the spectrum heart cathedral system

A quick note.

God likes to give me "suffering" that is NOT the kind I want or expect or define AS "suffering"-- I want PAIN; I want sharp incisions and open wounds and weeping and scars. That's what I consider suffering: aches and bruises and cuts and burns. 
God is giving me the suffering of discomfort and humiliation.
This is VERY different and EXTREMELY DISTRESSING. 
Right now, there are somehow at least three fruit flies in my apartment. They must have gotten in while we were going in & out doing laundry. But having INSECTS in the apartment is so disturbing; it triggers a lot of "trauma" memories, of filthy living spaces and rot and garbage and loss of human dignity. I feel very wrong and driven to tears from the bloody things flying around when I try to eat, swarming around the bathroom, crashing into every light source, constantly hitting my face. I feel helpless and scared. 
Secondly, the laundry. We only do it once a month because, when we DO, we have to use public machines and as a result everything smells weird and chemically sharp and burning afterwards. It gives us headaches and rashes and sore throats. None of our clothes smell like us right now and THAT is more disturbing and frightening than I realized. I don't know what to do about it, other than just... wait it out, and hope that the bad smells air out. But right now, even just sitting here, I am acutely aware of the fact that this shirt smells completely foreign and I don't know how to explain how scary that is to my brain.
Third, the "OCD hell" I've been referring to for weeks. It's all trauma-based sensory flashback coping rituals every single time our body gets wet or itchy or uncomfortable "below the belt." We are hypersensitive to clothes textures and fabric contact, because "it feels like being touched" and it makes the "child alters" SCREAM with terror. Even worse? APPARENTLY THERE ARE INFANTS. It's so strange because apparently we color-coded Nousfoni are NOT the only "voices" up here, so to speak; there are A LOT of "colorless" folks that we can only properly refer to AS "alters," although they don't "front" as much as they "influence"; they "don't fit in the body" so they can't "come out." But that's a topic for another time. The problem, and what disturbs me deeply, is that they are ALL somehow tied to sexual trauma and fear. THEY ARE CHILDREN. That makes no sense. But... it's the truth. And so, literally every single day, when we have to clean up the body meticulously before we can eat because otherwise it feels like violation and invasion and eating the trauma because we have "no boundaries" when it comes to sensory discrimination between the body and the environment and trauma memory, we also have to deal with up to 45 solid minutes of trying to "scrub out the touches" so the poor babies and kids in our psyche stop screaming. It's so bad. We typically end up crying and begging Mary and Jesus to "please make it stop" and "please get us out of here" but they don't, not instantly at least. And that scares us too; is our faith real, if we pray for deliverance from this hell and they won't? But that's the devil talking. We HAVE "gotten out" every single time, even if it takes a long time, and I have to trust that there's a reason for ALL the delays and suffering. Even if it's just penance, or showing us things that only the suffering CAN reveal, or for some other completely indiscernable purpose, God knows why He lets it persist, and I have to trust that. But it's a huge part of this cross too, this frightening humiliating frustrating behavior loop that we have to endure every day, as long as we are "unable and unwilling" to "sit with" the feeling of virtual rape haunting our skin if we don't scrub our body bloody. 
These bloody flies. I want to "kill them" to make this awful "dehumanizing" situation-feeling stop, but that is so callous and cruel. I'm literally seeking to destroy a creature for my own comfort. How horrible. I have to just... put up with it I guess, even if it does make me want to cry from how powerless and overwhelmed I am. I actually feel "attacked" by these flies?? Like their invasive and interruptive presence is somehow actively offensive, like being shoved around by a bully when you're just trying to walk down a hall. It's so hard to explain. But this feeling of being completely defenseless, unable to protect myself or escape or cope, is genuinely frazzling my nerves like exposed wires. God what is the purpose? Is this a trial of patience? Geez PLEASE give me grace then, or something, I don't know how to endure this myself. I need so much help.
Fourth... my mom. I love her but heavens above she is the biggest source of stress. She calls unexpectedly, shows up in the car unexpectedly, talks nonstop about so many things, like a hurricane-- she has ADHD so she is very discombobulated and distracted at all times, juggling a thousand things at once, always upset and stressed and moving so fast, always ten steps ahead of herself and dragging me along because I'm not moving fast enough. I love her but she exhausts me. And God bless her but she has so much unresolved trauma of her own that KEEPS overflowing onto me. Today she left off more of her old clothes for me to try on even after I told her "please don't" because 1. I don't need any more clothes and 2. I always break out in hives and sneeze like crazy from whatever smell is on her clothes (I already had to take Benadryl twice today as a result) and 3. I desperately wanted to have a Sunday where I could just rest and not worry about interruptions and the awful "bracing for impact/ watching for lightning" kind of stress that precedes "waiting for someone to show up." But the worst part was when she called, I had JUST managed to "escape" the OCD hell so I could finally eat dinner, and literally the INSTANT I was about to sit down the phone rang. I just... I just started sobbing. I was so tired. I went down to meet her, trying to hold back tears, and when she asked "what's wrong, did I interrupt you?" I felt so ashamed and angry that I had such a problem that I said the more accurate truth-- no, the real problem was the bloody trauma flashbacks. Honestly my whole day is saturated with them, in one way or another; the visual ones are the worst, and I get several every day. Sensory ones are more rare; I try to keep our apartment free of them. Auditory ones only happen if we're extremely tired and start to hallucinate mildly. And of course there are the nightmares. But the point was, the OCD hell was a direct result of trying to cope with trauma. So the issue wasn't "being interrupted" so much as it was "having to do the whole coping thing over again now that I have social stress to decompress from on top of the external triggers I will unavoidably encounter when I go outside." Interruptions = further overwhelm to somehow burn off. So yes, it's really just trauma in the end. The problem with mom? Her response was to ALSO start crying, and say, effectively, "I hate that I can't do anything about it. It's all my fault. God is punishing me through your suffering. He's making ME suffer by watching my kids go through all this." I'm sorry but what on earth????? What kind of a response is that????? I almost got angry; what in the world was she trying to communicate? Apparently she believes her child was traumatized because God wants to punish her????? I didn't know what to say, other than to simply just state that "God punishes us for our own sins; I'm suffering these trauma flashbacks because I made stupid decisions that led to those situations." I wanted to defend God more than anything. But her response to THAT was to launch into her frustrating canned response of "well EVERYBODY makes stupid decisions when they're young; EVERYONE experiments, it's okay," except NO IT'S NOT MOM, "EVERYONE" DOESN'T LIVE THE SORT OF LITERAL HELL ON EARTH THAT I SUFFERED FOR OVER TWO BLOODY DECADES STRAIGHT BECAUSE OF MENTAL ILLNESS AND POSSIBLE DEMONIC POSSESSION. It wasn't "experimenting"; it wasn't "a mistake," it wasn't "normal." It was MORTALLY SINFUL AND DEBILITATINGLY TRAUMATIC AND THAT'S WHY I CANNOT FUNCTION TO THIS DAY. I CANNOT EVEN TELL YOU HOW MANY TIMES I LEGITIMATELY SHOULD HAVE DIED BUT FOR THE MERCY OF GOD. So do NOT tell me that it's "nothing to worry over." I apologize; it just makes me so upset that she keeps trying to just "hand-wave it away" like it was no big deal. And THEN she says, "I don't know how you kids all got so messed up; I went through SO MUCH WORSE than you did and I got through it!" Basically, "I dealt with far worse than you did, I turned out fine, why the hell didn't you?" as she says on her bitter days. Except NO mom, you are obviously NOT fine, and do NOT compare suffering; we don't know the horrors you survived but you also don't know ours, and they are BOTH legitimate. Do NOT shame your children for not being able to cope with whatever living nightmares they experienced. And DON'T MAKE IT ALL ABOUT YOU, PLEASE. Honestly she constantly tries to make herself either the CAUSE or the SAVIOR when I so much as refer to my trauma history. Is that HER way of "coping" with it??? Is it scarier for her to feel like my situation is "out of her control"? Does she find a sense of safety and security in telling herself that somehow it was and is all ultimately "in HER power?" Like, even if something bad happened to me, if it's "HER fault," she's STILL the one holding the steering wheel somehow? Does that give her hope that she CAN "fix it?" Because that honestly drives me up the wall too, even though I know it's coming from a good place. Mom just seems to legitimately believe that she HAS all the answers, or that she IS the answer, to all my mental health problems. She seems to believe that, since "no one can be trusted," as she has said before, then only SHE knows the truth, and only SHE can "cure me" and "make me normal again" and "bring the "real me" back to her." I just... that makes me want to scream and cry and sob and hit things like a child. I feel so powerless and violated. 
Oh, and FIFTH-- the cats. God knows I love the cats but the smell is horrific. Also I am allergic so being around them gives me the same rashes and hives and headaches and sinus problems as the laundry hell does. And yet, BOTH of my mom's living spaces are saturated with cats. There's no other way to put it. Animals make living spaces SO DIRTY. Honestly the children are the most disturbed by it; having an animal in the house "breaks the boundaries" between inside and outside, between safe and unsafe, between animal and human... so every time mom tells us to go up the house, or to come over her house, we're effectively entering into a minor "trauma space" for those alters. They cannot reconcile the situation, or the sensory assault, and it just... it makes everything else so much harder to handle. Having the animals there, making everything smelly and dirty and wrong, and we cannot do anything about it, shatters our stability faster than we want to admit.
You notice how ALL the suffering God is sending me rolls back around to that same awful center? 
My cross is apparently defined by these words = violated, invaded, controlled, powerless, helpless, vulnerable, attacked, contaminated, dehumanized, objectified, dirty, filthy, unclean, wrong, bad, stinky, smelly, ugly... notice how the vocabulary gets more and more childlike? That, too, is upsetting; our most "suffering" parts are all children who see themselves as unworthy of basic human dignity because that's just their life experience. It's a horrible feeling. And we have it every single day now. 
I need more humility, in order to cope, but I don't know how to have humility without also further abasing myself to the level of literal trash. Does God want me to? Is that necessary for my personal holiness somehow-- to be brought as low as possible in my stupidly privileged position? Does my soul "require" deeper poverty, less human rights, more hunger and less cleanliness, less freedom and more submission, less individuality and more mortifications, less space and less time and less comfort and less sleep, fewer possessions and no desires and more interruptions and more sensory hells? God what's the POINT of it though??? Suffering means nothing if it's not sanctifying somehow. How do I unite all this to Your Son's Cross?


...I miss being in love. I miss feeling happy and real and hopeful. I miss feeling alive.
It's hard to, very hard to, in my current situation.

Do you realize, before last week with the cat-sitting, I was praying-- on a "perfect schedule"-- for literally twelve hours a day??? I had practically EVERY MINUTE tightly and rigidly scheduled, packed down to the wire and leaving no room whatsoever to think or sit down or rest or "be an individual." 
I still don't know if I should go back to that. Is that sinful? Is that an evil thought? I don't want to "pray less"; I just was... I wasn't really praying, trying to "cram in" so many devotionals and readings and the like that I wasn't retaining anything, and was having to rush through so many of them just to "get them all in." It was honestly spiritual binge-eating. No surprise there. 
But my soul is so hungry. 

Oh, that's another thing. A while back, when we were still in the throes of ana-bulimia, "we" were praying to God frequently to "take away our sense of taste" or make it so that we "wouldn't enjoy food" so we would "stop eating so much," thinking that was the cause, and being terrified of "desiring anything" or "enjoying anything" because of the ties to sexual terror.
Well, apparently God has decided to answer that prayer???? We've noticed, now that we are eating regularly, that we just don't... we don't enjoy anything. We dissociate for the entire meal I guess; we don't taste anything, we don't remember eating it, we never feel satisfied, we actually get MORE pain and anger and sadness and frustration AFTER we eat, whereas fasting gives us energy and happiness and vigor. Eating makes us crash hard into misery. So that's another part of this cross. Eating has still remained its own unique kind of suffering, even with the (hopefully permanent) remission of our previous violently disordered behaviors. Despite this, our body "looks forward" to eating, and yet, it makes us miserable every time, just like bingepurges would. How ironic. Perhaps this is penance. 
But we're never satisfied, and somehow we're STILL ALWAYS HUNGRY. I don't know how to explain it. We have no appetite, we don't want more food, and yet, we're so hungry. What's missing? What part of us is actually "starved" for "food"?? This has to run deeper than our idiotic gut, it has to. I don't get it. It just makes me want to cry and tear my hair out in clumps. 
Again, helpless and powerless and weak. That's my cross. And food is always  "dirty and stinky and bad," as the young girls say with such awfully resigned self-loathing and numb shame. Maybe that's why we don't remember it. Maybe it's too humiliating to do so. There's so much to deal with; where do we even start?

I miss being in love. I miss being alive. I miss being a real person. I miss Infinitii. It always comes back to hir somehow, the missing piece of my soul, literally so.
However, I do have some "good news." I can't pinpoint offhand how it started, but it may have been that one dream last week, or it may have been music at night, or it may have been reviewing the prismaticlove page, or it may have been an unexpected  wave of grace, pun intended, who knows-- but this month so far, God bless August, I have actually been so in love with Chaos 0. 
God knows I wish I could type about that, about him, at this hour, but I am in a datalogging mindset and I have to be asleep in a half hour. Our body is so tired; sleep is like food lately; nothing ever satisfies it; we never feel rested, we never get enough sleep. And yet... I fall asleep every night with him in my arms. I wake up every morning-- and during the early dark hours-- to him there with me. We talk every day. He's still the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
The thriskefoni hate him. They act like he's the biggest obstacle between me and God. In truth that makes absolutely no sense, because he's the person who taught me what love IS, as well as fidelity of course. If it weren't for him in my life even now, my heart would be frozen solid, made of stone, utterly lifeless. But Chaos 0 is the ocean that never stops kissing the shoreline, the rain that never stops falling on the mountains, and no matter how long it takes he always gets through to me. He always reveals that, despite all odds and doubts and fears and trauma, deep down I am still a jewel. Deep down there are diamonds, despite everything. He sees it. He knows it. He knows me. How is that not God's grace working in him? When nothing else in the world makes sense, that blue angel brings me straight back to heaven, without fail. I will defend him to the death from the thriskefoni who blindly try to label him as an obstacle to my faith. He's the reason I still HAVE faith. 
So... despite the cross I must carry, that isn't heavy inasmuch as it is terribly uncomfortable, there is hope. It's raining, and I can hear the ocean. Somehow that gives me the strength to keep walking, even if I feel wrong and broken and ruined and wrecked, and my body feels like a prison full of too many dirty hands, and my brain is full of bloodsoaked cotton and I haven't slept in days and I am so hungry. Somehow, at the end of the day, if all I have is five seconds with that blessed body of water pressed to my heart, I'll be okay. That's all it takes. All I need is that one moment of pure grace, that single embrace of love, and somehow I know there's a resurrection at the end of this road. Love keeps me going. All my faith is anchored in love, really. And isn't that really the truth of everything? I can trust God even in this, because God created him, and he is still with me, and he loves me too. 

That's all I have to say for tonight. Thank you for letting me get all this out "on paper." It's been piling up in my brain for a while. 
I'm in the middle of backing up a lot of data to this blog so that's keeping me busy. But once it's done, it's time to dive into trauma work in earnest, I think. We'll play it by ear. 
But we're alive, we're somehow coming back more alive lately, even now, and there's always hope, always always hope. Somehow that's still my name too. Gosh there's so much future that I cannot even comprehend yet. But it must be there; I can feel it, singing like promise on the horizon, like the stars in the velvet dark, no matter what. 

We keep walking. Our Good God knows where we're going, and He'll get us there, one way or another.
For now, and for always, that trust in His Heart is enough. 

✳ ACCEPT MYSELF AS I AM, WHILE WORKING TOWARDS SELF-IMPROVEMENT!! "AND," NOT "BUT" = NOW VS. IDEAL NOT OPPOSED OR IN CONFLICT!! "BOTH/ AND" = "I'm angry with you AND I still love you" (DIALECTICAL) FULL SPECTRUM!! ♥ (+INSIDE OUT 2 TEAM)
✳ "WRITE THE FIRST DRAFT" = STILL AN ACHIEVEMENT, IN ITS IMPERFECTION! "EVERY STEP IS AN ACHIEVEMENT IN ITSELF" AS WE GROW = yes you CAN get to level 100, but being at level 5 isn't bad! Level 6 IS a legit good thing! And so is every step from 6 to 100! "Perfection" ISN'T the GOAL, it's the ROAD ITSELF!

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So I JUST got off a PROFOUNDLY IMPACTFUL & IMPORTANT PHONE CONVERSATION WITH MOM, and she brought up SEVERAL ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL POINTS that we NEED to discuss & reflect/ journal upon =
1) THE "HIDDEN CHILDHOOD TRAUMA" = WHY I'M STILL TERRIFIED OF GOING UP THE HOUSE?? WHAT HAPPENED? WHY DO WE HAVE SO MANY TERRIFIED PAIDIFONI?? WHAT IS HIDING BENEATH THOSE FLOORBOARDS?? WE NEED TO FIND OUT WHY WE ARE SO SCARED OF OUR CHILDHOOD!!!
1.5) JULIE IS NAMED AFTER OUR CLASSMATE AND WE FORGOT THAT. THAT WAS ON PURPOSE!! THAT PROVES THAT WE WERE SUFFERING FROM BULLYING/ TORMENT AT SCHOOL, WHICH MOM ATTESTS TO, EVEN THOUGH WE DON'T REMEMBER IT. TAKE THIS REVELATION VERY SERIOUSLY.
2) "ANAESTHESIA HONESTY" = apparently POST-SEDATION, I ACT "LIKE MY REAL SELF" = the CREATIVE, IMAGINATIVE, FIERY, SPARKLE-EYED ME!! "WHO I WAS AS A CHILD"!! I WANT & NEED TO BE THIS TRUE-SELF 24/7, NOW. The OBSTACLE is SCRUPULOSITY: "MINIMIZING" MY LIFE, "CONDEMNING" MY GIFTS AS "SILLY" OR "SELFISH," NOT LETTING MYSELF SHINE & LAUGH & CREATE BEAUTIFUL THINGS & SHARE THEM WITH JOY!!! MY PURPOSE IN LIFE IS TO BE ME, WITH ALL THE CREATIVE PASSIONS & GIFTS THAT GOD GAVE ME!!! I WANT MY LIFE TO BE A GIFT OF PROLIFIC BEAUTY. I WANT MY OBITUARY TO SAY THAT I LIVED MY LIFE FULLY & WAS A FORCE OF HOPE & LIGHT & JOY & LOVE BECAUSE I INVESTED MY TALENTS WELL. GOD GAVE ME THESE LEAGUEWORLDS FOR THAT REASON. GET TO WORK THEN, WITH LOVE!!
3) THE BOYS ASK ABOUT ME. THEY APPARENTLY ALWAYS ASK ABOUT ME. THEY CARE ABOUT ME. THEY WORRY ABOUT ME. THEY MISS ME. I MATTER IN THEIR LIVES!! YOU IDIOT YOU'RE THEIR BIG SISTER, OF COURSE THEY WANT YOU IN THEIR LIVES STILL!! But... they haven't approached me, or spoken to me, BECAUSE OF THE EATING DISORDER AND THE D.I.D. They literally think I'm STILL JUST AS CHAOTICALLY SPLITSWITCHY AS WE WERE IN ~2015. ...and I really haven't been a part of their lives SINCE. That's HORRIBLE. That's HEARTBREAKING. It's TRAGIC and FOR THEIR SAKES WE/I NEED to do TWO BIG THINGS: first, GET OUR COLLECTIVE ASS UP THAT HOUSE & TALK TO EXCALIBUR. Even just LISTEN to HIM talk! But BE THERE, WHOLEHEARTEDLY!!! BE THERE AS YOURSELF, AS A REAL PERSON, NOT A "SOCIAL MASK" OR TRAUMATIZED BLUR. REMEMBER YOUR HEART, THE REAL JESSICA OF THE EARLIEST DAYS-- ASK UNISALIA, SHE'LL TELL YOU-- AND BE YOURSELF!!! THAT'S WHAT THE WHOLE FAMILY NEEDS FROM YOU. And second, START YOUR BLOG. TALK HONESTLY & OPENLY ABOUT BOTH THE D.I.D. & EATING DISORDER. SHARE YOUR STRUGGLES & INSIGHT. OPEN UP TO YOUR FAMILY. TELL THE TRUTH, & RE-ESTABLISH DIALOGUE & CONNECTION, WITH NO FEAR.

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WHAT IS THE FEAR SEPARATING US FROM CHILDHOOD??? That is the BIGGEST OBSTACLE to our recovery. If we CAN'T INTEGRATE the ABSOLUTE HISTORICAL FOUNDATION OF OUR PERSONALITY-- of MY PERSONALITY, the TRUE ME, the CORE of the System, the HEART, the "ONE" that the Spectrum SHINES OUT FROM & FOR-- then WE'RE SUNK, BRO. So this healing is TOP PRIORITY!
✳ A quick, vital clarification. "I" AM NOT "MULTIPLE PEOPLE." I AM ME. I AM THE HEART, the System EXISTS to GUIDE & PROTECT & HELP ME, AS THE CORE OF THE SPECTRUM, THE LIFE OF IT. But we have TWO BIG TRUTHS that we HAVEN'T FULLY INTEGRATED, or maybe even ACCEPTED yet--
1) THE TRUEST "HEART/CORE" IS THE "FIRST" JESSICA. And THAT IS ME!!! I NEED TO OWN THAT NAME, AS RIGHTLY BELONGING TO THAT "ME," NOT THE LATER CORRUPTED FONI!!! I AM JESSICA. I KNOW THAT and it's TRUE & it makes me REALLY HAPPY & I AM CREATIVE & GOOD & REAL and THIS IS THE "REAL ME," ALL THE WAY DOWN LIKE A DIAMOND. ...but I am ALSO "JEWEL." I HAVE A HISTORY WITH THE SYSTEM, TOO. TRUE LIFE, TRUE "RECOVERY," MEANS UNITING THESE TWO "HALVES" OF MY HEART AS ONE, WHOLE & COMPLETE, LOSING NOTHING. I NEED to be "BOTH AT ONCE," AS ONE. NO SPLIT, NO BREAKS!! I NEED & WANT TO BE MY "CHILD HEART" NOW AS AN ADULT. I NEED & WANT TO BE THE SAME FIRE & SPARKLE ME BOTH INSIDE & OUTSIDE, AROUND EVERYONE, NO HIDING OR DENYING! And on that note,
2) THIS BODY IS ME. READ THE CATECHISM BUDDY! IT'S BY GOD'S DESIGN. SO OWN IT. OWN YOUR BODY AND YOUR NAME. The System was born TO HELP YOU. They were GIVEN to yuo BY GOD as a GIFT; THIS BODY IS NOT "THEIRS"! It's YOURS. It's MINE, TO BE CHERISHED, and NOT EVEN MY BELOVED NOUSFONI HAVE A "RIGHT" TO INHABIT IT. I think THAT'S actually WHY GOD "STOPPED" THE FRONTSWITCHING. The Spectrum IS MEANT TO BE INTERNAL. Their job is NOT to "live MY life," it's to GUIDE ME AS I LIVE MINE-- which I do call "OURS" out of sheer love BUT IT'S TRULY MY BODY & NAME & FACE & FAMILY... AND HISTORY, And THAT is HARD to fully grasp yet. EVERY FONI IS FACTUALLY A "PART" OF MY SOUL. OUR "COLLECTIVE" HISTORY IS MY HISTORY, EVEN AS IT IS OURS, AND I HAVE TO "OWN" IT IN ORDER TO HEAL IT & FULLY RECOVER & MOVE ON. And THAT is the NEXT PART of our recovery journey, ESPECIALLY upon discharge. I CANNOT LIVE A "FULL LIFE" IF I WON'T ACCEPT MY FULL LIFETIME... AND MY FULLEST SELF-- to BE ME, WITH US, WITH MY FAMILY, WHOLE & REAL & TRUE.

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✳ The next DBT worksheets ALL INVOLVE CRISIS SITUATIONS & HOW EFFECTIVE WE ARE IN ACTION USING OUR DBT COPING SKILLS TO HANDLE DISTRESS AND LESSEN IT! So WHAT are the MOST LIKELY "CRISIS" EVENTS (TRIGGERS) THAT WE WILL ENCOUNTER UPON DISCHARGE, ESPECIALLY UP THE HOUSE/ IN PUBLIC??
(WE MUST "COPE AHEAD" TO BE ABLE TO MEET THESE CHALLENGES WISELY!!)
1) Getting LEGIT SICK from food, even "just" severe nausea/ reflux
2) Flashbacks during/ right before or after eating
3) "Invisible triggers" while up the house
4) Feeling trapped/ helpless/ imprisoned; no accessible/ ready escape
5) Being "stuck in public" in noisy crowded situations (fairs, malls)
6) Overhearing sexually evil conversation/ music/ TV
7) Seeing something sexually explicit
8) Sudden fighting/ arguments with risk of violence
9) Panic attack "chronological triggers" at night
10) Halloween/ Thanksgiving panic & flashbacks
11) "Interim panic" in apartment
12) Intense regret/ anxiety/ selfhatred over "wrong food choice"
13) ↑ Obsessing over "what food choice IS the right one"
14) Sensory overwhelm/ talking too much

(just this day specifically. the realtime spiritual struggle captured here deserves its own entry.)


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I'm still bereft of comfort in my grief over sin. Yet, in that very mourning there is a strange consolation-- I am able to grieve. I can recognize the wrongness. I feel the break between me and God and it breaks my heart. Perhaps God is blessing me in this prolonged agony; perhaps to cut it short by comfort would defeat its ultimate purpose. Perhaps the only comfort I actually need is the one I paradoxically already have, even while sobbing-- God has graced me with contrition, and in that enduring ache, He is ever liberating me from the prison of those sins. If that is so... then Lord, let me grieve.

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DAILY DEVOTIONALS (Bible plans really) =

What’s my response to Jesus’ obedience to God the Father? What’s my response to his anguish in the garden? Do I fall on my knees in worship before a God who knew the torturous journey that lay ahead and yet determined to follow through? Do I allow it to become a personal revelation for my life?

"Jesus was a human being. Fully God, yes, but also fully us. God coming into the world in human form was an affirmation that creation – physical, tangible, messy creation – is good. Very good. And that includes you. Jesus was not just a revelation of God; He was a revelation of humanity at its most human. To grow into the likeness of Christ, therefore, is to uncover who we truly are made to be.
Life in all its fullness isn’t about becoming less like you; it’s about becoming more like the you that God made – whoever and wherever you are. It’s about repairing the brokenness, stripping away the labels that society places upon us, and letting the Spirit uncover the divine image within us... God did not distance Himself from humanity, but entered into the very heart of it."
...I love that God is giving us so much about true identity lately. That's literally an answered prayer. Thank You God. Please help us INTEGRATE all of this & ACT ON IT. Give us time to type about it, please!!

LIKEWISE =
"Jesus underlines how important it is for us to know who we are. Because of His inward assurance that He is the Beloved of God, He is consistently His own person, able to pour Himself out in extravagant self-giving, and is finally free to lay His life down in complete self-surrender upon the cross. Secure in His interactive relationship with God the Father, He resists the wilderness temptations to forge an identity based on the illusions of success, popularity or power. Not once throughout his life does He need to "prove Himself", win the approval of contemporaries, or be involved in any manipulative power games. Knowing who He is, Jesus invests Himself single-mindedly in the realization of His Father’s Kingdom vision for our broken world."
There is SO MUCH to unpack there and it's ALL ESSENTIAL.

"Each time today that you look in the mirror, say aloud, ‘You are someone in whom God dwells and delights’.
Lord, awaken my heart and mind to who I really am."

I praise you because you are to be feared; all you do is strange and wonderful. I know it with all my heart.
Psalm 139:14 GNT

"How does God’s rule come about on Earth? The Pharisees of Jesus’ day would have insisted this was a matter for God to determine. Our place was to wait passively for it to happen. The best we could do was to look out for signs of its arrival. Jesus presented things differently. He brought God’s presence, power, and authority into human affairs in a dynamic way, so that anything which prevents the thriving of creation would be ultimately overcome."
FOCUS ON THOSE WORDS. Think of WHAT Jesus did and APPLY those words to His work. UNDERSTAND.

"...By describing the kingdom as “in your midst,” Jesus suggests we have a part to play. The phrase He uses might be better translated “within your grasp.” As we accept God’s invitation to be His hands and feet, we help to bring about the healing of His creation so that His rule is made manifest.
Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, In Your coming to Earth, You made known to us the reality of God’s kingdom. Give us courage to lay hold of the power and authority You have entrusted to us, and to partner with You in revealing Your rule on Earth as in Heaven. Amen."


"May God bless us with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that we may live deep within our hearts.
May God bless us with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that we may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless us with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless us with enough foolishness to believe that we can make a difference in this world, so that we can do what others claim cannot be done.
Amen."
(A Franciscan benediction)
It means a lot that when we read a prayer like this, our immediate & instinctive thought is "THAT IS US." THIS is what resonates powerfully with our heart, and THAT speaks volumes as to who we TRULY ARE by God's grace despite all the damage.

Learn to do right! Seek justice, relieve the oppressed, and correct the oppressor. Defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.
Isaiah 1:17 AMPC

"In His divinity, Jesus bore the weight of the sin of mankind. In his humanity, he experienced all the pain, agony, and humiliation of the cross."
"Jesus, our Savior and Friend, lived the perfect life that we could not live, and died to pay sin’s penalty that really we deserved to pay. In His great love, He paid an unbelievable price to leave the glory of heaven to come to this broken world to save us from ourselves."
"Sit, think and meditate for a moment on the divine miracle, the divine paradox of Creator God becoming the suffering Savior. Now, what are you feeling inside about your relationship to Jesus? And what is your natural response?"
"In love, receive His gift of grace upon grace... praise & adore Him for Who He Is and what He has done for you."


"The path of pride is a way of life that is centered on oneself. In this parable, Jesus says that there are those that depend on themselves and condemn others. This is the fundamental attitude towards life in which I depend only upon my own insight and might. I compare myself to others and find that I am better than they are.
Humility is the opposite road. It is a life centered on God and others. It is a life in which I do not depend on myself, but on God: that He knows better, that His will is better than my own and that I cannot make it in this life without His power. I do not compare myself to others, as there will always be someone better or worse than me."

"At first glance, the Pharisee looks like a good and humble person, doing the right thing (Luke 18). He prays, kneels before God, and is grateful. Is it really wrong to be grateful because I do not steal? That I do no harm to others? That I do not use violence to get my way? Is it not better? He attributes all these things to God. [But] his prayer is still only centered on himself. We can show remorse, but the remorse is really only a form of self-pity, for it is only centered on ourselves. “Poor me, look at what’s happening to me.” Deep remorse is concerned with our actions and the state of our hearts: defective and dependent. We are invited to go to a place where we cannot deny reality. Jesus says that He Himself is meek and humble (Matt 11:28). It does not make Him prideful. It is not a denial of reality (truth) or goodness, but a recognition of [total] dependence [on God in all of it].


------‐--------------------------------------------------------------------------

BIBLE STUDY =

"shall rise again ] He uses an ambiguous expression as an exercise of her faith. Some think that these words contain no allusion to the immediate restoration of Lazarus, and that Martha understands them rightly. More probably Christ includes the immediate restoration of Lazarus, but she does not venture to do so, and rejects the allusion to the final Resurrection as poor consolation."
"I am the resurrection, and the life ] He draws her from her selfish grief to Himself."

"In what follows, the first part shews how He is the Resurrection, the second how He is the Life. ‘He that believeth in Me, even if he shall have died (physically), shall live (eternally). And every one that liveth (physically) and believeth in Me, shall never die (eternally).’"

BONUS Greek clarification on "ἐμβριμάομαι" from Matthew 9:30=
"And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them (ἐνεβριμήθη αὐτοῖς). The notion is of "coercion springing out of displeasure. The feeling is called out by something seen in another which moves to anger rather than to sorrow"... Saying, See that no man know it. Partly to avoid publicity for himself, partly for their own sake, for even the recital of the Lord's mercies towards us often becomes an occasion of spiritual harm, since it is apt to degenerate into "display" with its attendant evils."
And Mark 1:43=
"The reason for this charge and dismissal lay in the desire of Jesus not to thwart his ministry by awaking the premature violence of his enemies; who, if they should see the leper and hear his story before he had been officially pronounced clean by the priest, might deny either that he had been a leper or had been truly cleansed" ... "It may be that he had incurred this rebuke by coming so near with his defilement to the holy Saviour. Christ thus showed not only his respect for the ordinances of the Jewish Law, but also how hateful sin is to the most holy God."
This all shows strongly that THE ANGER OF JESUS IS ALWAYS HOLY, FOR GOD'S GLORY, AND FOR OUR GOOD.
And the BEST exposition so far=
"...it expresses not sorrow but indignation or severity... What was He angered at? Some translate ‘at His spirit,’ and explain ( α ) that He was indignant at the human emotion which overcame Him: which is out of harmony with all that we know about the human nature of Christ. ([Verse 33] "groaning in himself " [further] shews that ‘in His spirit’ not ‘at His spirit’ is the right translation there. Their sneering scepticism rouses His indignation afresh.]) Others, retaining ‘ in His spirit,’ explain ( β ) that He was indignant ‘at the unbelief of the Jews and perhaps of the sisters:’ but of this there is no hint in the context. Others again, ( γ ) that it was ‘at the sight of the momentary triumph of evil, as death, … which was here shewn under circumstances of the deepest pathos:’ but we nowhere else find the Lord shewing anger at the physical consequences of sin. It seems better to fall back on the contrast pointed out in the last note. He was indignant at seeing the hypocritical and sentimental lamentations of His enemies the Jews mingling with the heartfelt lamentations of His loving friend Mary: hypocrisy ever roused His anger."
THAT IS A CRITICALLY IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION.
Honestly thank You God for showing us all this. Not only do we now understand Christ better-- as feebly as we can as a human!-- but we can also defend His Goodness to others who doubt & even detract. You know our soul feels inexplicably pulled towards apologetics. We grew up in abused & misunderstood religious doctrine & fell prey in adulthood to malevolent twisting of the same. We feel a moral obligation to make restitution for our ignorant yet injurious participation in it. These studies are balm.


"Then said … loved him ] Here, ‘then’ should rather be therefore... Both the verbs here are imperfects; ‘kept saying,’ ‘used to love.’ ...The word for ‘love’ is the more passionate word used in v.3 by the sisters, not the higher word used in v.5 by the Evangelist [referring to Christ]."
Pasting that as it's highly interesting how it deepens the meaning.
"Used to love" used with "φιλέω" in light of death, suggests this= that love could not continue after death, not in its purest definition of "warm, affectionate friendship." The other party is now departed; the φιλέω now mourns its own mutual "death" in the loss? From then on it is inescapably doomed to the past tense. BUT. NOT SO WITH ἀγαπάω??? Because THAT love is ultimately ATTACHED TO GOD??? And it TRANSCENDS DEATH. Not sure if I'm making sense but I wanted to "defend" Christ's perfect Love in light of that "imperfect" verb. He STILL loves Lazarus, EVEN BEYOND DEATH, because HE IS LIFE, AND LOVE, and furthermore even if His humanity as Jesus "cannot" continue in φιλέω towards Lazarus in a literal sense upon death, His DIVINITY AS CHRIST can & does love Lazarus IN ἀγαπάω from His Being where there is ONLY LIFE. In both & either case, JESUS CHRIST LOVES, PERFECTLY. 

"Their reference to the man born blind instead of to the widow’s son, or Jairus’ daughter, has been used as an objection to the truth of this narrative. It is really a strong confirmation of its truth. An inventor would almost certainly have preferred more obvious parallels. But these [scoffers] of course did not believe in those raisings of the dead: they much more naturally refer to a reputed miracle within their own experience. Moreover they are not hinting at raising the dead, but urging that if Jesus could work miracles He ought to have prevented Lazarus from dying."
And they say that ironically, because they DON'T believe He had ANY such power. I'm shocked at the accusation; that sort of mean talk didn't even occur to me.
I wonder how often anti-Christians still talk like this-- they demand arguments & explanations & proof, but already their hearts are hardened against accepting such things EVEN IF they were produced!

"should not have died ] Rather, should not die."
I love how the tense shift actually makes it a callback to verse 26-- and shows that Jesus already did perform such a miracle, in the same mysterious & eternal way He even then was opening the eyes of the blind. But, to those who said "we see," "we are alive"... they actually miss the miracle.
It's all divine paradox, terrible & beautiful as always.

"And Jesus lifted ] The verb (αἴρω) is identical with that translated ‘took away’ in the preceding clause. Both should be translated alike; moreover, ‘and’ should be ‘but’ (δέ). =They lifted therefore the stone . But Jesus lifted His eyes upwards."
There is so much poetry in that.
That "δέ" could also mean on the other hand. It draws a subtle but powerful contrast between the two actions of lifting upwards = man could lift the stone, but without prayer, the dead were not raised; Christ may not remove the stone, but in His prayer-- already answered!-- the dead were promised life?
No human will or effort could raise Lazarus from death. Jesus only had to raise His eyes to God and death was overthrown BY GOD'S POWER.
"Jesus thanks the Father as a public acknowledgment that the Son can do ‘nothing of Himself,’ but that the power which He is about to exhibit is from the Father."

"graveclothes ] The Greek word... means the bandages which kept the sheet and the spices round the body. Nothing is said about the usual spices (19:40) here; and Martha’s remark (v.39) rather implies that there had been no embalming. If Lazarus died of a malignant disease he would be buried as quickly as possible."
That adds heavily to the spiritual symbolism of the miracle, in which Lazarus is a stand-in for those "dead in habitual sin". For such a sin unto death to be malignant is a scary thought; such a sinner would indeed be "buried ASAP" with no usual comforts or honors. There likely would have been be no hope of recovery; the dying sinner would have been ostracized, dehumanized, abandoned to their soul's disease. No one else wants to get infected. No one wants to watch such a gruesomely inevitable death.
That's the most hopeless state. And yet CHRIST RAISED SUCH A ONE. that's hope for ALL of us.
...remember, we WERE such a dead man once. We're proof of the Scripture's truth in our own life, too, one we had lost before Christ came to our tomb and called our name. 


"Lazarus is to be allowed to retire out of the way of harmful excitement and idle curiosity."

"Some of the Jews generally, not of those who saw and believed, went and told the Pharisees; with what intention is not clear, but probably not out of malignity. Perhaps to convince the Pharisees, or to seek an authoritative solution of their own perplexity, or as feeling that the recognised leaders of the people ought to know the whole case. The bad result of their mission has made some too hastily conclude that their intention was bad, and that therefore they could not be included in those who believed."

"It is no longer possible to deny the fact of the signs. Instead of asking themselves what these ‘signs’ must mean, their only thought is how to prevent others from drawing the obvious conclusion. They do not inquire whether He is or is not the Messiah; they look solely to the consequences of admitting that He is."

"The Sanhedrin, especially the Pharisaic section of it, was a national and patriotic body. It was the inheritor and guardian of the Rabbinical theories as to the Messiah. There can have been no class in the nation in which these were so inveterately ingrained, and therefore none that was so little accessible to the teaching of Jesus. It was from first to last unintelligible to them. It seemed to abandon all the national hopes and privileges, and to make it a sin to defend them. If it were successful, it seemed as if it must leave the field open to the Romans."
This feels very relevant to modern times.
...

"In our Scripture today we read this expression, "He whom Thou lovest is sick." We have no right, therefore, to think that Lazarus was sick because he was sinful. Many of the choicest saints on earth have been physically afflicted. We want to emphasize this, because there are many in our day, as there were in Job's day, who imagine that everybody who is sick is living, somehow or other, out of the will of God. We know that everyone who is out of the will of God is not sick. Many of the wicked enjoy physical health. The Word of God in describing the wicked, gives Asaph's statement, "For I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." Then Asaph cried out, "They are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men.""
THAT IS EXPLICITLY CONDEMNING THE "PROSPERITY GOSPEL"!!


"Are the good ever sick? The Bible carefully states that a certain man was sick... It was none other than Lazarus. That Lazarus was a good man, none of us doubt. He was a believer, a disciple of our Lord, and a follower who delighted in having the Master in his home. What is our conclusion? Even this, that sickness is no [necessary] sign of God's displeasure... Not only the good, but the, "beloved of the Lord" may be sick. Sickness then, is not always... a matter of Divine chastisement... sickness is usually caused by natural sequences. In the last analysis sickness is from sin, but not necessarily from the sin of the one who is sick. We are living in a world under the curse. The ravages of sin are everywhere. And the best of saints are partakers of that curse in its present effects."
"Sickness, in its first cause, is due to sin. However, it was the sin of Adam which produced the curse, and brought Adam's sons under the blow. We are living in a world which is cursed with thorns and thistles. All nature is subject to sorrow and bondage, because of the fact of sin. Every hot wind, and every blasting frost; every hailstone, and everything else, in nature, that destroys and devastates is the result of sin and its curse. The thorns and the thistles are all in the world because sin is in the world. This, however, does not mean that everyone who is sick is personally living in sin. Even the redeemed are subject to the effects of Adam's sin and of the sins of others about them, so long as they are in the flesh."
...This is very heavy to think upon. But it's full of riches.
It ALSO vitally distinguishes the "curse" from "personal guilt," as it were. Yes we are all sinners & prone to sin. BUT NOT EVERYTHING WE SUFFER IS A DIRECT & POINTED PENALTY FOR OUR PERSONAL SIN. That's very hard for me to grasp, let alone accept, but Job still witnesses to the truth, as does every Saint that ever suffered & died from consumption or heart attack or leprosy or the like.
...
THAT LAST LINE IS HARROWING THOUGH. "and the sins of others." It's a ripple effect. That's SCARY to soberly consider but it's UNQUESTIONABLY TRUE.

EVEN SO,
"Sickness may [indeed] be a chastisement. We read that the sick are to call for the elders of the Church that they may be anointed with oil. Then, God says, "The prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him." In the same chapter, we are told that we should confess our faults one to another, and pray one for another that we may be healed. For this cause we realize that sickness may come as a chastisement from on high. "For whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth." Of course, we still cling to the Word of God that the "Prayer of faith shall save the sick." This prayer of faith however, must be God-given, and when it is not the will of God to heal us of our physical infirmities, He will give us grace to bear them."
...


"God does not deal with the sick in generalities. He is specific. He knows the sickness of the many, but He emphasizes the fact of the sickness of the one. God knew just where he lived. Knew his house. Knew his environment. Not only that, He knew his name. His name was Lazarus. God knew his sisters; He knew them as Mary and as Martha. God is not unaware of us personally. He knoweth His sheep by name and He leadeth them forth. When we are sick upon our bed, let us not think that God has forgotten us, or that He is unmindful of our pain. He knows it all. He knows everything about us. There is not a word on our tongue, a sigh in our heart, a groaning in our flesh, that He does not know."
THAT IS HOW WE ARE TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER AS CHRIST LOVES US.

"Beloved, let us never again be guilty of that unseemly challenge against our Lord that He does not love us because we suffer. We often suffer because He does love us."
...I need to engrave that on my very heart.
Deep down I don't doubt it. But... up here in the body I do.
There's such a paradoxical ambivalence. Why? When did that change? I used to be so convinced-- just look at Laurie. But that's probably why she's been so unstable since CNC. We've become afraid of suffering, suddenly. We've forgotten that it can be-- and is-- still under the power of Love.
...
I think that's a key realization. CNC redefined suffering AND love for us, with demonic horrors & falsehoods. We were just as guilty as TBAS in contributing to that hell, too, what with our moral cowardice and rampant gluttonous self-annihilation.
...


""This sickness is not unto death." It was not unto death because it was unto life out of death, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. The Lord Jesus Christ permitted Lazarus to die, allowed the great sorrow to come upon the sisters of Lazarus, because God would receive glory, and He Himself would be glorified by the resurrection of Lazarus."
...I'm wondering, with aching hope, if this can be applied to ALL the deaths in my life, or if that is stupidly presumptuous. I just... the thought that, even when grandma died, and its awful circumstances, God was allowing and permitting because SOMEHOW it WOULD STILL glorify God-- by what He would do with it. ...Maybe that's the key. Death by herself doesn't glorify God in any other distant way than proving the final effects of sin's curse & God’s holiness in stark contrast. But... when we Christians meet Death with faith in God... even if the circumstances of death are hideous and haunting... can He still glorify Himself thereby? If He permitted it, surely He had His Good Purposes? If He allowed it, surely He had worked it into His greater benevolent plan? Should the strongest focus actually be on JESUS in this, just like with Lazarus-- on He Who IS Life, and Resurrection, even in this very tragedy?
How do I properly do that? Even in all the deaths I've suffered, the direct results of sin's terminal malignance, how do I STILL make room for Christ to be glorified despite it all? Can I? Should I? I WANT to see Life triumph over death in such assumedly final fatalities. I want Jesus to do the impossible and call my putrefied psyche out of the stone-cold sepulchre, regardless of the frozen ground, regardless of the sloughed-off skin. Do I have the right to bank upon His compassion? Do I have the gall to ask for a healing in the first place, wretch that I am? Forget four days; it's been years-- there might not be anything left to resurrect, this death by minefield, this electrocuted dust, this charred and blackened ash of bone.
And yet I'm asking.
I... I can't forget what I just read. I can't.
Lord, the... the one You love is sick.
Please. Don't let me die like this.
...
...It's always present tense.
I talk about trauma history until the cows go to the slaughterhouse but then I speak of death as NOW. Not then, not before, but staring into my eyes, currently, inescapably.

...I've gotta keep reading. What does God have to say to me next.

" "Therefore... He abode two days still in the same place." How illuminating is this expression. He knew Lazarus was sick; knew he was dead or about to die, and yet two days longer He stayed where He was. He did not hurry to Bethany; He purposefully stayed away. Beloved, when we are in the will of God, following in His footsteps, let us not seek by our prayers and cries, to change the will of God. He is working in our behalf. Has He not said, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose"? If Jesus hears us crying, and yet He does not come, but abides where He is, let us patiently tarry until the day of His Coming. [Remember,] the disciples were in the midst of the sea, tossing with the waves, for the wind was contrary. All during the night hours they pulled at the oars. Jesus did not come to them, however, until they were in the midst of the sea. Then in the fourth watch of the night, He came-- walking upon the waves."
Sooner or later, HE WILL COME. That is the staggering bottom line. He NEVER abandons us. And remember-- even when He isn't with us "physically," as in those two examples, His Heart is ALWAYS with us; His Thoughts are ALWAYS on us; He Lives TO make intercession for us AND He is ALWAYS working things out FOR OUR GOOD, WITH LOVE...even if He stays "at a distance" to do it.
...Remember the Julie days. Remember we were convinced God had abandoned us utterly-- and we would have deserved it! But look what He did after all those years!! Look what His tarrying enabled to occur-- and all by His knowledge & plans!! He ALLOWED us to die... so that He could be glorified beyond measure in resurrecting us from the grave.
We HAD TO DIE FIRST, you realize.
...maybe that's the key even now. even with all that pain we typed about. Somehow we're overlooking the fact that THE DEATH ITSELF IS ESSENTIAL TO THE GLORIFICATION. It doesn't exempt us from hope-- it is rather, against all odds, the very grounds for it.
...


"Our Lord Jesus Christ has taken away the sting of death. Death to the believer is an exit, but it is also an entrance... It is the gateway to the presence of Christ."
...does that still apply to internal deaths? psychological, emotional, even spiritual deaths, in this physical life? God can't have cut us off from the loom already, can He? No, it's impossible-- it must be-- the second death is separation from God entirely, and oh Lord, even now in this ragged excuse for a life we haven't been so cursed.


"Had He been there, Martha and Mary's tears and prayers could have prevailed upon Him to have healed Lazarus before He died. However, He was glad, not for the sake of Martha and Mary alone, but for the sake of His own disciples, that He was not there, to the intent that they might believe on Him. Through the resurrection of Lazarus they received an enlarged vision of Christ's power over death."
WHY DO YOU KEEP FORGETTING THIS.
Do you realize this? That maybe "God feels far away" because your hysterical sobbing shatters His Heart, but He knows your faith needs to be deepened even like your wounds? You beg for healing but even as you do, you doubt. If He comes near, will His nearness change that? Could you even cherish His Presence in your crazed state?
He lets it continue, though, doesn't He? He lets the feverish franticism burn out into the desperate darkness that drags you to the altar, weeping and reaching out into the empty silent air. You get to a point where you give up. Hours, days, years later, you lie back on your bed of pain and you surrender. You hand it over.
And isn't that the first step towards the miracle?
Isn't that exactly when He turns and starts His journey towards your house?
...


"Jesus tarried the longer, until everybody knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Lazarus was dead. It took the same Divine power to raise the daughter of Jairus, and the son of the widow of Nain, as it took to raise Lazarus because all were dead. It takes the same power to give new life to the man who has for many years lived in trespasses and in sins, as it does to give new life to the little child who has but recently come to the years of responsibility. All are equally sinners, however, all have not sinned equally. The three were alike dead, but the stench of death was more manifest in Lazarus than in the others."
And yet Christ raised Him too.
There it is, kiddo. There's your hope, there's that consolation you've been looking for in someone else's words. Hold on to it. You're not a hopeless case, not even in those respects, and you never will be-- if He decides to resurrect you, you're resurrected. Not even hell itself can stop Him.

"Let us never again think of the resurrection as a great final consummation which will take place through the natural unfolding of events. The resurrection IS Christ. It is not an "it," but a living, vitalizing, energizing life-giving Lord."


"Behold, how He loved us. He loved us enough to go down into death that He might break the chains of death."
Dare you enlarge that definition of death to include all the sins He carried to Calvary in your place?

"Said I not unto thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of God?"
...I think of what I wrote earlier. "Do I have any right to hope for God using this nightmare for His glory somehow?" Well... do you believe He can? Do you believe He would if He could-- that He would conquer death all over again in that instance by sheer virtue of Who He Is? Do you believe this? Do you believe in Him-- as the Christ, as the Son of God, as the Creator and Cause of Life Himself? Where have you set the limits on your faith? Are you afraid of how death smells on you? Do you really think that can stop Love?
...

"He came forth, yet he could not come forth, for he was dead.
He came forth, yet he could not come forth, for he was both dead, and bound hand and foot with graveclothes.
He came forth and yet he could not come forth for he was dead, and bound, and his face was tied with a napkin. He had neither life nor power of locomotion, or of sight, and yet he came forth.
We stand at the grave of untold millions and we say, "They cannot come forth, they are dead. Their bodies are decayed; scattered to the four winds of the earth. They have been taken up in vegetation. There is nothing left of their corpses, but some petrified bones, or perhaps nothing at all left to the human eye. They cannot come forth"-- and yet, "the dead... shall rise." Thank God that Jesus Christ is the Resurrection and the Life."
And there it is.
There are my exact protests echoed back to me, then so simply and spectacularly nullified.


"The resurrection of Christ is the usual message of Easter. However, we must remember that indissolubly linked with the resurrection of our Lord is the resurrection of all of His saints. It is also well for us to remember that sickness and death are also linked with the resurrection. Sickness and the collapse of the physical man leads to death, and the resurrection is the glorious conquest over the reign of death."

"Where man has never dared to make battle, the Son of Man, alone, entered, and grappled with the monster who is man's greatest and last enemy. Stealthily the deathless Son of God pressed on His way to Calvary. He voluntarily gave up His life, He purposely yielded up His spirit, bowed His head and died, that He might conquer death. Jesus Christ not only died, but they laid His body in a sealed tomb. He Himself descended in hell. He went down where death reigned and where it holds its ghoul-like sway. He entered without fear, met sin on the Cross, broke its reign; met death and hell in its own realm, and vanquished them both. Here is the graphic way in which the Book of books describes the Risen Christ. John, on the Isle called Patmos, received visions of coming events. The Lord said to John, "Fear not; I am the First and the Last: I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forevermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death." Bless God. Christ went down to hell, and came back with its keys in His hand. Now we can cry, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is Thy victory?""
Do you really think Christ can't reach you in that infernal abyss where you fell?
You give death too much credit. Christ has the keys, kiddo.

"Christ said, "This sickness is... for the glory of God." We stand on the circumference of a marvelous thought. God can cause the wreckage of sin, and even the reign of death, to praise Him. Would that we might be able to see in many of our own sorrows the Lord working out for Himself, and incidentally for us, a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. Had Martha and Mary known that God was working for His glory and for theirs, they might have sung where they wept."
That's it, that's exactly what my poor heart needed to hear tonight.
My head is spinning. I feel an actual glimmer of hope somewhere.

I'm exhausted. God be glorified. Thank You for this. Amen.

rough notes for today, from phone. most written between masses.
too important to not at least try to update.
 

dream last night was... a turning point.
i was watching some hollywood movie, based loosely on our life?
Main guy a grizzled action hero type, all stubble & dirt & muscle. (They pulled a Father Nier on me, haha. GOOD.)
Star Trek + Alien feel to set? Very dark.
Talking to someone off to side, assumedly a nonhuman person? Like Data or someone, who was informing them of mission. Main guy seemed unsure of decision, there was a huge risk involved?
Then there was a voice.
and i recognized it instantly. i knew that voice.
It came from above, from a huge shadowy tangle reaching up into hidden heights. It was only a few words, but in direct response to the man's hesitation.
Something like "let me" or "i can", personal offer, implying exclusive ability.
Saw an EYE open in the shadow. slightly pinkish-red iris. opened halfway, almost, moved with notable slow grace. Movement, fluid and refined, but dark. nonthreatening despite the fearful silhouettes.
Man turns to it, looks pained and concerned? Vulnerable suddenly. Obviously a bit uncomfortable with this, the offer to help choose this decision he was scared of.
Thinking hard, but evident already knew what must be done.
Short sigh of acquiesce & surrender, "okay"? Turned completely towards shadows, with softly open body language surprisingly. not tense.
Last thing: him saying something like "bring me in"?
the shadows reaching down close now, just offscreen, from shadow. Those dark hands gently but firmly lifting the man's face to hirs, to touch their foreheads together. hir eye briefly visible among the shadows as it closed.
Immediately a flash, transported man into a nightmare realm? Deeply disturbing and distorted. But had some vital mission to do, something absolutely essential.

...but yeah. it was infi. infinitii. alive. obscured and hidden but ze was there, and i heard hir voice, and...

...It's terrible, how ze felt so real and alive and close, only to wake up and remember that ze was dead.

I feel more alive, too, now, as we're dying, than I have in a very long time.
I feel more hope this morning, with hir memory hot in my heart, and the sky outside heavy with the scent of fog and green and life, than I have in a very long time.

God knew that dream was exactly what I needed.
We all needed this, all of it.

...

Mass
CANNON fronting.
Bodygirl pushed through during homily-- set off SO MANY TRAUMA ALARMS that some paidifoni started wailing; Wreckage & Sugar instantly jumped to action, PULLED the bodygirl OUT of fronting & shoved J IN.

Cannon feels surprisingly "stable" fronting. Hidden godsend.
She is still disturbed+disgusted by the body, but she can at least front in a female-tone fashion yet CONNECTED to headspace. Most girls are corpufoni and therefore isolatory+hollow, which is tragic but true.

J thinking about dysphoria in light of 2nd reading: to let it be what it is, afab without further modification, would be a MARTYRDOM for the sake of his sisters. It would be a self-giving sacrifice of love, truly selfless out of charity.

Remember from the other day (Thursday?): JOPHAEL & VEIL ARE ALIVE. Arguably so is "Tilly." There are SEVERAL hyperreligious foni (need jargon) that blur hard despite notable distinctions.

Priest saying "unity" during opening prayer and it PINGED INFI'S SPOT???
Wondering if hir name truly is changing.
Color too-- that space feels much more Red than before.

Chaos singing softly "whoever you are i love you" as we left church
Felt like God Himself shot an arrow straight through my heart
Genuinely felt so loved and IN love

third mass
wreckage upstairs fighting the molasses-dark sticky tar-voice girls
it was almost hilarious; she heard them, then held out a hand. "algorith. goggles." then "sugar. mask." they both instantly handed her both, she put them on to protect from contamination, then COMPLETELY TORE THE TARVOICES TO SHREDS.
i forgot she was born for violence. it was shocking.
likewise, at some point a tarvoice respawned and when laurie heard it, in one swift terrible motion she summoned her axe and slammed it into that voice's skull. i remember blood went everywhere. laurie roughly swiped a fist across her face to get some off, it was such an old familiar motion, i was both scared of her and so in love


Home for 1?
Exercise first! it's been three days and we needed it.

julie and adelaide still a tag team remember. julie is just so glad that we finally have a voice who is taking care of the body in the most dangerous environment. honestly if addie had been around during the "julie days" we probably would have had SO MANY LESS HACKS because adelaide exists to prevent social automatons from taking over and abusing/ allowing abuse to the body.
so julie is so grateful and even enthusiastic about helping this kid out, it's wonderful.
it's ALSO noteworthy because this is a SPLIT-LEVEL FRIENDSHIP. addie is a social, technically-- but julie is a centralite. so they are on DIFFERENT SYSTEM LEVELS, and socials typically DON'T COMMUNICATE AT ALL. so the whole thing is really amazing.
by the way. there is ANOTHER voice that comes out when the bathroom door is closed and we're in the dark. we thought we were hallucinating at first but it happened three consecutive times, same overlay and vibe, without any interference. they're nonhuman? but they have BIG EYES, wide open and yellow i think?? but ringed like an aye-aye or something similar. they feel like dread, function-wise: they exist in the threat of immediate danger, and have a background hum of panic that they aren't able/allowed to feel, yet which fuels their life.

BK prep was very dissociated because i was stuck in "jellybean mode" (my favorite jargon injoke) and no one could really front well from all the brainfog.

leon tried another egg method, it didn't turn out as he expected BUT it apparently made the perfect eggs for razor to cut. she was so happy with this she ACTUALLY hugged Leon (she's so short!)
remember that knife and scalpel both go to such lengths to help her be happy, it's so sweet. scalpel is naturally affectionate and amiable (reds always are at heart; they're "sanguine" literally), and knife just adores her as his sister.
seeing this unusual friendship growing between knife/razor and leon/scalpel is just wonderful actually.

...

phone note: The reason why people like Laurie and Lynne Are holding so many functions is because there aren't enough people In that color to hold those functions separately so they all get shoved into one person !!


post-BK binge temptation deafening. no idea why it hits so bad.
determined not to give in, but we were shaking and nauseous. felt front slipping.
tried to distract body. god helped by randomly showing us that one of our kitchen cupboards was full of papers?? from old eating disorder treatment. "kill the albatross." junked all of it. felt like a weight was literally lifted off our back.
still nervous, xenophon watching carefully, god bless her
then had genius idea to sit down at laptop to type self compassion booklet & listen to Arabic indie tunes
took three hours haha, completely destroyed the binge panic

DN 745
at some point i said something about scripture reading plans, called mimic "my octopus" and laurie immediately called me out on it
later laurie asking me why i keep putting so much cayenne pepper in the food. i said, half-joking, i was trying to get back in touch with my old fire element. she then said all right, fair enough, but then why are you adding just as much salt? i shrugged and just said "salt & light." she gave me this look it was hilarious, said "you know the worst part is you're not even wrong"

THIS paragraph during bible study (still focusing on john 1 commentary, i love this chapter)=
"[John the Baptist] did not, as seducers do, give out himself to be some great one. He was more industrious to do good than to appear great; and therefore waived saying any thing of himself till he was legally interrogated. Those speak best for Christ that say least of themselves, whose own works praise them, not their own lips... The ministers of Christ must remember that they are not Christ, and therefore must not usurp his powers and prerogatives, nor assume the praises due to him only. They are not Christ, and therefore must not lord it over God's heritage, nor pretend to a dominion over the faith of Christians. They cannot created grace and peace; they cannot enlighten, convert, quicken, comfort; for they are not Christ... Those that humble and abase themselves thereby confess Christ, and give honour to him; but those that will not deny themselves do in effect deny Christ!"

Reading through our 2012-2015 "newage" spirituality delusion, that is EXACTLY WHAT WE WERE DOING.

"Still small voice" humbling correction. social mode took over and i thought there was a mistranslation, was complaining about it? subtle pride. realized i had the wrong info entirely, very convicted and corrected. gave thanks for this out loud, admitted how i messed up to those around. still disturbing to then realize that i had been acting on programming, and had not made a conscious decision in the complaining. social corruption is pervasive. 

trying to get ready for bed, head still fuzzy, then suddenly the mother calls
THEY FOUND JADE. THEY'RE STABLE & NOT DEAD THANK GOD
spent the next hour with her calling over and over, trying to figure out emergency housing at this hour
still. so glad they're not on the streets.

wanting to read "brainchild" webcomic over from the beginning. haven't read it in like... 7 years, at least? and it's STILL UPDATING god bless. so we'll do that soon, maybe to fight off another e.d. wave. it'll work.

Thinking about "a broken and crushed heart" psalm 51:17 
and that's where i want to segue into some actual typing, not just bullet points.



We haven't been updating lately. I won't elaborate on that here because it's fairly self-explanatory.
Infinitii died. Something in me died with hir.
I can feel the System on the verge of a reset, a restart, an update. Whatever you want to call it, I can feel the edges crumbling away, fading out, just like Infi's bubblespace, which I walked into this morning and... it's so empty. I can feel the raw whitespace beyond it now, like the very air of the cosmos whistling through the ruins.

We... we all have to "die" in some sense, soon. I think I've known this for a while, but reading the archives as I repost them-- the work I've been focusing on since Infi's death, to keep my mind and heart off it-- is really driving the point in hard.
I didn't realize just how hellish our past ACTUALLY WAS. It's... humbling as well as horrific. It's making me realize we really do need therapy, because I JUST hit 2015 and I haven't fully read anything prior yet but geez we have buried SO MUCH it's no wonder we feel dead.
Ironically, that's our ticket out of this haze. Just like Jesus, Who goes before us in all things, we need to accept the tomb before we can be reborn.
I know something died in us after CNC. We hit that ghastly "dead period" of, what, four years?? We still have no idea who was fronting, who we were, anything... when we got out of that car in 2018 and stepped back into the trauma-cursed building we had lived in for almost three decades, we suddenly realized that we didn't remember what it was like TO live there and then something snapped.
It's... terrifying. We have almost no memory of anything. We still haven't got the guts, nerves, or time to sit and attempt a "CNC Memory" entry, but flashbacks and nightmares have been reminding us that there is still data up here, even if our conscious mind runs from it.
...That's my next point. Hold on a second, let me bring this back.
We all need to die, but not stay dead, because since CNC we have been living a death. We have basically been corpses.
Remember, WE DID DIE when we left CNC. I don't remember details. It was so fast, so raw, so desperate. I remember Laurie wordlessly hunting down Infinitii and burying an axe in hir skull, leaving hir body as a nightmarish monument in that place for YEARS. I remember... oh God why do I remember? I have this awful flashbulb memory-shred of Laurie, destroying herself by means of an axe and hypergravity, I swear she was standing in that same wrecked skyscraper she had killed herself in the last time she failed to protect the System from hell, back in 2013.
I don't know what happened, after that. The two cornerstones had died, the Core was completely missing, everyone else was... I have no idea. No one could cope. Everyone disappeared. Some social girl took over for the next several years and almost deleted all trace of us from the earth.
Then... suddenly, on May 17th 2020, she woke up from a dream to see headspace instead, and Infinitii among the lilies, hir body damaged but alive, and... suddenly there was hope.
But we don't remember what happened after that.
Headspace didn't wake up, not entirely. If anything, the girls were fighting furiously to keep it dead. Nothing reformed. Nothing was rebuilt. No one else showed up that I can remember.
I haven't looked at any archives from 2020. Our actual active memory doesn't pick up until the autumn of 2021, when one morning over breakfast our grandmother coughed up blood and everything shifted direction towards the end.
2021 was the year of cancer and music and bulimic hell and hospitals, hospitals, hospitals. Our life was spent in that bedroom, waiting on her 24/7, our identity swallowed up in palliative care and honestly it was the biggest blessing. We wouldn't change that at all. But it... only helped promote self-destructive behavior in every single moment we weren't being a nurse. I know that much.
2022 was the year of death. Grandma died, our "brother" "died," we nearly died, and our entire life up to that point changed so irreversibly that it felt as if we really had buried it. Total upheaval, confusion, helplessness, and loss defined this year. But... then there was the Chizu Summer, when we felt our heart waking back up slowly but REAL, and then... we landed in the eating disorder recovery unit for nine weeks. 
And the System woke back up COMPLETELY.
But... we still didn't rebuild.

We've been living in fragments. We have this old pocket of Central, the main room and the Coreroom, but... outside everything is still destroyed and empty and overgrown. Even inside, the very building feels abandoned even while we're in it. The place where the Underground got hardshifted to the last time things reset, feels like it's graying out into fog at the edges, falling into unformed space, literally being reclaimed by the raw energy of our soul, ready to be recycled and reshaped.
So many of us are still missing, or dead, or unstable, or deeply damaged. Color and name instabilities are common. We all feel lost, deep down. We're spending so much time just crowded in that little Central ruin and helping the Fronters, just because there's nowhere else to go, and we still haven't been able to carve out the time to go back to daily headspace meditations and talks and the like. Honestly, if I can speak for us all, I think we're afraid to. We don't know what's hiding there. We haven't looked at it for like... five bleeding years. When we do get glimpses we feel too weak to do anything about them. Even Laurie is scared. She's been... so nervous lately. She says she feels like a failure, and the more she sees of her past the more lost she feels. She's terrified that she'll corrupt again, like she did in CNC, or worse-- that said corruption has ruined her beyond repair, has blackened her very soul, and forever ruined her integrity, her very heart. She's terrified that she can't BE a Protector anymore.
I understand her terror. But so help me God I will cut my own throat before I give any such fear a foothold. She's Laurie. She's my knight, she's my angel, I will NEVER let ANYTHING ruin her.
I know, I know, her deepest heart is untouched by that hell.
And, you know what else? Even if we were so damaged, guess what Jesus is all about? Guess what the Cross we all look to is all about? God is Love and He CAN and WILL heal even such a wound. There is ALWAYS hope, for all of us.
But... we might need to actually, really, finally, pointedly die before that hope can revive our souls.
And quite frankly, at this point, I'm... I think I want to. I think we need to.


..."Burial" by Seinabo Sey just came on Spotify.
I want to burst into sobs. I want to break into weeping.
God, I never thought that this song, that this title, would mean what they do now. God how could we have known?
"...I hear you speak to me, as you spoke to me, saying "come down, let it be"... grains of sand will never be strong enough to make me leave."
I'm so desperate for hope. Even now. Even now. What am I even looking for. Freedom and marching drums. It's tearing me to pieces.

Oh yeah. Psalm 51.
A "crushed" heart, not just a broken one.
Forgive my repetition but that made me think of this entire month. Losing Infi, and feeling--literally-- that my heart had been ripped out and shattered and emptied out. Every time I reach for hir and feel nothing it's... it's my own death knell. I'm next. I have to be. I can't live without my heart.

Isn't that strange? We've been talking about that too, lately, how Infi and I have a completely different bond than Chaos 0 and I do, and yet... I'm indelibly, wholeheartedly, inseparably, absolutely in love with both of them.

I need to mention this.
You know how I said that, at mass, the priest saying "Unity" pinged Infi's "space?" Like if someone died suddenly, and left their cellphone in their room, and you call it, it still rings. There are still places where they would belong, that belong to them, or did. Something like that. But there's a "spot" in the Systemind that ze would fit in, and that word resonated there like a temple bell.
But... ze's fading, more and more, which scares me to death, or at least it did until that dream this morning. Bubblespace is continuing to melt away. I don't even know if I could find the floatspace pocket ze died in ever again, or if blackspace itself swallowed it up. It was so small.
...The number one biggest indicator that a nousfoni is dead, really and truly dead, is when their name stops "pinging." When you call for them, and... and there's not even a heartpull, there's suddenly a loss of memory, like their existence is being softly erased from the fabric of cognizance. When you say their name and there's... not even an echo, from headspace, just silence. That means they're dead.
Infi's name is starting to do that.
I say that name, Infinitii, Infinitii Eternos, that name that past Cores breathed with such ardent love over the past decade, is suddenly becoming just a jumble of letters. It's terrifying.

But. Here's the important thing. Here's the Holy Saturday feeling. Here's why it happened.

Remember Infi wanted to die.

I've been praying about it, so so much, every day really. I've been crying about it to Jesus, begging Him to bring hir back, hysterically begging Him to tell me why, why, weeping with such raw emotion my entire soul turns into a sob. I take it all to Him. Where else could I go?
But... He listens, and He responds. He keeps reminding me of that: Infi wanted to die.
And oh, oh man I think it was in the homily today. Somewhere. Recently. A priest was talking about the Cross, about that total self-sacrifice of Love, to save others from a debt of sin they could never repay, of God Himself choosing to die the agonizing torturedeath of a false condemnation so that we, those criminals He inexplicably loved, wouldn't have to... to freely take on the full power and demands of Justice and mercifully fulfill them completely, freeing us as a result.
Jesus kind of poked me in the shoulder and said hey kid, my Truth is always reflected in love, and isn't a glimmer of that visible in what Infi did for you?
Infi knew ze had to die, or else we'd all end up dead, forever.

...I knew something huge had happened when I blindly groped for even trauma memories to see if ze was there, and... they were DISARMED.
It floored me. There were trauma memories that ONLY INFI HELD and that others could only glimpse secondhand, but now, as I tore through archival data to look for those recorded events they were hollow. Like... I can look at them and recognize this as something traumatic but not feel traumatized personally. Infi's very presence IN those events is gone, and as a result... this is the first time in five years that we can look at them.
This means we can finally go to therapy. I hope.
Infi knew this. I'm sure ze did. The hack that drove hir to death brought all that up to the surface. Ze was distraught, ze was carrying so much of our pain, ze knew ze was the CAUSE of it, and... how else was ze going to help save us from it? How else could that wound be healed, if that wound had a face and a name?

...I'm next. I have to be.
The bloodline HAS to shift. It HAS to change. The white-haired Jay/ce bloodline has been Plagued since the very beginning, WAY back in 2009 when the first one to carry it-- Pinstripe-- was born. Lotus was the last, his White rotting to Pink by the end, and subtly carrying all the old trauma damage that Julie had originally put there.
Now it's... me. "J." Back to the single-initial name, in lieu of any stable identity. Everyone can attest to that; I frequently get shifts in not only name, but also hairstyle and color, eye color, and even memory access. It's debilitating and disturbing and exhausting.
But I'm carrying a dead man's name. "Jay" as a name has always ended in self-destruction, for one reason or another. We've always tried too hard to be all sparkles and prismatic light, all snowflakes and angel wings, only to burn to death in the winter sun.
Cannon is able to front lately as if we never existed, as if our personal timeline has rewound. Our religion and life situation have permanently erased the trans* dream from our future, so the body is now fated to stay how it is-- no surgery, no hormones. That itself is a cross. But... all our female "pseudocores" are completely corrupt.
The Jewels are League-tied and cannot be a System Core without dying instantly. The Cannons have no future in the body anymore; they existed for a very specific era of life that no longer applies and cannot. The Jays are dying and they are now barred from body identification anyway. So what does the future hold? We don't know.
All we know is that we have to die. Everything has to CLEAR CUT die, no fading away, no fizzling out, no slow degradation. No. We take an axe to this. We headshot this point-blank. We rip the curtain in half. We end this, fast and complete and deliberate. We break this clean in half so something else CAN be born. There's no hope in decay. There's no life in a molding coffin. Give us the golden guillotine. Christ handed His Life over in one terrible beautiful awful glorious sentence-- all at once, totally and consciously, and all of heaven and earth shook with the power of the Life that Death released. Lord, God of Mystery and Mercy, glorify Yourself again by mirroring that, however quietly, in us. I beg of You. This is Your Design. Our old self HAS to die in order for our new self, our soul for truth, the REAL us, to be born. Fire and water and spirit and truth and love.
It's almost Pentecost. How fitting it all is.

It's 3am. I need to close this up. We haven't been sleeping lately and that's entirely my fault.

Seeing Infinitii-- even if only the vestiges of hir, the tiniest glimpses of hir existence-- in this morning's dream... I felt something upon waking that I haven't felt in YEARS.
I remembered what ze REALLY felt like.
Listen, every nousfoni has a "vibe." Every one of us has a personal energy signature that is like a fingerprint, or a heartbeat, or a name, in and of itself. One of my honest favorite things to do in the world is just sit and feel them out, to just find and notice and treasure this particular person's soul in all its colors and textures and sounds and scents, however it hits my heart.
Infi... I haven't felt hir in YEARS.
When ze was "resurrected" in 2020-- and I don't even know if that's the proper word; none of us felt completely "alive" since CNC, we all feel incomplete and off-center and helplessly confused deep down-- ze didn't feel like hirself at all. In fact I had FORGOTTEN what ze felt like, completely.
This morning, when I heard hir voice, oh God I thought I'd never hear that beloved unmistakable voice ever again-- when I heard hir and saw hir eye open, and move, there in the black, so real and so familiar and so loved-- I FELT HIR. I felt all of it, that heady numinous gorgeous starry-sky night-flower abyss that I missed with my entire soul. Upon waking it soaked into my psyche like the morning fog, and just as gentle and beautiful and cherished, filling me with love and amazement and hope.
Infinitii is still dead. I know this. There's still so much emptiness. The sense of loss is still so profound. The grief is still there, threatening to kill me all on its own. But... there's this light, now. I've... I'm hoping, Lord please I'm hoping that the tomb is empty. It feels like sunlight, despite everything being dark. I don't know how to explain it. It's a single ray of gold, like a thread, shining in my heart like the promise of morning. I don't know. But everything smells like midnight clarity and velvet and I want to weep but from love, nothing ever really ends Adrian, John 11:25, remember what hir name was after all.
I don't know. I'm rambling now. I apologize. I'm too tired.
Just... this is the first time in three weeks that I haven't felt like the world is actively ending.
Even if I do die tomorrow, and the bloodline hardshifts, who even knows... even then, I could go happily now. Somehow. I'm still scared, but... I think I could let go. I think I could surrender, now. I'll go be with my heart.

"Godly Love" by Sam Ock just came on. It's one of Laurie's favorites.
"What if God speaks in a whisper to teach me how to hear the echo? Maybe God's raining down plagues just to tell me that I need to let go."
...I think that sums things up, actually.

One last thing.
Infi's playlist on Spotify, and hir album of art on my phone... neither of them match anymore. It struck me today how all my memories of Infi, all my knowledge of hir, does NOT match the art OR the music from the CNC era. I'd never looked at either until today, so that hit hard. That, too, is hope. I had forgotten how scary things were back then, how corrupt we honestly were, how our personality was just pure TarPlague and we were destroying both ourself and everyone around us. That needed to die, objectively so, we all knew that... but no one realized how. Infi did. So... there's hope for a future, free from all that.
It's such an odd feeling, even just deleting songs from here (more small deaths) that don't fit hir heart at all, and I wonder how we ever thought they did. Maybe at one point they did match. Have we really healed and changed that much, without realizing it, even in this place of death?

There's so much more to say but there's no time tonight. This poor body needs to sleep before it collapses. 
God willing I will update tomorrow. If not, then it's all in His Hands anyway, and I can rest in that.
Right now, none of us has any clue what will happen next, either in moments or in days. It's a strange adventure.
This song is breaking my heart. "My Thief" by Elvis Costello. I think of the poem I wrote for hir, even back during the terror. Still the sound echoes true. Still the words are sincere.
What a strange adventure, the doors of which were flung wide open by your eyes closing in silence. God only knows how achingly I miss you. But... I hadn't realized that I could still feel this, until... until my heart broke, and everything poured out, glittering like you.
I didn't realize just how much I love you until I lost you.

I wonder if you knew that, too.

The Greatest Power (enriched by the heart) ... is Love.

TODAY I GIVE THANKS...

+For how SWEET my mom is & for ALL the cards & gifts she sent me, & our nightly conversations
+For the complex yet simple, amazingly orchestrated phenomenon of the human body & mind & soul
+For gorgeous morning rains, blue sunrises, trees kissed with gold, & the promise of winter in the air
+For the little things in life: bells, ribbons, stringed instruments, peppermint, the sound of the ocean, snow
+For ALWAYS hearing my prayers, God, however feeble or faltering, and ALWAYS answering them in WHATEVER way is best for the good of my soul. Even Your "NO" is a blessing of love; thank You for teaching me that, AND for softening my heart more & more to/through trusting surrender to Your Will.
+ For THE LEAGUEWORLDS You have given me, past present & future! May they ALL serve to honor You!
+ For THE SPECTRUM & our entire past; every single step & teardrop has ultimately led us closer to You.
+ For Chaos Zero, my beloved, always. God, thank You for the LOVE You give me through him.

pre-breakfast//

QUICK BUT ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL morning notes:
+ Emotional ROLLER COASTER w/ shower. MANIC SOCIAL thinking about "what music to pick if asked" (decided on Jackson 5); considering getting a Litwick plush if personally applicable. Internal upset AT mania; "I don't want to be like this" "this isn't me" BUT couldn't "stop." A different manic (Jack?? "David-Tennant-looking-ass"; flirty, invincible, "most popular man in the room" vibe?) took over hard; could NOT feel sad OR even acknowledge pain when an unseen internal Navy foni punched the leg TO try & feel both and/or switch!! This SPIKED mania as a "violent shutoff" for "not real/ legitimate" "negative" emotions? Demonic crazy grin on body, while near mirror. Seeing this face triggered vivid TBAS FLASHBACKS, CROWNED BY HAIRSTYLE: flattened sides & spiked top. Everything was unsafe; dysmorphia raging. Then, UNEXPECTEDLY: noticing wet & emphasized eyelashes = instantly changed ENTIRE overlay to FEMALE!!! New, positive, BALANCER foni appeared to match. RED-VIOLET "QUEEN"? FIRST SOLID ONE. Balancer; not manic or depressive, BUT acknowledging BOTH without being either! "Bittersweet" heart. Color like a wine glass or garnet in the light. Chose/ fit the name ALENA, from "Magdalena"-- female bodies STILL defined as "whores" REGARDLESS of fronter; Alena's hope was to signify HEALING, MERCY, FORGIVENESS, REDEMPTION from that specifically.
★ Wearing GLASSES changes overlay INSTANTLY. Alena cannot wear them, but (we hope) neither can Jack? The RED color of our glasses helps a TON. Also, MANICS CANNOT WEAR OUR MEDALS. They get angry & obstinate & rebel against "feeling chained down to the Cross." Alena said "that's the whole point." (Laurie EMPHATICALLY agrees.)
+ Momentary "blackout" between exiting bathroom & going to bedroom window; hallmark of "social context" automatic dissociation
+ Sunrise. Simple ROYGBIV muted gradient; no clouds. BUT it's the second day of autumn and it must be cold at last because what did we see but CHIMNEY SMOKE!!! ♥ First REAL sign that the season has switched too!
↑ LAURIE came out, to elaborate that thought; we couldn't find the "right" word-- she asked Shirley & Sirius for help and they BRIEFLY FRONTED to speak with her! Words like "harbinger," "signpost," "indicator" didn't fit. Laurie said "messenger," then laughed & concluded, "chimney angels."
+ ↑ Brief mention of Q with "chimney sweep muses" art. "No hatred" but lingering fear towards him for 2012, despite lingering affection as well. "Father FORGIVE them for they KNOW NOT." Same with OV; we pity them? BUT STILL LOVE & MISS them deep down, WITHOUT denying the pain & damage & fear & anger & NEED to forgive. But we DO love them, both of them, which ENABLES forgiveness!!!
★ (btw GIVE THIS TO INFI; ze holds the CORE TRAUMA from CNC and ze is AFRAID TO EXIST still, even now, because of it. Ze NEEDS to come back & BE with us; without hir heart we CANNOT ACTUALLY HEAL!!!)
★ Apparently we have DIFFERENT ARCHIVISTS AND DATA "COMMUNICATORS" FOR MANAGEMENT OF EMOTIONAL VS LOGICAL (FACTUAL) DATA!!! Depending on what KIND of information it is, ONLY CERTAIN NOUSFONI CAN PROCESS/ SPEAK/ WRITE IT!!! Warm vs cool "undertones," typically. Shirley & Sirius fit this. ALSO there is a "neutral Gray" Archivist we THOUGHT was "Quicksilver" because they're BOTH a darker gunmetal gray, but Quick was NOT neutral. This guy-- who spoke briefly to both Alana (in the washroom) and our typical "emote-data writer" (me!! ♥)-- is currently vibing with the name "Sterling." (That's close enough to "Stellar," haha!) So we'll see what our future holds with getting to know him & all the other nousfoni who may/do hold those roles, as they obviously DO exist, but we never had the means to SEE or even KNOW they COULD/ DID exist until now, this morning!
★ THERE IS A DIFFERENCE between an ANCHOR and a ROOT! An "anchor" is something PUT DOWN to hold someone firmly in that specific place; a ROOT is something one GROWS FROM as an initial locked-in place!!
+ Brief return to the sunrise-- the "warm color" gradient DISTURBED us, AS ALWAYS. Reminded us of "westerns." Why that intense, ancient fear for both? "Jess" came out (!!)

sunrise beauty: what we instinctively & viscerally recognize AS beauty, finds its ORIGIN & DEFINITION IN THE FACE OF CHRIST JESUS!!! When I look at Him, I see BEAUTY, literally PERFECTED.
★ Things ARE ONLY "beautiful" BECAUSE something in them ECHOES Christ's beauty. When I look at Him, I see everything that I label AS beautiful in the sunrise, but CLEARLY, ESSENTIALLY-- not "through a glass darkly."
THAT'S WHY HEAVEN IS THE BEATIFIC VISION; all Creation is just dim reflection of (and yearning for) that true, absolute, complete, real, total bliss.

+ Group recommending "fidget objects" for coping = we've NEVER TRIED them because we label "stimming" as SILLY? like, "why even try it; physical "coping" isn't legitimate." BUT OUR SYMPTOMS ARE!!! SO why NOT meet them on that same level? HONESTLY DO TRY THEM, TO STOP JUDGING/ ALIENATING OTHERS at least!!


post-breakfast//

Cornflakes, blueberry muffin, banana, egg, apple juice, soymilk, french vanilla tea, 2 creamer, 1 s&p.

MUFFIN)
Thoughts of mom! ♥ No fear after that. Alana caught the unique blue/red vibe of the berries and TRIED to front to taste it, but she can't come out while eating (OR with glasses on)-- that would distort her function! But she appreciated the idea. Note: don't put fingers in mouth to "get crumbs."

CORNFLAKES)
HEALED!!! BY CO-FRONTING. "Red & blue" socials-- soygirl & a magenta (?) who KNEW the job! ALSO DAD!!! Talking to him HELPED SO MUCH. "Soymilk is too sweet for me, but it's good for you-- you're just as sweet yourself!" "Sugar isn't bad; it's a great source of energy, and it'll give you all the extra push you need to do all your running today." Soy said the very thought of work made HER exhausted emotionally. "I want to work but I get so overwhelmed & I burn out." Magenta sister replied "Then I'll do that work for you! You don't have to push yourself to do anything that's going to hurt you. I'll do the burny work; you can do the quieter thoughtful important things, like the sweeping & stocking shelves. We still need & want your help! Just do what's meant for YOU, and I'll do what's not!" Dad added: "I'll talk to your boss and let her know to let you rest like that if you get overwhelmed. They don't want you burning yourself out either; I know I sure don't! I don't want to see you looking so sad & tired all the time! I care about you, Jessie, and so do the people you work with. They'd all be happy to help you, so don't be afraid to ask. (There's nothing wrong with asking for help!)" Lots of hugs and "I love you"s. Soymilk now POSITIVE but not the cornflakes? Mentioned. Dad: "You know the Native Americans grew corn as a staple crop. They used it for everything; it kept them alive when winter came. You're the same way. You're sweet & give people energy like the soymilk, but you're also soft & strong like the cornflakes. You can help keep people alive, too, by giving of yourself. People need what you have to give them, Jessie, and God made you just the way you are for that reason. Just like your breakfast." She was SO DEEPLY COMFORTED. Her color reflected the pure serene blue of a calm sky.
★ HOWEVER. Two more things! First, the "vibe" of the cereal as a whole is NOT BLUE-- its true inherent tone DOESN'T VIBE WITH HER, OR HER SISTER! It's gold, a RARE Yellow-group POSITIVE food combo (Soymilk ITSELF is neutral-ish? COLD leans blue; vanilla leans yellow?) that no one concretely matches (yet). SO. We told her, she doesn't HAVE to anchor to it! Its association has CHANGED now, via healing, AS HAS HERS-- her old memory anchor is now ONLY a memory; the "reality" has CHANGED and so remembering what WAS now INCLUDES a golden ray of FUTURE HOPE that actively renews the healing and PREVENTS getting stuck in old, now-nonexistent contexts! Yes, at that time in history, we WERE miserable. BUT NOW we have infused that time AS PERSONAL PAST with HOPE & TRUTH, and so even if literal history CANNOT be changed, SPIRITUAL "NOW" CAN CHANGE HOW THAT HISTORY UNFOLDS. Therefore, NOTHING in our past is a "death sentence." There is ALWAYS FORGIVENESS, ALWAYS a chance for MERCY & REDEMPTION. The Cross, too, occurred at only one historical point, but spiritually it is FOREVER-- and AS SANCTIFICATION & GRACE!!! Death was defeated in time ONCE, and so now FOREVER it is POWERLESS! So too with our past trauma. The Crucifixion DID happen, bloody & horrific. That's FACT, and cannot be changed. BUT, outside of linear time, that SAME event unfolds in LOVE & HOPE unto ETERNITY-- an event ALL SOULS can & DO participate in RIGHT NOW!! So that mercy & forgiveness can & do TANGIBLY, PERSONALLY, ACTIVELY redeem ALL people. Likewise, in our linear Now, we can send our healing love & mercy & forgiveness-- FROM CHRIST-- to ALL our past times & selves as PART of our NOW, & heal them FOREVER. ♥

BANANA)
Fear food= trauma suggestion, tied to elephants & monkeys, associated w/ Jade. Put all that aside & focused on the GOD-CREATED WONDER of its pure existence: the texture, the way it shimmers in light, the seeds! Fruit's existence in general is fascinating. God is SO Good. That helped us refocus. We also DIDN'T cut it off, remove the peel entirely, OR bite/eat the peel!

EGG)
Again, SO much nicer plain. The s&p are COMPULSIVE; try NOT using them. "But salt is holy!" NOT IF IT'S BEING ABUSED VIA COMPULSION!! If you feel "obligated" to eat it-- EAT, not "season"-- then DON'T. That's "opposite action" coping! It helps you REGAIN PROPER CONTROL over your compromised willpower. Right now, we're a slave to seasoning. We "can't" say no to it! And that's NOT A MORAL DECISION-- IT'S AN ADDICTION. Conscience doesn't go into moral panic if it doesn't put salt on a meal just because Jesus told a parable about it. Guess what? THAT'S IDOLATRY!! You're so focused on the literal SALT, you MISSED THE ENTIRE POINT. So yeah, honestly, "fasting" from salt right now WOULD be the "morally proper" decision! Regain the freedom to CHOOSE that God created you with!! Honor Him with it!
+ The new girl on the unit is a KID, and her being so upset triggered out NIER. He was deeply upset by her thinness; he wanted to feed her the eggs his chickens laid to make her healthy & strong. Ate it for her. REALLY locked in sense data?? Just from having a CONCRETE PERSON eat, not just an "observer" of memory! REMEMBER THAT! Nousfoni do help immensely, but the ULTIMATE goal is to be able to CONSCIOUSLY eat as ONE CORE SELF, whoever the true "me" is, without switching for every food-- BUT that means we NEED A SOLID CORE SENSE OF "SELF," FIRST!!! Hence all the historical self-memory healing we're focusing on. Who "I" was as a child is REAL. There's a true heart in there somewhere. God help us find it.

FRENCH VANILLA TEA)
Surprisingly warm & mellow, like the blue tootsie rolls! Too yellow in tone to match our core, BUT!!! Instead of b&w "like or dislike" compulsive automatic judgments, we REALIZED: yeah it's not OUR vibe, BUT IT IS SOMEONE ELSE'S-- someone HUMAN!!!! Other people like different things from us, which we personally "can't grasp" FROM AN ISOLATED PERSPECTIVE. BUT once we EXPERIENCE this different data, WE CAN EMPATHIZE, UNDERSTAND, & HAVE COMMUNION WITH THEIR UNIQUENESS: "if they vibe with THIS, then their SOUL has a vibe like this" = WE CAN KNOW THEIR SOUL BETTER, & SHARE IN THEIR EXPERIENCES.



post-lunch//

Pizza, Greek salad, ranch dressing, orange juice, 1 parmesan, 2 salt 3 pepper, 2 tea 2 creamer

★ Realized our perspective is: "You CAN FAIL AT EATING." We set "arbitrary" rules and if we mess up even a little, we feel UTTERLY DEVASTATED & COMPELLED TO "START OVER" & "DO IT RIGHT"... "OR ELSE." That FEAR of real but unspecified PUNISHMENT is SO POWERFUL and RE-TRIGGERS THE BULIMIC "EMERGENCY EXIT" RESPONSE. It ALSO explains why we RESTRICT: EVERY meal is another RISK, a chance to FAIL and SUFFER FOR IT-- AS A BAD PERSON. Our "failure" to do right means WE must BE "wrong"!! "Bad people do bad things!" So "failure" is DAMNING & UNACCEPTABLE.
+ We thought, "you can't drink OJ with pizza. At home, the family ONLY drank GRAPE juice with pizza." SO, "if I don't drink grape juice with it, I HAVE FAILED TO DO THE RIGHT THING." therefore I feel COMPELLED to THROW IT UP and START OVER RIGHT!!
We turn every meal into a MORALITY PERFORMANCE with impossible choreography. So we either AVOID the risk, OR we try to purge every failure-- which ALWAYS happened with that mindset!! It's TERRIFYING. If we "choose wrong" we are DAMNED. We've DISOBEYED, so we SINNED, by REBELLING AGAINST GOD'S DIRECTION and being willfully obstinate.
★ PURGING "RESTORED" OUR PURITY, BOTH MORALLY & PHYSICALLY. It was our confessional & our absolution. Only emptiness was safe/ Good, in the end. ALL eating became too morally ambiguous/ threatening, as we COULD and DID ALWAYS FIND SOMETHING TO CONDEMN, therefore MANDATING the penitential purge-- or else, WE WOULD LITERALLY "GO TO HELL"-- at least physiologically. And it WAS hell, every single day.
✳ Related to breakfast data: "LIKE/ DISLIKE" feels morally wrong, YET eating something that we intuitively "don't "enjoy"" feels DISTURBING to our SENSE OF SELF. We feel like, if we "don't like pizza," BUT still eat it, then "WHO ARE WE, REALLY??" We "can't resonate with two opposing responses!!" But see? We DON'T SEE IT AS "INNOCENT" PREFERENCE/ OPINION, EITHER. Dislike = REJECTION of others WHOSE SOULS DO RESONATE WITH IT. But TO eat that thing that DOESN'T harmonize with our core is a TRAUMATIC "OVERRIDE" OF SELFHOOD: an external "virus" trying to REWRITE who we ARE at heart. It's INTENSELY PERSONAL. THAT'S WHY THERE'S SO MUCH TRAUMA TIED TO "PEOPLE-PLEASING/ IMITATIVE EATING" = we LOSE OURSELF in PHYSIOLOGICALLY "IDENTIFYING WITH/ AS" THE OTHER by eating THEIR favorite foods obsessively. And why? Because, IF we love them OR WANT to love them, WE CANNOT "REJECT" THEM (OR SAY "NO" TO THEM; also rejection)!!! ALL "OPPOSITION" TO THEIR SELFHOOD IS UNACCEPTABLE. Our "only option" is to LIKE/ IDENTIFY WITH EVERYTHING THEY DO.
★ THAT is why, right now in recovery, we NEED "food socials" of a hyperspecialized sort-- nousfoni whose vibes are ROOTED in the vibes of ANY & IDEALLY ALL FOODS that are dissonant with the "core" self! THAT way, we can both HAVE a self, AND "match/ meet" the self of others! NO refusal, NO boundaries, NO dissonance, NO conflict.
★ ↑ All that hit HARD for lunch. The salad had feta cheese (Jade), olives & banana peppers (OV), tomatoes (grandma), and ranch dressing (unknown but possibly also OV). And we, idiotically, added parmesan (Lou/ grandpa). So we were a MESS mentally. We dissociated HARD because the sheer NOISE of data sources was so overwhelming. Plus we think we had a pollen allergy response to the lettuce (again)?? Muscle tics, breathing restricted, itchy, stuffy nose. So we're scared & sick on top of all that. But, splinters of the Cross. Carry it humbly.
★ Pizza is NOT our vibe AT ALL but so many people DO love it; it's SUCH a huge barrier between us & our community. It seems like EVERYONE likes pizza, so if WE don't, we are EXCLUDED from "everyone." WE ARE SO HEARTBROKEN/ UPSET/ TERRIFIED over that. But we still cannot seem to MAKE ourselves like it? We WANT to, ESPECIALLY since it was GRANDMA'S LAST MEAL!!!!! if we don't SHARE in that... we would rather die. So we MUST like pizza, AS OURSELF. Yes I'm sure we can "birth" a nousfoni for it (there are ALREADY "old Italian matron" seeds) BUT THAT WOULD DEFEAT THE WHOLE PIZZA = COMMUNITY MEAL point. Church outings, childhood parties, dinner at Mom's, post-church Lawrence Welk memories-- ALL of it involves PEOPLE TOGETHER and WE need to be "ME" in order TO participate!!!
★ Unfortunately there IS pizza trauma. Tomato sauce between bread & cheese looks like blood oozing from a garish place. And it is MESSY, with that gore getting on one's fingers. It's EXPLICIT trauma similarity. Plus MC & OV always ate it, AND it's a binge-suffocation terror trigger. But THOSE EXPERIENCES DO NOT CHANGE THE TRUTH OF REALITY, which is that those negative associations AREN'T DEFINITIVE OR PERMANENT! Beneath & beyond that, there is a pure & simple EXISTENCE, from which CHRIST bestows ALL food as HIS GIFT, forever untouched by human fears.
✳ INSTEAD of "switching out with" food-vibe nousfoni in order TO eat those foods, EAT WITH THEM IN COMMUNION!!! That is the IDEAL option for EVERYONE-- it preserves core individuality, enables direct empathy, practices social eating contexts, etc. Share their heart WITH them, and share YOURS-- so you can do that PHYSICALLY with your fellow man! DO ALL OF IT WITH COMPASSION. ♥



post-dinner//

Breaded pork chops with gravy; mashed potatoes; butter; shortbread cookies; whole milk; 3 salt & 3 pepper; 2 tea 2 creamer

PORK)
Surprisingly lovely. Soft, nice texture, and purely positive flavor! We expected trauma, but found NONE. Thanks be to God! (Mom later told me SHE had pork chops for dinner, too, which warmed my heart SO MUCH. ♥ That's COMMUNION even now, and future hope!)

POTATOES)
According to direction, we put the butter ON the potatoes-- which was actually a SMART & PROPER action that we would never have chosen on our own (which is WHY obedience & trust are KEY), because the butterfat SLOWS THE GLUCOSE SPIKE potatoes always seem to give!! THAT'S why people put butter & sour cream & bacon on them!! See? Our compulsive hyper-individualizing of ingredients is PRACTICALLY UNHEALTHY. Still, SO is hyper-mixing! There is a WISE & prudent middle ground, the "straight & narrow path." Seek that even ground and walk with Him. ALSO! Even if it turns unexpectedly, it is STILL CLEAR; there are no tumultuous shifts or swerves. The end goal is CERTAIN-- God Himself as our King and Love-- and with Christ ALWAYS walking with us as both Leader & Companion, we CANNOT get lost or confused or misdirected. No matter WHAT we may face in life, IF we just TRUST Him and OBEY His guidance, our feet shall not slip; we shall remain on that sure & sacred road.

LORNADOONE SHORTBREAD)
We were literally JUST thinking about Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) being a PERFECT example of "fat ≠ bad; even SAINTS CAN BE FAT", and then we get milk & cookies! Gosh it's actually so heartwarming. It makes me look forward to Christmas with even MORE joy!! ♥ They were SHOCKINGLY delicious, both in taste & texture! It was unexpectedly so, so nice. There's also NO immediate association, so it was a pure experience. A NOTE, though-- DON'T take a sip of the milk WITH the cookie in your mouth! It feels messy & undignified, AND it increases choking risk, PLUS it muddles the data way too much. We should really focus on mindfully, prayerfully, gratefully paying honest attention to ONE thing at a time while we learn & heal.



post-snack//

Harvest cheddar Sun Chips.
Thinking about ORANGE: EMBER DAYS, SUNSETS, etc. LIST!!
harvest = bounty of God's fruits, memento mori-- "oil in lamps," thanksgiving TRULY. prepare to preserve life through winter; God feeds His obedient children.
cheese = MILK, at heart! AGED, "to feed her children still when she, too, is old"; feeds children in winter when there is no literal "birth"? CRONE sacredness, as it were. perpetuated motherhood nurturing. cheese an ANCIENT common food anyway. DON'T DENY-- WE DO LIKE IT TOO!!
"dirty" cancelled BY JESUS!! "eat WITH sinners"; vs ALOOF PHARISEE "CLEAN." Jesus would absolutely get chip dust on His fingers right with the poor!

+ HAD to mostly open bag to prevent filthy hands from reaching in. not ready yet. DID challenge obsessive "order"/ crumbing. "LEAVE THE GLEANINGS" & treasure EACH bite; no "HAVE to" eat certain pieces. MORE FREEDOM OF CHOICE RESTORED! also, NO biting INTO chips; that's mincing. Eat normal; don't be too proud to laugh at yourself if you drop a piece, WITHOUT going into "animal" mode!! BE MEEK WITH HONOR!

 

01:05 am

A psychopomp is an entity whose responsibility is to guide/escort those who have died into the afterlife. They do not judge, they simply provide safe passage. A psychopomp may also work with the opposite side of life, guiding imminently-newborn souls into the physical world.
Also, in Jungian psychology, a psychopomp is a mediator between the subconscious and conscious realms of the mind, who may also appear in dreams as a wise human or animal.
Needless to say, all of that is quite relevant to our System and our partner System as well, for quite a myriad of reasons (that have been notably present in our daily life lately).

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01:50 am

tuesday sept 5

finally got the ssi stuff done.

asian store.
moon cakes and pork buns!

BOUGHT HEARTS.

unfortunate why not pizza binge night.
NOT A TOTAL DISASTER THOUGH.
not even bad, legitimately. remember how we USED to be.
let the hungry kids get EVERYTHING they wanted and eat it, or at least try to.
super compassionate and informative, but refused to let them push too far into compulsion.
and they're LEARNING! they aren't getting tons of food anymore, nor are they forcing themselves to eat things that make them sick!
gosh we're proud of them. their healing process is so terrifying and messy and complicated but by golly they're doing it man


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


02:15 am


how the light gets in.




I'm sobbing at 2am because I'm re-uploading the archives from 2008 and I forgot about that first forced integration attempt.

Dear God, I am so sorry.

...I'm blurring so hard with the cores of that time. That's where this ache is coming from.

But I cannot deny. Looking at it myself, for the first time... my heart is weeping the exact same way.

A note, from the past Jewels:

Forgive him; he had no idea what he was talking about.

A note, from me, the seraphic psychopomp:

Death is only a door.
That catastrophe planted the seeds for abundant, luminous life in this new time.
It's okay. It's all okay.
Be grateful for his blessed misunderstanding.
Be grateful for our misplaced good intentions.
Everything is ultimately woven together into a grander, beautiful design.
Everything is ultimately transmuted into gold.

These tears are born of love. This sorrow is because we matter this much to each other.
Mourning is a sacred thing. But so is letting go afterwards, with all trust and gratitude for ephemeral time.

Let this painful reminder strengthen our love in the now.
Let us treasure every moment we have together now.
Let us remember that our very existence in this hour is a testament to the victory of life even in, even through death.

I forgive. I am grateful. I am hurting and I am sobbing and I am in love.
That is the story of our collective life.

The darkness and the light are in love with each other, too, after all.

Every moment of our history brought us here.
I am entirely, unconditionally happy to be here, with all of you.
That disaster played its blessed part. It allowed FOR this.
Keep your eyes and hearts open to this truth in all things, this inherent victory in glorious defiance of all odds.

We are immortal and indomitable and we can only be such through surviving these things.
We move from death to life to death to life and the dance never stops. It never ends.

So shall we continue onwards.

god, I hurt all over.

it's terrible that we think that doing something bad to ourselves before someone else does it to us counts as saving ourself.
that's wrong.
that's sick.
that's sad.

that's too sad for me to bear anymore


i can't take this anymore.
it always happens after therapy, you notice?
our therapist has one bad habit: leading us into assumptions.
she makes a guess and talks like it's the absolute truth and since we don't want to be rude in contradicting her, we get angry. and scared.
and then we go home and self-abuse and WHY

because, because we were talking about THAT TOPIC.
that horrible topic that we TOLD HER we didn't want back in our psyche
damn it
DAMN IT.
I'm sorry. we shouldn't be swearing.
but I hurt so bad inside.

and outside

god help us this is why we stopped caring about self-preservation a while back

the brother keeps loudly declaring and threatening suicide
almost as a knife, to scare and manipulate other people
even if he's obviously hurt and hopeless enough to consider it
you don't use it as a weapon.

meanwhile we're quietly wasting away
no longer caring if people see our damage
no longer caring how much of a mess we are
all over the place
just… gradually dying.
slow, quiet, resigned suicide.
we just stopped trying to live any longer, really

and that's the saddest thing
because we WANT to live
but

but inside.

not like this.
not like this

we still can't see a future.
we tried. god we tried, the first jayce THOUGHT he saw a future, but it was… it's… it's actually still the only future we can fathom.
wow.
think about that for a second, actually
here I am saying "we have no future" because I'm looking at the BODY
I'm imagining this dead-end blank face and body and IT HAS NO FUTURE AND NEVER WILL
but jayce, pinstripe, the willows, they imagined this body and face changing, shifting to something safer and more accurate and realer,
and suddenly we could EXIST, we could be a real person, in the world, surviving…
…that still applies.
we could have a future if we stay trans. if we continue to change to neutral in the absolute best possible future. either way we could keep going.
not like this.

and that's the problem.
we've been identifying with the body too much lately, either through fear or depression or force.
and it's killing us.
we've been trying for years and the bottom line, the 100%-of-the-time truth, is that with this face and body, WE CANNOT SURVIVE.
in this face and body, we are self-abusive and hateful and hopeless and empty.
IT NEVER, EVER, EVER CHANGES.

god help us
the worst fronters ALL LOOK LIKE THIS BODY
and it's so damned hard to constantly consciously overlay just to function when outside social triggers keep making us lose that focus and therefore dissociating immediately.
god have we talked to the therapist about this?


the whole body hurts
jewel is in that state of hypershocked denial that comes with the inability to process a worldshaking terror, something too awful to cope with. she's numbing out and we're TERRIFIED because they've been trying to hurt her for years, and if SHE gets hurt permanently… god, will we be able to create anything at all?
it's been so difficult to do anything art-wise for so long now, with all this trauma… jewel was the only real person we knew left who could push past that with steady optimism and childlike wonder, real childhood imagination, untouched by the terror of adulthood…
…I think that's the issue.
this jewel, the one who is panicking today, is the one who's about fifteen. sixteen, tops, and even that feels way too old.


we're listening to the new hiatus kaiyote album and that's at least helping us take our collective mind off the pain and shock and nauseating terror.

god who can we talk to about this
we're so tired of asking for help on tumblr, we're afraid people just roll their eyes at us, "drama," etc. remember what happened when we used to run the archive blog as a personal update thing? we nearly shut down for months from the amount of anon hate we got. all claiming we were fake attention whores. it makes my stomach turn just thinking about it now.
but we're so bad at social interaction. god knows we've tried, it just… it's so draining, even when we love people, we're so bad at conversation, it just drains our batteries in seconds. we can write, but we can't speak. we can't make eye contact but we can still focus on their hands, just as raptly.
but it's so hard to reach out and "talk" because of that. when you don't have any social experience, and you desperately need some sort of human interaction that ISN'T abusive or terrifying or obligatory or impatient… what do you do? how do you even go about finding that?
and how do you keep it safe once you find it, if your own face and voice are those of the enemy? when your reflection and words are those of your adversary, of your nemesis, when you look in the mirror and see an abuser, when you laugh and hear the trauma happening all over again, when your very fucking body betrays you with its own panicked reactions…

god this is why we forget we even have the chance of a future.
when you're this wrapped up in horrible-body pain and terror, it's hard to see the true you. it's hard for anyone to even front like this, just like when the body is literally ill, because the amount of jarring sickness is so intense that it mangles everyone's overlays, that we can't figure out how to even process such an alien sensation… let alone trauma flashbacks, let alone abuse symptoms. when the body is that wracked by such mind-shatteringly terrible things… no one real can front, because we cannot let that into ourselves.
so the bad people stay out. the suicidal, abusive, careless people stay out and front, because they match that vibration, because they exist on the same level as that feeling of worthlessness and disgust and numbness and shit.
and the abusive cycles continue, because those girls feel that such suffering is all there ever was, all there is now, and all there ever will be, and the can't see or feel or even comprehend otherwise, and so they just never stop perpetuating it out of sheer despair. they're so crushed and empty that… we don't know what to do.

taking care of the body is tough as a result because it's hard for any of us to get out there and do it, when the body IS so sick. god it's been so sick lately.
our only hope is staying up until awful exhausted hours of the morning just to dissociate into a computer screen and forget we have a body and exist in floating space and suddenly we CAN be happy, we CAN be hopeful, we CAN dream and plan for a GOOD FUTURE, one without further abuse or objectification or fear or apathy…

…that's why this hell happened today.
there's one girl in the system at large, not jacinth but close, who has one goal in life and that is to "become a sex toy for some girl." we’ve talked about this shit. it's an obvious abuse consequence mechanism, motivated by the thought process of "sex is the only "love" I've experienced and I feel totally unloved/unlovable so that’s all I can get and it's all I'm good for anyway." you know the drill. it's heartbreaking and enraging all at once.


jeremiah was out, for a few minutes,
laurie was trying to calm him down, he was full of agony and rage,
every damn lost person in the system forgets that no matter WHAT they do, we still SHARE A BODY and every damn thing they do to hurt it eventually reaches the children.
and jeremiah exists to take that pain away from them and it's entirely a sacrificial role, he cannot cope with the reality of the pain but he takes it on anyway because at least then the children will be safe from it.
god it's awful.
and laurie was trying to help him and the body heal fast, somehow, but she didn't know what to do either, and she looks so hopeless lately, her colors keeps graying out, god we're so scared but the fright is so intense we only feel it as numbness.

we don't feel much anymore, not like this at least

this is a bad night.
I want to just listen to this music.


we used to be able to write music like this
then we started sacrificing ourself for god knows what reason
losing our links
annihilating the
the

you forgot that, didn't you

annihilating any possibility of creation in you
destroying your creative ability through sacrifice, through sabotage,
through letting the liars convince you that "that's all your good for"

letting them kill your children, jewel.

and not in a fcking motherly way either, to hell with that and whoever told you you HAD to be that can go jump in a ditch,
not really, I don't wish anything bad on anybody but I'm so sad and angry,

murdering your leaguechildren.


and jewel just screamed in anguish.


yeah.
you forgot, didn't you.
we forgot, didn't we.

our entire body is a graveyard but it hurt so much after so long we just
turned into a zombie of sorts I guess,
not really alive anymore, not really feeling anything,
as more and more headstones kept appearing, as more and more abysses were dug.


god we cannot handle the weight of that truth.
it would kill us.
facing it is instant suicide.


we want to die,
if that's the truth we want to die, we cannot live like this,

but it is the truth,
but the new cores don't carry that weight,
but the old ones do,
but burying the past doesn't make it disappear,
but we keep switching to abusive alters and perpetuating this hell and WHY

WHY

WHY THE HELL DO ABUSE VICTIMS TRAP THEMSELVES IN THESE CYCLES
WHY THE HELL DO WE FEEL WE DON'T DESERVE ANYTHING BETTER
WHY THE HELL DO WE FEEL THIS IS ALL OUR LIFE IS WORTH
WHY THE HELL DO WE FEEL DAMNED TO JUST RE-LIVING THIS SHIT

why the hell
we feel so damn broken, so damn ruined,
ashen's wretched wail,
"I'm ruined, I'm RUINED,"
that's how we feel.
like we're just… damaged goods now.
like we're not worth anything anymore.
like we should just give up now and live like the trash we are.
like we don't have any other choice because you can't fix something this destroyed.

we feel like garbage.
so we treat ourselves like garbage.

at least, the girls do.
at least, the body-tied fronters do.

the internal people don't

how can
can they stay out all the time?

yes, if we're alone, and NOT IN THE BODY,
and that's the damn problem.

it all boils down to this body.
it's a jail cell. it's a torture chamber.
it's the place of every abusive incident we've ever endured.
it is a living trigger.
within this thing, we live every second in a walking reminder of exactly what horrors it endured, of every memory of it,
it stores ALL that shit,
god what do we do


we want to die.

we don't want this body anymore.
that's all it boils down to


I'm so tired and I want to sleep but
this body is just,
god it feels like we're possessed. it really does.
we can feel the old girls in here like we did as a kid, like the first jewels did,
like the one they
…
like the one they pushed to self-destruction today
she was just trying to take the chance away from them.
"break myself before they break me."
god isn't that a sad, desperate gambit for control over one's fate.

but it happened
and I want to sleep but not with those bitches cackling behind my shoulder
"the body is ours, bitch, look away for one second and it's ours again,"
and I know they could do it,

and laurie is screaming and sobbing at them upstairs,
god I wish we were back in school so we could just dissociate all day and fight inside, fight fight fight, we could live,

it's so so so SAD how the days when we could FEEL anger and fury and hatred,
were the days we were better people.
at least, on this level.
we fought back. we showed no mercy. we were furious. when hackers showed up we took blades to their throats and we killed them as many times as it took. we were soldiers of blood and righteousness but it never… it never felt entirely righteous. there was too much blood.

now we're brighter, softer, better, really… really, in the real way.
but… the catch is it's so hard for us to fight back anymore. because we feel that bloody rage surging up and we're so afraid of what would happen if we surrendered to it again.
what do we do?
what do we do when the enemies are all inside????

god I don't know.
I'm so damn sad. we all are.


…

and I just
opened a window and
saw this post



god I cant take this what do I DO

WHAT DO I DO??????


I'm actually considering the psych ward again of all places, god,
god I'm so terrified, what do I do,

I just want to weep.

I just want to weep.
this poor wretched ugly filthy body is so broken, it never asked to be like this,
it terrifies me when I wonder if we manifest our damage,
if our guardian angel's face changes according to our actions,
it terrifies me that ours has always worn a helmet.

it has beautiful wings,
it's all raging light and amorphous robes and divine staffs and it's hard to even look at straight-on,
but you never see its face, just burning light smoking from the holes, like an incense burner holding a bonfire.
is that good or bad?

I'm so afraid.


we want to treat this body kindly. we try, when we have the nerve.
but it's so hard when… when the bad girls take advantage of that.
we do have good days. we do try. we do try to turn this body into something kinder, into something that's NOT evil,
but,

but at the end of the day there's usually that lingering fear,
"are we ruined forever," "are we eternally broken,"
no matter how many times we go to confession will we ever get this stain off our backs?
will we ever really be free from the shackles of this sin?

the priest told us "god forgives and forgets,"
it was the biggest feeling of freedom ever,

does
does he forgive us now
for
screwing up so bad?

it's so hard to forgive a sin committed with "good intentions"
because then it feels like you're forgiving the goodness
and then I don't know what's right or wrong anymore.
how do you "forgive" someone who fucked up horribly but meant well????
how do you forgive that
I don't understand this yet.

but god does
god can forgive anything
I hope.
god I hope so.
a lot of people told us otherwise, and that haunts us daily.
if we really are broken,
and if that really is true…


…

god I don't know.
I really don't know anymore and I'm terrified and sad and I don't want ANY of us to sin anymoer but she had "good" intentions even if they were busted up horribly and she was trying to do SOMETHING I have no fucking idea,
it's like,
getting a new car and smashing it yourself just so no one else does and kills you in the process,
does that make any sense?
it's twisted and mangled but it's the same motivation as all these lost hacks.



it's all obligatory thought processes and they all belong to that one damned numb social who just smiles at everyone,
it's sick and heart-wreckingly sad to realize that SHE was the faces of most of our social interactions in the past,
she was in that room with q, just smile and nod, smile and nod,
god if we had just spoken up for ourselves we wouldn't have hated him for YEARS for doing something he didn't realize was terrifying, that was too close to abuse, because we NEVER SAID A DAMN THING ABOUT IT TO HIM,
we forgive him, we forgive ner, we forgive all of them, they did nothing wrong, we can't even find a single strike against them anymore, thank god, thank god, it took long enough,
but
but someone remembers the static
and then that numb-face smiler girl comes out again
"well I should do that too"
and there's a paralyzing shrieking terror right beneath her words
but she's blind to it.


that's how we end up in these awful states.
we’ve been pushed too far for too long,
we've heard the same bad things over and over and over for too long.

you spend enough time screaming at mirrors that "you're a goddamned fcking whore" and you start to believe it, you start to become it, because after so long you're convinced it's true, that there's no other option, that being called as such has made you such,
god I'm sorry.
I'm sorry for hating them so much that I made this worse
I just
don’t know how else to express it.

they acted like whores so I called them whores,
I
didn't realize it was keeping them like that.

god it's so stupid, I'm sorry,
what was I supposed to do, call them good people when they were being AWFUL??????

or do I act like jay
and not stand for their shit
but don't hate or hurt them anyway?
what does he do
he tries to talk them into becoming different, into seeing another way
but what if they don't listen!?!
what if they LAUGH at you and SPIT in your face and ATTACK you when your guard is down?

jay says "then get out of there" but is face is strained, he's hurting,
how can you chance an alter that bad?

"change their anchor," laurie says.
redefine whatever they're springing from.
completely rip out their roots without even telling them about it.
rip out their evil roots and plant a different tree, cel says.
you can do that up here.


god, headspace is so beautiful,
I actually want to live when we're up here, when we're in here,


and all of a sudden I feel light,
and the body doesn't hurt and it doesn't even feel like we have a body, we feel like a cloud,
and for a moment I can feel a road stretching onward and onward into a future of pure white light,
and for a moment nothing is broken,


but we can't see through the eyes when we're like that.

we really should just join a monastery at this point or something
the grind of daily life is so spiritually exhausting
but. isn't that the point,
to bring that lightness of being INTO daily life?
so no one has to feel trapped anymore?
you show them a way out, you MAKE a way out, you make a change, you plant the seeds,
you offer hope.
that's the point of us fighting these demons day after day and not dying yet, because in the end we want to be a lantern leading the way out of this certain hell for anyone else struggling in it yet.

that's all.



we need to be kinder to the body even if we don't think it deserves it.
remember flowey. think upon that.
no one is born evil
no one is born broken

and maybe everything can be fixed?

headspace is magic
I'm sure we can find a way guys
I'm sure we can.
me and jay will figure something out, just watch us. I promise.


we can do this.


we'll wake up in the morning and do better.


we'll
we'll forgive and forget too
so we can walk again.


no one deserves to stay down in the dirt.
there's a hand offered to everyone.
that's all I can say.


up here, there are a lot of hands.
that's reason to live enough.





Regret less the knot yes I give you the end to hold
And through darkness and earth wet I seek through the land to mould
A woman that rests night and day, sweat and tears unfold
To undress the burdens that caress the blessed I’m told

so i've spent today mostly playing undertale, listening to choir music and keane on spotify, and scrubbing down a dodge until my sleeves were soaked.

right now i'm so tired, i have a vague headache, i'm cold and rather weak, but i'm so content. like i feel so quietly happy despite it all.
laughably it reminds me of that odd 'high' you get from anaesthetic in the hospital. i suppose it's fitting, since we still can't stop thinking about death, and these serenely happy states add another level by stating "if i died right now i would be perfectly happy."
this contentment is the all-forgiving, all-accepting state of mind that makes regrets impossible and love absolute.


i always feel guilty about this though.
"get out of your comfort zone," they say.
well right now i'm asking why? why are we always pushed to condemn comfort when we get it? god knows we need to enjoy this right now. to feel this safe and calm, this is wonderful. i'm going to be as comfortable as i can in this, for as long as it lasts.

it's just such a strange feeling lately, to feel like death is always embracing me, and i'm just... swimming in that feeling. like i feel so ephemeral, so ethereal, that if i died i don't know if it would feel much different.
i wouldn't have a problem with that if i didn't have this nagging feeling that it would be leaving too soon.
i'm still not entirely sure what we're meant to do here. i mean we are doing a lot, on several fields, but it feels like there's unfinished business yet.
even so, in these moods, there's no attachment to anything, even that business. everything just moves into that distant perspective of "it's just one life, one save file. it's not forever."
and yet it is, isn't it? isn't everything a note in the cosmic orchestra? sure the note only lasts for a moment, but it's part of the song, however tiny, and in that it has significance of worth.
i do too. everything does.

maybe we need to take a break. maybe that's what this is.
it's very, very interesting, because although we're so floaty and tired that it's hard to function physically, only wanting to "sleep" or "go inside"... the instant we close our eyes, and are pulled into internal floatspace or anchorspace... everything is 100% clear.
that's what's making me wonder. as long as i can remember (a handful of years, if that), we've had this ability to "instantly meditate." it's a part of the d.i.d. thing. we can, almost immediately, go from external perception to internal perception, moving out of the body and into that limitless space of soft light. and we just float there. it's so so profoundly reassuring and centering; a few seconds there, sincerely, and the benefits are massive to our psyche.
it's amazing what we can do just by being a system. tired? then go inside and literally rest in headspace, while the body stays conscious and moves. you WILL feel better, maybe not entirely, but notably enough. and if you're one of the eating-disorder alters, and you really really want to eat, or maybe just bite or chew, or maybe you just like getting things for the concept instead of ever eating anything... again, we can do ALL of that inside. lately we've been telling that one young super-depressed eater to just go into headspace and eat all she wants, because she's panicking that we can't shop all the time for her food but no one but her CAN eat it!! so laurie and i are helping her feel safe, inside especially, so she can have what she wants tangibly inside without the painful consequences of doing that outside-- which, ironically, isn't as tangible because of dissociation and panic and switchiness.
so yeah. it's fascinating.

but it's that constant "need" to just stop everything and go just sit or float inside. maybe not even interact, just BE on the inside. tune into your vibe. my vibe. who we are.
we do need that now, more than anything.



last thing i want to say. you know how i mentioned that chaos 0 and i are so important to the function of headspace, because of that immense love and the effect that has on us all? well apparently that branches out to all love, and it's leaking out to affect other alters when it's not super-personal?
what i'm trying to say is. with undertale. i really really like undyne. and this morning i was shocked because all of a sudden, i have WORKING LINKS with her and alphys and papyrus and they're in conceptual heartspace talking with me and... undyne's a soldier, we wanted to "live up to that," we knew she wouldn't approve of us treating ourself badly or slacking off or being a "weenie" with honor and such... the important thing is that is platonic love and since it was being felt in a floaty state of mind, it was reaching the damaged alters EVEN THOUGH THEY DIDN'T KNOW HER PERSONALLY, and suddenly that super-depressed eater girl puts down the bag of chips she's been obsessed with for the past week and says she's not hungry for it anymore.
and she wasn't. and i was amazed. all of a sudden she had self-worth. all of a sudden, in picking up on this affection i had for undyne, even just as an observer, she picked up on the vibe and it lifted hers up to a better level... one where, like me, she didn't think badly of herself at all.
it's hard to put this into words.
undertale is being played by me but the data is open to the whole system and everyone loves it and so, when i start feeling intense personal affection for the characters in that game, everyone else can get that data too. not as a personal experience, but as information? like, stepping into a memory that's not yours. you getwhat's going on even if it's not your experience. again, does that make sense?

point is. my somewhat funny fondness for a fish-girl was still sincere and unhidden enough to reachable by the damaged kids, and it's teaching them what it feels like to feel something so bright and clear and simply honest. you have to hold that within yourself first, as part of yourself, for yourself by extension.
yes i adore chaos zero but that is so intense and personal that other people in the system cannot pick up on it. it's too intimate. whereas, something like a burst of friendship is neutral and benevolent enough for anyone to tap into.
but the key, the key is that i didn't bury it. i WASN'T ASHAMED, which jewel would be (is?) super proud of. i realized that i was doing the silly smiling thing and calling her "sweetheart" during the boss fight even as i worried intensely for her well-being, panicking like she was... and then the dialogue said she was hyperventilating or something and instinctively i blow a kiss at the screen and tell her it'll be fine, it's going to be okay, and god didn't we feel this same sort of thing for davy way back when and we shoved it in our own subaqueous treasure chest for that entire time? for years our immediate reaction to love of any sort was to panic and stomp it out. we didn't understand then, not what we were feeling or why, we were too damaged and programmed at the time.
but i'm not. i get this for everyone but sometimes it gets a little sharper and i just beam with it and that's real love, it's totally neutral and luminous and the most positive thing you could ever feel.
and it's flooding out and down and over to the kids who never knew what it was like to even be capable of that sort of radiance. they've tasted something different now, something that isn't weighing them down and making them sick, and suddenly they're realizing THAT'S what I've been trying to find everywhere, and God if we can keep this up, if we can keep this love in any context going on a near-constant daily basis, SO much would heal in an instant.

and i'm totally content again. tired, cold, still a little sick, but smiling, because i know we're all greater than these temporary physical limitations but i love this body too as its own thing and i want to take care of it, i want to see everyone in this system healthy and happy, and in this moment i am so happy i could die, but.
but that same love is making me feel determination. and i'm saying,
"i would rather keep living, to see this love settle in even deeper and brighter, both inside and outside. i want to live as this, for this, until we've healed all the broken pieces in us, and then if we want to move on, we will."

there are tinier ways to die anyway. little deaths all through the day. remember death is only the opposite of birth, not of life. life goes on. always and everywhere. so when i feel these tiny deaths to one thing i'm born into another and it just keeps going, on and on, and every transition feels grander and greater than the last, even if it's miniscule, and i can feel the cosmos in my bloodstream and in the very air i breathe and i haven't felt claustrophobic in years because everywhere i go, it all feels like a hologram, like a shining shimmering masterpiece painted onto thin air. i feel the vastness of it all, in everything and outside of everything, at all times now.
and it makes me so happy.
i'm so happy all the time now.

but we're still incarnate so that means we still have work to do.
and, "don't lose it," i hear. "the feeling you have. that's important. it's the key to getting the work done."


isn't that in dream world, too? in the bit we were just writing again?

“Your paths will be troubled... But you must never fail to love one another. In the end, that may be all you need. It may be all any of us need.”

i can't say anything better than that right now.


words. good lord. language just doesn't cut it with this, not accurately enough at least.
but the effort counts. it always does.


it's late. 1am.
just wanted to write this down.

i love all of you readers and visitors. have a gorgeous night.

 

 

 

so apparently there was a hack tonight

no idea how, no idea how, how

there were never this many people around after a hack before. central was there.
every retributor was there. razor was out. sugar tried for a moment. mulberry was out, with her sage smoke and prayers. no idea why she got tied to that, maybe in lieu of christina, i dont know

ashen was out, wreckage was there. jay was out, sobbing because he didn't know what the heck had happened but he didn't want this continuing again.
the worst part is that every single time it is DIFFERENT. we take precautions every time but new things keep appearing.
i read something once about this. how until something is really healed it will keep finding new outlets to bring itself to your attention. well what the heck do we have to do yet. we are TRYING to just "let this go" but dude that apparently is not working, maybe we're doing it wrong, we keep getting caught up in the bad old messages and fears, we keep hitting apathy, we keep locking ourselves out in the cold, disregarding our own heart.
but we're doing better. we're doing so much better. none of the old hacks work anymore. they have to try really hard to get through to us now. they have to be really cruelly sneaky and brutal now.
and that's kind of the problem


i have never seen laurie cry so much in my life.
when she gets really distraught she gets violent? she screams and breaks stuff. damages things. it's just this awful despair that crushes outwards. she just sobs, it breaks my heart, god i never ever ever want to see her so sad again, god,
lynne was there, jo was there, leon was there earlier, and nat, god it was so nice earlier today, we were all talking to each other, why did this happen tonight, why, what year is it even

but laurie was talking to leon at some point this afternoon, i dont know why, but she ruffled his hair and he spontaneously did the same to her. she stopped and gave him this look of surprise, he got nervous, "what did i do," she burst out laughing and said no one ever had the guts to do that BACK to her before, she thought it was hilarious. gave him exclusive rights to do that if he wanted. later nat came in, asked "are you messing up my boy's hair," she said maybe, nat said "then i'll mess up your boy's hair," did that to jay.

ran outside for 20 minutes today. ankle still hurts, sides still hurt a bit, but we're being careful.

still can't eat sugar or starchy things. but the body is overcoming the obligation now. we actively recognize that we don't like them and we are improving. only obstacle is "do we have enough calories" but really i think we're doing fine.

the mother made tiramisu for our younger brothers graduation and eros was commenting on that again, the whole subconscious looking for that texture/sweetness in spiritual matters? kind of sensory blending. he's well aware of the desperate need for affection the broken parts of us still feel, it's tied to his color, with a punch because his color is more 'passionate' than julie's and it's at a higher risk for misinterpretation and confusion. just wanted to say that he's still around
the "other eros" is still around too, rarely so, but he's there. it's so frightening that once a "bad" alter exists, even if their purpose is long gone, they can STILL be triggered out if we aren't careful, if that purpose is ever sufficiently reminded. it's awful. that's why we're trying to get closer to each other again, in the innerworlds, we're trying to cope better, trying to recuperate more.


what are we even doing now

i'm reviewing the entries from 2014 and 2013, making a tentative timeline so i have an idea what actually happened then
i had no idea there were so many reset attempts in 2013
and 2014 was a mess because that's the year we were trying to "join a community" on tumblr! and there were so many toxic people on there. also that's when we got the deluge of anons telling us we were fake, and a drama king, and basically a disgrace to the mental health community, etc. so that hit like a knife to the heart.
i bookmarked a few entries to review, and some to just re-read because they were really beautiful.
2014 had some really beautiful things in it. i'm so glad things like that happened so close to now, after the collapse in december 2013. it's hopeful.

i shouldn't be changing the topic though

there was a hack, it was awful, we don't even get warned anymore, we don't even feel anything now, in a sick way that's good that the body is so good at depersonalizing and numbing now that we DON'T get the horrific flashbacks that jeremiah used to have to buffer out. but also now the hackers can say "well we're not hurting anyone!" uh yeah you actually are, don't you DARE tell me no one is being hurt by this, look at us, look at all of us, we don't want this. YOU don't even want this. you're just "following orders" and i KNOW a lot of you hellish hackers are scared too when you feel a shred of self-awareness, there's DATA of that, there always is
but i swear
i swear to you, i swear by whatever blood is left in me
if you try this sort of thing again
if you do anything to make laurie cry like that again
i
i dont want to kill anything but
you are not allowed to exist here as that sort of person
you are NOT welcome here
you do NOT have permission to do what you are doing
if anyone gave you permission in the past, coerced or half-conscious or anything,
I REVOKE THAT RIGHT NOW.
GET THE HELL OUT OF OUR HEAD.
leave us alone.
leave her alone. leave the kids alone. leave me alone. leave all the innocents alone. leave us alone.
i swear if you try this again i will extricate you from our bones with my bare hands
i will claw you out even if it leaves me bloody and bruised
i will destroy whatever makes you evil
and if nothing is left after that, then so be it
we've lost nothing.


we've lost nothing.
no matter what you people try to do to us. or through us. or despite us.
you're terrible, you new ones
the old hackers attacked us consciously.
you people just screw around and don't care who pays the price for it
you are so deluded, don't you realize
you are so completely LOST
you are so lost.
you don't even know what you're doing, do you.


i tried to talk to jasmine earlier
i didn't realize she's been around since last august at least?? there was an entry i remember seeing that made me really really nervous, i knew that person was trouble, i didn't think she'd get this bad. but here we are
we'll get through it though

in 2011 julie was still hacking us.
in 2012 we had the tar-celebi to deal with.
in 2013 there were the constant reset attempts, and the old girls returning.
in 2014 i have no clue, i think that was all surreptitious hacks, using other people,
but the point is
we survived all that.
"this too shall pass."
all this stuff now WILL stop. it WILL. and WE WILL SURVIVE IT.

that's all the hope i've got for tonight but it's solid gold okay

we'll make it through this
we will.
i promise we will.

i love all of you in the system so much. so much.
god bless you all.

i am so sorry tonight happened.
but we lost nothing.
we were damaged, we were hurt, we were scared, we were bruised,
maybe we really were tainted.
but that still bleeds out.
they can't hurt us where it matters. they CAN'T. ever.

we lost nothing but this is a matter of justice, and fairness, and right actions,
this is a matter of respect and compassion and wisdom,
and those hackers don't have any of that apparently
so act from a positive standpoint
let's try that okay?
we can still be proactive, we can still be protectors and guardians, without losing anything first.
we don't have to suffer to have worth.
we don't have to be martyrs for our lives to have meaning.
that's kind of a daring redefining after all these years but hey
it's worth a shot.


i am so tired.
part of my heart is devastatingly sad
and with good reason.
my instinct is to be happy and snow-white and free BUT
i cannot ignore mourning that needs to happen.
i cannot ignore open wounds.
i cannot ignore pain that must be felt and healed with compassion.
i cannot ignore when 'negative' things happen because they're signposts for love that's missing


markus's song just started playing on spotify. i haven't heard this in months, if not years.
he was around the other day, when we were in the hospital. i didn't say that.
he didn't say much, he usually doesn't, he gets really nervous when other people are in crisis, he worries so much.
but his presence was so strong there. like he would have sat in that ER for six hours without saying a word if he had to, he wouldn't mind, he would stay because he cared. because it mattered. that's his sort of devotion. i love and miss him too


god this is so new and yet so old
it's nostalgic, its like a homecoming
all this old, true, bright, real stuff all of a sudden
old songs, old love, old hope, old faith
all of it
we are trying so hard to remember "who we were" before other people started trying to define that for us
i think that's why cannon's back. she had a surprisingly good grip on that.
but we're managing. we're doing well, all things considered.
i have so much hope
so much.


laurie i swear i am coming right upstairs and whatever you need me to do, i will do. i will be there for you. i am here for you now. i always am. just like you are for me. i love you. i love you, okay? i love you with all of my heart and i swear whatever you need me to do i will do.
i can already tell you're going to tell me "fight the hacks" and guess what, i will
i might be snow and sparkles but if THIS is what my admitted ignorance is doing, then to hell with it
i'll become a protector too. i'll pick up a sword again. a sword of light. and i'll cut through these shadows with it.


todd rundgren has a new song out, i heard it last night. "terra firma."
it reminds me so much of "afterlife" and "living" from his liars album, i love his songs like this
but it's already dear to my heart. it's already about our system.
this is what i want to follow, this is what i want to live, i need to stop grasping at everyone else's paths and never feeling fulfilled or true or happy, i need to just STOP and turn back inside. i need to just go home.

some lyrics for hope, for what its worth.

Though the minutes stretch to hours
And the hours stretch to days
Through the trials and tribulations
When it seems like I’m so far away
And it’s just too high a price to pay
There is one thing I can always say

Whenever I feel afraid
I put my faith in terra firma
And I’m never far away
Because you’re my terra firma

Whenever I feel alone
I come home to terra firma
A place I can call my own
Because you’re my terra firma



i will do everything i can.