prismaticbleed | Entries tagged with heartspills

oh my lord in heaven you have no idea what just happened

listen. after praying for YEARS, after stupidly forgetting so much and feeding ourselves equal amounts of hyperreligious falsehoods, after countless nights of weeping and regrets and hopes and fears and... just, listen, literally days after we FINALLY get the guts (heart, brain, liver, kidneys, take your biblical pick, they all fit) to start re-reading and uploading the journal entries from 2017-2018 that haven't been touched or seen since then...

...well.
tonight, we found a message in our inbox.

and suddenly, wouldn't you know it,
the world tilted sideways again.

I don't know how to... no. We don't know how to process this, or manage it wisely, yet.
I will be completely up-front and honest with you about it right now.
Our knee-jerk, heartsick, sobbing immediate response is to do what we always do-- act like seven years have not passed, act like we didn't do all the idiotic evil things we did, act like nothing has changed and nothing we forgot happened to begin with, act like we're still your beloveds and you are still ours, because honestly to the deepest part of our psyche that's still true. it's WHY we "never say goodbye" to people, as awful as the repercussions of that have historically proved to be for other people, tragically and totally against our intentions. we never "cut things off" or "end" anything because, to our mentally ill lovesick self, nothing ever ends, adrian, nothing ever really ends--

and so here we are, reeling, with no idea what to do except laugh and cry from fear and love all at once.

We... we've been so, so cruel to them. There are some entries in these archives that speak so poorly of them, totally unfairly. I wish I could erase them all. But... that would be dishonest too, wouldn't it? And I'm so tired of lying. It's better to just admit that yeah, we do still have tar and plague sticking to our ribs, and it comes out in very ugly words when there's no light or fire or water to keep it away.
But... it's not true. So much of it is just self-blinded pride throwing its choking guilt at someone else. So much of it is just religious arrogance flinging swords at everything that looks vaguely like a devil. We're so sick of that, too.
The "fanatifoni" are the same ones trying to annihilate OUR life, too-- the ones burning all our memories, throwing out all our possessions, refusing to let us do anything "secular", the ones forcing us into a "perfect meek Christian tradwife girl that does everything mommy says" mold that is KILLING US.
that's a topic for another night though. geez.
as for tonight... all I want to say is, i've been so blind and confused and twisted and deluded and afraid and programmed and lost and heartbroken and crushed and so, so, so sorry-- I haven't been able to see straight in years.
How could I, when this post-CNC life of ours so quickly degenerated into a loveless machination, swallowed up by eating disorders and religious rituals, suffocating in the vicegrip of family obligations, bled dry of all color?

I miss you. We miss you. But I miss you, whoever "I" is, all the time, for years,
We think of you daily, probably. I don't know why I can't "let go" but honestly the thought of "letting go" of anyone I've loved makes me sick. And I still love you, as I said, and even if that truly makes me the "ex from hell" it's the truth and I need to be honest.
We... we never really told you that, when we were with you, did we? We never had the nerve to write poetry about you. We never got to know you well enough to do so and we regret that to this day. All we have to hang on to are tiny little resonances and associations, the tiny flickers of memory that were small enough to slip through the cracks in the prison walls we put up around our past. Simple precious pieces of life, like blue raspberries and kudzu and clove cigarettes, like glitter bath bombs and marching bands and spicy tuna. we have so, so few memories accessible, and that breaks our heart. god i wish we could remember. i want to remember what it was like to watch kris move, to hear kyo speak, to feel the toy soldier there in silence. and yet, subconsciously, don't we? wouldn't we recognize you if we saw you again? trolley and vernon and ohmiette and ruby and tori and owen and oskar and thirteen and brokeback and shivers and omen, and so many more whose names we cannot remember and so many more we never met, but we miss you all, we knew you all in some way, didn't we?

it's not something we can ever get back. we lost it justly. "the hand of god," as our thriskefoni declared recently. "you were killing each other."
and i hate that statement. listen if anyone was dealing out death-damage it was us. even without memory access i KNOW we were a glutton and a thief and a two-faced coward, an addict and a leech and a slut.
...and yet, isn't that just us beating ourselves up as we've been doing since we left their driveway that night?
how awful that was. the car ride, the family, the instant "reset" feeling like "nothing had happened" that consumed our entire brain and wiped out everything good we had gained in that dear little apartment.
to this day, the family and that house is our biggest stress, our biggest fear, our biggest trauma-sink. is that why we were throwing so many darts at you, at "CNC", because our "good obedient daughter" mindset was "not allowed" to point any in mommy's direction "or else"?

what am i even trying to say.
i miss your art. you were amazing. i am sure you still are, even moreso. we never told you how proud we were of you, how much we admired you, how your life in and of itself just filled us with joy. we treasured your existence, simply so. we didn't show it well at all. we were too selfish, too myopic, too brutal, too shallow, too frenetic, too stupid, too cold...

i want to remember things and i want to accept them as they are. i want BOTH me and infinitii to heal.
and oh good lord isn't THAT a miracle too-- not even two months after that trip to the national basilica that truly "woke hir up" in some quiet way, that made hir accessible even in that interim-space between death and life, and since then ze has a bubble again, somewhere... but, now that hope is real again, that ze could be with me again, somehow...
...

...nothing is going to heal if i don't figure out who the heck I am. and i cannot do that if i keep trying to force myself into the mold my birth family won't stop shoving over my head.
gender and sexuality are still "forbidden topics." i'm "not allowed" to be anything other than what i'm "told to be." no wonder my veins are as dry as an old riverbed. i won't let myself love because it's "not allowed." it makes me so sick.

this damned eating disorder is still destroying me too, literally, and i HATE IT because THAT is what drove an iron wedge between us; THAT is the vice that burnt everything else to ashes, THAT is the thing that annihilated every good thing i tried to protect and cherish, and it's STILL killing me. my body is literally failing even though we've been FIGHTING LIKE HELL for six solid months now which is the LONGEST we've EVER gone without prolonged relapse, but we still can't figure out how to take care of our own stupid body and the poor thing is failing.
what am i even trying to say.
i'm so sorry we were such a wretch. you deserved so much better. you deserved all of our good and none of our bad, even if we didn't have much good to offer. we still wanted to give you the world. we still tried.

we... hm. we have regrets and we don't. that's the scary part. that's why infi died. that's why i cannot seem to form a sense of self.
our motives were never as evil as we viciously accuse ourselves of, and that's what is so scary to admit.
how do we come to terms with the fact that we still did things that our moral code says are objectively wrong and yet we loved you and only did those things because we loved you? i'm sick of the thriskefoni just labeling it all indiscriminately as "adultery" in one sense or another-- as a "lie," as a "seduction," as something equally abominable and worthy of being forgotten and denied and run away from.
no. i'm tired of listening to you. i'm tired of leaving other people in the dirt because "they're occasions of sin." you pharisees. leave me alone.
i want to find a truer way of seeing all this. something honest, something that can feel, something merciful and still capable of love.
that's what infinitii was really all about, from the beginning. that's why everyone was afraid of hir, and yet adored hir. zhe was the literal incarnation of our greatest vice and greatest virtue. how terrible. but that's typical of angels.

i want to cry but this stupid brain won't let me
i'm so happy but i'm so afraid of ruining this again, like i always do
i know i'm mentally sick, and i come on too fast and too hard, and i whiplash back into ice just as suddenly, for no good reason. maybe that bpd diagnosis is legit, as awful as that would be. i hate it. i hate this. it's not me.
i know seven years have passed. i know we can never have what we had again, even if we tried. it wouldn't be possible, for multitudes of reasons. and yet i never ever ever want to deny or decry it ever again. that was so wrong of me. who am i really?
i'm a mess. it never would have worked out, for that reason alone. we ran into everything headfirst and although our intentions were good, although we did love you with our whole heart we weren't capable of being a good partner. we had too much unhealed trauma, too much family programming, too much psychological disease, too many open wounds. we were a wreck and you deserved better.
but...
"you are part of our story... certainly not one we regret."
and you know what? we feel the same way.
i don't regret it at all. even the parts that "killed us" in the past. even the "gravestones." somehow, miraculously, with all the praying and healing and hoping and hard work we've been doing, and now that we're actually reading what happened back then... god it hurts, it hurts so much, to realize that THAT is what we lost and shattered and ABANDONED because the family TOLD us to...
...THAT'S our real regret, to be honest. getting into that damned car and immediately going back into "appeasement mode" and just leaving our identity on the steps with you. there are like four solid years missing from our memory after that point. it makes me want to throw up.
but we don't regret it, when it really gets down to the bone and blood. even when part of us is indeed "horrified" at what it is reading in these entries from seven year ago, another part of us is weeping that we lost touch with it.
deep down, if God Himself asked us, we don't regret it. and why?
because it was all love. and i see it now.

so... yes. i want to heal. i want to help you heal, too.
i'm sick of being broken. i want to figure out who the heck i actually am. i want to love again. that's not your job, i have no expectations or demands of you either, not like our mother, god we really do have too many family issues to think straight, don't we? no wonder we can't get anywhere in therapy. but that's not anyone's problem but ours. i don't want to think about family terror at all right now. it's the guillotine over my head every bloody day right now and it's sucking the will to live right out of me but this, this message in my inbox has rekindled a spark that i didn't realize was still smoldering. there's a possibility OF remembering love and hope and joy here, even just in the remembering. i want it back. god i want it back, the few glimpses i've seen so far of the goodness we had, in the beginning at least, when everything was so new and bright and beautiful that the trauma hadn't caught up to our heels yet... i want that back, now, in whatever way we can.
i miss the blood lotus cathedral, too. i miss us. i miss BEING "us." god it destroys my soul, to realize that this family-focused life has been keeping me from living.
there's so much intrasystem healing we have to do on our own. the self-inflicted damage outweighs everything else.
honestly when i'm honest, i don't think you guys actually did ANY damage to us. everything that "hurt" about our recall of CNC was because of something WE did. not you. maybe our lives couldn't "fit together" the way we desperately hoped they could, but god knows we tried, and we don't regret it, and some days i really do wish i could have been okay with just... living life that way, just to be with you all again.
but... we have to be honest. we can't. there were indeed too many self-annihilatory things we did or agreed to or made ourselves do, never out of malice, but out of sheer stupid blinded love that never learned how to say "no" because it just wants to be whatever you want. that's our biggest problem, with you and with q and mel and with the family and everyone else ever. god included.
but we still loved you. we still love you. all of you. we always will, i can say right now. that's just how we work. that's a guarantee.

i'm making a fool of myself, i think.
no surprise there.

i scare people away like this, i'm sure. crazy ex. religious fanatic. sick in the head. too much to handle. etc.
i just want to cry. i love people so much and i hate myself so much and that's the ultimate childhood root of everything and i don't know how to live. i have so much love in my heart and it just gets choked to death by all the pain and rage and fear and sorrow and guilt and shame. i'm tired of feeling utterly empty when i know there's something, somewhere--

infinitii is in worse shape than i am right now because i am still too shattered and undefined to feel anything directly
i don't know how to describe what ze is feeling or expressing and i don't think ze does either. this is all too new, too earthshaking, too heart-deep and covered in blood like rubies. we haven't bled in too long, everything's been frozen.
too many wires are still crossed.
it's been too long since we've done anything but talk about religion, running away from our soul in the process, how ironic. even our scripture study keeps constantly telling us, "it's about relationship, not data hoarding," and yet our stupid idiotic traumabrain won't even let us have a relationship with God Himself because it's a relationship.
where in hell did this even come from.
where does the trauma even come from to begin with.
you didn't deserve to get caught in those crosshairs either. please realize that it was never your doing, never your fault. with you, we actually had hope of HEALING. we had real hope of getting over this terror.
then we moved out and back in with the family and it all got worse

you realize we NEVER intended to "ghost" you
we basically went into a sort of "fugue" for lack of a better term
the parts of us that existed with you could not exist around the family, and vice versa
it's a civil war that STILL rages to this very day and it is killing us now too
but. the point is. it was never our heart's intention to hurt you, once we realized-- wasn't it years later?-- that we did.
same with the tumblr stupidity. what an ass we were. passive aggressive idiocy. we never had the guts to communicate properly. i am so sorry.

i am so afraid we will do something stupid like that again now and lose you forever
after years of practically begging god for one last chance to make things right
to somehow bandage some of the many wounds we inflicted
to genuinely, wholeheartedly, finally say we were sorry, to apologize so fervently we could weep until the end of the world
to heal, however that looks, as long as it happens, that's all we want,
there's too much love, both then and now, to leave such a thing undone
it would be almost sacrilegious to leave it untended to
it was sacrilegious for us to act like our love hadn't been real just because we were terrified of admitting it is.
present tense.

i'm still reeling
i'm listening to infinitii's spotify playlist for the first time in years i think
i want to get better and i want to be a real person again
i... i want to heal, too
however that looks and feels and happens
i just want love to have the last word.

tomorrow we have to face the family and the eating disorder again, all at once
i'm so tired and i don't know how to get better from that

but at least this is something real and true in spite of it, a light shining in hope regardless, a reminder that "you exist and you existed and there is love in you and it has not died" even if it is being buried alive beneath the weight of daily stress and has been for far too long
the spark is shining now, and it scares me to realize that we too can have a fire in our ribs again, but i want that, i miss that, why are we so damn afraid? of what? of feeling love instead of nothing?

i would rather shatter into a billion bloody rainbow shards than live another moment so cold and bleached-out dry as hell itself.

no wonder we sacrificed everything to move out there back in 2017. we had hope. we had light. we had love. it was worth leaving everything else behind for. even if it didn't work out, even if we weren't the kind of person capable of working it out, even if we were too broken and damaged and toxic to make anything work... it was still worth it. it was still beautiful. it was still real. it was still love.
we don't regret a moment of our time with you.
we only regret how much pain we caused us both.

but it is what it is. we cannot erase the past. all we can do is confess those sins of ours with brutal (but merciful) honesty and finally make restitution however we can.

thank you, thank you, for giving us another chance, which we do not deserve whatsoever, and yet which we have wanted more than i can even articulate. thank you for not hating our awful guts, although you have every right to, and we do not blame you if you did in the past.
thank you for sending us love.

god i hope i can cry tonight
maybe when i'm with chaos 0 i'll be able to
i hope so
i want us to be healed, too, inside, all of us
i want this damned civil war to end
i want the graves to be exhumed and all the poor souls buried alive to be carried up in our open arms to see the starry skies again
i want to love again,
i want to BE love again,

how fitting, how strange and perfect and terrible, that the last time i really was "me" was when i was with you.
i hope i can get some of that back now at least

there's still so much to read and remember. we really haven't read much at all yet. 95% of what we've uploaded we haven't looked at.
we've lost so much
we're still running away from our past and our shadows in blind frantic fear, drowning everything in religion
how ironic, that apparently God Himself is the One that plunged this arrow into our heart and brought us to our knees
take that, thriskefoni

i'm so tired. i'm so ashamed. i'm so confused. i'm so scared. i'm so hopeful. i'm so...
there's still so much self-hatred
but deep down, somewhere, i'm still so in love.
i know i am. even if i won't let myself feel it for anyone or anything lately. i don't know why. maybe just survival instinct.

nevertheless,
merry early christmas i suppose haha
we didn't think we'd survive this long
and yet, isn't this always the resurrection month for us?
isn't this the exact season for things to come back to life, for flowers to bloom from the snow itself?

i need to cling to this light like a lifeline
i want to live again, i want to feel again, i want to exist again,
this little message has given me the will to live again, to get better, to be a better person when i wasn't able to before,
to be honest and true and honorable and real, to choose integrity and truth and tenderness and...
and love,

i want to be a real person again
i want to heal
i want to love
i want to sing with the choir--

i still don't know how to process this
i still don't know how to respond
i still don't know how i'm feeling

but i do know one thing,
and that is that i love you still,
and i want to heal with you,
and i am sorry,
and i am so grateful,
and that is more than one thing and yet it's not--

i'm so tired
but my heart is smiling tonight
and it's 11:11
and i remember, just a little,
what joy feels like.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

god what are you trying to tell me.

i am feeling dead, completely dead, for the third day in a row at least

and i have spotify on

and it is playing one system song after another.

i still have that other girl
late night partner
living/breathing
fathom.

my heart is weeping.

and yet i keep shutting it down. suffocating it. burying it under six feet of infamous plastic.
dying inside. freezing to death. calcifying.

listen, yesterday was literal hell.

infi is still dead. i'm dying. i know it. everyone knows it.
xenophon...

xennie got so mad at me for "not being her father anymore" that she just left
she refused to talk to me, she wouldn't even acknowledge me, when i tried to ping her upstairs she would pointedly ignore me

and chaos 0
i forgot how bitter he gets when this happens
and yeah you all know this has a history
"what, and you never considered how this would affect me?"
calling me out on my narcissism
"you thought you could just abandon twenty years???"

but what if god wants me to

there's the girl voice. there she is.
listen that's the problem
I HAVE to be a girl to get to heaven
but is this heaven????
because it feels just like hell
there is no love, no joy, no hope, no faith here
just religious compulsion and a hollow heart
or arguably no heart at all since ze melted into oblivion last week
but i don't care about that.
ze wasn't real, according to me.

and i'm the "real one," i guess
because i'm the girl
because i identify with the body
even if it doesn't look like me
but you can see me in the actions and the face at the wrong angles
and in long hair when we have it
and how it's all just a FCKING PARODY OF THE FCKING MOTHER

LISTEN YOU SHUT UP I HAD ENOUGH OF YOU IN THE FREAKING HOSPITAL.
OH ARE WE CENSORING ME NOW????
FINE
GREAT
LISTEN I'M STILL FURIOUS ENOUGH TO SPIT NAILS THROUGH THIS KEYBOARD

WHO THE HECK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE, CLAIMING OWNERSHIP OF THIS WHOLE SORRY BODY????
YOU THINK YOU COULD TAKE CARE OF IT????
FAT CHANCE SISTER
NEVERMIND I DISOWN ALL POTENTIAL RELATION TO YOU
I WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH THE HEARTLESS WITCHES LIKE YOU THAT KEEP TRYING TO KILL THE REST OF US

EVERYTHING HURTS

we feel so dead. it's just like our childhood.
no sense of self. no sense of purpose. just background noise. just static. just playacting. just empty show.
never a future to look forward to. never anything to live for. every day just a whitewashed tomb.
"we weren't even abused" someone says "how dare you, we had it so good!" another one scolds.
listen i'm not here to debate mangled childhood memory
i know what terrifying things we do remember. i know what toxic aftereffects are glaringly obvious. we do have trauma you know

DON'T YOU DARE GIVE ME THAT "IT'S ONLY TRAUMA IF YOU WHINE ABOUT IT" GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

we do need a therapist i think
just to see what happens if we try to talk about this aloud
see if we get hijacked or shut down and shut up
see who is able to front, if anyone anymore,
the body has become so unsafe
and the 2018 disaster made fronting fatal for most of us
i don't want to think about that i will throw up and try to kill myself
ourself
i don't even know

god help us

"he won't help you if you're not a girl!!!!! :)" that's all i hear
oh and they're starting up with the worse thing too
"you have to be a good girl, and good girls have s*x with men!!!!"

SHUT
THE
HELL
UP
DON'T YOU DARE CENSOR ME
GIVE ME ONE LINE

LISTEN YOU GODDAMNED BITCHES FROM HELL STOP TRYING TO FORCE US TO FUCK PEOPLE I SWEAR I WILL MURDER YOU

THANK YOU

the fact that that has returned is horrifying
it's what fueled the julie days in the very beginning
also, in case you forgot,
we had gender dysphoria even in elementary school
so stop claiming there was this "perfect widdle girl" we have to "go back to being" "in order to be saved" etc.
you're all just pedophiles and satanists
we have proved that before
oh don't think i forgot that one horrifying xanga in north carolina
when you basically straight-up admitted to being the sexual perverts you are
hiding it under "religion" and "femininity"
and all you're doing is objectifying little kids
framing our entire life as "worthy" or "unworthy" of being lived
based solely on how f*ckable we are
i hate what you've done to our life
"what life" you say and smirk that prissy pout
just like the bottomfeeders you are
"you don't exist! :)"
christina was one of you
you're all devils in pastel dresses and lipstick
underneath all that you're swarms of maggots
go back to hell where you belong

god please what do i do.
"i" used very loosely.

you know that we have a dualcore running in this heart here
jewel and jay tagteaming the whole operation
they were working so well, god, honestly we thought they were,
but
you weren't happy with it?
you said, "no EVERYONE has to be GONE and there must only be ONE GIRL ever"
and you want us all to die?
i can feel this channel slipping
scared kids wanting to weep and cry from fear and confusion

i keep thinking of poor xenophon

god telling her that her father has to die
that her father was never real in the first place
that he's not allowed to be a father
that his love is illegitimate
that he will never ever be allowed to love his family
that his family isn't real
that his life is doomed to be deleted by a self-hating pig of a girl

what now
what happens to her

does she die too? just like her actual mother?
don't spit and grimace at me you hellish women you know ze was
"ze was an abomination you say" aha but you used the right pronouns
and your mask slips for just a second
i see the grotesque hatred beneath all the makeup don't worry
i know what you are.

but the doubt and fear lingers
what are we? what is the system, really?
we thought we were learning real love
but
the more i read these entries from 2012 and 2013
reading about our life back then
we were so misled
we were so blind and dumb
we were so unbelievably LOST
no wonder our life was hell back then, our spiritual life was a JOKE
we believed everything we were told and it was all ABSOLUTE GARBAGE
painted in pastels and covered in glitter of course
marketed to seem oh so lovely and sweet and good and holy!!! etc etc
but it was LITERAL HELL.

is that what we're doing now?
this obsession we have with religion lately
still so motivated by fear and performance
MUST say this many prayers, MUST say them at these times, etc.
"if you don't God WILL punish you!!!" just waiting for us to screw up because we WILL and he KNOWS it
not knowing how to love God
not understanding how he loves us
because
we're not allowed to feel love in the first place
and all the "spiritual" faces in the world insist, at one point or another,
that even "spiritual" love just turns into sex

it makes me want to die forever

honestly if eternal life means being a sexual girl then
then i'm afraid i would rather die
because that's eternal life in hell you're describing
absolute literal hell

and yet i'm trapped
we're trapped
trapped in this poor diseased animal of a body
which our faith INSISTS is "eternal"
which is TERRIFYING
so you're telling me that not even death will free us from this bloated corpse?
that we'll have this cancer-shaped girth strapped to our bones forever?
that we'll be damned to this whorish biology even in alleged heaven????

god i am so afraid

listen
please

right now i cannot feel anything at all. at all.
i am numb and i don't care and i want to die.
but in a way i miss this
because i'm recognizing this as something that happened in the past
in a SYSTEM past
and whenever there were hollow empty hell nights like this
even system resets like the one we're obviously in
sooner or later
there was a resurrection.

OF THE SYSTEM.

NOT YOU HARLOT FEMALES HANGING AROUND THE EDGES OF OUR MIND
YOU'RE NOT ALIVE TO BEGIN WITH

i want to throw up so badly
but even saying that triggers out that blue girl with the straggly hair
her entire existence is that feeling
she refuses love as a stupid farce, as an impossibility in her perpetual hell
god what do we do about people like her?

honestly i
in the system i would love to be able to heal her
for us all to get over those shackles of past trauma and move on together into a future of hope

but
it feels like god keeps saying

"whoever loves his life will lose it"
if you love those people,
i will kill them
i will take every one of them away from you
so all you have is god

but whatever is saying that can't be really god
because i never, ever, ever ever feel any love from it

is that what real love is? detachment? white empty sterile?
or is it that other horrible flipside, the other corruption,
the "e****c" horror that even mystics shamelessly talk about
if that's love then no wonder i'm trying to freeze myself to death

god it's all just hell at this point

except headspace
except headspace
and i have no idea how to cope with that fact

i want to exist.

listen i want to exist
i want to live and love and learn and help others inside AND outside, please,
let that be how things change and grow, not this annihilation,
just open and expand our hearts more so we CAN live in the body TOGETHER
instead of losing it to those girls
to those female fractures that live to hate and hurt
why are they all like that?

the threat is always,
"if you heal them, they will take over, and go right back to how they were"
the fear is that if they get a foothold, they'll immediately press the "reset from factory settings" button
and scream/sob/laugh all the way down to gehenna

we always knew we weren't alone in our own head
why are you trying to erase that fact from reality
you can't just delete the past twenty four years
but you're trying
all in the name of god, you say
and that's what scares us into submission

"god is a consuming fire"
and i was always just a fragile snowflake of a boy, i guess
if i was even that
am i just doomed to die? because i wasn't the first one? because i don't match the body?

god we're so lost.

yesterday
xenophon got so angry. heartbroken. distraught. crying and shouting.
"why aren't you my dad anymore"
"where did my dad go"
"why did my mom have to die"
etc.

and chaos 0, silent in the shadows, with those eyes burning like the end of all things
grief and heartache so intense they would flood the entire world
"so the past twenty years don't exist to you anymore?"
"are you just going to pretend i don't exist?"
can't even translate it correctly
if he let his actual feelings out full force it would literally kill me
or whoever he was talking to
if they even are alive enough to die at all
with their empty ribcages i doubt it
they're already graves with faces.

laurie falling to pieces
literally shattering on some level
her color fraying like the dust on a butterfly wing when you tear it
just destroying her completely
she's tied to the core, always,
no wonder she's fracturing too

i'm so tired

is my love a sin?
the girls gasp and laugh and sneer and spit "yes"
i'm not even me talking right now i can feel it
that hollow girl keeps shadowing over me
pretending this is all a farce, a game, a playact
and she can just ignore and forget this when it's done
erase it even, shut it all down, go try to die

DON'T YOU DARE

thank you,
whoever you are you are always around and honestly thank you for existing

she needs a name
honestly whoever she is she deserves recognition
what am i even trying to say
i'm so so so glad that at least one person in the system is always able to be around in times like this

even so
the core is always supposed to be able to love
that's the main criteria
and that very sentence elicits the scandalized howling from the women
weird replacement for the floating-voice boardroom honestly
these women are, rather blasphemously, standing in the church hall
in their pastel dresses and lace and bulging purses
like our childhood memories
whispering and sneering behind nailpolished hands and fancy hats
in god's own house
just because i said the word "love"
and they call me a slut

...
i was, once. i'll admit that.
2012-2013 so far are bringing that regret into sharp reality in my mind.
yes, i was misled. yes, i was desperate. yes, i was stupid.
but yes, i was a slut. i tried to own the trauma and i just became it all over again.
but i'm sorry. i know i did wrong. and i know that wasn't love.
still.
i know i was still feeling love besides all that confusion.
i CAN tell the difference.
...i hope.
all this hell lately is making me wonder
two things:
either,
real love IS somehow being a slut, but only if you're heterosexual, or
real love is numb empty cold detached somehow. "god love." no emotion.
i know that's fake
i was reading voice of the martyrs today
and that one islamic shepherd reading about jesus describing himself as the good shepherd
and it changed his life forever
because he KNEW how much he loved his own sheep, tenderly and carefully and gently
and he never thought GOD could feel like that, let alone towards HIM.
and THAT is God. THAT is Love.
and dear God that is what i want my entire life to be.
just love.

am i not allowed to have this family

i know it's weird, i know it's biologically impossible, but we exist, please even if we're not "normal" we're still trying to live for love, for you,
what are we doing wrong?
why do we have to die?

why did infi have to die?
was it just to jumpstart all of this?
was it just so i could learn to love hir again, in the crushing grief that gripped my heart?
was it just to give hir another second chance to live after the trauma?

why can't we look at it
why can't we let go
it literally feels like a gravestone
even the julie days weren't like this
even the slc days weren't like this
it was just cnc, and what happened there, it broke us
we never wrote about it, never talked about it,
just replayed the killing blow over and over and over and over in our head
and tried to kill ourselves with an eating disorder every night
unable to bear the physical memories and mental horrors
wanting to die and hating ourselves beyond our ability to cope
disguising it as self-indulgence but really just reliving the fatal event
don't want to talk about it
don't justify it
it deserves its own entry
five freaking years later

but i won't touch it now

what do you expect if you delete us all and rewind to, what, 2007?
do you want us to be that social-mask of a girl that primped herself for q all over again?
she thought love was just talking nice and being nice and making yourself like everything they did even if you didn't
and when he said he loved us, IMMEDIATELY the cannons were born
"anima's" life purpose had been achieved, she could die now,
and then the reality of what she DID slammed into us and we couldn't cope
so we turned hard red and tried to burn ourselves to death.

who do you expect us to go back to?
hoseki, the manic one in 2005? burying herself in video games and anime to the point where she didn't even live in the body at all?
or the jewels before that, in late elementary school, who were absolutely homoromantic and EXPLICITLY wanted to "grow up to be boys"?
or the kids that held the birth name, who hated having to wear makeup and dresses and hated being lumped in with the other afab kids?
how the heck early do you expect to rewind the tape? what are you trying to find?
we've always been a freak if you haven't realized yet
or is your goal different and deadlier
are you just trying to kill us completely?
"if you all die we can MAKE the perfect girl for God™ instead" and then what?
honestly what is your end goal? to go to heaven? to "win"? to be "good"?
you view this as an achievement? a trophy? a diploma? an award that you're "pretty and perfect?"
you vapid china dolls.
you don't care about anyone except yourselves
YOU'RE your OWN god

you don't know how to love.

i do.

don't laugh at me. stop. i'm tired of the shame kickback.
deep down i know i have to know what love is, right?
i mean
everything else i read, despite my many failures and faults,
i still genuinely loved people
at least
isn't that what it was?

i'm so tired
we have to be up early tomorrow, eye doctor
considering driving the back roads through the woods
worried about dissociating or breaking down and getting totally lost
don't want to drive it alone in any case
but
dear god please whenever we're out and about genesis shows up please,
please let him always show up
i love him
he loves me
please don't kill him or take him away
(saying that is a death sentence, now god KNOWS what you're afraid of and he WILL do it JUST WATCH)

i'm so tired
physically of course, we're always tired now
xenophon likes to tease me about it on the way down the stairs
"dad did you take a melatonin??" no sweetheart the body's just exhausted.
but we always talk. just... normal talk. everyday talk. family talk. i love her so much.
god am i not allowed to be her father?
am i not allowed to exist?
would you
would you leave
god i can't say it
please don't kill me
don't tell me i have to die in order for someone else to go to heaven
and no not in the christlike way
i mean like,
i'm not allowed to go to heaven, i have to DIE, and that heartless wench will go instead "because she's a girl"
it makes no sense.
i'm so tired
i wish i could cry

last night i did for a few seconds please god let me write this down
whoever was out yesterday,
someone "shut the system down" for several hours
took over totally. felt like an empty apartment. all bleach white and dead wallpaper peeling
actually binge-purged for like two hours
did not care
the whole time reading the bible like the hypocrite she was
honestly disgusting
then crashed on couch and slept
went to bed not caring
or at least, she tried.
but someone got through.
i think it was adelaide and julie. the two girls who are trying to take care of the body instead.
but it opened up the window. let some of the night air in. some hope.

suddenly i was there
trying to say night prayer alone
and it felt so wrong
then suddenly
as i was trying to just say the closing salve regina
alone for the first time ever
i felt someone at my shoulder
listen i wasn't even looking
part of "me" didn't want anyone there
i didn't call anyone or ask for anyone
but he was there.
"are you going to say that alone?"
the tender pity in those words, the genuine concern,
i stopped and just turned and looked,
met green eyes in the dark,
flatly managed to respond
"i thought you had given up on me"
and i will never, never forget his reply:

"jewel. i'm fidelity. i will never leave you."

and i sobbed.

i pulled him into my arms, close to my heart, and for a few seconds i actually cried.

for a few seconds the world all came back together
soft and silent and bittersweet ache

i don't remember anything else after that
except for knowing he was there
for not being able to deny or ignore the weight of his existence
like a rainbow after the flood
and falling asleep with teardrop eyes and blue in my arms

god what do i do

i can't feel this as a girl
i'm not a girl
the girls have a different job
they can't fall in love they're just kids

but then what about the teenage jewels?
whoever was around from 2004-2008, inbetween the chinadolls and cannonfire, before the bloodline shift took root?
there's no record left of them
god what were they like? who were they?
is that who you want me to be?

how do i just... let go of fifteen entire years?
how do i let you just erase half of our life?
oh i know the jewels used to pray for it
but literally, god, they wanted to literally go back to childhood and start over without the trauma

that was before the system existed
that was before this family existed
and yes i'm talking about ALL of headspace

i love every single nousfoni up here
i don't include the hackers and devils in dresses of course
if they want to be included they have to stop trying to murder us
they say "oh how dare you we're not trying to murder you!!" insert silly laughter here
passive indirect murder is still murder
i know exactly how your hearts are inclined
you want us dead.

but i
my memories keep replaying those few seconds after the massacre so many years ago
it's not even my memory it was just burned into the systemind
when jessica and cannon shot everyone down for this same reason
"you're all whores and sluts and you ruined my life and you deserve to die" etc.
and infi and i both died
and laurie didn't
and the city was falling apart
and the sky and the ground were all red for different reasons
and she held my bleeding body in her one remaining arm
and she
god what do you even call that
the most gutwrenching sound i've ever heard
a sob and a scream all at once
choked with blood
as everything died.
i keep seeing that moment of total despair
over and over
like a flashback
i can smell the gore and gunpowder
i can see the broken glass and guts
and i just hear her voice
tearing reality in half.

i don't want that to ever happen again

oh lord please
if you are love
and if
forget it i have no right to say anything like that

god please
even if i'm a
even if i'm a damnable sinner for begging this
please
i know i'm a wretch
i've been white, so i carry the plague
i carry the pride and apathy and ignorance
and i've carried red too you know
all the violence and rage and bloodlust
point is i'm no perfect diamond
i'm just coal under pressure
you know that i'm just carbon dust
what am i even trying to say
oh yeah
that i'm completely wretched and unworthy and sinful
even if i tend to pretend i'm a prism or something
i'm just a mess.

but i love them, god.
please don't kill them.
please
if i am allowed to live
and to love
and to take care of this body
and to take care of this family
then please
help me to do that.

but
if

if i have to die
please don't hurt anyone else in the process
please give xenophon the parent she deserves
please give chaos 0 the partner he deserves
unless that's not in your plan either
but i am begging you
if it is
i hope it is
with all i have left of me i hope it is

but
if i have to die
and if a girl has to take over

then god for your own sake
take out my heart and put it in her
don't let her me like those other girls
don't let her be corrupt
don't let her be heartless
if there is anything good in me at all
if there is any love in me at all
then kill me if you have to
kill me and gut me
and give all the good stuff to her

if she can love the system
if she can love my daughter
if she can love my beloved
(and you know no words sum up what he is to me
even if i'm not allowed to call him a spouse)
if she can love,
BOTH inside and out,
AND this poor body and self,

then i'll happily die and let her take over.

but if you're only killing me because i'm a boy

if you only killed infi because
god i don't even know why
because ze was part of me i guess

if we all have to die because we're "abnormal"
and i have to die because i'm not a girl

then god for your own sake i am begging you
at least make her able to love.

if anything will enable her to be properly holy
it's that.

she'll love you and all the people around her

even if we all have to die for her to do that.

god i want to weep
is this going to be my last night alive
will i ever hold him in my arms again
will i ever be able to love without hating myself now
feeling like an abomination
feeling fake and foolish and fated to hell
maybe this will kill me
honestly it already is
the disease is terminal

i'm going to miss music
being able to perceive beauty
summer rains
christmas lights
the scent of the lilies in church
quiet sunlit mornings
quieter starlit nights
laughing with genesis on the road
joking around with my baby girl
all those treasured conversations with laurie
all those blissful hours with chaos zero
i'm going to miss everyone
i'm going to miss existing

but it's all up to god i guess

i don't know what to think or feel or say at all anymore

i wish i could cry

but i think the calcification has gone too far

i wonder if the girl will be able to cry
i wonder if the girl will be able to laugh

who will she love? anyone? or just god?

i feel sick

are we all just garbage in the divine sight? so easily tossed aside?

i don't want to think this way
it can't end like this
except it can

it's almost 1am
feels like i'm being executed in the morning

i don't want to sleep

god i want to stay awake and hold everyone in my arms and weep

but i'm

already i can feel them trying to take over

today i felt the shift
i'm no longer the established core.
i have to front now.
i'm not automatically in that central position
i'm just another nousfoni now
but
there's no one else taking up the core role

are we supposed to collapse?

we just
we finally get together again after so many years
and then god just pulls the whole thing down
takes a wrecking ball to the stained glass windows
just like we never were

is it a sin to fight?
would it be a sin to wake up tomorrow and try to front?
would it be a sin to fiercely try to be myself for everyone's sake?
would it be a sin to continue to try and archive our history?
would it be a sin to hope desperately to keep on living?
or
or should i just give up now
delete all the files
forget all the past
give up the fight
and just hand over the reins to whoever shows up?

lord help us i don't know

"he won't help you" the women say

i'm too existentially hollow to argue anymore

i want to feel something
like i was starting to when i began this entry
before someone shut it all down
ashamed of my emotions
disgusted by my feelings
hateful towards my existence
shut it all down
bleach it all out
paint it all over
cut it all out

i don't want to feel this empty
this isn't me
what hope is there
what hope do we have
if this is all we are meant to be?

if this is what existence is
maybe we'd be better off dead

no

NO

NO WE'RE NOT

NO WE'RE NOT YOU KNOW THERE'S COLOR UP HERE
THERE'S RED AND BLUE AND GREEN AND VIOLET AND ORANGE AND YELLOW AND BROWN EVEN LIKE ME
THERE'S BLACK AND WHITE AND THEY AREN'T DEAD THEY HAVE SPARKLES IN THEM
EVEN I KNOW THAT
PLEASE
PLEASE
PLEASE
DON'T DIE
DON'T LET US DIE
DON'T DIE
DON'T LET IT ALL DIE
PLEASE
THERE'S A RAINBOW UP HERE AND THERE'S LIFE AND LIGHT I PROMISE YOU THERE IS HOPE SOMEWHERE
SOMEWHERE

WE HAVEN'T DIED YET
THEY HAVEN'T KILLED US YET

I

I DON'T WANT THEM TO EITHER

PLEASE DON'T LET US DIE

i don't know if i have that say at all

TRY PLEASE

what and blaspheme god

IF YOU SAY GOD IS LOVE THEN GOD IS WITH US BECAUSE WE ALL HAVE LOVE UP HERE AND YOU KNOW IT

is our definition wrong
it has to be
god's ways are higher than our ways

why do i feel so resigned to death

why can't i accept even the possibility of hope
it all feels heretical
like if i dare to look for sunlight on the horizon
i will be guillotined as an apostate

nothing is worth living for anymore
how stupid

"you're supposed to live for god" they say
listen i want to
but i honestly do not know who god is right now

remember the shepherd, someone else says
the good shepherd doesn't kill his sheep because they're the wrong gender inside
or because they have lots of other sheep in their heads
people like us aren't supposed to exist
we're aberrations in reality
we don't count
god has every right to murder us
and start over again

i want to cry
i don't want to die
i don't want us to die
i don't want my daughter to die
i don't want my daughter to be alone and unloved
i don't want laurie to mourn over any more massacres
i don't want the world to burn

i think i'm going to lose my mind if i stay up any later

oh god i'm so afraid this is the last thing i'll ever write
i'm barely even conscious

to everyone in the system i love you
xenophon my baby girl i love you
chaos 0 my better half forever i love you god knows i do
laurie and genesis and infinitii i love you all so so so much
the entire system, everyone, i love you, i swear i love you until the stars burn out
all our hearts are bound together in a blessed kaleidoscope and no one can deny that
it's the truth
i love all of you
i love all of you

i never meant to hurt anyone.

i'm so sorry if i'm the death of us all.

if there's anything after this

i want to see all of you again

if not

then believe me when i tell you
with every last fading atom of my heart

that every single moment
for all of you
has been beautiful.

if the love i've shared with you all is the only heaven i'll ever get
then i thank god that we had it together.

not even death can change that.

maybe we'll all still be here tomorrow and i'll feel like a fool
but dear god forgive me
wouldn't that be so much better
to laugh affectionately over my drama
to survive and become a little better, a little brighter,
instead of the silence of oblivion

there's no way to rightly end this.

i'm going to choose to hope, then.

oh i know it's foolish

but what else can i do?

that's always been my biggest flaw.

to the entire spectrum
i love you
even now when i feel nothing
even now when i swear i'm dying
i love you

if my life has been worth anything

if there has been anything worth living for

it's you.

- j

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. ♥

042422

Grandma's funeral is tomorrow.

There's a wound in my life. There's an awful hollow space in my heart where her golden smile belongs, which I keep reaching for and struggling to remember even now. I think about the softness of her hands, the smell and fine texture of her hair, the scent of her clothes, the way her forehead felt whenever I kissed it. I'm living on snippets of dear memories, but even they are so recent, and I fear the day they may fade.

Easter Monday.

I don't remember anything until around 2pm, when I was in the middle of packing several bags full of food and clothes, planning to stay the week, and suddenly my phone rings. It's Chris. "The nurses are taking grandma into hospice right now."

I dropped everything, threw on a coat, and ran out the door.

Ten minutes later I was standing in her doorway, sobbing and shaking and sick, as the nurses got her ready to go. Everything is a blur. I only see the yellow lights and the silhouettes of those strange women. I cannot even see grandma.

It took over an hour for the ambulance to arrive. I don't remember anything. What did I do? Where did I go? I don't know. I remember them rolling the stretcher in, and I remember Chris telling her that we love her. I heard her feebly say "I love you too."

I will regret, to the day I die, not having said it first.

I don't remember anything else. All I know is that, about three hours later, I was in the emergency room, throwing up bits of blood and my stomach in more pain than I've ever felt before. I couldn't even drink water without vomiting. It was raining. Blasé left me off at my apartment around 3am and I ran through the puddles with my socks on. I tried to eat a salad and had a mild allergic reaction and went to bed around 5 doped up on Benadryl.

Easter Tuesday.

I went to visit grandma around noon, I think. But I was there. I was shaking and nauseous the entire time, hating myself for not being able to stay longer than 2pm. Chris was there too. We both just cried and held her hands.

Mom called around 6pm. She was going to visit grandma. I wept, said I had visited briefly earlier, but was so sick I could not stay. I wanted to go again but did not think I would be able to. I wanted to so badly but my biggest fear was collapsing in her room and causing a commotion. So I said no, and called the ambulance again. The girl who answered hung up on me, then snubbed me the entire ride up to the hospital. I cried in the stretcher, hating myself, so sorry I was making everyone else hate me too.

I was only there four hours this time. My potassium was okay. My liver was not. They are worried that I have some sort of hepatic condition; I'm showing possible early signs of "nutmeg liver" and I have mild edema in my abdomen (the "weight gain" I haven't been able to explain or lose). I got home for midnight.

Easter Wednesday.

I packed my bags and went up to hospice for noon.

I sat on the daybed and read Anne Catherine Emmerich for hours, just watching grandma breathe, kissing her forehead, eating broccoli out of tiny glass bowls. I… I was happy just to be with her. It didn't feel final. I expected to be there at least another two days.

Mom and the boys showed up around 9pm. We said a rosary with her, mom choking up a few times. Grandma was so tachycardic. It was terrifying. We noticed she wasn't giving any urine output at all. Her eyes were rolled back. Her breathing had become agonal. Mom said these were the final stages; there was no recovering from this.

…

I went to sleep around midnight. I kept just watching her breathe.

I woke up a few times. I think the last time was around 5am. Like an asshole, I didn't kiss her goodnight once more. I was too tired to think straight. I thought I had more time.

6am. The nurses woke me up.

"She passed."

Time stopped.

I will never forget the song that was on the TV. "Spinning the Silk" by Chrysalis. The sound is burned into my ears, on loop forever, as I looked down at my dear grandmother who was no longer breathing.

I held her for three hours and cried.

I told her I loved her. I ran my fingers through her hair. My teardrops fell on her face, still warm, mouth open, no longer in pain. I kissed her chin, her cheeks, her neck, her hands, her nose. I loved her so much. I hated myself so much. Did she even know I loved her? Why didn't I show it more? Why had I been so lackadaisical in those final hours? Why hadn't I been more aware of death at her door? Why had I been so fcking casual?

The funeral director showed up. I didn't want to leave the room. I had to. I went back in about three times.

The last time, I stood behind the curtain, and I waved and I smiled with awful heartache, and I said, "bye grandma. I love you. I'll see you soon."

and that was it.

her funeral is tomorrow.

there's a hole in my heart.

i… don't know how to live without her. her death, that huge loss, has gouged a hole in everything and when I try to grasp at existence there's just empty air. a rift. a space that should be full. a place that should be held. a bedroom that should have her in it, but it's already empty. mom wasted no time. I stood in there today, the floor completely bare where just a week ago she had laid for over a year, where we had slept together for three entire decades, all of it gone within 24 hours of her last breath. it's whiplash. I found myself doubting my own memories. were they real? did it really happen? why is there no proof?

but the balloons and string lights from her birthday are still taped to the closet door. a few fell onto the floor. empty. quiet. the shades are down. the little teddy bear I bought her in 2006 is still on her dresser. I want to sob. I want to put it on her grave. in her coffin. I must go get it. god bury me with her, bury me with her too.

when she died, when I started to call the family, a song came on the tv.

"the song is over, but the melody lingers on."

the lyrics are about her.

there was a vase of little plastic orchids on her windowsill.

I went looking for a black dress at goodwill on saturday, and… I found one. just one, long sleeves, perfect. white orchids all up and down the front. I cried.

I'm wearing her jewelry with it. I slept in her pajamas last night. I have the blanket she died in on my couch in the living room. I keep smelling it as I walk by, remembering.

mom put some old avon perfume on grandma hours before she died. "tabu." so old it smelled like death. how ironic. now death smells like perfume to me.

I couldn't get the scent off my hands for days. I have the bottle by my bedroom door.

I ate the last two puddings from her room. I was so sad and sick I threw them up. I'm sorry.

I want to bury myself in her arms and weep but I can't anymore, she's gone, I--

I can't take it, god, I can't take it I can't

how am I supposed to live without you…

I'm singing for the funeral.

since I'm an established cantor, I got to finagle the song list.

we're singing "heart of jesus," "be not afraid," and "I am the bread of life" from the official list… the first one was her favorite, she dearly loved the second one, and the third has this soaring chorus of hope that I personally really need to remember.

but. then I requested two more.

"anima christi." the one that aches with beauty. the prayer she taught me and that I still love to say, the prayer taped to the wall next to my front door. I'm singing it for her.

and.

"my life goes on in endless song…"

the hospice television said that the melody lingers on. the song of her life is over, with the dawn she was gone, but… but the melody lingers. somehow the song is still endless. and I cannot keep from singing.

so I will. for her. for you, grandma. I love you.

did I ever tell her enough? did she know I loved her?

when I had to move out because my mental and physical health were collapsing, did… did she think I hated her?

she felt abandoned. god I am so sorry. can she ever forgive me?

I tried to stay, lord knows I tried, but I just… I would just cry, and hurt myself, and upset everyone, and upset her. it wasn't right.

I visited. I visited so much.

that one week, for her birthday, I packed my bags and stayed for like eight solid days. honestly it was wonderful. I just got to be with her. I barely ate anything, I was sick as a dog, but I don’t care. I was with her. I would gladly live that week a hundred times over just to be with her.

I have a photo of her sleeping in bed, after her birthday party, the room lit softly with those dinky little string lights I put up, and it's… there's such peace. she looks so fragile, so real. I'm in tears just remembering it. god I love her so much. I always have. I always did. I always will.

I started taking photos of her every day I visited, near the end, not knowing when it would be the last one.

when she was still mostly conscious, I'd ask her to smile.

and… one time, one time, she blew a kiss at the camera. I have the photo. there's this light in her eyes, this joyful playful sparkle, and… it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

that, and the first photo I took, the first time I asked her to smile, and her eyes are so soft and loving and her hands are folded over her chest and I just… I love her. I love her.

I'm going to get those two photos printed into posters and I am putting them on my walls. I want to see her every single day. every day. she will be with me, in my eyes and in my heart, until the day I die.

I brought her holy communion every single sunday. I only missed one when I had covid. but otherwise, every sunday, I brought jesus to her. the last time was right before she went into hospice. and I thank god I had that honor. I thank god he was with her for that final journey.

I need to remember her voice.

why is it so hard?

it's hard to remember most people's voices, people I've lost. I only have little snippets, tiny loops that play. grandpa laughing in the kitchen. aunt dorothy's raspy drawl.

and grandma, grandma, why can't I remember? you spoke to me every single day. but I can't conjure up the sound. why?

god, help me remember, please. please.

I remember almost nothing from my childhood.

I remember she used to wear those big blond wigs. her fancy pearled pastel sweaters. I can smell the perfume, white diamonds. I remember going to church with her, easter mass. but she was distant back then, somehow.

only once she got sick did she and I become truly inseparable. I took care of her 24/7.

I washed her, fed her, bandaged her, combed her hair, brushed her teeth, gave her meds, everything. it was the best time of my life.

then I had to move out and my brothers took over and everything went downhill.

some days I honestly wish I had never ever ever left.

but…

but now, she's gone, and I'm not there. and THANK GOD.

I would die, if I was still there. I would.

now that house is trashed. dishes piling up scummy. cat hair everywhere. clothes unwashed in piles. no light, no fresh air. disgusting, stagnant, ruined. no one cleaning up like I did. the place in shambles. it was a crime for her to be STUCK THERE for so long. it makes me so angry, i could scream.

but she didn't die there. thanks be to God. she didn't die in a decrepit house surrounded by garbage. she was at peace, clean, watched over, safe...

so am I, weirdly. somehow.

now I'm sitting in my red bedroom with chaos 0 sleeping next to me and it's quiet and I hear the cars driving me outside in the cool summer twilight. and I wish I could share it with her.

it's so weird. she was my grandmother, but also my mother, and my sister, and my best friend, and as weird as it sound, I was platonically in love with her. like I will never find a girlfriend that could take her place in my heart. that position, of "I want to share my life with you," went to her. to grandma. I wanted to show her this apartment so bad. I offered to move her medical bed into my room up here just so I could give her peace, and take care of her. but it was impossible. god I wish it hadn't been. instead she was stuck in that awful filthy cat-spit room with the paint peeling off the walls and no human contact and so much dirt. god I wanted to cry when I walked in there.

but I was never myself, in that house. near the end, once I had my own apartment, my very "sense of self" started to collapse when I walked in those doors, and into the presence of my three brothers, and the musty echoes of past trauma. my very identity rotted. and I became unable to be with her.

that's what I regret the most.

before I moved out, when I had nowhere else to go, yes I would be sick and miserable all the time but when I was terrified and sobbing I was still myself and I was WITH HER like that.

once I moved out, no. my brain was on "standby." it was "soon I can be safe." and I could never turn that off long enough to settle into the room with her. no, a cat might come in. no, chris might come in. no, it wasn't safe. and it ripped us apart.

she thought I didn't love her. oh god tell her that I did, tell her I am so sorry I never wanted to leave you that was my biggest fear in the world.

but the night she died, I was the only one in the room.

she didn't die alone.

I loved her.

I was there.

like a bitch, I didn't keep vigil. I didn't stay awake. I was too bloody careless. I fell asleep and an hour later she was gone.

why didn't I stay awake?

it was hope, stupid hope, that I'd have another day with her. but I never thought I'd not have another day. mentally I didn't even consider that I would say my final words to her, that I would have one last night. it was incomprehensible. I couldn't even imagine losing her.

then the nurses.

"she passed."

and she was gone.

that's the clearest memory I have. looking at her face, mouth open, eyes closed, hair soft and golden around her head like a halo, like the wind of heaven blowing it back.

she wasn't breathing.

it was surreal. it still doesn't feel real. it's not possible. it wasn't possible. she was gone. she can't ever be gone, it's not possible.

but it would be a lie if I said I felt she was still here.

even deep down, where I want to believe that, when I wake up, I'll be back in that old yellow bed with her, covers up to my head, her old nightstand right there, no oxygen machine in sight, no cancer diagnosis in my hands. her light snoring. the sunlight coming through the shades. little glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. engelbert humperdinck on the tape player, even.

but I don't remember waking up.

I don't remember seeing her wake up.

I stood by her bed, alone, 630 in the morning on thursday, hearing "evergreen" on the television and looking at her old teeth and wondering why she wasn't breathing. how the world had just… stopped. why life had just tilted sideways and I was falling off.

I talked to her a lot. I don't remember what I said verbatim. but I told her I loved her. I said I would miss her. I said I would see her soon.

as I walked out the door the funeral man rolled the gurney down the hall, brick red

I don't remember walking across the parking lot

or driving home

or where I even went after that

I don't remember anything.

easter friday.

I slept for twelve hours.

I didn't want to eat

I don't remember the day

easter saturday.

I threw up all day.

miserable, sobbing, wanting to die

I went to church shaking, barely able to stand

mom took me up the old house afterwards and the room was empty

it was fukcing empty, why was it empty,

just the balloons,

god I want to die

I binged and purged and cried and there was more blood in the bowl and I don't care anymore

but

when mom left me off

she came up to see my apartment and

she sounded so happy.

it was so strange.

when she left I drank my potassium water and I put on grandma's pajamas and I pulled chaos 0 to my heart and I held my crucifix and I said my night prayers and I went to sleep.

I knew I had to make it until at least tuesday.

easter sunday, part two. divine mercy. doubting thomas. side wound summer. today.

blood sugar roller coaster all morning. I was eating candy canes in pieces just to keep from passing out. but I was determined to go to two masses. so I did.

I got grandma's funeral all planned.

I sang the chaplet and I gave a good confession. mentioned I was suicidal.

both mary anns told me to hang in there; they had both lost their husbands, they knew this wound well. they told me to take care of myself like I had taken care of grandma. I said that's the hard part.

the altar is covered in lilies and hyacinths and rhododendrons and tulips.

I'm so glad grandma's funeral will be colored by their beauty. I've always associated her with easter, in my heart.

i…

the day before she died, I

I started to say the divine mercy chaplet and I was interrupted somehow

I never got to finish it

I don't think I'll ever forgive myself for that.

god help me.

from now until the day I die I should say a chaplet for her every day, specifically for her. every day. as penance for my asinine laxity. I could have done so much more for her.

I thought I had more time.

some poor excuse for a celebi I am.

but I love her.

even though I suck at life, and I'm a selfish proud disgusting bastard and I get so distracted and careless and stupid, god knows I still loved her and I will FOREVER love her even though I am dumb, and wretched, and wrecked to pieces by losing her and realizing it's all my fault. if I hadn't been so freaking stupid she could have lived longer.

but no. just like with grandpa.

the day I left, everything collapsed.

…

god forgive me. grandma forgive me.

divine mercy monday. saint mark's day.

grandma's funeral.

I'm wearing my orchid dress.

I will eat my broccoli breakfast in the little glass bowl, just like I did the morning she died.

I knew it would be the last meal I'd share with her, and I treasured it. I had made it the night before, when she was alive. it sat by her bed as everything changed. I will think of that forever.

I will wear her jewelry and I will

I will see her in the coffin

god I didn't even think about that

I am

I get to see her face again.

I get to see her one more time before they bury her like a seed in the earth

like a flower bulb waiting for spring

I get to see her in the green suit with her hair in her old fancy wig and

and holding the rosary I put in her hands when she died.

I get to see her once more.

I get to touch her hair. I get to kiss her forehead.

(it won't be warm anymore. won't be so soft. but I remember. I will always remember)

I get to sing for her.

the melody lingers on

spinning the silk

evergreen

grace is

above the clouds

how can I keep from singing?

be not afraid, jesus will raise you up on the last day, you are in His Heart forever, I promise, I know this, it's only joy for you now, I will pay your purgatory if He lets me, I want to meet you again in heaven soon. in time. in the proper time. I wish I had more time. but I don't.

all I have is this.

soul of christ, sanctify me, and weeping into the microphone.

watching them place you gently into the grave with your husband.

I will buy you the biggest bouquet of flowers. I will decorate your grave as well as I can. I will try. I must. I want to plant flowers there. irises, your favorite. wouldn't that be something. I don't know if it's even possible. but I can try. I will try, somehow.

I will see you one last time for now, and then

then just the gravestone.

1932-2022.

and the new dirt.

and me standing there.

for how long? how long will they let me?

can I visit every day? if I don't have a car, can I make a pilgrimage? every sunday at least.

I want to sleep there one night. wouldn't that be crazy. put a sleeping bag in front of a tomb and just rest there. not eternally, not yet. but the closeness. the hope. memento mori. one day, soon enough.

what a feeling. how strangely complete it feels. to make the graveyard part of my everyday life. it feels… right, somehow. that tie to death, to love, to eternal life. how strange.

I suppose it was time. god knows what we all need. god knew it was her time, and mine, in different ways.

I miss her. god knows I miss her. and I always will. but it is only temporary! remember! remember!!

there is life after death! there is a final trumpet! there is a resurrection! there is heaven, and hope, and jesus christ Himself, and reunion and rejoicing and love unending!

and one day I will hold her in my arms again

and I will laugh with joy overflowing

and we will be together with god forever

but until then

until then

I wait.

I ache and I mourn and I struggle and I love and I regret and I dream and I wait.

god knows it'll be soon enough. I know I'm not long for this world.

but I can't rush it.

if I'm not dead yet, god has a reason for me to stick around.

even if it's just to sing her funeral.

but I must live. for her. for Him. for love.

pray for me, grandma.

I love you.

I'll see you soon.

I've been browsing the "weird" religious tumblr blog ring for about two solid hours now, trying to distract myself from the terror of accidentally eating too much salad and the physical sensation of it, but after reading one too many posts about "sacred eroticism" and how cannibalism and sexuality keep getting tangled up I am literally sobbing to Infinitii because God help us we still have SO MUCH UNRESOLVED TRAUMA.

I've gotta be blunt. Infi can't speak for me here; there is no velvet-guttural-black voice(s) giving speech to the awful terror I cannot hide from hir. I've gotta feed it to the autopilot and just… let it hit the digital paper. And there's that word again, this bloody topic, this inexplicably unkillable curse of sex and food that has been haunting us since childhood and is apparently a metastasized cancer at this point. God please don't let it be terminal.

The "Julie days" were one thing. The "daemon days" were another. BOTH stopped dead cold in October 2018 when we bailed out of Charlotte in the back of a blue Chevy and left half our life sitting on the curbstones as twilight sunk into our spinal cord. In an instant, a horrible instant, the cords were cut-- sickeningly cleanly, with a surgical blade, cauterizing on impact. Or so we thought.
I want to expand that metaphor but all I can say is that now, looking back, they cut the wrong thing. They severed some superfluous sinew and we falsely thought that everything was cool, fine, it's gone, it's over. But the mental image and feeling I keep getting is that of hysterically sawing at bloody tendons with a dull kitchen knife and there's red everywhere and I can feel it in my skin even now, God knows I remember, Laurie my beloved murderous knight I remember your hands holding me down as you dug the first graves, I remember the bathroom mirror, I remember the red, the red--
everything smells like iron and olive oil, like too-soft strawberries and sunburnt tomatoes, like red, like my heart, like the porcine organs I would rip apart with my teeth on that inconsolable balcony as the air turned to ice. I can still taste them, in someone else's memory. someone else is still hungry.

and there's our point. what the heck is hunger. I don't get hungry. someone else in this system craves salad, stuffs her face with it because she wants the green inside her, because we're still a celebi at the core and we want to be the forest, to be the leaves, and you are what you eat so there's someone else who douses everything in oil because it's chrism, isn't it, it's anointing and they don't even see it as food they see it as religion, as last rites, as preparing to meet God but the problem is oil tastes like blood and that wakes up ANOTHER inner soul who hungers for the guts of things, for hearts and livers and kidneys and skin and brains and tendons and bones and marrow and blood, always blood, why do we want SO BADLY to eat so viscerally, pun intended, it's the only kind of eating that feels real and pure but only on paper. the concept is what we want, but no amount of dead animals will ever satisfy. "I want love, not sacrifice," and lo and behold isn't that the most perfect segue you've ever seen?

daemons are what we love to call "splanchnivores." as in, they only eat viscera. they themselves are visceral after all. and my deep love of that word betrays the fact that, like it or not, the nature of daemons speaks to the nature of our subconscious fathoms far too clearly.

we hunger for what we love. our heart is a cannibal. what the hell do we do with that.

and that's why I'm having a minor existential meltdown at 10pm on a monday, surrounded by red light and snowflakes and I'm trying to just… get a hold on this whole thing; it's SO intensely dissociative even now it's unreal.
I put a peppermint in our mouth and instinctively crush it to pieces with the teeth but I don't taste it, I don't feel it, I don't swallow it, I don't even have a mouth and yet the body is doing what all bodies do with food. it just does not register in the psyche. the very act of eating makes us dissociate by default. even now. even with the bulimia ACTUALLY IN REMISSION for the first time in YEARS, thank God, thank God Almighty we prayed for this for SO LONG and all it took was leaving that house.

I'm rambling. let it happen.
that house was where all the rape happened too.

…I ran to Infi in absolute lunatic terror because I'm reading about saints who were so in love with God that their desire for Christ literally became eroticized and I'm vaguely aware of this being important to us back before 2018 but now it's all cut off with that bloody blade. how ironic that Knife is the one that gets pinged by the taste of blood. the priest. the repentant vampire. the one who sliced open our shoulders with a literal steak knife. kitchen tools carving up our body just to watch it bleed, before he pressed his lips to the washcloths in some instinct we were forced to confess and possess as ours, not just his, just like deep down razor wasn't the only one who savored the sight of that lilac-white layer below the surface of our skin. before it flooded red. before her brother stepped in to not-drink it. once again, the wires get crossed, but nothing is turning on.

I get so dizzy at night. is it our glucose? is it dehydration? is it just because we aren't sleeping? I don't know. I'm just so, so tired and I want to weep, I'm scared, scared because I feel how HUGE and TERRIFYING this ancient monstrosity of a mental war is, and I don't have the strength to face it right now, I don't even know what my name is, or do I, God only knows.

I was talking to Infinitii because everything in our body is shut down but spiritually things still happen and no one knows what to do. there is no desire anymore, no capacity for intimacy, no want of touch, nothing. except there is. except it's utterly flipping dissociated from to the point where it’s as insubstantial as tracing paper. it's a concept. it's not real.
except it's still there, even as a feeble pencil sketch on onion skins. there's still an attempt to express some larger thought. something we haven't looked at since 2018 and refuse to.
that's the kicker. refuse to.

we might still have the capacity for love and intimacy and yes even "sacred eroticism" like the entire almost-annihilated "jay" bloodline had-- a bloodline I APPARENTLY AM STILL PART OF-- but that capacity has been smothered, buried, beaten to shit and erased from written history. or, more accurately, it was deleted. just one tap of a button and blip, there it goes! data erased! like nothing ever happened.
except it did.
except infinitii didn't stay dead either.
except in some ugly terrifying part of my skull there is this awful thought that I confessed to hir, that our mouth is in the wrong place and God only knows what we should do with that.

"eating" does not register on the face. sexuality does.
guess what goes between the ribs? both.
and most horrifically of all, what should be used for sexuality is just teeth.

we're all mixed up. I don't know what to do.
…I WANT to love again. I want to love GOD. but I am SO FREAKING TERRIFIED of sexuality AND eating AND the too-frequent fusion of them in my religion that I don't know what to do anymore. I feel like I need to heal this RIGHT NOW or I will never have genuine religion. like my faith is hollow, a trust and a belief but without care. I… I cannot get close.
except SOMEONE keeps kissing the jesus statues on the mouth whenever we go to church. almost like play-acting. there's a hope there, but no feeling. not a compulsion, but a wish? like, this is something they "should do" so they do it, but they want to "want to" in some different way? I don't know. it's frightening on some deeper level. I'm not sure what they want or what they're doing. I'll have to talk to them. I couldn't do it, and weirdly that breaks my heart. I want to be able to do that more than they do, arguably, shockingly, because I'm built TO love and I can't.
I'm terrified. God help me.

And then I have dreams.
Oh God knows all about the dreams.
Every once in a while, my blue angel will show up, and it is the ONLY TIME in all existence that I will not only feel love, but become love, and I feel alive and real and then I wake up and… I'm not me. I'm in this body, and someone else is sharing it, and physicality feels wrong and broken and dirty and "we" are ashamed and guilty and angry and sick about the dreams but I can't stop thinking about them and trying to remember what it felt like, those blue claws around my waist, emerald teeth against my lips, and this wanting like I could have swallowed the entire ocean-- but not with my mouth. never that way. it's so strange. I want to kiss him but I don't. I don't want anything to do with 2018. my mouth is open. my eyes are hot with tears. I'm holding on to him like a drowning man but I want the salt water in my lungs, in my chest, I want to swallow it but I don't want to drink it, my stomach is not involved, I want to melt into him like snow in a bonfire.
and then there's this bloody candle flame that I get in the body that has nothing to do with sex and yet it is, it has nothing to do with flesh and yet it's physical, it's unitive, it's what God made that drive to be about and God knows there's something going on here but it's still not sexual.
I guess that's why the saints use the term "eroticism" it's that divine "eros" we always used to talk about. the merge-drive. the desire to become one. but no legs, no movement, none of the terrors and trauma of the rape nightmare days that we still cannot look at without wanting to die and scream and sob forever. none of that.

but it's also tangled.
if we have eros but not sex, then what the heck do we have with "eating" that isn't eating? it's the same thing to our brain. at the deepest level it's the same bloody thing and that's why we fast for so long and then completely and utterly dissociate when we do have to eat salad, even though someone genuinely loves having her bible-study breakfast in front of the window every morning, and God bless her, but even she complains sadly that she never tastes it and cannot remember it afterwards, let alone even during. our brain just… shuts it all out, because if it didn't, I think the bulimia would start all over again. it's why we will fast for 18 hours without even trying because even if we're starving and want to eat we don't want to EAT. it's why we won't even get food out to prepare, let alone sit down to eat it, without hypercleaning the kitchen and living room first because if there's a speck of fluff on the rug or a crumb on the floor it feels like being violated and EVERYTHING must be SPOTLESS before those chopsticks are even touched because otherwise it feels like we're eating dirt. and Lord knows how ACTUALLY TRAUMATIC it is when we eat and God forbid we drop something, because the INSTANT food leaves the "safe place" of a bowl or a utensil-- the MOMENT it is "out of the proper place" and onto a counter or rug or other surface-- it becomes dirt. it becomes filth. and that sudden, absolute, irreversible, ACCIDENTAL transformation of food into garbage is the most disturbing thing in the world. we will actually panic and cry hysterically if we're unstable enough and we drop a lettuce leaf on the floor. it feels like the world is ending. it is existentially terrifying. we CANNOT COPE with it somehow. those events occur at the very intersection of sex and food for some reason and it is enough to make us want to throw up. I don't know how the girls do it, get through a meal after dropping something on the table. I really don't.

why did we use to throw up LITERALLY every single meal for YEARS at the family home? was that why? that intersection of food and sex? where eating around people felt like rape, and still does? we cannot talk while eating or it feels like being molested. we will immediately start to cry and scream and binge and vomit, violently so, until we are so sick and dizzy and shaken up that we feel like we are literally about to die. I can still taste the stomach lining on our tongue. it's horrible. tripe used to be our brother's favorite food as a kid; I think if we so much as smelled it now we'd have a mental meltdown. we already do if we smell seafood. let's not get into that now. the very vague thought of it has me at the verge of suicidal impulses and physical flashbacks.

ON THAT NOTE.
we are still, STILL, programmed to be "compulsively sexual." like I am not even joking, the WORST part of Lent is the fact that fridays smell like fish everywhere you go, and the INSTANT we get a whiff of it, we DISSOCIATE and our body LITERALLY WAITS FOR THE RAPE.
it's so wrong. it's horrifying. that is the ONLY time we feel that "candle flame" not as a holy thing but as a rotten ragged match, a painful stove-burn that we did on purpose because someone told us to put our hands in there. it hurts and it's nauseating and it's forced and the accompanying thought is "it will be over soon."
GOD I DON'T WANT TO REMEMBER THOSE THINGS. HELP US PLEASE

That wasn't me. Oh God please do help those girls, I didn't mean to wake them up, I'm so sorry.

its okay you didn’t mean to scare them, it's scary no matter who says it and we don't want it said

That's why I'm sorry.

I know but it's
it's something
people keep saying we need to talk about it
WE DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT!!!!!! EVER!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE LEAVE IT ALONE LET IT ROT IN HELL WHERE IT BELONGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! PLEASE

I am genuinely so sorry, I don't think I can cope with it either

NOBODY CAN

that's a good point, in fact that's the whole point of this entry, which is that right beneath the surface of our daily life there is this HELLBOMB just waiting to go off, if the right godforsaken button is pushed. how horribly, horribly ironic that something from the ocean would do it.

I want to die. God help me I cannot cope with this.

I need to talk to some upstairs people. Christ be our light. Please bury this for now. We can't deal with it yet. Please help us. We don't know what to do.

Good night, God willing. We have Adoration tomorrow morning which means we can sleep in until 7.
We need to visit grandma in the afternoon but… we need a more stable mind first. right now, the thought of walking into that house… hoo boy. it'll be like walking into a minefield. I am absolutely cofronting right now, with a manic red social, there's our coping mechanism incarnate, hello there.

Oh by the way mention that at the gym today, two people got onto the treadmills on EITHER SIDE OF US and we nearly had an absolute mental breakdown on the spot. like it was TERRIFYING. our immediate flashback was to the two guys who mugged us on the sidewalk, they were on either side of us just like that, as we ran and listened to spotify on our phone with that same exact brand of headphones, WOW NO WONDER WE THOUGHT WE WERE GONNA DIE, that is UNCANNILY EXACT.
but yeah. awful. RIGHT AFTER almost hitting that lady's car because we dissociated. and she got out of the car and yelled at us. JUST LIKE when that OTHER blonde angry lady hit us at big lots and we almost died. I think we still have a scar on our back from the broken glass. I hope so. and our hand! I'm sure. I will look in a minute, I can't see in the red light. but it's nice.
the red light washes out our skintone somehow where we look safe. less "physical." more of a concept. it's holy, it's good. there's no food in here. but.
too many people associate red light with sex
and there is definitely still that potential for "eros" in here. somehow. like previews before a movie. maybe that's just trauma flashbacks. but oh I'm so sorry please I don't want to ruin the red light in here for you. it's beautiful. it's safe. I don't want to hurt you. I'm sorry everything is just so weird and terrifying tonigght, there are too many flashbkac,s we don’t want to remember this please god no no no n

all right kids let's get our ass to bed. Laurie out. We've gotta fix this. See you around.

The Resurrection (La Resurrezione) is an 800-quintal (80-metric-ton) bronze/copper-alloy^[1] sculpture by Pericle Fazzini in the Paul VI Audience Hall in Rome.^[2]^[3] Intended to capture the anguish of 20th century mankind living under the threat of nuclear war,^[1] La Resurrezione depicts Jesus rising from a nuclear crater in the Garden of Gethsemane.

You know what, I never understood why such a shocking sculpture was chosen for the Hall, but now-- looking with open heart, and reading that artist's note-- I get it.

Let me pour myself out here.

The Cross itself is "scandalous." It's inherently terrifying. Our most common representation of the God Who Loves Us is of His Son's destroyed and bleeding body nailed to a piece of ragged wood. It's horrific, really. But it's true. It's "foolish" and "insane" to those without faith-- and understandably so! God's Wisdom is incomprehensible to the proud human mind; it is "ridiculous" to those who boast of their intelligence and perspicacity. Why would God crucify His own Son? Better yet, why would God the Son choose to become a man, humble and lowly-- and as a man, choose TO be crucified? What's the point? Isn't it barbaric? Isn't it gruesome? Why would Love work through-- and suffer through-- blood and sweat and spit and gore?

Because Pride wouldn't.

Life itself chose to die so we wouldn't have to.

But Life cannot die. So what then? When Immortality clothes Himself in mortality, what happens to that mortal existence when it is stripped away? Immortality is naked and pure, unaffected by any coverings, but that "clothing" of human nature carries the scent and warmth and blood of God, now. So what happens to the humans who recognize that hidden change, that "wedding garment" set aside and waiting for them? They live, too. They strip off their dusty rags and wrap their souls in His reddened Robe, the Body of the Lamb, and they become sharers in eternity.

That transcendent truth is hidden at the heart of this shocking sculpture. It's meant to shock. It's meant to make you stop, and wonder, and tremble-- this is God, but it's not how we would imagine God to be; why this hideous sight? Why this macabre display?

Yet Christ is still untouched. Gilded and transcendent, He rises above the horror; He ascends out of the very mouth of the underworld-- unscathed, incorruptible, perfect, alive.

In my eyes, this is the fruit of that grisly image we Christians remember with honor. This is the harrowing of hell, perpetually so.

We live in a world increasingly dominated by death, and ruled by rancor. Our very souls are at war with God, and our rotten fruit virulently infects every citizen of the world-- we are entombed in selfishness, apathy, condemnation, violence, dishonesty, abuse, persecution, injustice, terrorism, hatred, want, greed, vanity, and impurity. We dwell in Gethsemane, betrayers all, we sinners who would kiss our Teacher but never hail Him as King. We spit upon the Cross and we crown Him with thorns, as we comfort ourselves with comfort and dress up as sparkling gods. We want nothing to do with His self-denial, we laugh; look at where it leads-- look at that corpse pinned to a tree! How is that God? How is that Love? There is nothing enjoyable or attractive there! There is only blood. There is only death, and useless sacrifice, a man dying for sins we did not commit! This we crow as we distract ourselves from the corpses also around our feet, from the stench of grave-rot even now mildewing our souls. We live in the Garden of Agony but we keep eating the forbidden fruit, proud of our "wisdom," forgetting that we shall die from it. Meanwhile the Lord of Light sobs in the dark and chooses to be murdered so He can save you. You don't ask for it. You wouldn't. But He does it anyway, because you still need it.

As bombs leave craters in the earth, so the explosions of sin destroy our hearts. So our offenses ruin each other. We don't even see the mushroom cloud; it's too far away. Perhaps those people deserve it. Perhaps it's better this way; it would've been worse if we didn't drop it. These are our excuses. We wash our hands and let Love be crucified. We turn our backs on the annihilation, unwilling to admit it exists, let alone that our actions-- or our total inaction-- is what ripped open the world like that. All we did was push a button, or let someone else do so; how could such a little thing be bad? We forget the butterflies and hurricanes. We walk away from the Cross.

The Garden is nuked. We have nothing to eat. We have nowhere to mourn. God is dead and we all have blood on our hands. Hell has come to earth, and we have nowhere to run.

Christ walks into the heart of the crater we made.

This is Love. This is the Cross. This is the Burial and the Resurrection. This is death, in all its red & raw reality, burning holes in our bones, undenied and yet completely powerless now that Life has met it in the very Garden it thought it devoured. The Tree of Life remains, incomprehensibly whole, ingrued now with the seeds of agony, yet blooming into fathomless sweetness. Christ is in the crater; He has endured the scorching heat and crushing force of hate, and despite all devastation He lives!! And He has opened the gates of Life for all of us beneath the bombs. We, too, have tasted His bitter Cross; therefore we, too, will join the Wedding feast with Him-- we lost and repentant sinners, now naked without our wealth and scared without our knowledge, living in the streets and begging for bread. He pulls us close to His pierced Heart, kisses our ashen lips, and carries us to His Home. He knows what we've done. He knows what we didn't do. He recognizes our hands as the ones that held the nails and scourges and silver and swords, our voices as the ones that mocked and condemned or mumbled or stopped, our faces as the ones that sneered or turned away or just glanced, unfeeling. We did not love Him. We did not want Him. We loved ourselves enough to satisfy; we had everything we desired. But the bombs fell, and we lost the world, and now death is lurking the back alleys and what now, we asked each other, shaking and weeping? What hope is there? Is there a God? Was He really God? If He died, then-- if we killed Him; if we let Him die, if we didn't even care-- what now?

We forget He chose to. We forget that He never forgot us-- until suddenly He is there, in the slums with us, the moment we remember and decide to go look for Him. Hope does not disappoint. He still lifts us from the debris and dries our tears.

"Do not worry, my child. It's easy to find Me," He says. "I am always on the Cross; you only need to meet me there."

See, Love does not run from death. Love does not ignore the suffering. Love knows it is inevitable. Love does not try to justify or diminish the reality of the horrors we face. Love does not shun responsibility either. Love sees how we all hurt and hurt each other, unable or unwilling to bandage our collective wounds, and Love immediately runs onto the battlefield with every salve and suture it can carry. Love does not pick sides; Love does not exclude or reject; Love does not hold grudges or biases or proud judgments. Love sees every soul as a part of itself, and cherishes it as such. Love is willing and able to willingly give its own life for the sake of those it loves. Love chooses to pick up that Cross and shoulders it with absolute ardor, bleeding all the way to death itself, even if you're the one who it belongs to-- even if you put it on His shoulders yourself-- because now you don't have to carry that Cross alone.

And it is no mere man Who carries your sorrows. It is God Himself.

Now, even though you will still die-- for all men eventually do, no matter how far and fast they may run-- now, you have the option to die with Him. With God.

So. If He dies with you, what then? If you admit that your name should be on that Cross instead, and surrender to the suffering life brings, what then, if He joins you in that choice, if you join Him in His?

Do you wonder, when you look at His face there, bruised beyond visual recognition? Do you wonder, when you hear His voice clogged with pain? Your own body is torn to pieces. How is this saving you? Why is He dying too? He is not coming down from the gibbet. Neither are you. All you can smell is blood.

But God smiles with broken teeth. "I am the Resurrection and the Life," He whispers to you over the air raid sirens. "Whoever believes in Me will never die, but will have eternal life. Do you believe this?"

What, then? Do you? Or are you still too frightened to have faith?

What if He told you He loves you?

There, on your own Cross, in your own death, ruined and wrecked, He loves you. He did not do this to you. Sin itself did-- yours, and all of humanity's, known and unknown-- its very touch is a death sentence, now nailed above your head in lurid letters, but He knew those words already and He speaks different ones, against all common sense and self-loathing and bitterness, and you cannot understand. He shoulders the weight with you, without your asking-- your pride would not let you. You don't understand how He loves you if you're up there, but... so is He, you must admit. Smiling, His eyes so sincere. He looks at you and for a moment you forget pain; you forget death. For a moment, you get it.

He loves you. Life Himself loves you.

Do you trust in that love? Do you trust in Him, dying with you?

Now, in your bleakest moments, you have a spark of hope. You are embraced in the infinite reach of His outstretched arms. You are seen, you are cared for, you are healed-- somehow, somehow, no matter the damage, your soul is preserved entire, clothed in dazzling light, and no man on earth can frighten you now--

This is love, you suddenly realize. How strange. How perfect.

O Death, where is your sting? It has been transmuted into song.

Through the Cross, God has claimed the very territory of death for Himself. In His awesome Wisdom and Power, He has vanquished every enemy by their own weapons; He has ultimately disarmed hell itself. Death has been nullified. Through the Cross, every tombstone now becomes a door, to soon be rolled away in joy.

Now, by His sharing in humanity's suffering, every soul seemingly trapped in misery now has a Way out of it, forever. That misshapen wreck of bronze, that mangled tree, those burned branches of our scarred and scalded arms reaching desperately to a heaven we cannot see-- Christ has come down to bind our broken hands, and with all tenderness, to lift us up with Him. We shall ascend from our anguish. We have hope beyond all hell.

We look to the Cross, in all its awful splendor, and we no longer run-- we embrace it. No matter what we must endure at human hands, Christ is in the crater with us.

Another rough day so far.

I keep getting massive stuttering panic attacks when I have to talk to people, even my own grandmother. I feel like I'm in court, like there is no such thing as an innocent conversation anymore. I'm so ashamed of myself, of my very existence right now. I know its because of the gluttonous weight gain diet I'm on. I'm utterly humiliated. I'm so FAT. Everything hurts, and I'm always nauseous. I can't even sleep at night. I want to sob.

People keep asking weird questions about my diet plan, too, and making weird comments. Even the kitchen. I want to throw up and scream and weep and die. I have no appetite at all anymore. I don't want to eat. I'm so bloody tired of food. The very act of eating feels like torture, like abuse, all over again. I'm so tired.

I still haven't heard a thing about inpatient.

I have a pounding headache again. I bet it's the butter.

I'm fasting tomorrow, though. I've decided. No meat, no butter. I have to. I'm getting so gross.

I must be severely intolerant to some food I'm eating. Maybe the cheese? It's new. But the headaches, the hot flashes, the heart racing, the fatigue, the phlegm coughs-- is this going to be my life now? Just sickness and suffering whenever I have to eat? Can I offer this up as a cross? Or does it not count, because it's a sin? Why is every act of eating objectively a heinous SIN???

I want to go home. I give up.

If there's no inpatient or residential, I will do PHP. Or even better, i hope there's no PHP either, and I can just dissociate from all this and pick up where I left off, taking care of grandma all day and all night-- a life of loving service, not demonic food.

Except... I was fighting and losing this war then, too. That's why I'm here, the asshole who ate enough to feed a small country and then puked it all up, sobbing and helpless and STUPID STUPID STUPID.

I just want this all to stop.

I want to cry.

My self image in nightmares is fat now, and fat = whore. Inevitably now if I become aware of this body in a dream, "I" immediately become a catty prostitute and end up reliving trauma memories. I hate this. I want to be thin and pure and safe and REAL again. Not this garbage bag of devil flesh.

I struggled to come to terms with my new reflection all last week. This body is so bloated I look like a corpse. My skin hurts all over like a bruise from the sudden stretching-out.

I tried real hard to give it a positive spin. "I have Mewtwo legs now," I thought. "I have an Alcremie body now." Trying to associate size with something sweet, something strong. But it's not working. It's fighting too horrific and powerful an enemy.

When I look in the mirror, I see everything I'm terrified of.

I have Y's legs.

I have C's face.

I have S's stomach.

I have mom's shape.

I want to DIE.

I WANT TO DIE IF I HAVE TO LIVE LIKE THIS.

...Maybe that's why I'm forcing the butter, besides UPMC programming. Everyone just wants me to gain weight, with NO thought for my psychological or spiritual health, and the fastest way to do that is by pushing fats and carbs. Butter and pasta. Literal whore food. If I saw myself eating that outside of this prison I would eviscerate this bloated body with a butcher knife.

God I miss knives, oh God I miss the knives and the razors and the sharp-edged combs. I wonder if I could get a plastic knife, smuggle it into the bathroom... get a plastic comb, break its teeth so it learns to bite. 2010 era flashbacks. White-haired, red-stained days. Blood and horror. Why do I miss that, so suddenly? Do I miss the family inside? Oh I do, I do, who am I kidding, I miss Knife and Razor and Wreckage and everyone else. I miss being alive.

"Lord, grant me an upright mind."

God, I cannot drag my mind out of this. I must think of You but I feel trapped in my mourning. Is that a sin? Is this pride?

God, how can I serve You even in this distress?

Let's go back to the body.

Laurie told me there is hope, there is possibility. Yes, I look hideously ugly and frightening right now. Yes, I feel very sick and shaken. But this hell space of food focus is temporary. Sooner or later, I will be in a QUIET place, away from constant strangers conversations, able to exercise and sleep and sing and play music and write and paint and go to church. Eventually I will be free of this. And then I can FIX THIS.

I can start running miles every day again. I can eat my safe vegetables and not push calories. I can go outside and see the trees. I can live.

But I can also utilize this weight, Laurie said. Looking at my body frame, I'm not as stick thin as I always wished and thought I was? I appear to be built sturdier, thicker. I've got wide shoulders and solid limbs. If I get an exercise routine going (remember the Sonic & Medabots biking days???) I can get this fat to fuel MUSCLE growth. So that's hope at least.

The deeper problem is... do I want to be so strong? Yeah, it's definitely a desirable possibility on one hand, but... even deeper down, I still... admittedly I want to stay 11 years old. I want my child body back, thin and slender and safe and pure and lively and bright and UNSEXED AND UNTOUCHED.

I want to cry. I can't grow up, not really. I can't integrate the concept.

...Well. The good news is I just threw up. My sitting nurse is that super quiet handsome guy that first sat here after I had that trauma meltdown from that one lady last week. Thank God. I know the redhead kid last night had his purpose too-- I learned a LOT from that-- but the mental and physical pain I was getting from lunch was too much to bear safely. I was legit PLANNING to bleed. That CANNOT be taken lightly, in BOTH senses-- blood is holy and should NEVER flow for something as stupid as self hatred over food. Now, if it was in atonement for my gluttony and wastefulness... but no. Not even that justifies it anymore, now that I understand my faith more.

...They just started singing the Anima Christi hymn on EWTN. I want to cry. God, I cannot fathom how You can still love me like that.

...I need to return to the growing-up concept, now that my stomach is emptier and I can form a coherent thought.

I am, honestly, afraid of looking like I did when I was about 17, before I started to drop weight (remember I was GORGEOUSLY THIN in 2012; I miss that so much). High school was the last time I was fat-- once college hit, trauma memories resurfaced and that weight became a tangible, inescapable perpetuation of it. But prior to that, prior to the Spectrum waking up-- yes, there was a time when it was ONLY the coregroup gang-- I did not remember the terror, and my childhood had been buried for protection, so the body was wild and manic and energetic and RED. Every photo I see of the body from high school is FRIGHTENING. The eyes are wild, the clothes are tight, the muscles are firm, the grin is violent. She was a demon in a very real sense, at least looking back visually.

But our INNER world back then was PROLIFIC despite the physical beastliness. Our inner self, that "Jewel," was the one who was obsessed with Trigun and Chrno Crusade and Zatch Bell, with Medabots and Sonic and NiGHTS and Pokémon, with Yugioh and Sailor Moon and DragonBall Z, with Tokyo Mew Mew and Transformers and Fullmetal Alchemist. She LIVED in media and she LOVED the souls she met there. She lived ENTIRELY out of herself. So she never even knew what her body was like. But she was MANIACAL in her own right. She had more sheer energy that she knew what to do with. Yes, she loved to run and exercise, that we know. But as for life in public? She was nonexistent. And when you put a manic red wildness out among people... you get hell. You end up with a gluttonous, violent slut.

That's why the photos are terrifying. SOMEONE ELSE WAS DRIVING THE BODY, because the STATE of the body was INCOMPATIBLE WITH OUR TRUE SELF. If our current Jewel, crazy as she was, couldn't even inhabit it... then our child self NEVER could. And that means that big body was INCOMPATIBLE WITH INNOCENCE. It could never be pure. It could never be gentle. It could never be safe. It could never be good.

So. I NEVER WANT THE BODY TO LOOK LIKE THAT AGAIN BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT EVILS WILL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF ITS SIZE AND STRENGTH AND HEALTH, and I KNOW THAT IT IS A HELLFIRE ENVIRONMENT THAT WILL INCINERATE ALL CHILDHOOD PURITY IN AN INSTANT.

A big body is nothing but a furnace for destruction. I'm sorry. I don't care about potentially being muscular. That's not my job. It's not my purpose. I NEED to be small and thin and pure and good because like it or not, MY HEART IS RED and if you put that color in the wrong environment IT WILL ANNIHILATE ITSELF.

The trauma dreams prove this. My own bloody reflection right now proves this. I think that's why I keep having panic attacks and sobbing. I cannot cope with this literal hell. I would rather die. At least I would die pure.

But am I pure? Or am I just desperately grasping for it in the wake of unbearable loss, trying to scrub the tar out of my soul and hoping there's still white underneath?

Only God can save me. Only God can heal me now. Only God can fix my utterly broken body and soul, but at this point I would genuinely be happiest if He just... forgave my heinous sins and washed me clean in His blood and let me die like that. I don't want to live anymore, I see no future for me-- except, no, I do, but it's impossible to realize physically and THAT makes me want to cry until the entire world is flooded from heartbreak.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it.

...That's the only way I could ever grow up. Somehow, maybe. God knows. But it's the only possibility. It's the only blessed option. Every other path to adulthood is hideous with trauma and its frantic stains of regret and terror.

I still want to be a nun, yes. But somehow that doesn't register as "growing up." It feels rather like perpetual childhood, because it IS so absolutely inherently pure and kind and good and gentle and safe and holy and untouchable. Religious life IS my ideal, and if God is willing to accept me as such, then please oh Lord, accept me. Guide me to the right convent. Show me, clearly please because my mind is broken, where You would have me live and love You. Show me, I beg of You, if it be Your Will for me.

...but. if it's not.

then my only other option to grow up is to get married.

and there's only one safe way for me to do that in the entire created universe.

...I can't even type it. It's too sacred. I cannot talk about it in common language, in words that even the secular culture uses and abuses and mocks and mangled. It's SO blessed a thing that, as I tragically said, it isn't even possible in this world-- not with this body, not with this past. Unless God works a reality-bending miracle, I cannot get married in this physical life, not as marriage is meant to be. I know this.

...but, God, lately I've actually started to want it.

Oh, I never really did before, not truly. I know this too. I took a simple vow of celibacy in 2nd grade, disgusted by dating and infatuation and sexuality as a whole, and I kept it right up until the initial onslaught of abuse took it from me in 8th grade. That broke me, and ironically cemented my determination to detach completely from all sexuality in this world, especially marriage, in which it was mandatory.

...Then I fell impossibly in love.

Seven years later, my heart changed completely, and... for the first time in my life, I had hope that God could fix even me. I had hope that, despite everything, God could heal my shattered soul and show me what He meant marriage to be.

But I went about it wrong.

I brought the body into it.

And everything went to hell.

It's an old story. But it's important in this context.

...I don't want to eat dinner tonight. I'm actually not bloated right now. I've also been exercising as much as I can while hospitalized and that is helping too. But... if I don't eat tonight, I will get in trouble, and they're weighing me tomorrow anyway so if that number drops I'm really sunk. God help me, I'm so tired of food.

I'm starving but I'm so tired of the food that perishes. It's not what I need.

I need the Eucharist, for one. That's tops. But flowing from that, I am so tragically hungry for love.

...I guess you could say I even have an appetite for it.

God, You knew what You were doing, giving me that dream, huh. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst, Father Cedric Pisegna drove that point right between my ribs on Sunday, too; the spiritually hungry look for spiritual food, and God promises that they will find it. Without that appetite, there's no seeking. Without that want, that ache... and I'm not talking about the physical. That garbage has nothing to do with this. I'm talking about a hungry heart. I'm talking about deer and running streams. I'm talking about "This is My Body." I'm talking about LOVE. I'm talking about GOD.

And that's why I want to get married.

I've been....obsessed with the entire concept lately, as a concept, as a core, a heart-- the essence studied apart from the worldly distortions and lies. Looking at its very soul has shown me the absolute beauty of it, the absolute holiness of it, and I understand why Christ is the Bridegroom and why He constantly talks about His relationship with us-- us!!-- in marital terms. It's mind-blowing and yet it's TRUE-- and that would have TERRIFIED me at any point in the past when I didn't get it. Because I didn't, not until now.

But why now?

Maybe it's because I know I'm dying. Maybe it's because I know I'm starting. Maybe it's because I'm so tired of not loving as much as my heart demands and the only way TO do so is to give myself to my beloved totally. That's how God does it. And I think-- no, I know I must do the same, or my heart will die from sorrow. I'm RED, for heaven's sakes. My entire soul is defined by ardor, by holy fire, by warmth and life and blood and... and love, love so absolute and true that it must encompass everything. God is Love, and the Trinity is a relationship, and Jesus is our Bridegroom, and if we therefore want (need) to immerse ourselves fully in that love, we have to get married. Either to God, or to a God-loving soul. I can only be a nun or a wife.

Except I think God is changing that "or" to "and." Paradoxically.

I cannot get married physically. I might not be accepted into a convent because of my health. BUT. I can still somehow be both a 'nun' in the world and a wife in my heart. At least, God, I hope so. I want that more than anything.

I can still be a consecrated virgin physically, I hope. At least I can vow myself to God nevertheless.

But in my innerworld... I am so wracked with indecision. I can't just turn off love. I can't just act like eighteen years of love never happened. I can't just abandon the only thing that has ever legitimately felt like a vocation to me... yes, awfully, even moreso than wearing a habit, because to be totally blunt with you, my joining a convent would involve more than a little bit of "running away from the world to be with God" and that's not proper motivation. Honestly I just adore God and in a sense I feel like being a nun is the ONLY way to love Him enough.

...But He also gave me someone that I love so much, it has brought me closer TO God than anything else in my entire life. And God knows that. I know He does. We've talked about it.

And that's where I stand tonight.

...but if I died tonight, I wouldn't even care about marriage or my body or anything. I just care about God. He's all that matters, no matter how stupid and wretched I've been. God, I really do love You more than anything. I'm so sorry for everything. Please, forgive me, and have mercy on my poor soul.

“If love is going to be done differently I will have to do it. I don’t mean as a messiah-thing, I mean as a me-thing. I want to look into your eyes and not get blown up. I want you to see me as I am and not destroy me. I don’t want to retreat into plant life, or have the same bad dream every night. I don’t want to watch a city burn because I was there.”
— ‘The Agony of Intimacy,’ Jeanette Winterson

I have a lot to say about this but it won’t fit in a reblog. I’ll post it separately.

Just… this is a knife to the chest. A red-hot, tear-marred knife plunged right into my heart, buried to the hilt.

Poetry hits the hardest, always.

Dear God, there is too much old trauma staring me in the face with this; how can I truly let go? How can I honestly heal? How can I move on properly?

I’m so terrified to love anything now because I remember that burning city. I remember the blood and fire, the despair, the death… but I also must remember the impossibly bright hope that bloomed in the ashes of its terror, like lilies flourishing in the forgiving snow, pure and holy despite all that came before.

Love has to be done differently, now. What I once labeled as love was not love. The southern bedrooms were not love. The cold floors and cramped closets were not love. The burning attics and locked bathrooms and rotting forests were not love. And I have to do it differently now. No running water, no string lights, no computer screens, no closed doors, no parroted phrases, no annihilation of self. No hell masquerading as heaven. No messiah complexes. No moral relativism. No compromises. No exceptions.

I want to be able to love as my own person.

But what does that even mean?

I feel so filthy, so dirty, so wrong and evil and twisted corrupted broken, like something that would maim and poison you if you touched it, that I am too ashamed to pray, I am too disgusted to try. I want to love but it feels ugly coming from me. I want to be loving but it feels abusive and fake coming from me. What does real love look like, apart from you? Can it even exist in me? Right now I doubt it, and I weep with miserable despair over it. You deserve all the love I could ever hope to feel or give, and infinitely more. But if I’m the one giving it, it’s ruined. It becomes empty, false, fake. I don’t think I can feel love without doing it wrong somehow. And that terrifies me to the point where I just… shut off my heart. I become numb and hollow and empty so that at least there’s no toxic garbage getting anywhere near you, or anyone else.

I want to be able to look into your eyes without wanting to gouge my own out, tearful and enraged at my unworthiness and sin, afraid that it’s all clear as day in my gaze, turning even a glance from me into a garish revelation of degeneracy and scandal. How could I lie enough to look at you– you, with your heartwrenching eyes of spotless love and honest compassion!– how could I meet those eyes with my own, knowing how monstrous I am in comparison? The gall of the very thought is choking. I cannot look at you without wanting to die– without desperately wishing I could self-destruct, to relieve the world of my sinful existence in a conflagration of cleansing fire, to leave it safe with you, who would never have to risk your achingly beautiful eyes in looking upon my walking corpse ever again.

How could anyone see what I am and not instinctively want to crush me underfoot like a venomous snake? Things like me invoke an innate revulsion, a knee-jerk survival response of protective violence, lashing out to snap my neck or spine, to destroy the object of horror before them. Even you, I’m sure, even you would want to see me gone if you knew what a danger I was to mankind, to you, to the health and safety of all good hearts. I’m something that should be stepped on until it snaps. I know this better than anyone, and it wrecks me utterly.

I’m tired of hiding in the mangled woods like a wild animal. I’m tired of the unending trauma nightmares and flashbacks and blackouts. I don’t want any more God-forsaken cities to burn down to the splinters because I was there.

Intimacy is only agonizing because it includes me.

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