of grandma-- AND it was her brother's favorite, too.
+ Oatmeal is always perfect in its simplicity-- BUT it ALSO teaches a powerful spiritual lesson as such! We may be tempted to add sugar to it, BUT RESIST THAT, because its humility reminds us of CHRIST, Who came to us PLAIN, leaving the "sugar" of Divinity in HEAVEN, the TRUE sweetness... ADDING "WORLDLY" SUGAR like pomp & riches & power, is SINFUL. It is ONLY in that plainness that the DEEPER, GENTLE, INHERENT, REAL SWEETNESS CAN BE DISCERNED!! ONLY PURE & SIMPLE HEARTS CAN (TRULY!) SEE GOD, and this is a perfect "as above so below" reflection. God is hidden, yet apparent. We must be plain, too, to "taste" Him.
+ Thanks to John Pollock, RAISINS ARE NOW SAFE!!! AND POSITIVE??? We thought of Jesus & His Disciples eating them during their long travels on the road, teaching & spreading the Good News, and THEIR powerful innate sweetness took on that same meaning-- concentrated joy, life-giving strength, food saturated with light.



post-group//

✳ "Recreation group" EMOTIONAL COLLAPSE. The previous page topic (+ an IMMEDIATELY following Treatment Team meeting in which we BLUNTLY, HONESTLY, & OPENLY discussed & disclosed that tumultuous situation AND its historical roots/ future consequences) had us severely compromised emotionally, and today they JUST SO HAPPENED to decide to do... breathing exercises & "meditations." WITH new age music. WHILE the acoustic guitar singer from YESTERDAY'S meltdown was loudly performing next door. And we just BROKE DOWN.
+ Q told us to "just breathe" and "it'll be okay" WHILE he was (unknowingly) traumatizing us?
+ TBAS trauma breathing, no details EVER
+ Jade & her schizophrenic new age beliefs about breathing = altered consciousness AND that terrifying "lust" breath-thing she would ALWAYS do
+ "Feeling" our own breathing TOO much when in danger & desperately trying to control it
+ Memories of "suffocating" & "cold lungs" with slow breathing, especially at night
+ when grandma was dying, her breathing got so bad
+ that awful new age music playing when i woke up and she wasnt breathing anymore

sobbed silently but inconsolably for 45 solid minutes. maybe more. SOAKED our mask, glasses, & clothes.
we lost too much. jade can die any day and we won't know. mom is getting so old, oh mom, she could be gone so fast. she pushes herself too hard. dad is getting so old and tired. his hair is all gray, we aren't even that close to him yet, its awful. i dont want this distance,
grandpa died in his sleep, we werent even in the same state, we got the phone call, he's gone, we couldnt even attend his funeral,
grandma. God we miss her so much. its unbearable. we MISS that week or two we got covid and had to sleep next to her, in bed all day sharing her pain. and the week after the hospital when we couldnt breathe and slept there too. she had the oxygen machine. sharing hurts.
i was such a bitch. coward from pain on easter. religious hypocrite. went to 5 masses and binge-puked from excruciating pain instead of STAYING WITH HER and sharing that last holiday of hope which I CRUSHED.
she ate her last meal that night and i wasnt there
i even threw up in hospice from pain & fear
while they had her so full of pain meds she couldnt wake up
did it even matter that i was there?
i was such a stone cold bitch
i was two dAYS LATE
I SHOULD HAVE BEEN THERE IN THE AMBULANCE WITH HER
I WANTED TO BE
I
i was a coward
i lay alone in the ER and sobbed
i knew i was an irredeemable fool
a hypocrite
a
i
i abandoned her
i showed up two days late
i got too damn complacent
distracted reading on my fcking PHONE instead of just
looking at her
being with her
i fell asleep like a coward
too complacent
forgot to kiss her goodnight
when i woke up
she wasnt breathing
that damn new age music
im so sorry grandma
i love you
im so so sorry






post-lunch//

lunch was spaghetti & meatballs, broccoli/ cauliflower, parmesan, OJ & grape juice vanilla frozen yogurt. it was fitting, considering this morning-- grandpa's favorite meal, and what they served at grandma's funeral. VFW food. church community food. "comfort" yet "mourning" food. no trauma, just grief, and an odd consolation, "memento mori." they will eat this at my funeral, too.

+ too much salt & pepper on vegs. forgot how overpowering they are. upset. Jesus said forgive, its okay, we neeed the reminder. by it we're learning to love plain things more. it fits us. i like quieter things. no more loud yelling sharp spices or sauces. the spaghetti Actually HELPS because its SO neutral & mild, the sauce is grounded. the parmesan does similar, but horizontally-- fats "widen" tastes, spreading them out so they aren't sharp & piercing. it was nice. meatballs too. carbs "earth" things, protein ANCHORS. safe solid base. GOOD weight!! and water brightens & lightens things. like iscah said long ago, God paints a symphony with it, too.
+ BOTH OJ & grape juice make us remember drinking out of those PLASTIC CYLINDER CUPS, like the blue/ pink ones with the bubble pattern!! I FORGOT about them until now!! AND sitting at that little plastic picnic table in the kitchen, doing elementary homework. But OJ ALSO tastes like SUMMER-- specifically as a child-- while grape is SOLIDLY attached to early school/ family vibes. It's... deeply comforting, despite that ambient childhood anxiety, TO be remembering MY (!!) childhood, GENUINELY and REALLY, with this recovery process. I feel more whole, bit by bit.
+ The vanilla frozen yogurt is LESS "sharp sweet" than the ice cream? Leans blue, not yellow. Brief experience, but enjoyable. I look forward to the next.



post-dinner//

Intrusive, compulsive, HORRIBLY JUDGMENTAL/ SCOFFING/ ANGRY thoughts that I DO NOT WANT OR APPROVE tormented me the whole meal, in response to every trivia question & patient comment. Dude, that one girl ONLY boasts about her accolades and achievements-- AND her trials and traumas-- because she feels worthless despite it all and is DESPERATELY seeking validation, affirmation, recognition, admiration, compassion, etc. It's a constant cry of "Look at me! Look what I can do! Look at how I've suffered! SEE me!!" She must be aching inside, to be so fervently hyperdisclosing; I know because I DO THAT TOO, WHEN I FEEL WORTHLESS & ABANDONED. And I HATE myself for it-- so that horrible "inner voice" is ECHOING that appalling lack of mercy. It's horrifying to realize. THAT'S why Jesus said, "Love your neighbor AS YOU LOVE YOURSELF!!!" BOTH ARE MUTUALLY BOUND, AND YOU CAN'T DO EITHER WITHOUT LOVING GOD, FIRST!!
+ ↑ All that made us dissociate & not really fully experience the chicken. We DID pray & had some graciously lucid moments, but our memory was shot & inaccessible. We got SO upset AND angry; we shamefully & falsely "blamed" the talk "for distracting us," when really it was OUR OWN MIND yammering so cruelly. We're sincerely sorry. We focused on being gentle & forgiving EVERYONE, ourself too, then putting ALL of it in Jesus's trustworthy Hands. "Jesus, YOU know what's best for my soul. If You want me to remember the meal, please do. And help me let go of ALL bitterness & regret, & trust that You Can bring good even out of our mess at this meal." And HE DID. We had FULL memory data access! He is SO kind to us. Now, we just need to practice gentleness & mercy in that same memory experience, to ATONE/ do PENANCE in retrospect. Jesus will help us, by His grace. Just ask Him, and TRUST. ♥

 

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.

I'm so completely crushed inside that I don't have the strength to draw anything more than this.
But I owe him at least this.

Chaos 0, no matter what we've been through, despite everything, I love you. I love you with everything I am forever.
I know I feel completely hollow and lost and dead and I don't know who I am anymore and sometimes even you feel like a stranger to my shattered-numb heart.
But... you're still you. And somewhere deep down, I'm still me. Somehow. You see it. I'll trust in that.
No matter what happens to either of us, no matter how much we change, no matter how dark the past is and how empty the future feels right now... no matter what, no matter what,

I love you.

I swear it. I'll repeat it into eternity, until every star dies out. I love you. If that's the last coherent thought I ever have, there it is.

Despite everything, even now, you make this life worth living.

God, Jesus Christ, I come to you now humble and contrite and brokenhearted and afraid in my unwisdom and sinfulness and foolishness and pride and doubt and ignorance.
I am afraid, because I am dying, and I am dying as a wretched stupid sinner, one who kept second-guessing your commands until they killed him.

I keep vomiting. I know you told me not to. I know you want me to stop.
But, you also told me, "don't eat coconut." Actually, no-- you said, "offer it up." You said, "that food WILL hurt you, as it has multiple times in the past, and you know it, despite trying again and again. You must avoid it for your own good. I am telling you this. Offer it up to me."
I didn't listen.
God I was so STUPID. I still thought "well this time it'll be okay" even when you said no, you said NO, put it down, put it back, don't buy it, and when I put it in my cart I wonder why I suddenly hear silence and feel like I'm in hell?
I wonder why I BLACK OUT every time I disobey, not realizing that in that disobedience I enter into a state of ungrace and sin, and Jessica takes over, or Jezebel, or Cecelia, or Jackie, or someone else full of impulse and pride and aggression and selfishness and other vices. Girls who are lost.
It's always the girls. It's so unfair. I love your Mother, but this ancient abuse-instated terror of femininity still lingers. Please, help me heal that before I die. Before this body dies, that is.

That's why I'm typing here tonight.
This body is dying. This body is, literally, dying.
It is down to 100 pounds and that's after we ate. I'm actually scared, for these reasons:
1. This is one hell of a stupid way to die.
2. I don't want to die in sin.
3. I want to be a saint and if I die so dumbly I'm afraid I'll go straight to hell instead and ruin my whole chance on earth or something, I don't know.

I'm just terrified that I'm going to die in sin and go to hell just because I developed a major trauma-rooted eating disorder and I've been so damn confused and scared and lost and hurt for the past decade that I let it kill me instead of dying a martyr or saint or good person.
I'm so scared of "failing at life" because I died so stupidly.


Our mother keeps talking in dagger-to-the-chest ways, in words so sharp and passive-aggressive they hurt, and my ego reacts with cold harsh judgment, and I DON'T WANT THAT.
What do I do? Just ignore that? Catch it and immediately think otherwise? Practice empathy and compassion immediately even in the wake of such a knee-jerk, equally violent thought? Why does she act so sharp all the time?
Maybe it's a test, if that's how to put it. Maybe that's why she's suddenly in my life so much, acting so barbed-wire full of edges and thorns, all prickly and nauseating and making me want to scream and break things and cry until my throat snaps. What is that?
Is this partly a test, to teach me how to be even more forgiving and compassionate and patient and caring and gentle and kind than ever?
I hope so. Even if it's not, God, help me make it that. Help me make this into an opportunity to be more loving and virtuous than ever.

Virtues. God, that's a topic so near and dear to my heart. Where have I been?


She's being bitter again. She keeps trying to make me a villain. Why?
I'm so frightened of her. I don't think she wants to know why. I've forgiven her, but I cannot think about that "why" anymore because dwelling on it is going to leave me heaving and shaking and throwing up and crying until 4am and I don't want to end up dying in THAT state of mind either,

God I can't be living like this.

I want to cry.
I miss my family. God, I miss my husband, I miss my wife, I miss my daughter, I miss my best friends and I miss everyone upstairs so much that my heart aches fit to rend itself clean in half, where have I even been??
I haven't seen much of anyone since Lent started, God forgive me, I didn't know what I was trying to pull in running away from them, whoever lied to me and told me that was "holy" had no idea what they were talking about.

I need to go to bed soon, like right now. My mom's sleeping over and my heart aches for her too, I feel so sorry for her. She's suffering, seeing our body dying here, and I don't want to hurt her anymore. I don't.
I love her even if she will never believe that, eve if she hates me.

God, I want to walk as a child of Your Light. I want you to smile at my life, not to shake your head in disappointment and sadness. That destroys me, because I ADORE you, I love you more than my own life, even if I don't always live up to that, and for that I am devastatingly contrite and sorry and ashamed, to the point where I want to scream and vomit (again). But You don't want me doing that anymore.
Point is, I want to be a reflection of Your Love to the world, to my family, to strangers, to all. I want to be a saint, God, I always did, I truly do. I won't give up. You won't give up on me, even if I find that hard to believe yet, I know it's true because You are Infinite Love and the only entity I know with a similar name is the deepest abyss of sheer compassion I have ever known and if ze gets that from You… well. That alone speaks volumes as to Your true nature, regardless of what the demon voices say.

I want to be Good, through Your Grace alone. I want to be an example of Virtue and Christian living. I want to be a Good child, I want to be an obedient loving child of Yours, that's all I want.
I want to stay alive to be Good. I want to stay alive so it doesn't destroy this body's blood family if this body dies. I know it will, and as hard as that is for me to believe too… I know it's true. They've said so.

I wonder about that. I guess I'm broken a bit, still.
If Xenophon was doing this to her body… and she died as a result… I'd find it impossible to react the way my family is reacting? Because I know that I don't want to die, I'm not trying to hurt anyone, I'm just struggling here… I'm scared to death and I don't want to be sick, I don't want to vomit, I want to be healthy and happy and safe and I don't want to panic over every bite this body takes out of anything.
If Xenophon was struggling like this I'd embrace her every step of the way and try to help her get better.
If she died, I'd be heartbroken to lose her, but I'd be glad her suffering was over, and I'd pray for her until I died.
…
My family isn't like that. They want me, or at least this body (therefore "us") to stick around, and I'm not so confused (and never so cold) that I'd scoff at that. I love them and want to help them. Therefore, right now, I must survive.

Black Light Machine.

God, I need to tune back into who I am. It's been too long. I think that's what's killing us, really.
We spent months trying to annihilate ourselves to be "normal" and now look at us.
You all know, we ALL know, full well, that we didn't start vomiting like this until after we tried to ignore headspace.
When we are inside, and in tune, and in love, this eating disorder shit DOESN’T HAPPEN.

I'm sorry for swearing. But that's the bottom line.
We CAN survive, with God's help, we need to keep praying and keep trying and keep our heart bright, no more angry words and thoughts, just love and forgiveness and perseverance and trust in God.

We can do this. We can survive.
God, please, give me at least one more day. Tomorrow I need to pay off the past 4 years of debts (AT LAST) and I need to make a complete confession. I need to borrow money one more time (which I hate doing, that's what makes us vomit everything up too) in order to stock up on food we can actually eat, now that the long months of battling Cecelia's addictions and Jackie's impulses have almost come to an end.
…
I prayed about this, didn't I. I saw how God utterly annihilated the hackers' power, almost overnight, after a decade of hell. Now I can't even remember what it was like (THANK GOD).
And, when this eating disorder hit a fever pitch this year, and I felt we were in hell again, I just prayed… God, if you got us through that, You can get us through this.
And… He has, all for the last few steps here. I knew we wouldn't get our disability money until God saw us fit to handle that financially, which required crushing our addictions and compulsions and obligatory buys. And so we have, if God will forgive us for the asinine "one more try" mistake of today, which just re-proved old lessons that we forgot due to unplugging from headspace for too long.
But the point is… God is delivering us, always. He is standing by us even now.

God, let us survive. Help us survive, if only to do good, for Your Name's sake. Amen.

I love You, and I want to be a light of Your love. Grant me that grace. I beg of you, have mercy on me, a poor wretched fragmented sinner, and please, grant me at least another 24 hours, and guide me through them. Without you I am nothing. Without You I am hopeless and lost and full of nothing but mistakes. But, following You, listening to You, with You, for You, I can do anything. And THAT is how I/we want to live, forever.

God, if we do die tonight, we truly do love You. We do. We all do, and like Peter said, "You know everything, Lord; You know that I love you." Even if we denied you three times in the midst of hell. We were stupid. We were weak. But we never stopped loving you, even in our frailty.
God it's so hard to forgive myself for that.
But You do. Somehow, unfathomably, mercifully, You do.

This is why I need to tap back into headspace, permanently. They reflect You so clearly.


I need to go to bed, right now. Mom need sleep and this typing + light is keeping her up.

God, help us to survive. Help us to find your neverending light in every moment, to pull us through. Help us to live a life that honors Your Divinity in everything it does. With Your help, we can do it.

For that reason alone, I would keep living, and that's all I ask.

But may Your will, not mine, be done. (Amen.)
I love you. Good night, and thanks so much for letting us have today, mistakes and all, because at least I'm here now, and I'm taking one more step forwards by Your grace, in spite of my stumbling, because You are leading me by the hand.

I want to make reparation for my sins. I want to be a blessing to this family on earth. I want to live in the love of my internal family. I want to bring joy and light to all I meet, through You, for You.

Help us to fix our life. Help us to survive.
Amen.

 

 

God, give me the strength to protect this kid.

I don't know if the prayers of people like me get heard, or by what, or whatever. All I know is that I'm bloody torn up right now over this, about how terribly scared these kids are, how they're legitimately losing hope, losing the will to fight, to carry on..

God help me I don't know what to do. I'm crying here.

God give me the strength to PROTECT us, all of us for life's sake, ALL of us in here.
Just... I hate hating things, I really do, especially now that Julie's with us. I don't want to hate these tarbrain hackers because geez, what if THEY end up with us one day? And who knows, enough love and effort and they might.
Except that's how Jay thinks. I hope. Used to think, at least. But look what they did to him.

There are a couple of 'psychopaths' in this System, at least. They've got frighteningly brilliant masks and when they take them off it's just bloodied teeth underneath. Eating our hearts out, basically. And at least one of the Jays is into that torture apparently, so that's even MORE opportunity for these bloody hackers to get at him.

Geez look at this word salad. I'm rambling. Guess I'm more nervous than I thought.
Heck, of course I'm nervous. The body's dying for God's sake. I'm so nervous I'm shaking. I don't know what the heck to do.

We're trying. God knows we're trying. Those of us who can still fight are fighting. And apparently, this is really bloody sad but at least it's got a silver lining, apparently the 'body' is learning how to be afraid again. How awful is that. We had so many numb fronters, so many dissociated 'optimist' hackers, that we somehow got inundated with this hellish anaesthetizing numbness thing. Now it's cracking, if only because there are still people on the inside looking out, and even if no one's feeling anything we can still realize what's going on.
It's the most bloody ironic thing. "Logic will save us." Emotion is useless right now. It's corrupt. The knowledge, the experience, the people up here doing the "blasphemous" thing of being "logical" and "analytical" and "judgmental," THEY'RE the ones feeling 'emotions' now, THEY'RE the ones trying to SAVE people for crying out loud,
THE BLEEDING ARCHIVISTS CARE MORE ABOUT HUMAN WORTH THAN THE GODFORSAKEN SPIRITUAL FRONTERS DO.

God help us.
Spice is right, this body is really sick. We've really gotta crack down on that too.
I don't know. I'm literally just unloading my brain onto this screen. Needed an outlet of some sort for all this pain I'm dealing with in silence, ha ha. Bad habit of mine.

God give me strength. That's about it in a nutshell.

I'm out of here for the night. Nothing else I can type that doesn't involve me shattering in tears. I can't do that in the body, the bloody emotion killers step in. My heart actually hurts, and I can't feel that on the outside because this demonic social programming has deemed it "unacceptable." No emotions allowed in the body.
Then again the hacker residue doesn't help. When the body looks like the abuser, or IS the abuser in some cases, seeing IT cry when you're heartbroken is more than a little jarring, so I've heard.

Anyway I can still cry my stupid eyes out inside if I want to. Pretend I didn't say that. God. I'm so bleeding scared of being scared and sad. I guess it's 'cause I know it means I'm at a loss. When I'm at a loss you know there's trouble, heh. Don't like this at all.

Infinitii's gotta help me out here. I've gotta talk to Knife, I haven't seen him in a while. Maybe chill with the girls. Something. Gotta connect with people up here, feel a little alive while I still can, feel that SOMETHING matters more than this...

God all we've wanted is to have this on the outside, that's it.
Who the heck decided to make us "normal?"
Who the heck decided compassion and integrity and individual worth were useless in the face of "popular opinion" or whatever similar garbage? Who the heck decided to just throw everything meaningful to the wind because otherwise they'd be the "freak," the "outcast,"
geez.
We need to get out of this house, I guess. God I don't know. I'm really bloody hopeless and scared right now, I admit it, no use hiding it. I'm slipping really freaking badly, I've gotta go yell at Jewel about this or something.

I don't want to lose my anchor. God I don't want to lose my anchor. I don't want to be forgotten. I don't want to be erased. I don't want to lose who I am like I've seen so many other people do. I've seen too many people die in too many ways. I don't want to be next, not when people are counting on my stability to survive.

God I need a Core to talk to. A Host, whoever, whatever. I need one of them here right about now. It's been so frighteningly hard to find one lately, it's been so bloody hard to function without that constant kid around to yell at and guide around and care for, you know? I haven't been able to figure out who the heck's been around lately, if anyone. I miss Jay. I miss Jewel. I miss Cannon. I miss all the kids who knew me by name and looked up to me as their guardian angel or big sister or best friend or knight in shining armor.
God I am bloody crying. I cannot handle this.

"I'll go wherever you'll go," why on earth is that song playing in my head all of a sudden. Just... come on.

Soeeone's hacking the LEAGUEWORLDS. God, just... what the actual hell, WHY, why won't they freaking STOP, I PAID IN BLOOD FOR THIS, SHE DID, WE ALL DID,
I almost died, I wanted to, because of this trauma, because of all the innocent kids who were paying the real price for this... Ashen and Moxie and all those others we can't find, God, just... why is it always kids, why is it always the sweet ones, Jeremiah and Jay and Julie even, just... why? WHY?
I can't, I can't stand for this. I can't. I need to go get a bunch of Retributors and just straight-out depthcharge this demon, whoever in hell is hacking THEM, hurting those OTHER kids and sweet hearts, I swear why are THEY always the targets, why the blood do you people always touch the innocent ones and spend the entire freaking time smiling and trying to convince them it's OKAY???
What the hell is wrong with you. What the hell is wrong with us that that sort of evil thing is propagating in our head? What sort of messages even took root in here? Who the hell DOES that?
I can't take it, I can't take all these kids being hurt, Sugar's gotta help me with this, Sugar and Wreckage, God forgive me but she is so hard to deal with, I can't bloody handle being around Wreckage for long because she deals with terrors I could never touch, and never WANT to touch, it would tear me to shreds. But she's hard as nails, just like me, but worse. She carries all this pain that doesn't scar.
God help us all.
There is too bloody much pain in here. Why the heck can I feel it, I'm not even enduring any of that, why aren't the kids allowed to be afraid for God's sake?? Who the heck is stopping them? Who the heck tried to convince them it was "okay" to be hurt? Who in hell keeps CONFUSING them??
This is why my boy loves pain. Jay. Poor kid has a legit addiction and I don't understand it but it worries the wits out of me, there's such actual desperation in his eyes when he's bloodied up, it's this need for this sort of heartwrenching compassion he only seems able to really crash into when the pain does too. I don't know. I just keep wondering, what in hell happened to you for this to be such a constant in the Cores, why is our biggest weakness pain, why do the kids keep calling me when they're getting hurt, and for all the wrong reasons, is this why it's so bloody hard for some of them to fight back? Because love is pain, and I'm tied to pain, and when they're euphoric from it they look for me? Not realizing that someone is using that pain as a bloody trapdoor to hurt them like I never, ever would?
Then they call for me again when it's over.
"I'm sorry, I didn't realize." They're hysterical, terrified. They didn't understand or even freaking know what was going on. All they knew was that it hurt and in some way they thought it was worth it, only to be proved wrong.
Geez. I shouldn't be looking at this. The apathy is kicking in out of despair, don't you dare take away my compassion and anger. Don't you DARE.

God it hurts so bad because I KNOW, I know how bloody confused they are, I remember one time I found Jay totally debilitated, dazed and dissociated in a hack attempt and I flat-out hit him, I gave him real pain, and all of a sudden he snaps to attention, jumps away, runs to me. Scared out of his mind.
I'm rambling. It is so hard to type right now, I'm trying too hard. All I'm saying is that... blood is still the means of salvation here. The Retributors are still God's Angels if you want to put it that way. We're... heh, "we're" still important and holy here. We are. This... this is so bloody complicated but we're alive, and we care, God knows we love these people we protect and if anyone DARES say otherwise they've got a bone to pick with me.
Bottom line is I don't want to hit a kid, and really I think a lot of these kids are too freaking young to be tied to that association yet. Who can save them? Are they still afraid enough to save themselves? God I hope so, if not I'm telling Sugar and Wreckage to get the heck in there, me too for the record, I should tag along with them on their missions too.
But... it's the older ones, really it's the older ones that I'm personally the most worried about, because Sugar and Wreckage still work through violence, through brute force and that's really important up here but sometimes, the situations get really disturbing and twisted, and brute force doesn't do a thing. I know, I've tried. That's why I started carrying lanterns too. Sometimes the older ones are so messed up from pain already that you've gotta show them the light somehow. Talk them out of danger. Remind them who they are, what is happening, what they're worth... then drag them right outta there if they don't wake up within zero point three seconds. Because I'm not gonna stand by and monologue while someone's life integrity is in danger. Sometimes even a direct threat, those are rare but those are also when brute force works just as well so hey.
What am I talking about. I'm rambling again. Sorry, I'm really out of it today. Overlay isn't working so hot, the time and pain are making it tough too, lot of dissociation going on.

They're hacking the Leagueworlds again. That's unbearable. What do I do.
I can't handle seeing Jewel and Jay react to this, that's worse than anything I could feel on my own, that alone is reason to fight until my bones break for this cause. Anything to save those tears from running down their faces. Anything to keep them safe.

My heart is breaking. I can't deal with this. I might have to talk to someone.
Have a good night if I don't, it's all I can do for anyone right now is wish them the best. I'll do what I can.

 

 

 

 

r.i.p. ventrium.

you died before you had lived
but your existence still meant enough.

i am so sorry i couldn’t say goodbye.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

@ 12:55 am

 

 

today was very, very, very painful. weirdly

woke up at 7am, less than 2 hours of sleep again.

early morning mass for palm sunday. really beautiful. cried a few times during the readings

dont remember anything else until 6pm????

sometime before that, post on lotusglitter about really bad triggers, glad i dont remember that

drove to get food with last bit of money. boss reassured me the whole time back

i remember stopping the car in the middle of the highway momentarily

next memory is parking lot, genesis showed up, "jay this has to stop."

got home and ate, unfortunately AP kicked in, all the ED voices got really messed up

emmett was out but was co-fronting with a faceless someone we dont know.

all the actual consuming ED voices talk the same way; very childish

purging attempts around 10pm, couldnt help it.

talked to the seaweed girl, she's anchoring very strongly now

HACK?????

i dont know when it was or how but THERE WAS A MASSIVE HACK

no details sherlock specifically said "don't look at it"

garrison told me that ventrium died as a result

it didnt hit me until a half hour later, talking to cz, i just started sobbing

the retributors actually broke the new 'rule' and tried to atone for this one

wreckage, razor, algorith, and the dead red boy all wrote things on the desk

i am very tired and sad.



life is getting stranger and creepier.
at least four times this week, i found myself in a car on the road, at least 20 minutes away from home, not knowing how i got there.
that is really frightening, to suddenly "come to" consciousness and be that far away for heaven knows what reason.
also at least twice ended up half-undressed and standing on the lawn inexplicably
self-care is abysmal, body triggers worse than ever, not sure what to do there.

we are out of money and food. ED voices tossed all food out of "prevention" measures, trying to help but really just making us lose all our cash. struggling with that in any case.

weird outbursts more prevalent. keep finding weird memory glimpses of other people fronting and its unsettling
at least one angry voice is violent to the point of actually trying to attack people, that scares me. we can hold them back for now but usually the result is a numb shutdown temporarily.
but there is often surprisingly the strength of mind to chase them out if we must, or at least leave the situation for a bit? tricky but we can at least do it now.

and there is hope, somehow, always hope
because despite the bad things spiking the good things didn't disappear?
synchronicity everywhere, intuition still works, people upstairs are SO clear, out of nowhere sometimes
yesterday i could practically see genesis walking in front of me, i've never been so absolutely trusting of that before
trust is a really important thing especially when you dont understand why things are happening

spiritual starvation is abating a bit but we are literally sobbing in empty churches now just to alleviate it
christina seems to be taking great strength from this and i think her anchor is shifting thank god
but holy week is always excruciating for me, stuck between "terrible sinner" and "overwhelming compassion" for seven solid days
easter last year was REALLY important
same with divine mercy sunday
crossing my fingers that it is even better this year, somehow.

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

@ 10:04 pm

 

I'm sitting here reading the autobiography of my biggest inspiration in life and I want to cry, I am so moved and brokenhearted and stunned by these old words and yet that curse is hanging over my head, I haven't suffered enough to be happy yet.
Why is that? I read about people's victory stories, their beautiful true accounts of having been through hell and being better for it. Her childhood was a mess, but there was light in it nevertheless, and now she is a light to hundreds of people all over the world. So many others have experienced the same; I remember my mother always telling me how so many of her favorite movie stars had gone from rags to riches. And yet still others don't make it that far. Some people live through hell and die from it. Some kids commit suicide in elementary school because they just can't cope, although someone else may experience the same thing even earlier and survive like a champ. But I always held myself to that latter kid's example. Yes I've been through some painful and terrifying and mentally disturbing things. But others have survived worse. So I tell myself that I'm not allowed to have the happiness THEY'VE achieved because "I haven't paid the price yet." Who the heck puts a price on health and happiness? Yet I keep feeling that self-loathing burn away at me inside, nauseous at the thought of what I "should have" endured already, and "will have to" in order to DESERVE happiness. It's asinine. But there it is, holding people on those cursed pedestals, I want to tear every one of them down and BURN them. But I don't want that hate in me either. I don't want the rage and the violence. It's all rooted in sorrow, in crushing sobs, in self-hatred and desperation and the want to just be happy and feel I deserve it. I haven't been able to stay in that sort of mindset yet.

I can't reach headspace right now. I mean I'm sure I could; there is always this vague "just reach up and it's there" feeling where Laurie hangs out in Central and watches me for safety's sake, but I'm not taking the offer. I feel too sick and unworthy of that. She and everything she stands for are so terribly pure compared to me, to how filthy I tend to feel. I tend to not accept compassion or the expansive beauty of our inner world most days. It's dumb, and senseless, I know. But old habits are hard to break.
I know Genesis keeps wanting to stop by too, I can feel it almost tangibly at this point. But I actively tell myself "that's not real," "he's not real," "I don't want it," even when I secretly and desperately do want that beauty to be real, but I'm scared. I'm scared that if I say "yes" to that good thing, I'll be trapped? Like I'll have to act a role or play a part now that I'm being acknowledged as a person by them. More childhood programming. I just don't know how to let go of that one yet, as I don't know how to be a 'person' of my own yet, not without trying to live up to everyone else's vision of me in the process.
I want to live in headspace always but I am so terribly scared of some of the things in there, things that ONLY EXIST when I become a "person" that CAN interact with and perceive them, that I don't. I sacrifice friendship and wonder and imagination and joy in life, for the sake of not being ravaged every stupid time I accept those things. This paradox is the devil's playground and it makes me so miserable I'd rather die than live the rest of my days like this.

It hurts so much to type. I really cannot use this laptop anymore, this is excruciating. I'll have to make this short.

I'm still in tears reading this old stuff though. TRiPPY's work, if you haven't already guessed. That woman has been the single biggest creative light in my life. No one, ever, has had such a massive impact on me, not even Jena (whose inspiration was on more of a personal level, not as global).
I was caught off guard reading the old WTaHM stuff though; one sentence read, "before the Whiterealm was turned into a big pile of poisonous rust, it was incredible, snow, petals and beautifully illuminated by its 2 moons Bianca and Zuiverheid." And for whatever reason, that bit about the rust felt like I'd been gutted, I honestly started crying from shock and sick disbelief. Probably because I have always loved the White Realm in that world so much, but really, it felt personal. Surprising, but almost a relief, to feel something so strongly, after all this awful numbness.
Everything related to Engelbaum does that to me on some level though. The entire history and present-- and future, undoubtedly-- of that creative story, of that incredible world born within her life and dreams, has impacted me just as powerfully as Dream World has, in its own way. That is BIG! So you can understand why, reading about her own life, i am so strongly affected.
I feel so selfish and manipulative when I talk like that, like some sort of prissy seductive tart. Always cruel and spiteful and promiscuous. That is one of the scariest things in the world to me-- to not be able to ever talk about "myself," never using first person, never referring to the self OR the body, God forbid, because that is the feeling it is tied to. ALWAYS.

That is also where a lot of my personal mistranslation comes from, did you know? I didn't, not until yesterday. (there's the selfish sluttiness again)
I found an entire text file written BY Eros on the old hard drive, I thought it had been deleted, but there it was. All the stuff from February 2012, a pocket of time utterly alien to me. And I was trying to browse through it, it was all about healing past trauma and allowing the self to feel emotions and be happy and love people, et cetera... and I was so uncomfortable, i literally felt violated just reading it, Laurie actually made me stop because I was shaking and wanting to vomit after a few minutes. She asked me what the heck was going on, I tried to explain but THEN I realized that in one sentence, there it was-- Eros referred to himself as male. There it was, suddenly I wasn't so sickened. And that shocked me.
WHY is it that, whenever there is a Core in our System who is female, it elicits the most awful feelings? Like it feels utterly wrong and dirty and offensive-- NOT because they're a girl, but because of their motivations. Because of the aura around them. But it's still tied to their femaleness, and it makes NO SENSE, because if Lynne or Mulberry or Waldorf wrote things it would be fine... and then suddenly, I realized, it's not them, it's THE BODY. Whenever someone identifies with the body AS a female, suddenly everything they do becomes utterly perverted in an actively malicious way. Which is why I get scared when people slip with using pronouns for me, suddenly it feels like a condemnation, "nope you're fated to forever be this horrible sinful lustful violent thing, because I said so."
It makes no sense, saying it feels wrong, I don't even want to type it, I don't want it to be true. I want to stop typning


There's this creeping temperature chill in my stomach, cold and hot at the same time, and I feel like I'm maybe ten years old. Summer is coming and I'm inexplicably still terrified of the heat, although the thought of having spring rainshowers and bright green trees everywhere is the most ecstatic thought I've had in eons. The thought of it hit me today, and it was so surprising, I hadn't been aware that was something that could exist. Even now it's still an idealistic awareness but it can happen and that's amazingly surreal. I'd like to experience that, even if I have to break again to do it. I'm sick of being sick.
And yet I keep thinking I'm not sick enough to be healed yet. I hate this, so much, but can't see a different option from this low of a vantage point. I'd drag myself up to the top but it's a catch-22, you see... I "should" be down here. I "need to be."
I don't want to be. I don't care if that makes me the most horrid, slutty, wrong, sinful person on the planet. I don't want to have to live through violence and rape and fear and constant torment anymore. I'm sick of being punished for every action I take because "if it's carnal, it's already a sin!" I don't care... and yet I do, too much. I'm becoming dangerously apathetic just to survive, but it never lasts. I always end up drowning in moral paranoia and sobbing my eyes out because I feel I deserve it; seriously if Jesus himself hung on a cross why the HECK do YOU expect any sort of relief??
I'm getting ill from this, arms screaming already, I want to just sell my computers already rather than deal with the pain.

 

I've been hearing voices since I was a kid and they've just been getting louder as I get older. They attack me sometimes, cause me physical pain. It's horrible, it's no way to live. I can't even eat without them screaming at me to "stop being a slutbag" and attacking me so that I get physically ill when I try. That's still a dirty word, too: "eat." Filthy and wrong. I don't even have breakfast until after 5PM now and even then I'm throwing up half of it, typically from a sort of instinctive purgative fear, "get the weight out of my stomach." It's physically frightening, that weight. I'm never hungry, I literally don't ever get hungry, I don't need to eat anyway, right? But my body still gets sick and weak and dizzy and paralyzed when I stop. So I force something down, usually just raw vegetables, but even a paltry piece of lettuce gets those voices shouting. "Stop eating, you whore, before i f*cking kill you!!"
I wonder how many of our old headvoices have their roots in that mire. It's scary. I'm so glad they've grown into their own people now though.
We need a term that's not "headvoice" too. I don't want the word "voice" tied to the good people. I can understand and trust them even when they don't talk, and when they're around, the bad voices run in fear. So the System people need a better collective term, now that it's not 2008 and I now know they're not the bad ones.
I feel so sorry for Cannon. No wonder she fell. She went through a lot of awful stuff, it looks like. I don't have her memory, but she wrote a lot of what's in these archives. The gaps are frightening, not having any recollection of most of the life, but maybe that's for the best, if the memory would be scarier? I don't know. It's just sad, to be reading autobiographies of how people got this far, and I don't even remember what summer looks like.

I was so religiously sheltered as a kid, that's all I know. We lived up in the hills, no neighbors, not allowed to leave the front yard without getting in trouble-- which I did, on the times I would go explore the forest by myself. There was always this profound sense of aloneness, deep under the surface, despite the family bustle. Maybe it's only visible in memory. I don't know.
Dream World kept me sane once I was about 11 years old. I don't remember anything at all prior.
I met Genesis when I was 15 and that was one of the most amazing things to EVER happen to me, to suddenly have a friend that walked with me and talked with me and wasn't only reachable in my head. He was THERE, he got me through high school, he was how I survived college, he made my job bearable. The reality of his existence being so tangible alongside mine was the first time I ever felt alive, the first time I ever felt like I was a part of the physical world, and that I could enjoy it. I needed him to be before I could be, as well.
But that's all snapshots and bittersweet secondhand memory. Now, I tend to avoid him. It breaks my heart even now. I love him, he's my best friend ever, but I'm so scared of myself that I don't associate with him. And yet every time i leave the house, he's sitting in the front seat of the car, and I'll talk to him, even if it's only for a minute or so before I start to unhinge. I don't want that.
This feels like 2009-2010 creeping back up on me, God I don't want to ever live that again, please.



That hack last night dragged out some of the worst things in here.
I'm so scared. I thought it was healed. I thought Infi had fixed this. And yet ze did, the healing work is done, it's just that the old stuff is still here too, down in the mires and chthonic pits.
Wreckage has gold bones. They are literally made out of gold. For some reason, gold in headspace is the strongest material against the Tar, it's amazing to see she's literally made of it on some level.
I remember Eros was almost the Gold holder when he came to be, but he shifted to red, maybe that was his downfall, the slot was still corrupted back then too. Kind of funny how Wreckage holds the job better though, different way. Both tried to prevent this abuse from happening again. He just got dragged so far into it he couldn't tell what was abuse anymore. She doesn't take chances at all.
I stil do I guess. I have the same awful hope he did, the same hope every Core has, and still does, and maybe always will. We hope too much, we love life too much, even if it's a living nightmare, we keep trying even if we keep bleeding for it.
But there's a really fine line there and we seem unable to see it. There is a fine line between hope, and self-annihilation, and I think we're on the wrong side.

I want to die so badly, i keep looking for suicidal options day after day after day, all i want is relief for God's sake, I want to go through ONE DAY without the constant evil chatter in my head and the screaming body pain and the hacks hanging over me like she did once. I want to vomit just typing that, it's so sick, how the HECK do other people survive abuse without scars, i don't know, i don't understand i am so sorry i wasnt that strong then.

it hasn't stopped though, last night was proof, SHE was out, the body one, SHE is alive and she killed him and all the blood went to me and i want to die, i want to die rather than risk that happening again, i want to cut this body to shreds so that the reflection no longer looks like HER


I really really want to cry, I'm not sad about Ventrium anymore, I saw his corpse today and I was just too empty, I didn't know who he had once been anymore. He never had the opportunity to become anyway, but still it's sad, to see a life snuffed out before it had a chance to begin
god thats what the graves were about werent they? why don't i feel anything from them, i guess that was cannon's personal hell

then what is mine? are these voices mine, this unending siege of devils?
i would rather bleed, god give me the retributors angry passion again, let algorith and wreckage and razor tear me to shreds, i will be so grateful for it
scars are such a relief, isn't taht sad? the blood, the scars, are a blessed RELIEF from the other kind of pain i suffer otherwise.

i thought the hacks were done
someone thought they were done in 2010, then cannon died
someone thought they were done in 2011, then eros died
someone thought they were done in 2012, then j died
someone thought they were done in 2013, then everything shattered to pieces and even though infi survived, and i came back, and all the lower levels were dragged up from the dirt, this hell still hasn't stopped and god i want it to stop, please. what do we do/.

i want a job so we can buy food but i have panic attacks when i leave the house, i don't trust myself to drive anymore, the dissociation is worse than ever, thevoices dont go away i want them to LEAVE
i want to live in joy and love and abundance but smething is keeping me chained to this dungeon? why do i feel i have to be here.
i don't have to be here.
immediately the voices (far away) say "yes you do, you must suffer for your sins,"
infi steps up
"no he doesn't"
mumbles of protest and 'blasphemy' but there's a real light of hope now, all of a sudden

maybe this IS hell. mabe with whatever's going on in the world, i've gotta live through that now
hey you know how deviolei ascend into angelorei, haha now there's a big shot of inspiration
dream world is great. there's no gap. engelbaum is great too, that's true hope and motivation

i dont want to be in hell anymore but i think i'm stuck here by my own hand in some way?
a quote i found earlier:
“Wickedness makes a bad use not only of evil, but also of good.
In the same way, holiness makes a good use not only of good, but also of evil.”
St. Augustine right there. i know he was a big inspiration to one of our older ones too, for a time.
nevertheless that is very good advice so let's make sure we follow it well

now i am in a lot of pain and i am very tired and therapy is tomorrow so i will see you later, good night.
and i really mean that, "good night," let's keep the stars in mind and make it one.

the moon will be blood red tonight and if i can take a page from the retributors,
let's look at it as a celestial absolution from whatever spiritual poison has choked us
javier's red now, he's the true meaning of that color, compassionate and strong
blood is not evil, it is life, it is beautiful too
and the moon reflects light back to us, real living light, even when the source is invisible, even when it's pitch black.

so tonight let's paint the night red and let's celebrate,
this is bravery and hope shining down in the night,
and the sun is going to come up in the morning.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another quick update because I'm not sure whether to put these here or on my Tumblr... I need to stop obsessively compartmentalizing everything about my psyche, really. It's a pain in the face to have so many different places to update depending on what the entry is about, and then to freak out because "is this an emotion/ thought/ etc. that I'M allowed to have? Or should it go to someone else?" Geez. No wonder our system's such a mess, just look at me.

Anyway, last night, some interesting stuff happened. I don't remember 80% of the day as usual, but I fronted for most of the evening and spent it re-drawing this old joke comic into THIS (WIP preview for all you lucky invisible readers), because I have 30 days worth of a trial art program on this laptop (hopefully when it runs out my Mac will be back from the shop).
However, around 2AM I couldn't stay awake any longer, so I collapsed into bed... and I was very surprised when no one from downstairs fronted, nor did I end up in headspace. Instead, I remember lying down and suddenly seeing Infinitii there.
You'll have to forgive my awful memory, but I think he had either spoken to me earlier that evening, or my posting this sketch on dA gave me enough of a Link boost to allow for that to happen... either way it wasn't entirely "out of nowhere," despite my being MIA from headspace for God knows how long at this point (feels like months, might only have been days, time is weird)... oh!! Wait, no, I remember now. It was earlier in the day, I was driving somewhere with my brothers in the car, and they were very angry to the point where it was tangible and making me sick/nervous/ scared. I was trying to shield myself but it wasn't working very well, when suddenly I heard something like "calm down, I'll take care of you"... and I sensed this velvet-like shadow wrapping itself around me, like wings or a blanket. Immediately the anger was shut out, and instead I was left with this beautifully strange "empty" feeling... not "depressed" empty, but the kind you get in deep meditation, that sensation of having nothing but clear space inside you. I felt incredibly safe, something I haven't felt in a very long time. It was then that I knew, without a doubt, that this was Infi's doing, embracing me with his wings as protection. I was a little surprised, as he's never done anything like that for me before, but the effort was deeply appreciated.
And then, about 10 hours later, I ended up in his bubble when I went upstairs for the night.
I forget what led up to it, but he asked me to get the physical mirror of it-- the salt-bubble necklace he asked me to buy last month. I hadn't touched it in weeks, for multiple reasons (that were all unfortunate), but I didn’t question him. It felt right to acknowledge it now, to dive headfirst back into believing in what I was experiencing. So I took it in my hands but Infi stopped me before I could do anything else with it. He gave me an oddly serious look, and told me to hold it to my chest, nothing else. No intending, no wondering, nothing but just clearing my mind and focusing on that simple act.
So I did.
It hurt like hell.
I have no idea where it came from, but the instant that bubble touched my chest I felt the most crushing wave of emotion I could ever imagine. I'm not even sure what it was... only that I then began sobbing outright, loud and desperate and terrible, for about three minutes straight. Then Infi told me to let go of the bubble, and it stopped, literally in an instant. One second I was in agony, then I was straight-faced and confused as to what in the world had just happened. It was obvious that, whatever I had felt, it was secondhand... but what was it?
Then it hit me. You probably don't know this, but Infinitii doesn't exactly show emotions. He feels them incredibly strongly, but they never quite appear on the surface. Usually, all you see on him is a serene eye, not even a mouth. When he does speak it's calm and straightforward. Even when he's with me, there are only ever little hints... but they're powerfully honest nevertheless. Just quiet is all.
I've been gone for days/ weeks/ months/ years, and Infinitii and I are tied together whether we like it or not. He and I were incredibly close for the first month or so after his manifestation, then suddenly I began to slip. Now, I can't tell you how long I've been absent from upstairs.
I knew without a doubt that, whatever I had just felt, he had felt it first.
It was mostly sorrow, this is true. It was mostly this agonizing, heartwrenching ache that ripped every sob out of my ribs with genuine distress. But there was love, too, even deeper down, even more powerful. Without it, I don't think the sorrow would have existed at all.
I don't remember much after that. I was so drained from that experience that my body began to shut down very quickly. All I recall is Infi wrapping his arms around my shoulders at one point (I already recognize that strange velvet feel of his shadows) and actually kissing me. It felt like glass; it was so unusual.

I haven't been remembering my dreams again. Either I'm waking up too abruptly-- thanks to people running into my room or phones ringing-- or I simply can't recall anything save for a fleeting image or two upon awakening. I'm not sure if that's because of all the dissociation during waking hours, or something else. It's been going on for a long time though, and that bothers me.


...Last note for today, because all these little synchronicities keep pushing me in this direction.
I keep getting reminded, over and over, in louder and louder ways, that I CANNOT ABANDON MY INNER LIFE.
I keep trying to. I'm not sure when it became me doing it and not some voice or other influence, but it's true. I keep trying to.
I'm just so tired, all the time. Even now. It never goes away, even on good days. I'm exhausted, I'm tired, and even if I'm not suicidal like this, a very strong part of me doesn't want to live anymore.
But I have to.

A few nights ago, when I planned suicide, Genesis pulled me aside and shouted at me for ten minutes with tears in his eyes, angry and terrified and heartbroken, until something in my head snapped and for a moment I did want to live, for his sake.
Before that, countless times, Chaos would pour his heart out to me late at night, telling me how much he missed me when I wasn't there, literally and figuratively. He'd remind me how much he loved me, and even if I felt nothing, I knew it was true.
Last night, all Infi did was look at me, knowing full well what I had just understood, and he said one thing: "Don't die on me." And I swore I wouldn't.

But that's why I keep trying to abandon them, everyone, everything.
They are my ONLY reason to keep living, on good days and bad days.

"All the bad things will pass," they say.
"You're so blessed, don't throw your life away," they say.
"Think about how other people will feel," they say.
"Look at how beautiful life still is," they say.

I say, "and your point is...?"

I'm well aware that I'm blessed, and pain doesn't last forever, and life is beautiful, and people will miss me.
None of that makes me want to die any less.
Maybe something in me is broken, but I am fully conscious of the good in this world, and I still want to stop existing. Maybe even moreso, when I remember it.
This isn't typical suicide, so to speak. Does it make sense, to want to die because you're tired of having reasons to live?
It's terrible, it's wonderful, it's a mess. Every time I have a good day, I don't want to keep living and experiencing days like that-- I just want to die. When I have a bad day, it's the same feeling, for different reasons. I want to die for the sake of dying. I even cut myself sometimes-- yes, me, not Razor or Knife-- because it's interesting, because scars fascinate me. I'm not even sad or angry on my worst days. How does one overcome that?
Again, maybe it's the dissociation. Maybe it's the fact that I've barely lived a full year of life, and yet people claim I'm 23. Maybe it's the fact that I literally cannot tell what is real and what isn't-- what's a memory, what's a dream-- what's me and what's someone else. I don't know.
All the soul-searching and spiritual work I do seems to go in circles. I'm not sure where I'm going wrong. I solve the same problems over and over again, because I can't remember solving them the first time. Or maybe I forget I even have that problem, and I'm good for a few months. Or maybe I forget who I am and can't do anything.
Point is, it's sad that I've reached a point in my spiritual progress where everything feels either "not right" or "mistranslated." I can't tell if that means I need to look elsewhere, or if it means I've become too corrupted to move anywhere but backwards. How does one know? How many priests and teachers and guides and gurus do I need to speak to before I can make sense of this? "Look inside yourself first," they say. But there's nothing there. I really am nothing, at the end of the day.

And yet, to them, I'm something. And that is the ONLY thing that scares me enough to stay alive.
I don't know what they are, I don't know who they are. All I know is that they love me, and some of them insist that they cannot live without me... literally.
I've seen it happen. I watched Central crumble when the downstairs voices locked me out. I thought they were all dead. And all because I had been removed from the picture! How stupid is that? And then there are the outspacers, God I don't understand, are they tied to me or not? If I die, will they fade away? Will anyone be able to find them again, to love them and keep them alive? And why do I even care about that, when I spend every damned minute of my time trying to convince myself that none of this is real, none of this is real, none of this is real, they're all hallucinations, it's all fake, you're dreaming, stop being an idiot.

But then I feel or hear or see something and then I don't know what reality is anymore.


I need help.
There, I said it.
I really, really need help.
All my life I've been told to be independent, both by my family and my religion. "Asking for help is only burdening others," I was taught. Throwing your silly concerns at someone else-- God forbid, even pretending your concerns are real-- is sinful, selfish, rude. Deal with your own garbage. Better yet, forget about it all and grow up.

And I've been trying to. I've been trying so hard to let go of it all and grow up.
But it feels wrong to do that.
Does that make me inherently wrong, too?
I don't know.


All I really know is that it breaks my heart to see these strange imaginary things cry over me.
And sometimes at night, I can see them beside me, quietly promising that they love me too.

But acknowledging their existence means acknowledging that I suffered in the past.
I can't do that. I'm not allowed to treat that as real. I deleted that timeline, remember?
I erased everything. I have no memories of whatever it was. It's gone, for good.
Except it's not.
Except I haven't recovered at all. I keep getting worse, showing more symptoms.
The more strongly I deny any ounce of pain, the more I bleed, in spite of it all.


I want to die, even when I'm happy, and I don't really feel anything anymore.


I need help.
I really, really need help.


Sorry about all this.

 

 

 

 

I've ruined you, haven't I.

You insisted I didn't, but I saw you crack, just for a second. That look of doubt, the awful wondering.
You've been a mess lately, haven't you. Ever since I...

Maybe she ruined me, or at least part of me.
Why can't I fix it?
I miss the days when you were angry with me, but now...

Last night we visited everyone upstairs and I was too torn apart to talk. I think it was about 2AM.
Spine was in shambles. She insisted I didn't care about anyone but myself. She began attacking me, fiercely, angrily. At some point Laurie knocked her back and tar came pouring out of her bones. We fought it for a while, then Leon showed up and stopped it. Spine was left in a heap in the corner, still sick, still scared. Leon had to take her to a cathedral to recuperate. I was scraped out.
Lynne was on the phone with Leon when we walked in, trying to figure out what was going on. Laurie asked her if she'd always had that room, Lynne said it was relatively new, but then added "but you haven't really been around." I thought that was weird, where is Laurie when she's not with me then?
She could tell I had a huge orange block, and started pulling huge clots of black ink from my stomach. I was so terrified of her being anywhere near that energy level that I was shaking, trying not to cry, burying my emotions deeper by the second. Lynne told me not to, that I was only burying myself alive with that darkness. She reiterated that I had a serious problem here. I think she had to stop because I was shutting down.
Lynne also pointed out my flawed black and white thinking. She asked me if she was 'good' or 'evil,' and how would I know? For a minute I was legitimately unsure, she saw this and wasn't happy with it. She said I needed to stop being so absolute, it was destroying me. She asked Laurie why she had slacked off in the discipline department when it came to keeping me on track. When Laurie sputtered that she couldn't quite hurt me like that anymore, and rhetorically asked Lynne if she could, she actually considered it, and it frightened me. There was a strange anger in her for a moment, but she suddenly caught it, realized some of the tar had stuck to her. Laurie tried to cut it out but Lynne told her to stop: "I can't respawn like he does." I don't know why that felt so ominous.
...That's when I realized I had broken you. Right then, when Lynne asked why you weren't so harsh with me anymore, and your expression betrayed a five-year change that I had somehow been ignorant of. How could I...
Lynne said I hadn't, that you were full of shadows back then. Was that better? Was it worse? I couldn't tell. I don't think you could either.
Josephina was better. He said Laurie had "lied to him" about the hacks, that she was downplaying them in explaining them, I forget why, but the reason made sense. Jo didn't get angry at me, even when Laurie asked him if he could. Maybe the darkness is stuck on Lynne's level.
He reached out and tapped my yellow energy-point, in my abdomen. It felt like ceramic, he said it was practically frozen. I asked how everyone was reaching into my energy field so easily, and he said that being the system anchor I act as a sort of living gauge as to the systems health. He then said that in certain conditions my energy was very easily manipulated, which is why it was dangerous for me to be up late. He broke the yellow block and accidentally overloaded it temporarily, he crystallized an orb of it "for later" with a smile. For a moment my self-respect came back, it was nice.
The few minutes after that weren't. Instead of going to see Nat, Laurie pushed me into a room of unformed white headspace and took out her axe. There was a sick second of fear mixed with excitement on my part before the blade slammed into me like it used to. She was angry. I forget what she was shouting at me, but it was true, albeit brutal. She cut me to ribbons really, but not too long after she started, we both realize I wasn't "respawning." I was finding myself incapable of pulling my pieces back together. Laurie paused, looking completely distraught, and forced me to solidify again. I don't think either of us said anything for a minute after that. We just realized what a terrible mess we were in. We left quietly.
Nathaniel expected us to show up. I vaguely commented that he didn't look "like he used to," he reminded me that he had died several times and then completely switched his color. He said he'd been feeling a lot of imbalances lately, but there wasn't a total green block. There was just a weird 'edge' around it, allowing me to give forgiveness and compassion, but keeping it from really reflecting back in, and the whole color was suffering. I couldn't figure out why it was so hard to love myself all of a sudden, unless I was in third person. I think they mentioned Celebi momentarily. I remembered how I messed that up. Nathaniel told me to come back any time I wanted to, and that he really did care about my well-being.
Waldorf hugged you when you walked in, took her a second to realize I was a mess, she was worried. We asked her how she was still talking with this system upset, she said it was because I had gotten the guts to talk to several people about overcoming my old hurts lately, that assertion was keeping her going. She said I needed to stay honest with myself about that. I was having problems discerning the truth though. Somewhere around here my boss actually showed up, completely unexpected... said he'd talk to us later, Wally saluted him, it was adorable. I was exhausted at this point so we had to move quickly.
We couldn't warp over to Leon's level, figured he was still at a cathedral. Laurie contacted him and he warped down to us, then over to the cathedral together. Spine was still there, didn't look much better. I kept apologizing. We brought her back to her slot and then went to talk to Leon. He said his level was having weird problems, it was dark and shouldn't be. He was having trouble discerning things, we figured it was because the lower levels were somewhat out of whack. Laurie asked him about risks, couldn't we use that to our advantage here, and help me take good risks instead of throwing myself into losing bets? He said he didn't want to treat that sort of behavior lightly, Laurie said that's not what she meant, maybe we could go back to ultimatums and retribution. Neither of them sounded sold on the idea though. I was too hollowed out to care either way.
After this we went to talk to my boss, but I was fading so fast I don't remember that...


I made the stupid mistake of re-reading some old Skype conversations this morning.
Last year, at this time, I was something bright and beautiful and inspirational to them. We dreamed of a future together, all of us, bringing light to the world around us.
She used to say she loved me, that she wanted to spend forever with me.
"You've been feeling the truth... But these demons will do everything they can to try and stop you from seeing it... sometimes you won't be able to see it. And you can't face them alone. But that's why God gave you me."
What happened?
Do I... do I really break my relationships so easily? Am I really that bad with commitment? Am I really that selfish? Why do all my ties to other people end up snapping by my own hands? And why, in some sick way, am I glad that it's over? Why do I need communication and yet I'm terrified of people? I drove you away, I underestimated my own damage, you thought I was a monster. And then one day you realized, maybe you didn't ever really love me at all. The only reason that hurts is because I wonder, how badly did I manipulate you? Am I really that bad of a person?
Why the hell do I care? It's over. It's over, and I need to let go for good.

But, Laurie... God help me, that just breaks my heart, how did I...?


I don't want to go to class today, it's so draining, I am so tired. This is just like 2009. I used to cut class and go hide in the corners of coffeeshops, numb, unable to bear looking at another naked woman for another two hours, unable to bear the screaming in my head from pink and violet the entire day. It would be just me, Genesis, and a green tea latte, talking about our problems over a sketchbook until the sky outside turned dark and I was forced to drive home... God I miss that so much, I swear I could cry just thinking about it. We would wander around campus for hours, sleeping in the rotunda underneath that beautiful painted dome, Abbey humming on my lap, sunlight streaming in behind me. There was the night I stayed in the art room until 11PM, hands covered in pastels, surrounded by empty easels. All those days we spent sitting in the psychology lounge, listening to other peoples conversations, reflecting on that hope-filled quote emblazoned above our heads... the covert visits to the music building, sitting next to the elevator and listening to pianos through closed doors, wandering downstairs and laughing in empty hallways... quiet foggy evenings in the science study room, my favorite place on campus, that tiny cozy spot hidden underneath the stairwell... all of it with you, you golden-blessed creature, what the hell did I do to you? Where are you now? I don't see you much anymore, and I know it's because I kept pushing you away.

I lost my innocence.
I had it stolen from me, and I told myself that it was supposed to happen, so stop fighting back.
After so many years I forgot how to feel and I kept wandering back into the abyss simply because I was used to being dragged there.
Now I'm a wreck, now I can't tell what's up or down, now I can't see straight. Everyone knows I have a problem. But only I can fix it, they say.
I don't think I can fix it without you... but I've ruined you, haven't I.
You used to be this brilliant knight, this indomitable violet rage, my dark and jagged guardian angel. You were perfect.
Then I was enough of a bastard to start breaking your walls. Now look at you.
Why is that such a bad thing, the fact that you don't have the heart to treat me so harshly anymore? Why do I miss the pain? Is that why I'm forcing myself deeper and deeper into disaster? Am I secretly hoping that one day you'll snap, that one day I'll snap, and my bleeding arms will once more hold purpose?
But I don't want to go back to that, ever. I want to be happy, and free of this pain.
I want to be able to sleep at night without being attacked, and no longer caring.
I want to be able to leave the house without seeing danger wherever I turn, and no longer caring.
I hate how the only time I feel fear, the kind that wants to keep me safe, I smother it. Someone gets too close, someone makes a sound, someone looks a certain way, and that sick rush of all-too-familiar panic rises up immediately. Every nerve in me screams to get away, but instead of running, what do I do? I close my eyes and stand there, shaking, telling myself to stop being an idiot and let them do what they want. They have the right idea, not you.
I never ran away before, after all. I couldn't.

I'm not even suicidal anymore. I'm just empty. I just want to die.
There's a light in here somewhere, that I know, but it's having a hard time shining through years and years of accumulated pain.
Why the hell can't I just make it disappear? Isn't that how it's supposed to work? "Only a fool trips on what is behind him." I should be able to just let go of it and keep walking, keep smiling, act like it never happened, it's all fake anyway, it doesn't matter.
But after so many years of trying, it's still happening. It's actually getting worse. What am I doing wrong?

I wish I could go back to sleep, but beds aren't safe anymore either.
God help me I am so tired.



Laurie, I'm sorry.
That sounds insultingly paltry but words don't work to properly communicate the total and overwhelming contrition I feel about this.
Maybe it's not a bad thing, but I'm not good at judging that, as you know. I've had too many things twisted into horrible shapes to recognize them in their natural state anymore.
Maybe it's a good thing that I've worn off your sharpest edges, who knows. I know it's a good thing that you can smile now, and care about everyone else just as much as you cared about me.
But I can't see anything being a good thing when I'm involved. Not me, not this defiled and filthy remnant of a boy here. I'm in tatters, and now you're trying to fix me, before you would just stand there and berate me for getting myself into that situation, then walk away; why do I miss that so much?

It seems that every time I dare to love someone, I ruin them. I've broken all of you in some way, every last one of you. You're all battered and bruised now, because I dared to get close to you, what an absolute demon I am. If I had kept my burning hands to myself none of you would be covered in scars.
Fire isn't something you can mix. You know that. We talked about this. It's why she can't be with me, it's why he can't be with me, it's why nothing stays together. It all falls to ashes. I burn it all away.
But you, God knows you burn just as much as I do, and the thought of hurting you is the most terrifying thing in the world.
I can't get close to you. It would be abominable, an unforgivable sin.
You know this. You warn me, whenever I slip into delusional oblivion and try. You warn me every single time and I still try to force myself by.
You were my angel, for the love of God, you were everything to me even when I'd turn my back on him after so many years. You were the only one who hadn't been marred by my existence.
And then I went and burned it all to the ground.
I am such a heartless idiot.

I've ruined you, haven't I.

 

 

 

 

...
I need to get back into my self-inspecting norm. I've been entirely off-kilter for too long, and it's had lethal results.
Yes, I'm dying to talk to Laurie again, but honestly, I have to be up around 5AM tomorrow and when she and I get typing, it lasts for hours. I have 2, tops, to spare tonight.

First let's give you kids a brief update. October 7th blessed me with at least four new 'kids,' and October 9th blessed me with this amazingly gorgeous picture of my muse. It made my month. The 10th through the 13th were basically spent working on various projects, the 14th was spend running errands with my mum, and today is the 15th (which I spent cleaning far too many things). So yeah. That's my life.
However, during the past work-saturated week, I had two vicious hacks that left me sobbing uncontrollably and unable to sleep. I haven't played Nier in nearly two weeks so that didn't help towards coping, but that personal distress is nothing compared to the revelation said hacks were accompanied by.

I don't remember when the first hack happened, or what happened (as usual), but it took a heavy toll on me all the same. See, lately I've been doing decently well with fighting Julie, having fought off several near-hacks, but... Laurie's been acting rather strange. Not only has she been chronically distraught emotionally, but she's also been reacting much more violently than usual to even the slightest threat of a hack, which is saying something. So when I realized I had been hacked, my own self-fear was shoved aside in favor of fear for her instead.
The moment I turned around and saw her there, staring at me with a look of disgusted resignation... she slit her throat.

No, she didn't die... but only because I begged her to stay with me.
She lost a lot of blood. She couldn't talk or walk straight for about an hour afterwards. I was terrified out of my mind, and hated myself more than ever.
She told me that if I let myself be hacked again, she wouldn't hesitate to finish the job next time.

...You notice I said I was hacked twice.

The second time happened so abruptly and so harshly that when it hit me what had happened, I was overwhelmed with sheer unadulterated panic. It was 1AM. I literally ran to Laurie, forgetting the horrible state I was in, just in time to see her plunge a large dagger into her stomach. I grabbed her hands and tried to keep her from slicing upwards, but she fought me, saying she was sick of us both suffering this day after day, and she wasn't going to take it anymore. If I wouldn't listen to her alive then maybe her death would mean something. I was literally sobbing by now, and I don't remember what I said to her, but it must have helped because she removed the dagger from her ribs and threw it to the floor. I remember trying to heal her but she pushed me away, spitting a retort that I needed to be more concerned about the damage I was doing to myself. I told her that I still cared about her as well, but she then shouted back, 'if you love me so much, then why do you keep hurting me? Why do you keep hurting all of us?'
Then she told me why she's been so unstable for the past 4 months.

I've been killing my children.

Apparently, every time I let myself be hacked, one of my potential mind-children dies. To think I was wondering why I couldn't find them anymore-- I was killing them!!
Needless to say I was floored. I couldn't think, I was shaking. I asked her how she knew... how long had she known.
She said that she first found it out back in July, which is why she was psyched to find Josephina had become personified onto our side, giving her more help towards saving me. That's also why they have both been working tirelessly, trying every option available to save me from Julie since then, no matter how badly they were hurt themselves.
I've been failing anyway, and my children have been dying.
She didn't tell me back in July because she hoped she wouldn't have to tell me. She and Jo hoped that they could get me stable enough to fight Julie off without the problems I'm having now, and if that had been fixed then there would be no more worries about dead children. However... that didn't happen. I'm still being hacked, and the stress of seeing me suffer through that, the knowledge that she and Jo were apparently 'failing' in their constant attempts to help me, and the bloody awareness of all those who had died by my unknowing hand, had driven Laurie to attempt suicide.
I saw how close she got. I felt her blood on my hands. I couldn't take it.
And now... now I understand what has been happening to me for so long... why I haven't been able to draw or write or do anything creative for years. I finally understand, and I feel like dying because of it.
I'm the only man in this entire damn world who can take care of those individuals, and I've been murdering them.

Dear God...

I haven't spoken to Laurie since then. I've tried. We're both suffering so much, but it needs to happen.
If we can't talk tomorrow we'll talk Sunday. If we can't talk Sunday we'll talk Monday.
Lynne is dying, Natalie is dead, Leon keeps trying to come back, Missy and Bridget are lurking in the shadows, Josephina is destabilizing, and Laurie wants to kill herself.
I haven't seen Chaos in days. Genesis doesn't know how to deal with this anymore.
Julie is stronger than ever.


To think that I have the blood of my own children staining my hands.
How am I going to live with this?


How am I going to live?

 

 

 

Current Mood: Words can't even say.




I'll admit, I couldn't help but cry when General Grievous died.
I'll admit, I couldn't help but cry when Davy Jones died.
I'll admit, I couldn't help but cry when Nicholas Wolfwood died.

But I was shocked when I read the end of Watchmen...

 

...I never expected to cry so damn hard.


I don't know why he has so many fans.
Maybe it's the mask.
Maybe it's his absurd quirks.
Maybe it's his unusual attitude.
Maybe it's his terrible past.
Maybe it's his trenchcoat and fedora.
Maybe it's all of that. I can't say.

All I know is that for me, it's all those reasons and heaven knows how many more. You know me.

I really admire that guy.
Rorschach. Walter Joseph Kovacs.
He's quite the unique headcase. I really do admire him.

But you know me.
Getting all attached to these guys, asexual neutrois or not.

...


Bloodstained snow.


Somehow I knew it was coming.
Didn't make any difference, though.

I was literally sobbing.
I didn't expect that at all.
I expected, tears, sure... but I didn't expect to just shatter like that. I didn't expect it to hurt so damn much.
But it did.

You know, in my book, the guy died a sort of martyr. No I'm not kidding.
Watchmen was painful for me... so much empathy, so much understanding and alternate motives and motivations. So much.
And yet, everything was so grey...
...You never know what was really the right thing to do.

You never knew if the end result would damn the world or save the world.

That's what made it so damn frightening, so damn heartbreaking. You never knew.


Not even in the face of Armageddon.

Never compromise.


Was that the right thing?
I don't know. I'll never know. We'll never know.
...
In a sad, desperate way, I hope to God it was. I really do.

But I don't know.



Sugar cubes... that always made me laugh. That and the refrigerator ambush. Brilliant.
Oh, and how he would always just sneak into Nite Owl's house...

He was a headcase, sure. His mind snapped for a damn good reason, and it was terribly obvious.
To him, the world was the color of his mask. I don't know if that was good or not. Maybe it was.
But despite all the things he did, even as a masked vigilante, I still think of him as a really good guy.
He's totally indescribable, though. Like an inkblot. The only way to know him even a little is to read the book, to stare right at the pictures on your own... and if you're anything like me, then save the last chapter for a night where you're not going anywhere. You'll need the recovery time. For multiple reasons.
Oh, New York, you broke my heart...


Laurel's mother, on the third-to-last page...

The entire conspiracy, once you understand it...

Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, their last conversation in Antarctica...

The last panel...

...The bloody snow.



I had to close the damn book and just cry for a while. Couldn't get that image out of my head. Couldn't get any of the images out. It hurt.

 

I can't help but laugh a little, though... red hair and freckles. Dear Lord, that still got me long after I was already hooked, haha.

Funny little factoid, actually.
You all know I 'met' Rorschach long before I got the chance to read Watchmen, right? One of my research binges... old Saturday morning cartoons, for a religion paper (seriously). Stumbled across good old Freakazoid, brought up his Wikipedia article by chance.
Somewhere during that time I stumbled across Rorschach's page as well.
I've seen him before, I'd heard about him countless times, but only as glimpses or fleeting mentions. I never knew who this guy was.
I read a little bit... non-spoiler stuff, y'know.
That was when I knew I had to read this guy's debut sometime.
Fast-forward to last week... Entertainment comes in the mail. Certain face on the cover.
I practically had a heart attack, haha. Within the next few days I drove out to Borders, finally bought Watchmen (last copy in the store!), and commenced the unforgettable process of reading the darn thing.
Just finished it an hour ago.
Even so... when I buy a book, I have a horrible habit of reading the beginning in the store, then once I buy it and bring it home, flipping to a random page and panel deeper into the book before continuing it for sure.
I did that with Watchmen right after I finished the first chapter.
Ended up staring at the page where Rorschach gets unmasked.
Flipped to chapter 2, and had the blissful honor of knowing who he was for the entire book beforehand.
That still makes me smile every time.


Life goes on, honey.

Life goes on.



For me it does.

People laugh, say that they're only comic-book characters. Just made-up personalities that can easily be changed and rewritten; just faces upon a page, just ink upon paper. Fragments.
To some people they are.
But...
If you've read Watchmen, and if you ever do read it, then you'll understand what I mean.

Sometimes, the world inside the pages, the faces inside the pages, they become more than that.

I heard someone say, a long time ago... that, if you love something enough, that if you believe in something enough, that if you really value and treasure this one thing, then it becomes real... even if no one else thinks it possible.
I believe that.

Watchmen is only the latest world to enter my universe... but it's one of the biggest.
Any of you who've read it... you were part of that world, somehow, as your eyes travelled through those pages. You know you were.
When that book ended, you couldn't believe it, could you? Did you immediately start flipping back through the pages, practically re-reading the entire thing, seeing it all in a different light, with a new understanding? Did you just sit there after the back cover closed on those 400 pages of a masterpiece, wondering about the alternatives? Was that really the best choice?
There's no way we can know.
And I think we've all thought about that.
We closed the book, looked up in shock, and we were forever changed by what we had now learned... by the world within the pages.
It had become completely, utterly real to us. To all of us.


As for me, I cried.
It was real for me too. It's always so real for me.

That didn't change anything, though.
The conspiracy still followed through to the end.


And Rorschach still died.




"Where are you going?"

"Back to Owlship. Back to America. Evil must be punished. People must be told."

"Rorschach... You know I can't let you do that."

"Huhhh. Of course. Must protect Veidt's new utopia. One more body amongst foundations makes little difference."



"Well? What are you waiting for? Do it!"

"Rorschach..."

"DO IT!"




And the snow turned red.