the spectrum heart cathedral system

quick morning typing notes

up until 3am typing.
then 330 FIRE ALARM WTF. quiet fire engines. surreal. it was raining outside

up at 1111
Mass at st clares as usual
homily about LEADERSHIP. good leadership requires accountability & integrity of character.
said we are ALL leaders, in our own way, in our own unique situations
at one point said, "what do we teach our children?"
got a SUDDEN and POWERFULLY CLEAR VISUAL FLASH of THAT OTHER CHILD sitting next to Xenophon on the floor, a "could-be" visual thought with that statement. (those feel like dreams, or memories. you can TELL they aren't "real," but definite potentials)
looking at him. pondering his appearance and colors. that weird icy blue crystal tail. the "undersea fish" vibe about his head, or even soft leaves. different vibe than xenophon. like an underwater plant almost.
Celebi was floating near me, looking at me pointedly, and CRYING.
I suddenly realized WHY that child is blue.
HE IS PINSTRIPE'S!!!!!!!!!!!!!
THAT EXPLAINS SO MUCH.
the light blue crystals on his tail are absolutely pin's vibe. Pinstripe's color was ice blue and he vibed with ICE, NOT SNOW. also, oddly, his "emblem animal" association was NOT bugs... it was SHARKS!!! 
(we never listed that for the cores, did we? we need jargon for it. "totem" is appropriative.)

BK prep talk
Mimic cutting open new water pack, said he wasn't used to dullness of kitchen knives, but it works. Barry jokingly commented about sharp knives, specifically "the knife isn't sharp enough"
Laurie admonished him STRONGLY on that. said that we NEVER use that phrase, especially not so irreverently, and also, "you need to die to those old associations if you want to live a new life." i.e. if he keeps identifying himself with the "zany sociopath" model he was cast in, he will never fit a new one in a new world. He needs to STOP trying to "be Barry from FMA" if he wants to grow and change beyond that original, doomed and degrading definition of selfhood.
Barry apologized (the guy is surprisingly open-hearted in that respect; Mimic might grumble or even retort, but Barry has never had an obstinacy towards correction about him? His pride might obviously be bruised, sure, but it's just a bruise-- he still admits when he's wrong, he can take a joke, he has a shocking amount of self-awareness but will readily concede, however sheepishly, when someone points out any vices he's exhibiting, consciously or unconsciously. That's all super notable), Laurie said she accepted it, but not to worry, because this gives us an opportunity to learn humility? I remember that virtue was clearly mentioned, because Barry or someone asked, effectively, "how long do we have to fight pride until we ARE humble enough?"
Laurie said that "humility is a neverending battle", that it is a "war" we MUST fight until the day we die.
Lynne just SMILED at her saying this, and said "you know, Laurie, I think that's your REAL root" = SPIRITUAL WARFARE!!!!
Noted that we ALL ALWAYS associate Laurie with specific knightly virtues: integrity, truth, honor, sacrificial love, perseverance until death. BUT THOSE VIRTUES NEED TO EXIST WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF WAR, IN ORDER TO BE FULLY REALIZED & LIVED OUT!!!
And THAT is what Laurie has been MISSING since CNC; it is WHY she keeps slipping & graying & blurring. She lost sight of her TRUE ROOT, because honestly I don't think ANY of us realized what it is.
Initially, yeah, the "pain=love" bit IS her absolute core. BUT WHY IS THAT EVEN A ROOT? Because, to suffer FOR love IS SPIRITUAL WARFARE!!! That's the entire POINT. So even in the beginning, when it was so mangled, it was STILL FIGHTING FOR LOVE, still FIGHTING FOR RIGHTEOUSNESS, still DEFENDING TRUTH. We were only punished as a child BECAUSE WE DID WRONG. Laurie also only took that up IN ORDER TO KEEP US RIGHTEOUS. Yeah we misunderstood the details back then, BUT NOT THE HEART OF THE CONCEPT.
So this is a HUGE realization. Hence the sudden update!

Jade call, bath tomorrow. GET READY SON

ALSO Laurie laughing that when she says "kid," BOTH Jewel and Jay respond. Jewel said "that's because we're a dualcore processor"
Julie commented, aren't we more like a quadcore? Because there's the Jessica bloodline too, and MAYBE the CECELIAS????
BUT then we noted LYNNE. Wasn't she supposed to be a bloodline shift? Laurie said NO, remember she was born to HOLD THE FORCED IDEAL that others wanted us to be, BUT WE COULDN'T BE. So we took all of that, and put it into HER. She was supposed to be "who everyone else WANTED us to BECOME," but deep down SHE WAS A POTENTIAL BANK. She was NEVER A SOCIAL.
Mimic was shocked at the idea that Lynne was almost a core. He asked if her Orange color had to do with that, since it was so close to Red. Lynne said no, in the beginning, she was a lot more Red than she is now. That's because she was split off FROM the Red Core whose vibe could NOT be mangled to match the external expectations. Lynne actually leaned CERISE originally???? The PINK being a femininity focus, something the Jewels could NEVER hold!!
Then Laurie realized something huge: Lynne DIED in 2009, BUT when she came back years later she was ORANGE, NOT CERISE. And why was this?
Lynne was supposed to be the expected-ideal adult version of Jewel, who could never actually fit those ideals. BUT we could never take the "hyper" out of Lynne BECAUSE WE COULDN'T TAKE THAT ENERGY OUT OF JEWEL.
THAT IS WHY LYNNE HAS THAT INEXPLICABLE AND INDOMITABLE EBULLIENCE TO HER. Just like the Jewels that instigated her root, SHE CANNOT ERASE THAT SPARK FROM HERSELF.
God only knows what she would have become-- what we would have become-- if we LET our environment crush us, and turn us INTO that pink-leaning female adult.
I wonder if anyone does hold that. I WONDER IF THAT SOMAFONI WHO WROTE SO MUCH OF THE UPMC STUFF HOLDS IT????? Is she Iscah, really? Is that her actual self? We never could pinpoint it. I think it IS. And if so... SHE IS 100% PINK. SHE'S A FEMALE ENFORCED IDEAL. AND SHE HAS CRUSHED JEWEL'S BOUNDLESS SPARK.
Iscah isn't a kakofoni, but she IS an apatefoni, which is equally deadly in a different way.


The Archivists realized that Mimic keeps "getting everything" channeled into him because he has such a POWERFUL presence and anchor in headspace; his visuals are crystal clear, his personality is solid, etc. But why is this? BECAUSE HE IS THE ONLY ONE OF US UP HERE WHO DID NOT EXIST DURING TRAUMA!!!! He is, effectively, the manifestation of LIVING HOPE FOR HEALING from all that came before, and that all the rest of us saw, or even contributed to.
Mimic is UNTOUCHED BY ALL OF IT. He showed up AFTER UPMC for heaven's sakes!!!
THIS MEANS THAT ALL NEW OUTSPACERS ARE TRAUMA-FREE. THAT IS AMAZING.
PLEASE TELL THE CORES TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THAT.
I wonder how that applies to nousfoni.
Remember the Undergrounders-- they appeared after a trauma as holders OF the trauma, who had been buried and forbidden from manifesting before. So all "new" nousfoni we find now, WHILE we're healing, might potentially be DEEPLY DAMAGED. Still, we love them and want to meet them.
BUT this fact makes the complementary untouchedness of Outspacers EVEN MORE VITAL as a balance!!!
WE NEED BOTH.
AND THEN THERE'S THE LEAGUE.
That UNITES us both, and with how the Jewels are STILL working on it, despite everything, arguably with MORE clarity than ever... I really think the League is going to be the HINGE on which EVERYTHING TURNS.
The Spectrum NEEDS the Spheres, and perhaps vice versa.
THINK UPON THIS. PRAY ABOUT THIS. LIVE IT OUT.


Quick note during breakfast:
----------------------------------------------------------------------

(later)

evening was absolutely terrifying

for unknown reasons, got hit with a debilitating panic attack after breakfast?
we think it was because, during our Bible study, one of the thriskefoni started on with their evangelistic fervor-- "i need to convert all the ex-catholics on tumblr!! i need to save all of the apostates!!" -- and started writing a notepad document on how to do so, pasting in all these bits of commentary on how to "preach to the lost" to "win their souls" etc. in response, someone ELSE upstairs (faceless & nameless) absolutely castigated them by pasting in huge red letters at the top of that document: "WOE TO YOU, BLIND GUIDE & HYPOCRITE!!" and the girl, terrified, absolutely shattered.
memory just breaks up. we lost all concentration, all coherence, all focus. the next thing we remember is someone eating carrots in the kitchen, but like one possessed, LITERALLY screaming upstairs "help me, i don't want to do this, i can't stop, please God help me" etc. and forcing themselves to eat more and more, amidst absolute shrieking terror. memory cuts out again, like a total blackout, and then the next memory flash is of someone eating oatmeal with raisins, one of our BIGGEST TRIGGERS-- who the heck even BOUGHT it and WHY???-- but with a completely numb mind. no emotions, no thoughts, just mechanical behavior. it was disturbing to see. then, blackout again, and the next memory is of someone throwing up violently in the bathroom, and the accompanying emotions of sheer panic from the pain & awareness of deadly consequences.
it was a nightmare.
however COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS ANYWAY because it has been TWO FULL MONTHS since we can remember having a binge. for years, the biggest gap between binges was two days. and now the worst was june, and ONLY because of the jade situation. this is amazing. so remember that.
Anyway we were SO sick and distraught that memory is, no surprise, shredded to bits. i know we used the default "ER recovery method" which is to take/drink a certain set of pills/ vitamins/ electrolytes/ etc. in order to recover ASAP, but it didn't make the symptoms disappear and so panic remained. i think we were too dissociated to know what we were doing anyway. AND, with all the "godphone" reliance of the thriskefoni, most of them WILL NOT DO ANYTHING WITHOUT "GOD'S PERMISSION," i.e. "hearing Jesus &/or Mary TELL them what to do." so even when we know we MUST drink our electrolytes to prevent hypokalemic disaster, they WON'T DO IT UNLESS GOD APPROVES. they will panic. "should I drink this? Is this right? Does God want me to do this?" etc. they are absolutely paralyzed with indecision-- or rather, a total rejection OF decisive will-- until they are given orders.
these poor thriskefoni are the same ones that will spend hours praying just so they don't have to do anything else with life. to them, life is prayer-- there are no messy decisions or opinions or choices or problems to deal with. just kneel and read prayer cards for three hours, that's all that matters!
on that note, they got what they wanted, and I daresay (with no small amount of holy fear) that God did, too, because from about 845 to 1AM we collapsed on the couch, drifted in and out of consciousness, and just said prayers. there was some talking to God about our illness, I'm aware, but as to what was said i don't know. i know it had to do with death, and suffering, and surrender, and "God do You care about me" "God do You want me to die" "God why did You let this happen" etc. LOTS of Psalm praying, though, which we are aware of because it was pinging us, the people in Central, with how painfully relevant they were.

Nevertheless, that's all we have for today. We went to bed surrendered to God's Will and praying to wake up in the morning. If not, well, at least we don't have to struggle with our own stupid sins anymore.

But hey, Lamentations 3.:22-23 says it best: "The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is [His] faithfulness."

No matter how confusing and frightening this war of our innerlife may get, we can count on God.
Despite all the lies and propaganda, we know His voice inside our heart, and we know He loves us. Deep down we know. Our own existence as a System is miraculous proof of it, despite all odds.
Rest in that. Hope in that. Don't give up. Endure to the end.

post-breakfast//

Good morning beloveds! Let's start today on a solid good note: Breakfast accomplished a LOT today. We got an EGG! (Shoutout to Elsa, haha) Also a bagel & cream cheese, something totally unexpected but perfect for increasing our empathy for others, so to speak. Lots of people enjoy bagels, including our dear brothers, but we've always feared them, due to their intensely dense & doughy texture (dense foods "scare" us a lot; we need to discover the root cause/s of that). Cream cheese, too, is very dense, so we avoided it-- although someone inside that we can't yet identify did have a noted fondness for it; again, we're not sure why. Most likely it's an association with childhood and/or grandma; I feel strong resonance there. But I digress; that's all the accessible information we have right now, as more is only revealed/ discoverable WHILE eating due to the direct sensory input. We weren't aware that cream cheese needed to be delved into as we ate it today. However, it would have been both imprudent & presumptuous to try-- the first "new" exposure to a food on the unit MUST be entirely receptive. We never know what it will trigger, what it will remind us of, what its synaesthetic palette is, what its texture is, etc. There's a LOT of sheer data coming in, all within a distracting, noisy environment AND while under time constraints. So we must be respectful of our own poor brain's mental capacity! One task at a time, and food exposure #1 must always prioritize what we RECEIVE, purely and unreservedly. Jesus WILL and DOES help us with this! He's the ONLY reason breakfast went so well today-- we talked to Him and followed His loving direction the entire time. YES, HE LOVES US and CARES ABOUT OUR HEALTH AND HEALING! He will NEVER belittle or mock or scorn us. He will NEVER laugh at our "unusual" recovery efforts, like gathering food data & memory managing, because HE MADE US and He KNOWS & UNDERSTANDS US and He will SUPPORT, BLESS, PURIFY, and STRENGTHEN those very efforts FOR HIS SAKE, because HE IS Life and Love and Hope, LITERALLY. So, it is His very nature to inspire & promote & protect & sustain those virtues, AND literally every other virtue. You cannot go wrong when you are walking with Him; He MADE both you and the path of life you are traveling. It is GOD Who controls the world and guides your destiny; that truth is the DEEPEST comfort & joy!! He holds it ALL in His Hands, forever, and He cannot ever be overcome or shaken. His sovereign reign is sure. But, in a terrifying paradox, through our free will, we CAN resist it. That's the foundation of hell. DON'T GO THERE. Go where Jesus leads instead-- the Way of the Cross, of charity & joyfully willing obedience even unto death!!
Now. As for our healing. We also got soymilk. And we sipped it slow & dived in to meet that girl. She's NOT Hoban-- Hoban is similarly depressed, but more distantly, and she is LOCKED ENVIRONMENTALLY into the school she's named for! That revealed to us, shockingly so, that this soymilk girl IS TOO. She's aware that she has to go to school, and go to work, BUT SHE DOESN'T. That's a MASSIVE revelation! She is, specifically, LOCKED INTO THE KITCHEN. We honestly didn't realize that SPATIAL ENVIRONMENT LOCKS were a thing, but now that we do, they explain SO MUCH of social function splitting-- it's the same reason why we can't pass through doorframes or windows in dreams. Every marked "division" of space with a "portal" like that FORCES a context shift, and rightly so!! And nousfoni, being hyperspecialized by nature, CANNOT preserve function integrity upon such a shift; they MUST SWITCH AS WELL. That fact opens up SO much potential for memory unlocking & Spectrum discovery, because it means that EACH space WILL be exclusive, and all its anchored nousfoni will ALSO be as exclusive: kitchen nousfoni CANNOT survive properly outside the kitchen, and ALL kitchen memories/ triggers/ vibes/ etc. WILL be tied TO one of such nousfoni-- who should ALL be, inevitably, SOCIALS. Their Spectrum has GOT to be a LOT bigger than it originally was assumed to be as a result-- it's not just Brown! Heck, we think now that Brown's entire function ITSELF has changed-- it MIGHT even now be mapped as a SUBTONE BANK like Pastels??? We are SO EXCITED to discover more about this as God reveals it to us. We have real hope for healing with this. But yes! The soymilk girl is locked into the kitchen spatially, BUT she STILL experiences the COLLECTIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL AMBIENCE, another "new" Social phenomenon that is explaining so much. What that means for her specifically-- and especially, as she is the one who revealed this phenomenon to us THROUGH her experience of it-- is that although she personally may not-- and indeed will NEVER-- experience school or work or even abuse, WE ALL SHARE A BRAIN AND A BODY AND THAT AFFECTS ALL OF US. So SHE WAS FEELING THE PSYCHO-EMOTIONAL AMBIENCE OF HER FELLOW SOCIALS-- notably the ones in the most immediate context to her: our school Socials and our job Socials. She felt THEIR dread & depression & exhaustion, as if it were in the very air. She was haunted by their ghosts, and her heart ached in unconscious communion with theirs. And now, tapping into her memorysphere, WE felt it too. It was honestly shocking. There she was, in the early morning, the dawn still indigo blue outside, the kitchen stove light on & dim. She stood in front of the microwave, pouring vanilla soymilk into a bowl of cornflakes. But she wasn't physically alone, which blew our mind. Anchored just as solidly in that memory was OUR DAD, sitting at the bar & watching the morning news. He's eating something, but only conceptually-- we can't see it. He seems upset, depressed. So are we. His presence alone is a MASSIVE milestone, as it is PROOF that this memory is in 2007!! Which, also, is a shock-- we timestamp the Spectrum's birth/ awakening as 2008, yes, BUT!! APPARENTLY THE SOCIALS EXISTED MUCH EARLIER & WE NEVER KNEW. So yeah. Proof of a long-suspected truth. Nevertheless, that wasn't our goal or the point of visiting her today. We met her there to share her pain, to know & understand it, to show her TANGIBLY that she was SEEN & LOVED & CARED FOR & SUPPORTED, that she wasn't alone-- ever-- and that it was possible to heal, at last, together. So we stood with her & felt her pain together and THAT is what taught us everything I just wrote about. THAT alone is a huge revelation: that such astronomically vital revelations could, do, and will come from pure compassion. And that sharing of self & scars, that communion across chronospheres, was miraculous as well-- it planted genuine seeds of hope in her heart, soothed her misery, gave her hope, and broke the barriers of her spatial-lock to allow us in. All of our hearts opened up from this effort. Now we UNDERSTAND her context and WHY her memory-triggers hurt so melancholocally. They still ache, yes, but now it's bittersweet; now there's hope, the knowledge that her limited existence (until now!) HAS a purpose, HAS a future, HAS its proper and vital place in the Spectrum's history as a whole. And she can live, knowing that the soymilk isn't al there is. That's... so, so important. I wonder how it will change tomorrow, that food data? And what it will feel like when it heals? ALSO!! What about multiple resonances? We get that with a LOT of other foods, especially childhood ones... BUT we've never known all this about the Socials before. THEY'VE never known that they are part of a "WE" before. They don't know that their chronospheres are PERMEABLE by love, or that their lives have PURPOSE and CAN continue NOW. What I'm trying to say is: even IF we find other nousfoni tied to soymilk in experiential memories, they don't know us OR EACH OTHER. ...Yet. What IF they met each other? Could they? SHOULD they? It's a massive new world of possibility for both healing & integration (of our shattered past) that we MUST pray about. That is, arguably, the MOST important step to take in this entire process: we must pray. Always & everywhere, before & during & about everything, we NEED to pray, because the SOLE source of ALL success-- AND healing AND wisdom AND love-- is GOD. HE must be our ultimate goal & guide in this entire process. Please, remember that. We exist FOR HIM, not us. Soli Deo Gloria, amen. ♥


post-lunch//


This one was an ADVENTURE, and ANOTHER milestone. I want to write about it thoroughly enough without exhausting myself, so we might resort to archivist datalogging instead of "journalist" wordiness. Here's the basics: we got a hamburger & whole milk, w/ ketchup & relish, 2 teas & 2 creamers, salt & pepper. Now of course a burger-- being such a common American & childhood food-- is GUARANTEED to carry multiple resonances. And it did-- VERY unexpected ones, tied to different textures & flavors within the same meal! Which is FASCINATING. That's why we like to stick to solo-ingredient consumption: mixing those data input triggers can be absolutely overwhelming, both mentally & emotionally-- or, it cancels itself out into empty noise. Both are horrible. But yes. The memories/ resonances this burger revealed to us were very educational & informative, but most importantly, we were able to IMMEDIATELY jump into them and do SIGNIFICANT healing IN REAL TIME-- well, within their chronospheres & resospheres, of course. But it was HUGE. The resonances we got were:
1) McDonalds birthday party burger. 9-10-11 age? Conglomerate? Upset by noise, rushing, kids partying & her left alone, expectations. She was so anxious. Wanted: to explore the playzone imaginatively, to eat & enjoy her burger at her own pace but also in community, to not feel rushed to open gifts or eat, to not feel trapped far from home, to not feel like she had to perform, for the other kids to share her interests & enjoy her company & all respect each other, for the acknowledgement of God in even that context. // What we did to meet her needs & heal the stress: everyone sat together & prayerfully, slowly, quietly ate, no one with any time limit; moved it to a local McDonalds; other kids also interested in joining & respecting her imaginative play directions as the leader; other kids interested in Pokemon & Tamagotchis & similar likes, and gave them as gifts, all playing & talking together WITHOUT noise or mania; everyone thanked God for meal & company.
2) Dad cooking burgers on the grill: Thornhurst & the "sunfish lake"; latter possibly an artificially constructed "concept memory", not literally real. No trauma, but still lingering "Dad isn't truly happy and I'm nervous/ guilty/ upset about it." That needs to be healed in future. "Fishing" construct tied to the HAT he wore = relish flavor?
3) Grandpa eating on porch; food not seen but anchored to the relish. Memories of pickle/ bologna sandwiches ("from the army") eaten there causing the resonance. The hat grandpa wore tied into previous vibescape. No trauma, no negativity. We don't "like" relish but he LOVED pickles, which we forgot! Tap into that next time; learn to like.
4) Grandma giving us dinner at kitchen bar. Ketchup & beef; hamburg patty. We were very anxious. Why? Just the kitchen?


LUNCH NOTES =
Oliver/ KN healing affected ALL other perceptions.
"They said I would hurt them" self-pity/ loathing loop
BUT "I don't want to be a dog"
AND mother trouble; self-giving never experienced;
Carnivore coping, weeping over cow giving milk/ meat,
"someone wants me to live/ cares for me so much they would give me THEMSELVES to eat"
no longer have to be a predator to survive
oliver & bloody meat = heart/ life connection corruption
SECRET EUCHARIST DESIRE!!
eating meat = compromise for lack of meaningful personal communion

+ Jesus "disobedience" teaching trick; we didn't ask permission for condiments
TRUTH = "Your free will & My plan for you are meant to COOPERATE, never overriding one another. Your picking ketchup will not send you to hell, nor will it frustrate My perfect plans for you. I work WITH you, & you with Me."

- Don't like the relish BUT it keeps resonating with grandpa = he LOVED to eat pickles, remember?? He's tied to ketchup too; he always ate tomato saucy stuff. ♥ Love you grandpa!!

+ Milk "smells like a nursery" = "smells like a MOTHER"; still TERRIFYING on some level??? BIG trauma trigger yet. We actually CANNOT overlay a "motherly figure", all those curves. It's one of our few remaining solid terrors, possibly because motherhood is INHERENTLY tied to sex. That topic is still buried & barred-off.


post-dinner//


"WHAT DOESN'T CHALLENGE YOU WILL NOT CHANGE YOU."

This one was rough SOLELY because we overwhelmed ourself beforehand, & disobeyed internal instructions during. It was humbling. But, it is only through humility & brokenness that we CAN truly grow into better people. GOD is the One Who disciplines & corrects us. Take heart.
Lessons we must learn from this:
+ We only have so much emotional & social energy/ "spoons." Obsessive journaling and extensive talking/ socializing quickly causes BURNOUT.
+ We had to unearth & disclose a LOT of trauma data today, and DIDN'T RECUPERATE. Instead we went to 2 successive groups, depleting our mental reserves & further exacerbating trauma symptoms, like dissociation & compulsive people-pleasing & manic threats. It was lethal to our internal well-being. When trauma is triggered, TAKE TIME TO COPE!!! NO SOCIALIZING. NO EXCEPTIONS. Staying externally oriented PREVENTS recovery & processing. We MUST go inside to calm down & PRAY until we are back in a safe space again.
+ When you get an external synchronistic warning, LISTEN TO IT. The devil's number was on BOTH Bingo cards-- so why didn't you STOP???
+ When you get an internal direction about a meal, LISTEN TO IT!!! We had a turkey sandwich, rosemary potatoes, & grape juice. The direction CLEARLY & REPEATEDLY told us to eat the sandwich first, but we stupidly argued our way out of it, claiming it would be "better enjoyed eaten last," and did so against orders. And WE WERE VERY WRONG. We forgot that eating potatoes solo gives us a GLUCOSE SPIKE, causing horrific anxiety attacks & tremors. Eating the sandwich first would've helped prevent that w/ the protein & fat. God, forgive our foolish & proud resistance to You!!
+ Due to mental overload, we began 5 minutes late as we were dissociating, which ALSO destroyed our first 5 minuts of meal data because our addled brain TUNED OUT and was smothering conscious input by listening to the trivia & stories. And there's NOTHING INHERENTLY WRONG with those things-- it was actually really sweet to be able to hear everyone openly sharing parts of their lives, talking about education & family & music, geography & psychology & art & work & babies! And the trivia itself is actually an opportunity for gratitude to God by the same token-- it is little bits of data about this wondrous world God created & our collective human experience, both of which God protects & sustains & guides & directs. So each trivium CAN be prayerfully used as a spark for praise, IF we aren't wickledly judgmental & proud!! BUT. There is a time & a place. When we begin a meal, whether or not we detect dissociation, our attention MUST BE CONSCIOUSLY FIXED ON CHRIST. Say grace MINDFULLY, talking TO Him, NOT at or about Him only. And then ASK HIM TO GUIDE & HELP US. Then LISTEN to His loving response and OBEY HIS DIRECTION!!! He can only lead you on the BEST path!!!
+ Because of that dissociation, we blacked out ALL the ketchup & potato data. When we realized this, we panicked & asked GRANDPA for help INSTEAD OF JESUS at first. We noticed that too & were deeply ashamed. But God bless Grandpa; his response WAS to direct me TO Jesus instead, and I did, humbly & instantly.
+ We had MORAL PANIC over our rebellious potato mistake, plus the ketchup void mistake. As I mentioned, it triggered a GENUINE ANXIETY ATTACK. We felt like we had done something truly disgusting & meriting of shame & sharp chastisement, something we were awfully ashamed of & could not fix. ...but. We brought this fear to Jesus. We confessed our failure & begged His help & peace. And do you know what He said? "Do you see? Through humble repentance & trust in My mercy & love, I can transform even this mistake into an opportunity for us to grow even closer, and to teach you important lessons you could not have learned otherwise."
★ When the panic hit, the bulimia symptoms returned. That was TERRIFYING, but I am still thanking God for it, BECAUSE it revealed a breach in the wall-- a chink in our armor, as it were. We assumed, rather immaturely, that if we just "changed spatial context" we'd be fine. NOPE! AMBIENT PAIN! We just learned that today, though, but this was CONFIRMING PROOF nevertheless. One misstep, one trigger, ONE taste of our collective ache, and no matter WHO is up front, if we aren't healed enough-- which we aren't yet-- THEY WILL SWITCH OUT FOR AN UNSTABLE PAIN HOLDER. So when we panicked over food, the IMMEDIATE physiological reaction was, "we made a mistake in eating this, therefore it is WRONG, therefore it counts as POISON, therefore it will HURT US SEVERELY/ UNFIXABLY, therefore IN ORDER TO BOTH SURVIVE & ATONE, WE MUST VOMIT IT OUT OF OUR BODY. THEN we'll be safe." And our body PREPARES to! It's actually INSTINCTIVE by now, especially since it's tied to survival fear. The feeling is horrible. But the point is: IT HAPPENED. Even here, in recovery, it CAN AND WILL AND DID HAPPEN. We're not perfect or impervious. BUT GOD LET THIS HAPPEN FOR THAT VERY REASON. We needed to be greatly humbled in order to gain wisdom. We needed to harshly experience our weakness in order to be prepared for & respectful of it, AND to realize & acknowledge our GREAT NEED OF GOD. We MUST rely on HIM for healing, NOT ourselves!! Without Him we are absolutely powerless and WILL fail. It's inevitable; humans are BUILT to need God & cooperate meekly & trustingly with Him. Life is infinitely more beautiful & joyful that way.
+ We begged Jesus for peace. Admitting our sin, we prayed for His forgiveness & consolation, and implored His help with the sandwich. HE HELPED & FORGAVE. Never doubt His Goodness & Mercy towards poor foolish sinners like us!! He STILL seeks out EVERY lost sheep!!
+ HOWEVER. He didn't take away all the panic, as it still needed to serve a purpose: we needed to practice trusting Him DESPITE symptoms. "But I have overcome the world." And we WERE trusting, becoming genuinely able to enjoy & perceive the sandwich & feel deep gratitude to Him for it, feeling a spark of true joy amidst panic... but we, obviously, didn't trust enough. Our symptoms threw us off & we doubted His directions AGAIN.
+ ...We realized just how disordered dear sweet Iscah actually was, because ALL HER DISORDERED BEHAVIORS KICKED IN. Honestly, with the anxiety trigger-fall, we FORGOT that she used to drink hot sauce & creamer (from the packets!), pick sandwiches apart, lick plates & wrappers, eat tea bags, and obsess over sheer data collection. But ALL OF THAT KICKED BACK IN immediately! And Jesus WARNED us, "don't do it!!" but we were too fuzzy-brained to really listen and we pulled apart the sandwich. Just the last bit, but we felt HORRIBLE, crushed by shame. That, too, was a needed lesson.
+ Some foods DON'T have attached trauma, or attached memory. THAT IS FINE & GOOD. DON'T FORCE ANY!!!
+ BUT so far ALL foods have attached resonance, AND require some sort of healing. DO SO WITH CHRIST; alone we'll fail.
+ DO NOT FORCE OR COERCE SUCH REVELATIONS. YOU CANNOT GET TRUTH BY FORCE. Be patient. It WILL come, in God's perfect timing-- when we're ready, AND as we're ready for. Trust Him, be grateful, & PAY ATTENTION!!!
+ Also, proof of His trustworthiness & love? He USED the postmeal "potato fatigue" to give us BRAIN RESET DOWNTIME. That's the TOTAL peace we prayed for!! GOD IS ALWAYS, ALWAYS GOOD!!! ♥

021618. 23:02.


Quite frankly, we're sick of being built on tragedy.

it's the first of the "nine nights" and we have no spoons and our body is weak and exhausted and confused and we're angry, we're frustrated, we're heartbroken, we're sad, and we're so so sick of this.
we've made up our minds. yes, struggle is necessary for growth sometimes. but the key word is SOMETIMES. we HAVE to learn how to use HEALTHINESS for growth. otherwise, we're gonna die. there's no two ways about it. we're gonna die.


we're thinking about what we can do for this first night.
we want to review the system list. find the people whose identities are foggy, whose names are clear but faces are indistinct, who have neither name nor face, etc. we want to make a list of them and FIND them. we want to be a coherent, united system, and that's the only way it's going to happen. we have to put the work in.
already, thinking about that is bringing happiness up in us. good.

we're sitting alone on the floor of the playroom with the white christmas lights on in front of us. god we're so happy in here. we feel safe and good and real. something about this environment-- a tiny space, alone and comfortable with tiny lights amidst deep silent darkness, sad and tired and weak but fiercely determined and unflinchingly happy and in love beneath it all-- it feels like us. I guess that's who/how we've been for years. so it makes sense.

our poor body is still sick, sick, sick in the gastrointestinal sense.
we had a weird but jarringly heavy realization earlier. realizing that our stomach was growling, but we had no appetite at all. the thought of eating made us nauseous, but we knew the body had to be fed.
and immediately, we thought of an i.v. drip, and the relief was tangible.
why is this? why the bizarre but powerful comfort in hospitals, in medical environments? is it because we spent SO much time in them over the course of our life?
prince pax has been around lately, when we reached his point of the archives and remembered his name. bam, there he was, remembered and therefore able to live again. he's the one that got us through our most recent. g.i. hospital stay, for the viral colitis infection. we were in excruciating pain for a week, up all night in that dark room with the city lights outside and medical noises all above and below and around us, but he was there strong. I think he was around for the bradycardia stay, too? but memory for that one is fuzzy, as I think we slept for most of it. no strength.
weirdly, too, NO memory of food for that entire time, other than the awareness of having glass jars full of carrots (?) brought to us by the birth family. no other memory. we remember being afraid everything would rot in the warm room. but that's it.
anyway. the i.v. drip. god we wish we could be fed that way. remember when our pcp almost got us that feeding tube? we still wonder if that would be a good idea, because eating in general is so exhausting.

good thing:
oh hey it's 11:11 ♥

but yes. good things. as surprising things, but good at heart. always.
breakfast this morning was the usual, but we had less of an appetite than usual, and we had no desire to eat it. why is this good? because that means there is NO binge impulse with it. some people see three bowls of vegetables and want to inhale them, as a stim or abuse method or obligatory behavior, but this morning we ate a few mouthfuls of spinach and were like, nope, that's it. we're full. we don't want any more food.
we had to, though. like we said, body's weak, it needs fuel. but why is it sick? is it a bug, or is it our diet?
we're wondering what to do. we can't stomach carbs well, but that's surprising, because iscah had to eat SO MANY of them for nine weeks straight, with no major trouble.

oh!! another huge revelation we had earlier, looking into the bathroom mirror, trying to feel out the "binge motives."
there is a warfront with two opposing sides, and two opposing views of the body:
side #1 is the "starve" side. the thin, bony, anxious, angry-sad, neurotic "girls" (always female pronouns but NEVER female) that want the body to be thin, NOT in a waifish way, but in a wiry way. raw muscle strength. tight and lean like a spring. they are terrified of softness, of weight, of heaviness, of bloated bodies. they want to be like a robot or machine. all lean lines, no excess shape. they don't want to eat at all, and have very little conception of the process.
side #2 is the "stuff" side. again, "girls," but these are softer, rounder, bigger, chubby, cheery, and they like to eat. they're focused on "being good" and "surviving," but all their motives are programmed. iscah is one of them, possibly the main one, as she is the healthiest. they are motivated by thoughts like, "fat is good, it gives us energy and keeps us warm, we have to eat fat." or, "carbs give us energy to run, carbs give us calories, we have to eat carbs." there's a LOT of religious thought in here, too-- "god manifests as bread," "god anoints with oil," "god is in flesh," etc.
but you notice the key distinction? group #2 focuses on HEAVY foods. oil, carbs, sugar, meat to a lesser extent.
maybe there's a group #3? the meat-eaters. their motives are VERY different.
and a group #4, too. the "dessert whores," is what someone upstairs said. the sugar eaters. the ones who go for fruit and candy and sweet things. not even as gluttons, though-- they are motivated by this weird thought that "we need to gain weight and this is the fastest way to do it," PLUS "it's a drug that makes you happy, right? and we NEED to feel happy, so that'll work" except it DOESN'T it makes us SICK AND MISERABLE WHY DON'T YOU EVER GET THE FREAKING DATA OR DON'T YOU CARE????
god I'm sorry I'm just so tired of this.
triple is that you??
yes. leave me alone. I'm tired. I don't want to talk.
okay.

so. stream of consciousness entries means going back to topics that were unfinished. gotta keep the flow going.
the meat-eaters. they're motivated by religion, too.
really, ALL the lotophagoi are primarily motivated by one of three things, with TONS of overlap:
1) health teachings, e.g. "fruit is good for you so you MUST eat it" or health fears, e.g. "if you don't eat fat your brain will stop working and you will die"
2) emotional teachings, e.g. "you can't be afraid of the possibility of being allergic to eggs, you HAVE to eat them," "why are you scared of bread, eat it and see there's nothing to be afraid of," etc. backfires spectacularly as the ones who are scared aren't the ones eating. when they are, the terror makes them purge.
3) religious teachings, e.g. "eating meat gives us psychopomp feelings therefore you MUST eat it," "god said there is a land of milk and honey so you MUST like those things," etc.

a list of foods affected by this:

meat= disliked, that thought is denied. "you HAVE to like meat, it's LIVING THINGS!!" the thought that if we "don't like the taste of meat" we are somehow sinning, condemning animal existence.

milk= intolerant. again the thought, "intolerance is cold-hearted! you must accept and love it." THAT'S NOT HOW GASTRIC INTOLERANCE WORKS YOU DELUDED I can't swear at them, they're not trying to be bad, what the heck, this is miserable (triple again. this is my job, leave me alone please)
milk is also a MASSIVE TRAUMA TRIGGER as it triggers "infantilization" flashbacks and suicidal impulses.
allegedly, iscah likes cheese, but we only know this through residual data. we're not sure of the post-upmc "terror month" changed this, because all she ATE was cheese (and yogurt) and we clearly remember getting super sick from it. the last day, she had a bowl of cheese sitting on the porch, and our body was violently rejecting it so bad she had to throw it out on the crudpile. I think since then it's become a trigger food even for her. the house would do that.

bread= stomach spasm-vomits immediately upon ingesting flour, for unknown reasons. the nausea is crippling. we cannot help this response, it is almost automatic.
but the body keeps craving it? like the seed bread OV bought today. we had a slice and the body wanted it so badly. why. why. the mental sheer panic response was unbearable. bread is a BIG trigger food and we don't know why. eating plastic-packaged bread. it makes us shake with impending doom. bad bad bad feelings. why?
either way, body not a fan. flashbacks to bathrooms, the gluten-free bread. remember? how heavy it was? because of rice flour? rice gave us horrific g.i. troubles for ages. it still gives us awful mental issues because of the blood sugar spike, it's terrible, please don't eat it.

so what do we do?
"we need carbs," the phrase continues.
we GET carbs. have you seen how many vegetables we eat? THAT'S ALL CARBS.
"but it's not bread carbs," they say. "we need bread carbs." but there's a hesitance, a quiet anxiety to their voice.
do we really?
"grandma and the doctors said so," a young girl blurts out. maybe 7, 8.
do "bread-carbs" make you sick?
"…"
no reply. an obvious "yes" awareness, but staunch refusal to admit it.

not going to get any further

"we don't want it to make us sick," they say. "maybe it'll stop all this diarrhea and stomach pain," they say, "because that's from the eggs, right? we're allergic to eggs, right?"
NO WHAT THE HECK STOP PUTTING THAT IN OUR HEAD WE'RE FREAKING FINE!!!! WE'VE BEEN EATING THEM FOR MONTHS WE'RE NOT GOING TO SUDDENLY DEVELOP AN ALLERGY OVERNIGHT
except upmc said we might they wouldn't even let us eat almonds because they thought we were getting an allergy to them
BUT WE HAD THE SAME FREAKING REACTION TO THE ICE CREAM YET THEY WOULDN'T LET US STOP EATING THAT BECAUSE IT WAS "US BEING AFRAID OF SUGAR AND TRYING TO GET OUT OF EATING IT" AND ALL THAT GARBAGE
does that mean we're allergic to milk too?? like mel??
NO STOP WHAT THE HECK WHY DO YOU THINK WE HAVE TO BE ALLERGIC TO EVERYTHING I AM SO FREAKING SICK OF THIS!!!!!!!!!
that’s overload, not triple, are they-- are you blurring that bad?
OUR JOBS OVERLAP. I'M TRIPLE. I'M FURIOUS. BUT OVERLOAD FEELS THE OVERWHELM. THAT'S HER JOB. MINE IS JUST TO BE RAW FURIOUS BURNING ANGER AT THE GARBAGE SHE'S BEING PUT THROUGH FEELING AND EXPRESSING LIKE THIS.

so what do we do.
about what?
about the diet. about eating. bottom line is, we want an i.v. drip.
can we do protein powders? no, they made us sick before, didn't they?
yeah. yeah, they did. they were all we ate for months and we got that horrible abdominal pain from protein excess, remember? at least, that's what we figured it was. too much for this body to process, probably.
plus it was nauseating, data says. at least, it's foggy, so I think so.
it was. I think. you're right, I have no idea. "data missing." or expunged. we kept having to repeat it even in PA and could never remember, I remember.
irony.
only in phrasing. but that keeps happening to us. is our situational awareness // actually that bad?
maybe. we dissociated a lot in that house.
who is talking? who are you guys? are you text-onlys?
probably.
but you have faces? blurry faces? do you have names?
we should, shouldn't we?
you blur together real easily though. it's hard to tell you apart

(mental overwhelm)

what else can we talk about.
this eating disorder is pure hell and right now we're just scared because
1) body still sick. not sure if this is because of eggs, or too much vitamin a, or too much roughage. we need to experiment with this (try no eggs, but then what do we use for protein? try no cilantro is easy enough, though, although we crave it for some reason, probably the chlorophyll). maybe (definitely) see a doctor. we have medicaid, that should cover it.
but right now we don't know what else to do. just keep trying, stay hydrated, don't panic. we've been through worse than this.
2) so much fear still tied to eating. so many foods we could potentially eat to widen our diet, but we won't because we're either afraid of eating them or afraid of liking them. we want to live cheaply, minimally, etc. eggs are the cheapest protein. lettuce and cilantro and cucumbers are the cheapest vegetables.
3) so many foods DO make us sick, and/or are triggers. like white flour, and dairy products, and sugar, and beans, and anything with a high carb content. so we CAN'T eat those without painful consequences. we've tested this repeatedly. the results are the SAME. so we have to trust this, even if it's scary and a lot of us would rather fight it tooth and nail because the thought of being "disabled" in a g.i. way is almost unbearable? like, "why can't I be a normal person" translating to "normal=good" or the like. they don't want to be normal, per se, but if they're not normal, they're not seen as human, and even if they don't WANT to be "human," if they're not seen as such, then they're ALSO not seen as deserving of human respect. and they're terrified of being objectified and viewed as a wild animal just because they can't "eat like a [normal] human being." THAT'S the fear. rejection of personhood because of a stupid dietary issue. but it happens. it always happens. god knows why.

we're so tired of this.
we just want eating to be super simple. SUPER SIMPLE. routine isn't a sin with this, it's a blessing.
eggs and vegetables for breakfast. every day. simple, cheap, reliable. no thinking about it.
dinner, what the heck. whatever they make for us. THAT'S the ideal. no thinking about it.
we're so tired of making our own meals. but they don't cook in the evenings anymore, like they did during the sideways week. so we have to adapt. plus we can't eat what they do. we can't have pizza or rice or ground beef or sandwiches, and when I say "can't" I DON'T mean "we're physically unable" (because that's a lie and it WILL be tested by someone inside); I mean that we are capable of eating it but if we do we will experience PHYSICAL SUFFERING. except someone wants to test the "will" and god help you but is the chance really worth it? look at the data results from all the previous times you tested it. look.
"but that one time, we DIDN'T get sick," they say, adamant, afraid, hopeful somehow.
yeah, but what about the other twenty times? I say.
"we/you were just afraid," they say, pleading, desperate, still hopeful. "if you weren't afraid, it wouldn't hurt."
god, we wish. we wish. but is it worth the trying?
"if it will make life easier for them, yes."
…
still. we have to respect our own health. kid, some things we aren't going to be able to eat, nor should we. like those pizzas. MASSIVE trigger food, also you KNOW our body would violently reject it. do you realize that?
"yes. I didn't say you have to eat that!"
but it was implied. "it only hurts if you're afraid." kid there are kids in this system that LIKE pizza, or at least the idea of it, and god knows they WANT to eat it but they WON'T because they get the data. they KNOW that if they LITERALLY ate pizza in this body, we would get VERY SICK.
"only because you're afraid!!"
THAT'S NOT IT. WE'RE LACTOSE INTOLERANT AND OUR BODY CAN'T HANDLE HEAVY CARBOHYDRATE LOADS SO SHUT THE HECK UP IF YOUR IGNORANT REFUSAL TO ADMIT THE TRUTH IS GOING TO HURT EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERSON UP HERE.

can we stop talking about this
this is simeon
sylvain?
the third boy? between them.
sylvain is more scared and weepy

please stop talking about the food!! it's scary and I don't like how it feels in here

it's okay, I promise. we're okay. they're just upset because they hurt.

and then there's me
are we triplets?

maybe we are!! maybe we are? I don't know how anchors work, is that ok

of course it's ok, you don't need to know how they work unless you want to. but you're not in trouble if you don't know! no one holds it against you.

are you sure?? they said don't be ignorant, I don't want to be ignorant

SYLVAIN I WASN'T TALKING to you you're fine, I promise, you never do anything bad. you’re always okay.


(simeon feels much older than he was/ than we thought. maybe that's where this third kid is coming in, to fill his previous role)



what else, what other topic was there


1) system members. we need to review the lists and find people
(oh hey it's 11:54 pm!! good we're tired. one more hour then we can sleep)
(our stomach still feels funny, are we gonna be ok??) sy
(yes, we'll be okay, trust me. I'm here for you. and they're here for everyone else. we'll make it through this! one way or another.)
(and if we don't??)
(we will, kid. life doesn't actually end in death. besides, we've got people on the outside who care a heck of a lot about us. say this body is going through some severe trouble that's gonna require serious treatment. we'll get it, one way or another, come hell or high water. if OV and MC can't help us out, you know the good-hearted birthfam will.)
(since when were they good hearted??)
(since we started seeing them as people and not perpetuations of their mistakes, for goodness's sake. look at every single email we've gotten from the mother. she's a good person, we know that, we've ALWAYS known that for heaven's sake, we just got bloody blinded by falsely defining her by her trauma-mimicking behavior. hurt people hurt people, and so help me god I am not going to condemn anyone to that ever again. look at our system. hurt people need love and understanding and a listening ear. that's so they can heal. same with the birthfam. chill the heck out. we know they're good at heart, that's been proven, too. now go on with the bullet list, kids)
2) spectrum colors! discovering resonances, attributes, color realm data, etc. also (sherlock thinking here) clarifying exactly how many color slots there truly are; e.g. the orange differentiation question we currently have. similarly, does this still adhere to the supposed "trio pattern" where colors occur in threes, not just tint-tone-shade triads? look into this.
3) jargon. simple as that
4) we'll think of it. let's focus on the first two first, mainly, only if need be.

body acting up, gotta just breathe and deal with it, not obsess over it. it is at is it. we'll be okay.
drink water darn it we're dehydrated from all this trouble anyway

good idea.

also done typing for now, at least here. now to do the actual work.
also daily updates, don't forget those!!
thanks jewel. we will.

signing off at 12:02 am on saturday

going to see black panther later today it's gonna be good if we go into it that way!! movies are super cool LET'S DO IT let's get popcorn too, // can we try some?
are we gonna do the cheesy fry thing or is that gonna stay a conceptual injoke or what
we'll see when the time comes.

as for now, like I said, let's work on the "nine nights" data discovery.
if we don't, it will stay just empty words, and not actual system growth. what we write, we must bring into existence by working.
"it's only one half of the spell" I hear from upstairs.
who resonates with THAT??
I wonder. but that's what these nights are to be about. finding out.
cool, then let's get to it!
my thoughts exactly.


12:04am 021718

010718.
sunday.

We finally realized why Tobiko hasn't been the one purging anymore.

Food does not register as food.
We've been using food as a stim.

We've been using a LOT of things as stims, actually.
This explains the bathroom rituals.
We brush our teeth, floss, brush again, floss some more, use mouthwash, brush our teeth again, wash our face, wash our body, wash our hands, wash our face again… over and over and over and over. We do this for an hour, sometimes, just scrubbing at our gums and our flesh, scrubbing until we are red and raw sometimes. We do this in the shower, too-- we obsessively wash over and over and over, not even thinking that much about "being" clean as we are thinking about feeling clean. It's why we cut our nails down to the nubs and shave every hair off that we can reach. It's never about the end result, not literally. It's about how it feels. It's about purging everything that hurts in the most literal way we can think of.

We eat when we don't want to because it NEVER registers as eating. It registers as stimming.
This is why preparing food used to take, what, six hours back in PA? Because it was never about food. It was, again, a matter of stimming. Of sensory soothing.

Remember that one night in SLC where we sat on the floor of our bedroom, rocking violently back and forth and flapping our hands so hard our wrists ached, blasting Serph at high volume on our headphones and stretching our legs against that rubber band until they, too, were sore from exertion? Pure stimming. Pure mindless stimming. THAT'S the key here.

We've lost all our old methods. We can no longer walk in circles in the living room, or the kitchen, or the driveway. We can no longer go hide downstairs by the furnace, or lock ourselves in the bathroom-- although the latter was always a horrific trauma trigger, as was the attic, even moreso (which is why we didn't even bother to list it here.)
We can't even self-abuse in the "traditional" way anymore. We don't have razors. We don't have knives. We don't have blades. (and oh, how our heart aches at those words-- no, those names, beloved and tender as a wound) We can't bite our arms anymore, can't slap our face, can't yank at our hair, can't claw at our skin or punch our legs or stomp our feet. All our old stimming methods, as violent as we need them, are gone, are forbidden. And our brain is boiling over.

It's been shutting down a lot lately and that terrifies us, to be honest. OV has it easy. He can stim with an adorable little squishy macaron or peach or donut, can play with fidget spinners or kaleidoscopes or even just a piece of jewelry. That's enough for him, it seems, and that makes us super happy. We love him, we love allof them, and the fact that they can use such mild methods to soothe their addled brain is deeply soothing to ours-- in a different sense. We would never inflict this aggressive need of ours on them, not for the world. And yet, here we are, needing it, and terrified because we can't explain it to him, terrified because he thinks we're doing it out of hatred, out of rage, out of suicidal ideation. It's exactly the opposite. When we don't do it, the stress and pressure gets so intense that we wantto die, and we stop caring whether or not we do. That is what's lethal. Not the stims.

The problem is, though, that the stims are dangerous in and of themselves. All of Cannon and Gamboge's old methods drew blood, marked bruises, left scars. All of them beautiful and beloved, true, but still risky to our health… and yet what we wouldn't give to be able to flay this flesh wide open again, even though I can feel Scalpel shaking his head at that thought even now. Why so?
"It's dangerous," he says. "You're right. Even though it is effective, and beautiful, it's also just as addictive. You know just as well as I do that once we start that, we can't stop. We want to bleed and scar forever. And that will kill us."
So will this "eating disorder." But I suppose that's the point of this whole entry.

Food is the simplest, easiest, most "socially acceptible" form of stimming and self-abuse that we have left at our disposal. It's all we have left on days like this.
Except, now, we can't, not without risk of condemnation and distrust, not without hurting someone else more than we ever could before or would ever want to. OV knows we have a problem, but he doesn't know why-- heck, even we didn't know that until this afternoon!
But it's why we go absolutely bonkers in the kitchen once he goes to work and MC goes to sleep. We racked our brains over that for weeks, for months even. We don't want to abuse ourselves, we don't want to suffer or humiliate ourselves anymore, so why this? Why can't we stop this? Why do all of the nousfoni tied to this have such shockingly, irresistibly powerful anchors? Why can't even Laurie stop them? Why does NO ONE, deep down, even want to? Why does it feel like we're being "betrayed" by the System itself in these nousfoni being given free reign and full power over our body and actions in the middle of the night?
We know why, now. It's because they're trying to save our life.
They're STIMMING. They're desperately attempting to soothe our hurting brain, to ease our aching heart, to comfort the poor screaming ones inside. The ONLY way we've EVER known how is to somehow "burn it off" outside. Even now, right now, although we're enjoying typing, our brain is too high-strung and our body is immediately defaulting to the urge of "eating." We aren't hungry. We never are. But that's the point. This isn't about physical hunger. This is about spiritual hunger-- psychological starvation. This is about us needing something we still can't seem to get and scrabbling at the scraps of it wherever we can find it.
Truthfully, we just want to isolate ourselves completely, close our eyes, rock back and forth like a lunatic punching bag and just let our brain turn off as completely as possible. But the key, again, is isolation-- that terribly dear thing we have NEVER been allowed to truly get, not since childhood, and which we have been aching for for longer than we can remember lately. There are no locked doors here. There's no cellar, no attic, no closet to sit in. God how we miss it now, how we miss being a child, ignored and alone in that dearly forsaken house, feeling like we were the only soul(s) existing in the entire world. Just us, and the quiet, and the sunlight, and our heart. We need that like the air we breathe, and we don't know how to get it anymore, because we never realized until we moved out here how we need love like the blood in our veins, pun entirely intended.
That's the killer. That's the real awful thing here.
God I want to cry. Our body is desperate right now, we want to just… scream and punch things and stomp the floor until our knees hurt and throw things and bite things and just let ALL the steam out. There's no malice in it, ever. But it scares people. It terrifies them. We're a monster, and we love what we are, but… we're still a monster. We're a scary, terrible, incomprehensible thing sometimes, and it hurts when our sharp edges cut even the people who try to love us regardless.

Our body wants to food-stim because that's the only thing it can think of to do right now, and yet it KNOWS that it doesn't want to. The very thought of "eating" is making Overload want to scream and throw the plate across the room, is making The Destroyer want to set the entire freaking refrigerator on fire. We HATE food; we hate it for being the only accessible way we were able to dissociate and heal for years, without being hacked.

Yeah. Isn't that the bloody cincher.
Hacks. Why the heck do you think they kept happening for so long?? Why the heck do you think people stopped fighting after so many hellish years??
It's because they hurt, they ate hours of our time, and they isolated us from the world. Yeah, they were absolute hell, that's the indisputable truth-- but the other awful truth is that we didn't want to live in the first place.
God. Those poor, poor damaged kids, sacrificing their souls and selves just because the world at large outside was somehow even scarier than blacking out for three hours and waking up in blood and excruciating pain and mental terror. At least then they could shut down. At least then they could hard-reset their memory, splinter a little more, break a little further, forget most of their entire life and pretend nothing was happening. They just wanted to run, God forgive them, they just wanted to hide and sleep and rest and the ONLY way they could was by shutting everything off. God forgive all of us.

Hacks don't happen anymore. They can't. Not since 2016. Not since Infinitii's presence truly registered, not since we realized what we were actually looking for and what was actually happening in contrast. The truth of it, the harsh horrific reality of the situation, was too terrifying to ever allow ever again. And so hacks stopped completely.
And the eating disorder exploded.

We knew that was going to happen, really. Stop one addiction, but leave the reason why it developed in the first place, and a new addiction will return or appear to replace it. The body is just hopelessly wrecked, man, it doesn't know what else to do.
Why do you think we started flirting with EVERYTHING that would detach us from the reality our poor brain couldn't cope with anymore? We started drinking. We started smoking. We started abusing prescription meds. We experimented with asphyxiation and anesthesia and everything we could think of that would detach us from the awful soul-crushing loop of that toxic household, of that dead-end environment, of the unending mental stress.
And somehow, some days, some nights, that still hasn't changed.
Like right now.

We have nothing. No paint, no sewing kit, no exercise bike, no weights, no internet, no Xbox. No isolation, which is the TRUE need behind ALL of those things. We can't do anything if we aren't COMPLETELY alone, and it feels like a kick in the face to the Broken Arrows, but God forgive us it's true.

We want to run. But we can't. Where the heck would we go? Everywhere out there, there are people watching us, there are social contexts "to obey" and our poor terror-hardwired brain keeps kowtowing to ALL of them. Even just now, when OV laughed or sighed or whatever that little dear breath was, we looked up, wondering-- are we needed? Was that a call for attention? What is the proper way to respond?
And then we wonder why people like Quicksilver exist, why that girl who fronts in the early morning exists. The nousfoni that will even flip off the people they love and say "shove off, leave me alone." The ones that seem coldhearted and callous and brutal, when really all they are trying to do is get us alone. They're trying to PROTECT us, bless their monstrous hearts, and we know it.
We're terrified of coming across as a horrible person, like we did to the kids in SLC. This is probably why. But we had no idea this was even happening back then-- we didn’t even know we were multiple, for God's sakes. Now, though, not only do we know, we understand, more and more each day.
So when OV sighs and someone immediately fronts with a middle finger and stony expression, they aren't saying they don't care. They're saying, "we can’t care right now because we are too burnt out TO do so without utterly sacrificing our health and your respect in the process."
So we sit here, miserable and overloaded, yearning for the opportunity to just… be alone.

God we both love and hate the nights when OV works. We love him, we love all of the Broken Arrows, but… it's just like when we started doing too much for church. We adore our faith, we adore its practices, but when you're expected to attend every daily mass, every weekly funeral, every weekend mass, every choir practice, every group meeting, every picnic, every bible study, et cetera… well, something in you starts to hate it, in utter paradoxical spite, in total impossible parallel to the love you still feel, solely because it KNOWS that if you don't stop you are going to burn to the ground.
So it stops it in the most complete, sudden, brutal, total way it knows how.
It scares the bloody wits out of anyone standing in its way.
People don't like monsters. People leave monsters alone.
So we learned to be a monster.

…God. What do we do.
We're thirsty. We want to cry. More than that, we want to scream and punch things, but that'll frighten OV, and we can't… we can't risk that. That's the horrible, horribly irony of this. We have to sacrifice our terrible needs for the sake of terrible love. What do we do?

People stay up all night because we need to be alone because that's the ONLY TIME we can brutally soothe our psyche. It's always violent love with us, did you notice? Always compassion and cruelty, or at least, what others would see as cruel. For us, it's just the rawest, most selflessly pure form of love. Love that doesn't deny you your needs just because they're strange or "socially unacceptable."

We want to run outside and go hide in that stupid McDonald's bathroom because it's the only place in town that feels like an airport-- totally insulated from the outside world, cold metal and echoing tile, quiet as a grave, no time existing in there at all. It always feels like 3 in the morning there, when you're by yourself. But that's the problem. It's a freaking bathroom in a fast food joint. It's not EVER going to be a failsafe place to be safe-- heck, the sheer simple fact that it's a bathroom has ALREADY condemned the poor thing beyond hope, thanks trauma. (God, there's that awful thought process again. Poor hurting kids. I wonder how many of them we've never seen, how many of them are still contributing to this in our sub(terranean)conscious.) But the one time we were in there, we felt-- God have mercy, what a dearly desired feeling-- like we were the only people on earth. Just us, just this body, just this tiny bubblespace of a bathroom, no time or space beyond. Just that single isolated moment. THAT'S what we need. YES, it's a literal NEED. It's why we risk our mental health going out literally EVERYWHERE when we walk in the mornings, exposing ourselves to too many soul-draining social contexts, desperately seeking a place where that won't be the case, desperately seeking some secret quiet corner somewhere that we can privately own, like the study nooks at Marywood, like the tiny pockets of woods.
…I wish there was a church with unlocked doors around here. God, we wish. We're nearly in tears just thinking of that. The ultimate met need. Isolation, but in a soaring wide-open emptiness. The feeling of our dreams. Rolling hills and labyrinthine halls and massive abandoned buildings and no one, NO one but us in them. Not even a gnat for outside company. Nothing. Just us, and the air, and the sun, and the clock ticking second after second, counting down to nothing, looping without an hour hand. That's what we want. Just… infinity. Eternity. God help us, no wonder hacks were a thing, I want to cry so hard we vomit out our entire respiratory system. This is wrenching and it makes so much sense. How did we never NOTICE this before???

…
What do we do.

Where do we go. It's 7pm, it's a Sunday night, we can't stand this social context right now, we KNOW OV is worried about us and that simple passive attention is keeping our brain in overloaded status and we want to weep because we care about them, too-- so much our heart aches from it, but what do we do? We love them, but… what do we do? We'll never stop loving them. We'll love them forever. But… sometimes, we dream of running away, of just sleeping in a field somewhere, of packing a knapsack and walking the railroad tracks for days, of catching a bus and just riding it until the end of the line and wherever we are, we are. We want no roots, and yet we want a home to go home to when the solitude starts to bite. There's nothing wrong with being alone. Just… souls need souls. God split hirself because ze needed to love more. We are made to connect with those other pieces, with every other bit of reality. And humans, sure we don't identify as one but this body is one, and we adore people, we do, we just… need to do this in moderation, I suppose.

Do we have a list? Do we even have options when this happens? When our spoons are so low the entire silverware drawer is missing, what the heck do we do, where do we go? When we're so weak we can't get undressed, is there anywhere we can be that will feel like the world has ceased to exist outside? I don't know.
Maybe we can empty out the bottom of the closet, sit in there.
No, no no no, I can feel the children shrieking at that idea even now.
Idola seems piqued. Maybe we should try. See what happens. I doubt hacks will happen--
They won't, but they'll be threatened--
In isolation hacks are always a threat because we black out,

What do we do.

It's too cold outside to go hide in the woods, or to even go find spots where we can hide. But Jewel is so excited at the thought. She has ideas.
Maybe we should try anyway? Get a blanket or sleeping bag or something, bundle up good, find somewhere in the woods where it's just us and just… keep that in our heart if nothing else, if we can't go there. Find at least one place in this new local world where we can be ironically cut off from it for a while, without risk of sudden jarring intrusion. Walking distance. Where can we go?
Buses.
Buses aren't cheap, kid, we need somewhere we can go on a dime without spending a dime, that's the problem.
I'm sure there's somewhere. Let's check Google Maps, find something out. I'm sure we can. Right? Are we done writing?
For now, maybe. I… the other topics we want to write about are huge. The hacks, for one, and the eating disorder in light of this.
But we have been writing about it. Both of them. Haven't we?
Not in as brutal excruciating detail and honesty as we need to, no.
Should we start, then?
Maybe. Hold on a minute.


Food stimming.
Back in PA, we had a soup pot, huge and solid metal, and every day, we'd start the morning by blacking out over a cutting board.
I don't know what we did. All I know is that the smell of wilted lettuce is one of the biggest triggers in the world, and we still can't put spices on our food without shivering in dread. Indian food makes us dissociate immediately, as do potato chips, and ice cream, especially Klondike bars… avocados are still terrifying, so are carrots, so is mayonnaise.
All of those foods were used for blatantly self-abusive purposes in the past and you know what? I'm going to say EXACTLY why.
There was a phase, in 2016, where all we ate for about a week was namkeen. Indian snack food. Just bags of (name). It made us horrifically sick but hey, snack food is an easy time-consuming stim, right? Even if it makes you vomit nonstop for hours-- even especially because it does! Because purging makes you even more dissociative, makes you able to sleep for hours because your body is so wrecked from the past several hours to even consider staying conscious for another second. The last day we bought Indian food, someone filled at least six entire cereal bins with the stuff, separating them methodically by ingredient, then going outside (thanks Destroyer) and flinging them all into the woods… and then hours later, even days later, someone else went outside in a scavenger-desperate mess and picked the pieces off the ground and ate them. We still cannot look at that memory without feeling instantly, unbearably sick. I assume it was all purged seconds after, but memory is black, punctuated only by tiny shattered snapshots of fingers wrestling bits of chickpea flour away from bugs and brambles and rain-muddled dirt.
Remember why P&R became the devil's household?? Remember how many actual HUNDREDS of dollars were spent there over several months, because the food there was dirt cheap AND typically already was garbage? Remember the granola bags with mouse holes chewed through them? Remember the instant noodles with mold growing inside? Remember the hummus that landed us in the hospital due to food poisoning? I know you do. We ALL do.
Oh, but THAT'S the most important thing, something we've probably mentioned in the past before but NEED to reiterate today-- the MAIN reason food was our main stim for YEARS was because, if no one is watching, you don't have to eat it.
We would buy starchy, heavy, crunchy foods, time-consuming foods, chips and cookies and cereals and granola and things, and we'd chew them up, ingredient by ingredient, piece by single piece, and we'd spit them out. Organize, chew, spit. Over and voer and over. And then, when the bag or box was done, we'd chew up the chewed stuff, over and over, until it was too saliva-riddled to chew anymore, and then we'd eat that and purge it immediately, too racked by family-instilled guilt at the thought of "wasting it" by throwing it away (no matter how moldy or rotten or inedible it was) to do so, even at the risk of our own health. That went on for years.
Then we couldn't isolate anymore, then we started losing too much weight, then our body forced us to start bingeing instead in a desperate gamble to get some calories out of it.
The worst chew-spit binges were in that one autumn that we re-read A Wrinkle In Time, with whoever decided that raw oatmeal mixed with molasses was the best texture for doing so-- probably because it took ages to mix up, causing our arms to scream with exertion from doing so, eliciting the same response from our jaws once it reached those. Pain, once sharps were forbidden. A horrific rerouting. And we did that for weeks, if not longer, until the passive sugar-exposure made us SO sick we ended up bedridden with a trashed immune system and too much nausea and chronic pain and hideous gastric distress to leave the bed. But to this day, anxiety-eaten nousfoni in this system, poor desperate kids, always look to the oatmeal boxes in the grocery stores even if the sight of them triggers immediate massive panic. Part of them also remembers a time when that food was the only way they could numb themselves to the world. So they hesitate. They're afraid, but they don't know what other options they even have. And every once in a while, we'll find a box stashed in a drawer or a closet, inevitably doomed to be in the garbage within hours, either thanks to the Destroyer or some poor purgative kid who just wanted to feel like they were throwing up the pain along with the carbs.

God. No wonder so many of our Daemons are tied to food. I wonder what Rupture knows, if anything. She's mainly the fear of dying in the process, of blood in our nose and throat, of our stomach screaming at us to stop. I don't know who holds this, this stimming nightmare… no one except Chocoloco, at least, and he only catches the frayed-end dregs of it, nothing serious, nothing traumatic. He's just that initial desperate programmed seeking of comfort in places where everyone who claimed they loved you claimed it would always be, and yet never was. Chocolate and coffee. Our family's "soothing staples," both of them doing nothing but putting us through hell since childhood. Still, desperate, we never gave up trying. Choco is pretty pissed as that, although nowhere near as much as he is heartbroken. His heart-host is angry almost all the time but it's for the same exact reason that any of us are angry right now-- because we're burning up inside, ripped apart and overwhelmed and sad, and we just want to hole ourselves up in the corner of a coffeeshop somewhere, in the evening when it's dark and softly raining outside and no one knows we're here and we have nowhere else to be, just us and this warm quiet soft place, and we can weep and cry and ache inside and this tiny childlike part of us remembers the days when a muffin and a latte made us feel real, made us feel like we could exist as ourselves apart from society and our family and anyone, like this little rite of passage was proof that we could survive alone, and were, in that moment. THAT'S what our hurt ones keep seeking, in that sort of archetypal memory, but Chocoloco knows it's ultimately heartbreakingly empty, that it's not food or drink or chocolate or coffee or caffeine or sugar or anything edible that we're seeking-- we're seeking his heart, we're seeking love, we're seeking the love that only we can give each other-- we're seeking ourselves.
We can't find each other if we're suffocating in the outside world.

So. Trigger foods.
Someone once wrote about this, too-- probably Iscah-- the science of "combined" and "fused" foods (she says yes, it's in her journal in detail). Well I won't steal her thunder, but the principle of it was this: if you want to make a food inedible but still ingestible, in other words, if you're trying to make a "stim food" instead of a meal, you need to make it as easily palatable as possible in the most blatant way possible. Which means, usually, you liquefy it. You blend things. You cut things into miniscule pieces. You take things like spices, and condiments, and sauces, and drinks, and you soak every stupid thing you have with them until your stomach heaves at the very sight of it, and when it's a slurry from hell you eat that as quickly as possible so your body rejects it just as quickly. Ideally, the whole prep process will take hours, as will the purging process afterwards, in a desperate blacked-out state, trying to get every last crumb out of our system. This is how we spent our days for years, inbetween church activities and family demands.
And isn't that the irony?
We were left alone. We were ignored. And yet, we were never isolated. The grandparents were ALWAYS there, always a few feet or a room away, watching, waiting, vigilant. If we disappeared from their radar for a few minutes, they freaked out. The only time we could "get away with it" was by being in the bathroom, behind a locked door, pretending we were taking a bath, when in reality we were slumped over a toilet wishing we were dead already, sobbing because we really just wanted to be alive already.
But we were never alone. We wanted to be alone, God knew. We wanted a place where nothing could touch us but ourselves.
That's how hacks happened.
I can't talk about that right now.

Potato chips. Cookies. Trail mix. Things like that. Our grandfather would hoard them in his closet, and when we weren't allowed to prepare or eat food in the kitchen anymore without being perpetually critiqued by our grandmother or psychologically terrorized by our brother, we would sneak into his room and sneak into the closet and gorge down a whole bag, not even wanting to, just desperate to stim away the constant fear and pain by crunching something sharp and salty until our mouth bled. But potatoes and flour don't purge easy. They stick like glue in your stomach, and they WILL make the next few hours feel like the central circle of hell. We know. We made that mistake one too many times. We thought we were dead, a few times. But somehow we survived. 85 pounds and throwing up junk food for 8.5 hours a night and we still somehow survived.
There was a time when we first discovered P&R and someone bought cheese curls and chips by the cartful, but they were bean-based, and when our body loudly let us know that it did NOT like beans, we threw them ALL out on the crudpile.
It rained that night. It was cold that night. The next morning, the food was somehow soggy but preserved by the temperature, and whoever the heck was fronting was starving and "couldn’t stand the thought of wasting that poor food" (why the pity on the FOOD being unloved and rejected?? why NEVER pity on ourself being the same???) and snuck out to that horrid garbage heap and ate them right off the dirt, brushing bits of soot and soil and ants off them in the process. Good God. How did we even survive.
They/we threw everything up in a panic shortly after. That was Tobiko's doing. She remembers that more clearly than anyone.
It wasn't the last time that happened. Someone grew fond of the process at one point, of the act of scavenging, of "finding food in the wild" and the time-consuming, stimming process of that fused with a broken sense of accomplishment and achievement. It never lasted long, but God knows they tried, over and over and over, until that last day with the Indian food. Thank God that hell is over forever.

The bloody Klondike bars and avocados. That was the WORST of it, shortly before UPMC. We realized that our body hated dairy, hated fat, hated chocolate, but we ALSO realized that the consistency of those foods was ideal for bingeing and purging, plus our body was seeking sweets out of childhood comfort desperation AND everyone we knew was INSISTING we "eat as much fat as possible."
So guess who binged on like eighteen entire avocados and ten packs of Klondike bars one night.
It was forced. It was forced so hard we thought we were possessed. We thought we were going to die. There's no memory of anything outside one hysterical moment when someone was shoving more chocolate into our mouth and thinking, why?? I don't want this, NOBODY wants this, I'm scared and sick and I just want to sleep, why can't I stop???
I don't know how that ended. All we know is that the family KNEW and they WATCHED IT HAPPEN and then afterwards they asked if we had "learned our lesson."
SHUT UP. YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THE HECK WAS GOING ON, DON'T ASK IF WE "LEARNED OUR LESSON" BECAUSE THERE WASN'T EVEN A LESSON IN IT WE WERE JUST SO DESPERATE TO NOT BE IN PAIN ANYMORE YOU IGNORANT TROLLOP
Triple, watch your language. Be angry, but don't be so brusquely inconsiderate about it, please.
IT'S WHAT VOCAB WE HAVE FOR THIS KIND OF INTENSE PAIN. i'm sorry. i have no other words besides screaming.

Let's continue.

Coconut oil. the NIGHTMARE that is coconut oil. HOW much money was blown on that??
It was the best stim food and it was the SCARIEST one BY FAR, and that is SAYING something.
Our body does NOT like oil, and when you're literally buying PACKS of it because this kind FREEZES and becomes not only biteable and sharp, but chewy if you mix it with protein powder, and your poor malnourished body is craving both those things so it's a recipe for disaster already. We… I don't even remember. Literally NO ONE we can find even remembers, nothing beyond one snapshot of lying on the bathroom floor with that unmistakable special nauseating agony that comes from eating too much oil, literally begging God to not let them die, screaming in rage and determination that they'd NEVER do this again, someone (a Protector, Wreckage maybe, the Destroyer maybe, Laurie maybe) going outside in the 10pm dark and rain and throwing all of that garbage into the woods where it couldn't be salvaged (although we all knew someone would try).


…OV just came over and kissed us and someone actually wanted to give him a double flipoff in response. Not out of hatred, just out of "what the heck do you want us to do. We're tired and angry and can't do a SINGLE THING without your permission because we DON'T KNOW what we actually want and don't trust ourselves TO know right now. But we're overstimulated and overwhelmed and heartbroken and furiously distraught and you're kissing us like we're supposed to ignore all this agony and kiss you back. And God knows we WANT to. That's the problem. We WANT to, but then you'll call it self-sacrifice, and what the heck do we do??? We love you, we WANT to be with you, but our body wants something else and until we figure out what the heck it is, we CAN'T be with you because we won't be able to pay attention To you past this screaming discomfort and unsoothed pain. We don't know what the heck to do, and we hate that we have to snub and ignore you in the process of finding out simply because our brain cannot handle the stress of having to factor in another human being's presence and needs into our decisions and thoughts right now. We can't freaking multitask. Please don't force us to context shift so shockingly suddenly or we Will hit you, or bite you, like the monster and rabid dog we are at the moment. But we won't mean it, and we hope you know it, but we still can't take that risk of hurting you, so we completely shut down. We do nothing, we say nothing, we boil over like a kettle fit to explode, and we just want to get this problem figured out so we can safely let this scalding steam out so you can touch us without getting burned. That's all."

…

Do we eat? Do we drink?
This body has to use the bathroom. These clothes are too warm and soft and do you know what that's overstimulating? Because they make us WANT to sit and rest and relax and we CAN'T.
Iscah LOVES these clothes because that's ALL SHE DID. She rested, and relaxed, and took care of our body. When we wear these clothes, the body remembers that, and wants it just as badly. But in this context, no. No, here we're too afraid of ignoring people, of rejecting them, of the fact that OV just went and lay down on the freaking bed because he probably thinks we hate him when really WE JUST WANT TO DO THAT SAME BLOODY THING BUT WE WON'T BECAUSE WE LOVE YOU TOO MUCH TO LEAVE YOU.

what do we do. god. I don't know.

Is our body hungry?
It's thirsty. We haven't drank in over 3 hours and someone purged most of breakfast out of sheer dissociative panicked guilt, so that's even worse. Go use the bathroom, get a drink, then figure out what to do.
We can't eat without OV anyway, and he's hiding away from us. Did we hurt him?
…I don't know. I don't even know. I just hope he's okay. If he didn't, and he wanted to be alone, but was happy, would that be okay with you?
Of course it would be, but he's obviously not happy right now and that's the problem.
…Oh. Should we go talk to him, or…?
Maybe. I don't know. Maybe.
I think we should. Apologize for not being able to respond earlier, apologize for snubbing him on purpose because we were unable to respond in honesty to him.
All or nothing, huh.
Yeah. A curse and a blessing.
Are we done with this file for now, for the record?
Maybe? I think so. The big unanswered question is still: how do we eat food without turning it into a dissociatively abusive stim?
Eat it like we do in the mornings with him. Paying attention, letting everyone share it, not being stressed the heck out in the process. Stimming beforehand, even. Really, that's probably the smartest thing to do. Gotta find what works on short notice that won't hurt us or magnify negative emotions and do that.
Sounds good.
Body does need some self-care, though, so let's call it quits for now. Everyone good? Anyone got any last thing to say before we stop?
Just that Wegmans was a living hell, too, and we never want to go back there.
Then get over that place and every other place in our memory, kid. Forget them. Live here and now, and please, learn from that experience and stop thinking about it. Okay?
…Okay.
Just… let it go. Walk into memory and burn it to the ground if you have to. Whatever works. Just don't let it suck the joy out of our present life anymore. All right? We'll help you. We're safe now, all things considered. Just confused and hurting is all. But we're safe.
I know.
Then let's go talk to OV. He's the reason we can say that, after all.
We love him, even now. Does he know that?
That's what we're going to go make sure of, kid. Give me a minute.



Oh, wait!! One last vitally important thing.
The key to a successful stim is that it HAS to let our BRAIN shut down. Low-impact, low-speed, "mindless" activity so that we can DEEPLY relax, INSIDE. Books don't work, nor does TV, because they're too mentally stimulating. Food prep is too, actually-- that's why we keep hurting ourselves when we try! Same with the garage job. We try to dissociate with repetitive motion and forget that those motions have an end, both in result and process. That doesn't work for stimming!! However, THIS DOES. Weirdly, this typing REALLY helps, at least, in a different way-- it helps us untangle what hurts, and really See it. It doesn't alleviate the stress, just lets us know what we're looking at. What DOES help in a pinch is TUMBLR, on the phone, IF we do it safely. Yes, it Does work!! Because it's "mindless browsing" and you can link-hop FOREVER and find poetry and pretty pictures and just let our mind wander for HOURS if you have to. Spotify is almost this kind of stim but not really, because music demands Attention, but we can use that to a BETTER advantage because it draws us into our mind ENTIRELY. THAT'S an ideal stim, hence the old beloved walks in circles for hours, just imagining and thinking. My thing!! We've gotta find a way to do that again if we can. Maybe in the playroom, who knows. But we will. Anyway, yeah. When in doubt, grab Nelumbo, our beloved Samsung Galaxy S8 who we saved up for a year for and now had better use to show respect and gratitude for that!! Okay? We've got this. Now go tell the Arrows that we love them because they need us just as much as we need them even if they need space too!! Bye guys!!

-J.W.L. and the Lightraye aka Lotus Cathedral System ♥

 

so i was looking up etymology today.
"mass" is from "missa" which means "dismissal" which is a sending out into the world, out of the holy building and into a mission elsewhere. "ite, missa est." Go, you are sent.
but that isn't what we do on sunday mornings. it's quite the literal opposite.
we are called in. we are all called to more fully inhabit a holy vessel, a sacred form, in order to be embraced by a second.
we don't go to mass. we go to church.

from the old english "circe." meaning a circle, a thing that binds. a ring. (cathedral bells. wedding cakes. music.)
reminding me instantly of the polish "serce." heart.
(cathedral bells. wedding cakes. music--)

in scripture, there is nothing analogous to the current "christian church" as a building. those came later. in the beginning, it was just a congregation, an assembly, a gathering of those who believed. fellowship. camaraderie. a unity of persons in love and faith and hope. people of "the lord"-- a term which we, personally,
the scriptures refer to the believers as buildings. as vessels. as temples. the architect, the master builder, is christ-- is the lord God, the Creator, the Source, the cosmic core, the very essence of love itself. 1 john 4:8, iscah would appreciate the reference.
"Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love."
we were just talking about that last night. and we were living it this morning. at "church". in church. our assembly of love. our bonds of faith.
"i am real. we are real. this is real."
love is the foundation that this cathedral is built upon.
ἀγάπη. agape. i daresay that's a familiar word.
if God is love and churches are temples and temples are places of worship and we are a temple, if we are this assembly of love, if we are a church, if we are a place of worship, if we are a monument to love, well. you see how it all ties together. how it's all linked together. how it's all connected.
circe. a circle. a cycle. nothing and everything, with a twist.

so, perfectly ironically, by not going to church on sundays, we get to truly go to church on sundays.
(we sure have enough angels to prove the point.)


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


another sacred morning.

early, 8am, all three of us in bed. we didn't sleep at all last night so we were waiting on the couch for oliver to come home, wrapped up in our dreamcatcher blanket. then we washed up for the morning and since mason took the weekend off, all of us got to lie there in the quiet morning together, talking and laughing too, which was so nice.
we had our hand on ollie's chest as always-- we can't help it, it's too true-- and then mason reached over and held our hand as well, so the both of us were there. man. that was just amazing, all of us feeling so close right then.
mason mentioned our poly situation being a v-shape line with THREE POINTS, almost a triangle, and that was SUCH a striking but unintentional "tessellate" reference that infinitii immediately was shocked into fronting, and ze laughed. oliver knew, he always knows. mason did not. he had no idea what he had just said or who was suddenly there; it was pretty great.
but infi and i were cofronting and basically dying from bliss. it all meant so much.
most notably, infi, delirious with euphoria, said "jay there are three heartbeats here"

then mason got up for the day and we sept a while but we woke back up around 11:30?
and heaven happened again. 
(it gets its own entry.)

basically, fronting was all infi, me, laurie, genesis chaos, CELEBI too! talking about time and hearts. forgot how incredibly centered she is when fronting; no wonder, she's an ancient frontrunner and she knows who she is.
lethe styx (using his second name so often lately) and infi cofronting too. infi "accidentally" name-dropped him and he showed up and stuck around. also yes he IS stygian blue! styx also name-dropped infi with whatever he said, i feel the sly affectionate grin in the memory vibe.
infi talking about connections being LEMNISCATE loops when they are truly solid; "everything with a twist"

everything feeling red and gold, like right after the midnight mass on christmas ends. pure quiet joy.

discussed cores having MULTIPLE names?? looking this up all day.
stars, mostly. 
perihelion, atrial/atriel? antaros/asteros? feeling the "a" root for some reason. it's silvery white. pure.
possible cores being LIGHT instead of a color?? "prism" association, "source" of ALL colors.
anyway, basic point was that my "true name" is not a word, it's a feeling, or a vibe. and the system seems to be mandating form-shifting for cores now?? to prevent them shattering like before, as it'll help their functions flow and expand, not locking them into hyperspecific situations, letting them actually front in the world and interact in different contexts. so a multiple-name thing while still resonating with a deeper truename makes total sense for having multipleforms but a deeper trueself. good things are happening bro.

got out of bed at 3. 

mason made CROQUETTES! also rice. and he got out our chopsticks!
we've never had croquettes before; apparently they're rather customizable? a basic versatile recipe. these were potato mixed with vegetables and bacon, coated in panko+egg, then fried in oil. we had three, plus rice with soy sauce, curry powder, and sriracha. we also had a tiny bit of zucchini after. everything was delicious.
no mistakes either! and no fear at all. and we waited a half hour to finish it, too, so we wouldn't get amount-panic.
did the dishes, got vegetable stuff ready for later tonight. in hindsight that was a BAD IDEA; we've realized that "preparing things for later" tends to trigger "sneaky" feelings, therefore shame and self-abusive lapses. it is far wiser and less stressful to just leave everything until it's time to eat, then make it on the spot. we didn't realize what a huge fear trigger food containers were until today. for years they have been, actually; we just keep ignoring the reaction. it gives us flashbacks even. sounds ridiculous, but it's true. that awful choking kitchen atmosphere, the having to secretly eat when no one could condemn us, only being able to eat leftovers and still being shouted at because they "were for other people," etc. and then our mother ONLY bringing food to the house in plastic containers, then telling us we weren't allowed to eat it, and glaring suspiciously at us with those wide scary eyes whenever we tried to take some. bad memories, bad feelings. we don't need to dwell on that, please don't. the point is, eating food out of tupperware is a massive terror trigger and we MUST STOP DOING IT. so is eating out of big bowls, let's please avoid that discussion. big big trauma trigger. bad bad memories and pain. no mixing bowls! no pots! no tupperware! no eating while standing up! get an actual ceramic bowl, sit down with your beloved friends, and eat that. then you're done! wash it up, put it away, brush your teeth, drink water, then go LIVE LIFE. eating is fuel. it's not the "only thing you can do with your life" anymore. look at us now! typing! reading! playing aywas even! spotify and oneword and tumblr and etymology websites and even scripture research! there's so much to do. so much to life. there's so much more. eating is nice but it's only nice in moderation and you know that too! so keep being brave, and doing what FEELS RIGHT AND GOOD AND PAINLESS. that's a good litmus test! if it makes you uneasy or sad or ill, STOP. or AVOID IT in the first place! we CAN do that now. even better, we WANT TO! before, when we first got here, lots of our socials DIDN'T want to feel safe or happy or good! they were so caught up in misery and self-loathing and toxic sad residue from the homestead. not anymore! every day it's going away more! and one day it'll be all gone. i know it.
so breakfast was wonderful and delicious and so nice. thank you mason, who was watching inuyasha as we ate and that was really nice background noise. always good to hear other people enjoying life.
oh yes, he was also talking about playing metal gear solid 5, which we remember because our bro diamond loves that series (as does viral) and we watched him play most of it! forgot how amusingly bizarre it is to hear someone talk about. like a fever dream. but it's a very good series. we hope he's enjoying it too.
anyway yes, we ate and then brushed our teeth and we were golden, dude. no fear! success!
breakfasts have been so good lately. remember for a while there they weren't! we'd have trouble first thing in the morning. not anymore! i'm so happy we're healing. this is gemma by the way, hi. <3 i know you've all been looking for me because i feel a certain way (blue happy) but i don't front much. i think this is more my element. also yes i think i might end up working with those two little bunny daemon things iscah met at upmc? i know chocoloco isn't my daemon but i did split off his host from what we all think. anyway it's nice to be back and alive and all of us being happy and good.
also i was just told that i sound like simeon. i do! but we have different vibes. so just ask. <3

after breakfast, mason started playing zero dawn and we sat and watched with oliver. it's such a visually beautiful, intriguing game. we're curious as to the ultimate concept of it; mason is near the end of the game but it's so unique! it's set in the far future, being post-apocalyptic, but there are robotic beasts everywhere? as well as real animals. it's such a cool juxtaposition, we love it. however, there's ALSO this corruption stuff, all red and black, infecting the landscape (!) and the robots. very negative headspace-y. i'm wondering how this became a common representation, like in breath of the wild, and way back on the scg forums 6 years ago even. i wonder if it's a global subconscious thing. that's also deeply intriguing. we love wondering and learning about things like that.
partly through watching mason, we took a short break to play aywas on our phone, mainly just to visit the adoption center. we adopted a rock sevryn, and ended up showing ollie the sevryn designs in the aywapedia, because some of them are truly gorgeous, like the peacock and patterned and our favorite, rose stained. 
did i mention that the GREEN JEWEL has been the one playing aywas, i think?? she's the one from high school, with the u.w.b.c.a and everything. we know her vibe. she gets so excited over virtual pets and keeps buying the ones she likes even if it's blowing all our virtual cash. laurie was chiding her for this but she responded that she was being careful; she was buying them because she legitimately liked them, it wasn't a random buy. laurie still said to be prudent about it. but yeah, green-jewel is still around. she needs to find a name. i'd say "emerald" but she is absolutely not that color. we shall see.
we didn't want to snub ollie or mason or even aloy, though, so we quit aywas and continued watching that awesome game. but then mason said to avoid spoilers at one point so we put on spotify and were listening to that AMAZING track oliver introduced us to, with the voice that sounds like "jay" truly, at the beginning, "galaxies." fittingly we also decided to do more core-name searching with stars and constellations. but it was so good and nice.
then oliver went to work and we walked him out to the car and i remember the air was perfect, the most beautiful temperature and smell and light, and we kissed oliver in the driveway and even though we weren't fully conscious (still struggling with social panic when he leaves, but we're getting better) that moment stood out so strongly in our heart. some things cannot be diluted at all.

immediately upon going inside we started writing this morning's entry, did so for about two solid hours.
then we took a break and tried to eat dinner. scared, but we have faith in ourselves now, and we did VERY well.
TAUREIA fronted and SHE LEARNED FROM YESTERDAY!!!! she notably started trying to be empathetic, and decided to NOT eat what she knew other people would get sick from. 
her thought process also involved her accepting that name; she started as one of the jessicas but also realized that she couldn't claim that name as it belonged to the body itself.
"i can be bullheaded and stubborn, or i can be the ox that overpowers all obstacles"
the brown "jessica" also came out a bit, but chocoloco stopped her as she was starting to eat in a self-abusive manner. but nothing bad happened as she listened to him.
iscah was also out briefly, talking to the BLUE voice from the "nervosa" xanga? the compulsive one. also talking to taureia. near miss with abusive behavior as a result of that poor damaged nameless voice stepping in, but they are learning too. i clearly recall iscah telling them that they NEED to eat slowly and mindfully or they will get sick; if you dont chew your food it causes sharp physical pain and we know it. the blue voice (and someone else?) were scared at this; they wanted it "gone as soon as possible" for binge purposes. but iscah said no; that's not what food is for. again, those nervous voices really don't comprehend food as a concept yet. but i can tell it's catching on.
we got a little sick from eating late, but we managed. taureia is very happy that she tried so hard and did so well. we are too, we're very proud of her and all the others.
i know spice also fronted briefly after jess and before taureia returned, making sure no one was doing anything harmful, as that's her job. dear lord we miss her. i am so, so glad she's still as strong as ever. we need to talk to her more; she doesn't have a clear overlay OR visual self-awareness yet?? even after all this time. but that's typical for eating disorder voices, what with how that struggle affects self-worth. so that's important to work on with her.
and the DESTROYER also was hanging around taureia a little? comparing their motives. GEEZ. we haven't seen her in ages either! good to know she's still alive. we do need to talk to her, though-- her role is VITAL in protecting us from blindly abusive fronters, similar to juniper's job but much heavier and blunter. no nonsense. she's saved us from disaster and pain many many times before.
brief thought, we haven't seen juniper around lately, which is good in the sense that she hasn't had to do her original job-- emergency shutdown of abusive e.d. voices-- and bad in the sense that we don't want her locked to that job and only that job. she's still context locked? so she can't be casually called out to just "be" right now. but i wonder, maybe if we try anyhow? practice that? after all if you don't give those nousfoni a chance, they won't learn HOW to exist in positive, self-aware circumstances. 
so we need to do that for all the nousfoni that are currently unstable, context-locked, or otherwise lacking in self-awareness and therefore the capacity to exist as their own people as of yet. they deserve that chance too. we all do.

now we're cleaned up for the night and typing until 7am!