prismaticbleed | Entries tagged with numb periods

Something I've realized while listening to old tunes as a severe thunderstorm rolls in…

…I've forgotten what love feels like.

I'm cleaning out my old laptop and it's blowing my mind. It's breaking my heart.

Ventrium was in 2014. How in the world have SIX YEARS passed since he died up in the woods?

Back when the Lotus Cathedral System still existed, back when "I" was still Jay, when I was a man who loved with his ENTIRE HEART, honestly to an extent of sincerity and passion that boggles me, I loved so many people, SO MUCH.

I don't… I don't even know what that would feel like, now.

Why?

…It scares me. Now that I've re-found my religion, now that I'm more Catholic than ever, it's severed something in me. Which is wrong, somehow. Now that I'm religious, I have no relationships. When I do have relationships, I lose my religion.

This has to be the devil's work. There should never be such a split, in anyone's life, between Love and love. It's wrong.

I want to kiss Chaos Zero again and I don't know how and I want to weep over that but I don't know how.
Do you have any idea how awful that feels? How horrific it is to realize that my emotions are absolutely SHUT DOWN and I can't even hold this fragile gorgeous being that I've loved for LITERALLY SEVENTEEN YEARS.

…God have mercy on us what if it's trauma.
What if it's trauma. What if this all boils down to having been so utterly wrecked by sexual abuse that I am full-on terrified of so much as holding someone's hand because it might escalate into something unbearable. Because hey, that HAS happened.
But how do I get over it? Is that even the proper phrasing? How can I heal that wound, that gaping wound that I have no clue how to manage on my own, this injury that's on par with a freaking shotgun blast to the ribs that I have literally just been trying to hide under a bloodsoaked shirt? Not even medicating it, not even wrapping it up, just trying to keep it out of my own sight because the reality of it is too terrible. And after a while I guess the blood just looks normal.
But it never actually stops hurting, does it. Even if you ignore it. And once in a while something bumps it and the sudden pain overwhelms you and THEN you realize that hey, I'M DYING HERE.

In the Lotus Cathedral, I had so much love, in me and around me and everything.
I had friends. I had family. I had a daughter, for God's sake.
I had Genesis, my best friend. I had Laurie, my superego soulmate. I had Chaos Zero, my other half, as it were; my dearly beloved who I would still marry if I had the chance.
And that's the other problem.
He's, quite honestly, the only thing that would change my mind against entering the consecrated life. Like, it's either become a nun, or marry a video game character. I'm dead serious though. I'd love to have it both ways but I have no idea if that's possible, which means I have to start researching the hagiographies of married saints because God knows I cannot live like this. I absolutely cannot live with feeling like I am forced to choose between loving God and loving anyone else, because that can't be right.

…And you know how I know that?

Because, like this, I can't actually love GOD, either.

Something in me has been scraped out with a rusty razor and there's this hollow ache smack-dab in the middle of my chest that feels like sobbing and yet, I'm utterly detached from it, cut off like a guillotine to the throat. It's that "blue voice" that the BLCS used to talk about-- that sole mourning woman who lived in our heart and never stopped crying. Lamentations. She just weeps, nonstop, like you cannot imagine. The pain is unbearable. And perhaps that's exactly why we/I cannot feel it. Right now, it is unbearable.

But darn it all I WANT to bear it. I don't CARE if it rips me in half, it SHOULD, it NEEDS TO, or I swear I will NEVER be able to feel anything again.

But I cannot even walk up to Chaos Zero in headspace because if he so much as reaches out and touches my face I swear I am going to shatter into PIECES because you know what the DEEPEST problem is here?
I FEEL TOO FILTHY TO ACCEPT LOVE.

If he, this creature that I love SO MUCH I could honestly die from it, die for him, die from joy in the best circumstances-- if he cannot even look at me right now because if he does, I will crumple into agonized sobbing, there is a BIG PROBLEM and that problem is that I CAN'T PARTICIPATE IN THAT LOVE RIGHT NOW.

My sense of identity is screwed. I want to love but I am ashamed and I am AFRAID and I don't even know how to receive AFFECTION without being terrified that I've got to dissociate and perform.
How did I do it as Jay? How did I DO it? How did "he" throw himself heartfirst into everything to the point where he became this absolute light-source of love? His very presence in the System was a literal catalyst for emotional sincerity and genuine selfless compassion.
What happened to him? What happened to me? What changed, between him and me, that just… hollowed me out, and killed him? Where did he go? If I'm his "spiritual successor," if I'm literally the next step of the bloodline as it were, the next piece of "Core" history, then… why am I so broken?

Why do I feel like CANNON all over again? Ten years ago or more? Marywood, 2009? Waking up to trauma and wishing I were dead? Well, there you go.

I don't hate S. (I will not call them by their "chosen name" because my faith prioritizes the name they were given, legally and originally, the person they were before dissociating.) And I want to be their friend. But truly I don't know if I ever knew them, either. Because when I was living in North Carolina I was either talking to Oliver or Kris or Kyo or… gosh I don’t even remember their names anymore. But it felt jagged, broken, confused. So did I. It feels wrong, even now talking about it, like choking on dirty dishwater. It feels filthy and sick. I can't look at it; I want to throw up and cry and scream and curl up and die.

And that's what I feel whenever I try to feel love, now.

That ugly ugly stuff is getting in the way. It's shame, to the point of crushing mountains, heavier than a dying star. It's apocalyptic shame, the sort that WILL annihilate you if you don't get a handle on it.

Where does God come into this?

I'm a Catholic, okay? I'm a Christian. And I do love God. But how genuine is my love if I'm having this problem with EVERYTHING ELSE?

Yesterday was Easter. We just got through Holy Week and I spent Good Friday night standing outside in my pajamas, the wind howling and snow whipping around my dirty head, crying hysterically that I was scared to death because I knew how sinful I was and I KNEW I was sorry, I KNEW I didn't want to sin or do wrong or hurt anyone or offend Jesus, ever, but I couldn't feel anything about it. My mind was confessing contrition with frankly panic-stricken sincerity, but my emotional capacity was bankrupt. There was no feeling behind the words, and THAT is TERRIFYING as a Christian because hey, does that mean I'm actually sorry at all?
God help me, I'm not sure what to do about this.

I need to be broken open. I need my heart to be shattered to flipping PIECES because honestly that is probably the ONLY WAY I'm going to get this hardness out of me.
I need to make a playlist of all the most wrenching love songs I know, and I need to go talk to Chaos Zero and not run away, and stay there for like a solid hour even if I spend most of that time sobbing. God knows that alone is progress, because I cannot even CRY right now, not without immediately reaching for a knife.

…God, where is Laurie?

Now THAT thought kills me. God I miss her, so much I actually am tearing up right now. And that's always been her saving grace-- she was always isolated from the potential horror of romance, always separate from the idea of being a partner or anything of the sort. She was always just my white knight, my soldier, my protector, my friend. And THAT is safe.
But NC tried to murder her in that respect. Oliver and the rest of the Broken Arrows wanted to be in a "romantic relationship" with her and her VERY EXISTENCE STOOD AT TOTAL ODDS TO THAT VERY CONCEPT.
She did die from it, I know. I remember. They all died. But… the Spectrum can be reborn, truly, in Christ as it must be, as it truly needs to be. She's Laurel now, or Lauriel, I can't quite tell; she's unstable, but she's alive. Somewhere, somehow. And she's safe again, untouchable, ineffable, real only because OF that. Unblemished, undefiled, virginal.

That’s the problem with everyone else that I love.
Laurie is the ONLY PERSON who has basically decreed to the point of spitting blood that she will NEVER, and CAN never, be a danger to me in that respect. She can never be romantic, she can never be intimate, she can never be sexual.
And that is THE ONLY REASON WHY SHE IS SAFE and that is also the MAIN REASON WHY I AM TERRIFIED TO EVEN GO LOOK FOR HER, because I believe that I am tainted and ruined and if I so much as look at her I will kill her.

…

The problem isn't everyone else. The problem is me.
I'm afraid to hold Chaos Zero because I'm afraid I'll ruin him. That's why I want to die and weep forever when I look at him, because I can feel this awful WRONGNESS in me and God knows I never want that to touch him.

…Love is only safe in the League, somehow.
I NEED to remember that.
And that is ALSO why I'm so FURIOUS on some level for S trying to steal it. For YEARS, the ONLY refuge from my trauma has been remembering the pure, chaste, genuine love between individuals in the League, notably in Dream World, but when S touched it, they CORRUPTED IT. They made it sexual and honestly I want to RAGE AND WEEP over that. I am absolutely BENT on making a website in the near future to attest to the TRUTH of the League and I need to like put that on a poster and glue it to my eyeballs so I am DRIVEN to work towards that end EVERY DAY.

That's slightly off-topic. And yet it's not. Because I'm listening to Kreva and when you drop the pitch on his voice to 80% he sounds like Xorane and he's singing about Devonal and those two genuinely adore each other AND YET SO MANY PEOPLE CAN'T SEE THAT IN A PURE SENSE. Because they're two guys, people assume they're gay, and then assume they're being licentious, promiscuous, immoral. NOPE. NOPE AND NEVER EVER, NO HOW.
But that's what makes me so angry. S ALSO jumped on the illicit and utterly disgusting idea that Justice & Revenge were INCESTUOUS??? And they were OBSESSED with it. And NOW Revenge's basic SELF has been SHATTERED in the League and I can feel it frantically trying to rebuild him but it doesn't know HOW because those corruptive imposed ideas got too deeply ingrained in there and things need to be ripped up and COMPLETELY rewritten but God I can't do that to my own life.

I can't rip up and rebuild. I'm stuck carrying this timeline.
But… there's the bit, the one tiny crack in my armor where the light gets in, the fracture straight above my heart, that says "if the only way I could protect the love I've known is by carrying that agony as well, then I will carry it until I die."
And that's Jay's voice.
And that makes me want to cry.

I want to be Jay again. I want to be whatever he was that made him so pure and loving and good. He was just… incandescent. He was iridescent. He was JOY, and he was only that because he was also LOVE.

…Can I even be that? How?

Hey! Here's another sudden thought.
I can GIVE love, at least conceptually, in imagining third person images of myself, BUT! I cannot imagine myself RECEIVING love. Like, the idea of someone looking at ME, or kissing me, is genuinely TERRIFYING and makes me want to run and hide and cry like a panicked child, shaking and confused and so, so, so sad. And that is obviously trauma residue.

Here's an interesting thought.
There are very few people in the League or in the Spectrum who can hold intimacy, or rather, raw emotion. Like, there are very few people who can be stripped down to bare their heart and blood and wounds and still stand. Lots of folks are too scared, too hardened, too afraid, et cetera. But some of them aren't. And those people are the ones who can look at you with eyes that are just like… holy fire. Untouchable, unbreakable, undying… but so bright. It's not a hard light. It's bright, so bright, but it's somehow so soft. It's fierce but it's tender. And those words are terrifying to someone like me who, currently, cannot bare their wounds because they are too awful. But some people… the sort of person I want and need to be… the sort of person that, honestly, hopefully, gloriously, anyone can become, God's grace willing… some people-- like Jesus, quite blatantly-- can have their hearts torn open and they will STILL gently wear those scars and let you TOUCH them. That sort of absolute invincible tenderness is staggering. And, as Jay, I used to be like that. I need to be like that again.
Chaos Zero is like that. Honestly, he is the MOST like that of anyone I have EVER known. In my entire life I don't think I have EVER seen him closed off. If he tries, he melts almost immediately. Really, it's utterly against his very nature to have a closed heart. And I love that about him. I love him. And honestly… he deserves to be with someone like him in that sense. To say otherwise would be cruelty. You cannot pair up such a raw heart with a hard one. If I want to be with him-- and I do, God knows I do, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, in the darkest of times, in the face of death even-- I do, I do want to be with him but my heart has to melt like his first.
Or it needs to be set on fire.

What is my personal element, now? Oh geez maybe THAT'S the issue????
The Jewel bloodline has always been fire. But Jewel, infamously, was somehow NEVER able to be soft like Jay. It's shocking. Jay's element was snow and LIGHT. Sparkles and softness and purity and white joy.
If I… if I redefine myself, if I maybe even start a new bloodline, find a new name… maybe I can soften? Maybe this weird brown-haired stone-heart earth-shackled girl I feel damned to be can change, can essentially redefine herself by what her soul is, truly, I know. I am not this reflection. I am what God created me to be and that is a child of God and that is someone who loves and rejoices and shines HIS Light through her life. And I cannot do that if I'm an inert pebble here.
I need to be light and snowflakes again. I need to find a new name.

So there we go, that's thoughts for today. It's almost noon and that thunderstorm is still rolling in and hey, maybe instead of panicking over it I'll bravely bare my heart a little and ask Laurie to join me in watching that beautiful powerful act of God outside. Lightning like her. Thunder like her words in my heart. Rain like my beloved's tears. All three of us, Genesis too with the wind, and then what am I?
"You're the hope that ties it all together," I feel her say. "You're the rainbow after the storm. You're the hope of sunshine when it's all over."
"But I don't want it to be all over," I say, a real twinge of loving sadness pulling at my chest like a guzheng string, pulling it into a vibrato. "Not if it's you. Even if it's scary, if it's you, I want it to stay."
"Even if you're scared?" A knowing voice. A hint of a purple smile.
"Yeah." I mean it, despite my trembling hands.
"And why is that?"
"…because I love you."
"And there you go," she says, throwing her own hands open in a victorious gesture, smiling, looking away a little, as if it was too bright a feeling to bear head-on. "There you go. That's how you get through this. Love."
And she looks right at me.
"You hold on to that, kid. No matter what. Promise me you will."
I nod.
"I'm still scared."
"'Course you're still scared, you're afraid to look love in the face. Embrace it, kid. Even if it hurts. Even if it's a crown of thorns. You've gotta hold it to your heart or it's not gonna carry you through the storm."

Be my light to others, child.
God is love, and love is God, and love is light unending, undefeatable.
There is always a sun behind the clouds, even in the worst of storms.
Fear not. I am with you always.
I love you too.

Dear God:

I am so sorry.
I keep thinking this is "worth it" for some reason, and it's not.
Every single time, my body is wracked with pain, and nausea, and fear.
I do not like this. The aftereffects make me want to sob, and sob, and sob, but it makes me so tired I cannot manage.
I am so sorry.

God, I only did this because I confused it with closeness.
I know you gave me a chance to stop. I took it, at first. I wish I had not reconsidered my own convictions.
It hurt. It always hurts. It's empty, and it hurts.

I'm through with questioning the morality of this. I'm done.
God, help me never to do this again.
Help me to remember that I CAN feel intimacy, closeness, trust, affection, with other people-- and other people can feel that for other people too-- WITHOUT having to force ourselves to do this instead.
I only wanted to feel close to someone. I knew, the whole time, that this thing wasn't what I wanted.

I am so sorry.
God, my body wants to shiver and vomit and cry. I am so sick. This never fails.
I know it's because this isn't for me. Why do I keep forcing myself into this?
It's just doubt, over and over and over.
Well I'll try again. I promise. This time I NEVER want to slip again. Ever.
Give me strength. Give me the strength of will and clarity of mind to not give in to the empty sweet talk of those who don't know what's best for me.

Help me, and those in the System/Spectrum, to focus on LOVE in its purest forms, yes it's PUREST forms, separate from this… help us all to feel and show true loving affection and compassion without feeling like we "have to" shove it down to this level.

God, forgive me, please. I am so so so sorry.
What I really want to do is rewind time, and take this back. I want to rewind time and stop this from EVER happening in the first place, whenever that was, for whatever reason.
But I can't. Like they say, the past is past, and there's nothing I can do about it.
I can stop it from repeating though.

God, I really do want to cry, so much, from this. I'm so sick and scared and sad. Why?
Help me, help us, to cry. Help us in therapy on Monday. Help us talk about this exactly, so we can heal whatever is crushing our convictions, and pushing us into dissociative numb abuse. This counts as abuse, when it goes against our spiritual and physical health.
Just because others can do it does NOT mean we should.
Please, help me to remember that.
Help me to say no.
Help me to run when I want to.
Help me be aware of ME instead of what someone else wants me to be, or what I think I should be.

God I am shaking so bad. I am so damn scared.
I don't know what to do.
Please, please, PLEASE, I am begging you, I want you to take drastic measures in preventing this in the future. Like the car driving by the window. Like people knocking on doors.
And you did, you DID, you ALWAYS do… and I listened this time, at first.
Why do I always feel like I HAVE to "try again," like I HAVE to "see if I like it this time," the thousandth time and it just hurts worse than ever. I never liked it.
God, help me.

Help me.
Part of me can't forget those Mormon kids and how nice and happy they were and how they acted like this was some huge part of their salvation and it had to be for me too.
Part of me can't shake the feeling of brokenness from when my college professors told me that unless I could stare at a naked woman without wanting to scream then I had better not be an artist.
Part of me can't let go of the suffocating terror brought on by forced exposure to pornography, trying to "get used to it," and serving only in making our nightmares that much more vivid and traumatic.

God, I want no part of this.

God, I want my innocence back.
Maybe I can never get it back in this lifetime. Not entirely. I can split, though, if that's okay.
Is there a way to break off the parts of me that remember this pain? I don't want to feel it ever again.
I want to go back to being innocent and white and pure and righteous, but I don't want to go back to hating and condemning and all that. I want to stand strong in my own truth without feeling the frightened need to shoot down those who oppose it.
I'm scared. That's the truth.
I'm very scared of the religious people online who say that THIS is the "one true path to God," because no matter WHAT I do, no matter HOW I do it, no matter WHO it's been done with… and not even me, I'm talking about all the Core people in the past who tried so hard their eyes could bleed from all the tears they cried… no matter what, it never worked. It NEVER, EVER WORKED.
I don't think it ever will, and quite frankly, I don't WANT it to, because I don't want to HAVE to do this "because now I'm 'fixed'!"
God, help me to feel like I'm not broken in the soul for being different.
Please. I know there are other paths to you.

I love people. Or at least, I did, before things changed.
Those inside… there's a lot of love there, I know.
I'd let them write but I can't tell them about this, they'd start sobbing. I am so sorry. I don't want them to have to bleed for my stupid mistake. It's not fair.
I know they'd tell me I have to bleed instead but I'm terrified and I don't know if that would stop it?
But I have to, I guess, until we find a better way.

I'm sad. I'm tired and sad and sick and God I am so sorry.

I'm going to go to sleep and God get this garbage OUT of the Leagueworlds, please, oh dear God it should never have gotten in there in the first place. Please, God, it's all confusion.

I'll heal them. Somehow. I'll step in and scrub it out even if it means I have to eviscerate myself to do it. I'll sacrifice myself entirely if it will deliver those people from my stupid, stupid mistakes.

God I don't want to die but I want this to stop.

I wonder what the others would say.

I need to sleep. I don't want to be awake right now. I'm sorry.

Monika, it IS disgusting, and it's NOT what you want, and you are ALLOWED to say no, even if it's to your friend. You are NOT obligated to endure things that make you very uncomfortable just because you like the person who asked.
Nikki, stop being a scientist about this. Stop detaching from the experience just so you can "study" it without being grossed out or shaken up.
Both of you, stay friends. Stay close. Love each other in the RIGHT way, don't do this. Don't do that. You know you don't want or like it, so DON'T. Please.

That goes for everyone. Especially me.

God, you are love, and I know… I desperately hope, I BEG you, please, you are love, tell me that THAT isn't the only way to love.
Please. Tell me, for sure, unquestionably, that I don't have to do that to love truly.
I want to go to heaven, but I'm terrified that I have to do that indefinitely to achieve it.
I don't want this at all. Please tell me that's not going to lock me out of the pearly gates.

God, I'm sorry. I'm truly, heart-wrenchingly sorry.
Please forgive me. Please protect me. Please, heal me.
Please don't let this ever happen again.

I love you. I'm sorry.

I'm even more sorry that I thought that was love.

-Jewel

1:58 AM august 9th

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@9:45 PM

today

razor was out for a while
killed three hacker plush
no idea who the hell keeps doing this
got blood and guts all over her knife
one of them was full of plague eggs
it was disgusting and terrifying
razor threw them out on the lawn
"turn into good bugs"
threw sparkly purple paint water after them
said that would go into the ground
and help to change them
razor said one of the plushes was pretending to be a jewel monster
and an angel
she got furious and said it was a liar
she cut off its wings
and cut off its head
threw the dead plushes out into the woods
said the woods will reabsorb them
so we're safe
the woods is powerful and purifying
which is why it is extremely evil for hackers to try and hurt it
the woods will eat them alive
so that is good at least.

we atoned today. had to.
jay blessed it.
it was a shock to all of us when we realized we havent been around in like THREE DAYS
when jewel is out normally this is fine
BUT someone ate tar food today
and the consequences were INSTANT.
we need to be unflinchingly vigilant with food from now on
the slightest amount causes instant violent rage abusive mindsets
and that needs to stop.

last night

jewel got hacked?
league routed
it was devastating for her

bizarrely life is good otherwise
TONS of leaguework being completed
mage angels book draft has begun
another shirt done, starting two more
working on music again
its beautiful and we are so happy
so so happy
which is nice.
we NEED to start the akuna art trade but we're paranoid about "getting it wrong"
jay says we should just try with honest intent and it should work
so we're reviewing all the info we have and will try tomorrow after therapy
if all goes well
we do love the people in that system even if we dont know them well
the affection doesnt go away

we are very very very sick to our stomach
we are so numb at this point theres just this internal shaking
i can only imagine how much pent up fear and rage and terror there is now

there IS someone in the system who cries more than anyone though
an inhuman person in the sky spectrum slots
they have lots of eyes. but they sob.
calling them "the mourner" currently
they were out last night crying when no one else could figure out how
it helped immensely
i wonder if they can front

therapist said heavy-duty work starts tomorrow.
it's about time

today wasn't a cool day

big awful realization about the brother. family crisis.
wont talk about it here that's rude.
basically bad stuff hitting a really awful high point, its unignorable now, inescapable
mother is ticked off, she's shut off all her emotions, she'll probably cry about it in private later

called dad to tell him, he sounded so crushed
he doesnt show emotions strongly but its always in his voice
god ive never heard him sound so sad
i just
i haven't cried in a long time and i just slumped against the washer and started quietly sobbing
it was too much.

he's never sounded so sad before

laurie hugged me and said she didnt know how to comfort me but damn it she'd try
said if i needed anything from her, let her know
she's a godsend i love her so much
i told her "be tough love," don't let ANYTHING wear down her edges anymore
we need her to do that more than ever right now
we need to be fierce compassion
we need to be brutal unflinching care
we need her.
we need to be everything she exists to protect.

hack today
jacinth responsible, preludove said
as usual, no memory of it just location
god help us
we are all so much in numb traumashock from all this hell that we dont know how to react anymore
jeremiah did though
he came storming in later when we were in the kitchen
swearing and furious and crying
said it didnt reach the kids, but it reached HIM
reminded us THAT'S HIS FUNCTION
HE EXISTS TO BUFFER HACK PAIN AWAY
so we were in heartsick shock over that too
i think leon showed up to comfort him
then javier did of course, jeremiah just held him and sobbed

lynne's wearing a different outfit
it's not a dress, it's leggings and a skirt i think?
i can't see it clearly
but there are black stripes through it
i am so concerned about her it's hurting my heart
god she's been scared about her anchor for a while
what with the "adult feminine ideal" she was meant to be being corrupted
we're all helping her tune back into the initial vibe of that, it is helping
but she's so shaken up from the other day
god let her heal from this please
we'll help her, we'll do everything we can to help her

rio's anchor is evening out thank god.
he was a mess for a while too
tied to sky, NOT blue, it seems
markus' shade of violet is lighter than we thought?
outspacers feeling brighter than they have in a long long time
possibly because we're trying to do more in heartspace
but anyway that is a good thing

emmett and aimee were out to eat today
thank god, thank god they havent been out to do so in WEEKS and they are so safe
emmett really despises grains and those are dangerous so that's good
he will NOT eat them so that already saves us from bingers and abusers
oh also FIG was out!!! FINALLY
we thought they were dead because theyve been so foggy for ages but there they were!!
their overlay is solid they are STILL orange, and they ARE insectiod, and they are a SAFE EATER
but focused on precision, kind of a hopefully positive spin on the eating disorder compulsions
i.e. picking everything to bits, obsessive organization of food, etc.
wonder if that's an aspie thing
anyway yeah. bug mandibles make that sort of eating mandatory.
but we tried very very very hard to eat safely today.
unfortunately someone apparently dissociated once we got the phone call
i think i dont even remember anymore what happened
but its sad because there were thoughts going through the head after we ate
mainly, "is it supposed to keep food in the stomach" and things like that
confusion at feeling full, at keeping food down at all
there is a legitimate fear of consuming, PERIOD, when that stays in the body
someone was trying to reason with the mindset?
said food was for energy, response was "but we get energy from the air, we dont need food"
so we said, "food energy is specifically replacing the energy we lose when people hack us"
as a result, we can't eat foods that hackers would like
or foods that would catch their attention
otherwise that's just hurting us.
the mindset caught, so hopefully that will stick
if we could only drill it into the numb fronters heads then we'd be home free
but those people dont care about anything
even a threat to their own lives

laurie was talking to one of the binge-alters tonight
a younger girl, not malevolent, just passively harmful
stress eating, wanting color & texture & stimming
no idea what led to it but laurie got them to stop??
some sort of conversation with the following bit highlighted:
she said she wanted them to stop because it was not the best for them, it was negligent and harmful,
laurie asked them, didnt they love themselves?
person responded they didn't understand that, they "didn't know what love was."
laurie said she expected that. attempted to give them a summary.
said she loved them, wanted them to be free of pain and abuse, wanted that to stop,
saw they had potential to be better, etc. that sort of vibe
but anyway that CAUGHT and the person DID stop because they FELT that faith in them??
laurie kept talking to them, calmly, keeping them stable as she could
told them to "go upstairs and eat" instead, it was safer and had better effects
not sure how that all ended but they didn't binge anymore. thank god.
so that's one very good thing about today

i'm really torn about the brother
i dont REMEMBER him, not much, not well
theres memory of him when he was like 12, 13
almost nothing before or after.
typical, we have big memory gaps
but... its making it hard for me to feel anything over this and that is terrifying
where did this numbness come from??
even if he was a total stranger, where the heck is your compassion??????
why do we keep reacting with DISSOCIATIVE EMPTINESS???
what the heck is going on?
i'm very concerned to say the least

this is why we keep self-abusing, we're not reacting properly
we're not feeling emotions at all for the most part
outside.
inside, when we turn off everything and go inside, well then jay is usually out
he only comes out inside for the most part anymore.
but inside he's fine. he's bright, he's fine.
outside he's angry, colors all wrong.
we're really concerned about this

jay calling chaos 0 his "source of hope" today
the fact that cz still loved him and all the hosts even when they screwed up or made big mistakes
was such a huge positive force, made them feel that they weren't evil even if they failed, wanted to do better for his sake
thats very important and i'm glad it still applies so genuinely and totally

it's been a struggle lately. no idea why. it's concerning.
conflict, "are we trying too hard" versus "are we not trying hard enough"
feels like the latter though
in any case we NEED to take more time for ourselves
we are so burnt out, so tired, it's a quiet sad exhaustion
there's a silent need to weep right beneath our skin at this point
we need a break on a psychological level and aren't sure how to get one
but we'll try again tomorrow. we always do.

key word is "we"
without that word we go nowhere

Quick update. I need to get back into the habit of writing here.

Therapy today took a lot out of me. It started in a state of almost-suicidal numbness, brought on by exhaustion and psychological fatigue, but then the frustration of it all kicked in and I actually ended up in angry tears as I tried to express just why I felt like I was still half-shackled to a living hell.
I'll summarize. I've been having nightmares again recently, and this morning I had a "hack" one. So that was the last straw. I am really, really tired of dealing with this sexuality issue for most of my life. I am tired.
Laurie literally told me, "throw out everything you've ever learned on that subject," and instead follow what WE have defined upstairs. It's totally different and I don't care what the outside people say anymore; the truth inside doesn't hurt, it's not abusive, and it's based on love. It's not that weird and inelegant half-animalistic stuff people keep trying to get me to adopt.
But I digress. I can't be so bitter. That needs to be healed too. It's just difficult, when my biggest obstacle is STILL the deeply entrenched fear that "if I'm asexual, I am flawed as a human being." Being told as a child that you are a "sin against God" because you're not using your "God-given gift" was bad enough; growing up and hearing that from other spiritual circles after prolonged abuse made it worse.
I don't want to talk about that nonsense though. The problem is, until I heal that mindset-- the one that says "I have to be sexual because that is the only moral choice, regardless of how frightening, painful and insincere it is for me"-- I will never be at peace, not entirely. I still fear going out in public, I still fear being alone, I still fear my own family because that mindset has me CONVINCED, utterly convinced, that corrective rape is just around the corner and it will be God's will.
On my worst days, I literally go about my daily life waiting for it to happen, expecting it from everyone, too numb to care. Some broken part of me just wants it to be over with, for me to be "fixed," so I won't be a "blasphemous freak" anymore.
Do you see how sick that is? But part of me believes it, completely, and with terrified sincerity.

I'm not sure how to deal with this, other than just following Laurie's advice and adopting Infinitii's existence as my sole unquestionable gospel truth on this matter. It's probably the healthiest option at this point.
I stopped going to my trans* meetings because of this. I cannot stand how queer spaces and people are hypersexualized. I can't handle the innuendo, I can't contribute to the discussion topics. Is that bad? My therapist says I can just get up and leave if it gets too difficult, but I am ashamed of that, to the point of self-loathing. The voices keep screaming "you shouldn't HAVE a problem; YOU'RE the problem; stop being a freaking wimp and get used to it, it's NORMAL."
On my good days I can just brush off any outside promiscuous comments, knowing that if I don't let them in, they won't feed the Tar/Plague. But when I'm not grounded, when I'm unsettled, that stuff sticks into my brain like rusty needles, and it gets infected. It's awful and it actually makes me angry, but that emotion by itself won't solve anything. Yes, I'm angry; I'm angry that this mangled part of my psyche devours everything tied to past trauma and gleefully spits it back in my face. But that's a lesson too, somewhere. The shadow parts of us exist for a reason. Infinitii has the same base material as they do. Those corrupted entities are reflecting back to me what I am not, what I cannot and should not be. Maybe that's all I have to do is keep that in mind. I don't HAVE to do what they tell me. I'm just so used to following orders "or else," that will be a journey. I can't expect it to be solved overnight. I have to learn to assert my own health and free will.
"Free will." It's a new term to me, the implication that I have the freedom to make my own choices. It's nice but it's rather intimidating, as long as it's paired with the "fear of punishment" for "messing up" that this hyperreligious past has given me. But I know that's old and false. Again, everything now is just practice.

Sorry. I'm repeating things that don't need to be repeated.
Bottom line: I need to somehow stop thinking that I HAVE to be an actively sexual being, or else I'm immoral and "not a complete human." That's what I internalized, that's what's still being fed to me day after day by new age media. I hope I'm misunderstanding it. I hope Infi's right, and I don't have to do a single thing with this physical body. I'm scared, I really am, that I HAVE to, after what I've been through with it. I guess I just need a response? Or that's what 'healing' from this would feel like: a message from those people saying, "oh, sure, being asexual is morally permissible; your sexual conduct or lack thereof has nothing to do with your spiritual progress!"
Why is this so hard for me to accept? I am so afraid that I'm "wrong" just for existing like this. It's nothing but moral fear, all of it.

Ah well. No use dwelling on the negative aspects. Nothing needs to be "fixed;" it just needs to fall away.
I have to stop thinking in terms of "moral/immoral" because that's just making me ill.
What's the healthiest choice here? What will allow me to grow as a person, what won't hold me back in terms of personal development? That's what I need to ask. Old damning judgments don't help anyone.

After therapy I looked upstairs momentarily and Laurie was just sitting there, looking absolutely furious, with tears streaming down her face. Javier was around too, but he was mostly in shock; he wasn't aware of the extent of the mindsets I had discussed. Laurie then called Lynne and Julie in, said we all needed to talk soon, about this specific topic, because it was bleeding over into everyone's colors and making us all deathly sick.
Lynne's been getting hit hard, because she holds most of our femininity, and those same anti-asexual messages insist that cis females are inherently sexual, which is total idiocy, but there it is.
Julie is still being affected too, but in a different aspect now-- she holds affection, and those lies tell her that she can't feel affection without it being sexually motivated somehow. That makes me very angry, because it's entirely false, and it is what has caused me the most acute pain over the years. When we hit our teenage years, suddenly society declared that "you can't have friends anymore, only boyfriends and girlfriends!" and we're still recovering from that. Again, it's an "all or nothing" mindset keeping us rooted to those things. Fear that if we say "no, we feel differently," the reaction will be "fine, have fun in hell."
Knife seems to be oddly impervious to this bleedover though, despite also being Pink? Not sure why, but that's a thought. He checks on me before every therapy session still, by the way. It's really sweet. (He's also taken to calling me "dear," which is adorable)
Anyway. Laurie deals with that too, the consequences from the "every form of love is sexual" nonsense lie. Problem is, more than anyone else in the System, she can die from that. Her role is still based on Chastity, on total separation from the sexuality topic, so she can protect everyone else from the demons it bred. If they sneak into her role, it can kill her. We all know that. And no one wants to see it happen.
Same with Infinitii, except ze has already 'died' a few times from it (the System won't let hir stay dead, thank God), which is not only heartbreaking for me, but also unbelievably abhorrent for everyone else. Infinitii's role is sacred, and these old lying programs are daring to undermine that? To THAT extent? It's inexcusable. So if anything is my motivation for healing this ancient pain, it is Infi.

I'm rambling again. I'm trying too hard. This isn't healthy either, this defensive reaction. It's fear! The mind whispers, "but what if they're right?" and so I keep trying to "justify my existence" lest someone else condemn me to hell for staying silent.
It's ridiculous. Honestly let's stop talking about this. I am tired of these tangled entries, too.

I discovered Son Lux two days ago, and his music is gorgeous. His entire Lanterns album is also quite relevant to headspace, no surprises there. But I am very much enjoying listening to this stuff.
I also heard Gustav Holst's Ode to Death on the radio on Sunday, completely at random, and it moved me to incredulous tears. It's so strange and beautiful; it sounds like the symphonies I hear in my head. So there's that for you too.
...Both of those things have direct ties to Laurie, haha. I'm not surprised by that either.

I miss talking to the people in headspace. I miss the people in headspace. I love the people in headspace.
It's going to be a bit clumsy getting everyone back together. We never rebuilt after December. We've been scattered, we've been silent. But I can't keep backing off, from fear of that love I feel for them, and them for me, and all of us for each other. That misplaced fear is literally the only thing keeping me away.
But some of them walk right through my walls. Always. And that quiet trust, that silent fidelity, means the world on nights like tonight. To know that when I collapse into sleep, she will be watching, and ze will be nearby, and he will be beside me, whether or not I acknowledge any of them... I can't put that feeling into words.
I'm scared of saying "that's what I want to live for," because I don't know how. I want to-- I NEED to be able to balance headspace and the physical realm. I can't do "one or the other;" I've been trying to for weeks and it's been killing me. I need to balance this.
Don't let me run from this, invisible audience. I've been walking in circles for the past several entries and I do not want that to continue. Yes, I'm acting on my promises, but it's slow and hesitant and there's that awful fear that is more pitiable than anything. It's like a little kid, scared to love because every time it tried, someone hurt it, someone told it that love was 'inappropriate' or otherwise 'wrong.' I need to tell that kid that those people were wrong in saying that. I need to reassure all the parts of my soul that we aren't the freaks so many other people say we are. And I need to include myself in that, too.

Progress. One step at a time. I know and feel what is best for me and our soul's growth here. I am not obligated to adhere to anyone else's path.
...I guess, God give me the strength and clarity of mind to see my own path correctly. If I am wrong, don't let me ignore it. But don't let me be blinded by doubt and fear either, please.
...Words don't work. Words don't work, when the answers to my prayers are never spoken.
This medium is so inadequate. I try too hard, it's laughable, but not in a bad way. Just... I need to stop typing about this.

...And see, this is what I'm talking about. Clicked on my Tumblr dash for a moment and saw this.
“Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”
That's sincere reassurance enough for tonight. Thank you.

Oh. Lastly. I need to talk about this separately as there's too much for tonight, but.
Genesis, whatever in the world is going on with you, I don't hold it against you. I'm sorry if I made you think I do, it's just frightening for me to not understand this situation either. Nevertheless I will never forget my promise to you, and I will always be here for you, you know that. I love you, and I hope you can forgive me, if I've hurt you in any way, because I never intended to.
Door's open as always, if you want to stop by the room tonight. Everyone's worried about you. You're always welcome.

Now I need to get some sleep. 2AM is too late, seriously, my boss is going to be wondering what I'm doing!
See you all again soon enough.

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

@ 01:55 am

ohhhh my heart i commissioned a poem about infi and the first draft is crushingly gorgeous i am in tears.
my heart is absolutely shattering with love.

there are a few adjustments i can make but otherwise this is utter perfection. i am not surprised, and yet i am in awe, total starstruck gratitude.

the last line is killing me in the most brilliant way possible.

infi don't ever stop being exactly what you are. be brutal blood and teeth. be gentle stars and darkness. be the wings of angels and the stuff of nightmares. be everything i am afraid of and everything i love.
i adore you, strange small shard of my soul, and that truth is just as eternal as you.

okay, okay, guys, stop

listen.

i'm the biggest problem in this system, i know this.

i don't think i'm capable of functioning anymore.

i can't front. i don't seem capable of making choices that don't hurt people.

you guys just... take over from now on.

i said i was done.

i meant it.

i won't fight back if you find me.

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

@ 05:03 pm

I've had this lying around for a while, and since I no longer have compartmentalized blogs to post surveys only in, I'll put it here.
Today's been odd. I woke up happy, even with troubles around me. Then I tried to socialize, and within an hour, my energy was gone. Is that something wrong with me, that I get so tired from trying to talk and "mingle with people" like my family says I should?
I try not to feel bad about it, spiritual people don't do that. But then I wonder, "am I ignoring some inherent, harmful flaw in myself, justifying it with the nonsense phrase of "do what feels right to you?" Would the correct, spiritual thing to do, be to force myself to socialize anyway, and damn the psychological stress? Everyone knows it's fake anyway, right?
I don't want to think. I feel like vomiting. I'm tired, and it's only 5PM. I want to sleep so badly.
Maybe I can exercise. Have to be careful though, exercise hacks were back yesterday. Not good.
But I've abandoned that world, so if I stay away from any triggers, I should be good.
"It's gone forever, and I don't care about it anymore."
A good lesson.

I'm not sure what mindset I should follow to complete this.
1. Happy, "everything is perfect and nothing hurts" mode, but no depth;
2. Logical, "detached" mode, but no emotions or preferences;
3. Current empty, "realistic" mode, but no forced optimism.
Sometimes I answer questions depending on what I feel the "appropriate" or "correct" answer would be. And when I reply, that is true. But is it always true?
That is the problem with self-analysis. It requires you to have a self to analyze.

Perhaps I should answer each question three times. We'll see.
Survey time.

1. Who are you?
Logically, intellectually, I know I am nothing; just a "spark of the Creator" existing in a physical form for some time, although I currently do not know why I "chose to incarnate here."
The "happy person" would choose to stick with an identity. But all identities are false. Everything is a dream, a game, a joke. Ultimately there is nothing.
So, when you ask "who are you," I would point out the fallacy of the question.

2. What are you passionate about?
I am not. "Passion" is not something I experience. Emotions in general baffle me. To cling so strongly to an emotion as to believe in it, and experience it to such a foolhardy extent... it's utterly incomprehensible. What is an "emotion?"
Dimly, another used to be "passionate" about creative endeavors in the past, at least that is what I am told. It's an empty fact, worn-out and rather dated, to the point where people sigh upon hearing it again. It has become a sort of myth in this age. Was it ever true to begin with? Or is it an invented truth?
In any case, there is no passion here. There is simply existence, quietly, and without "emotions."

3. What are the achievements you are most proud of?
Again, I am not. Nor am I responsible for any "achievements." Will the survey continue in this way? I am rather disappointed in the current question lineup.

4. What are you most grateful for in life?
I would prefer that someone else answer these questions. I am literally incapable of giving a suitable response.

5. What are the most important things to you in life?
These questions are utterly foolish, I apologize.

I just finished Off.
What a spectacular game.

I'm still in emotionless mode, but there was one little second in the last scene where I thought I was going to cry-- the silent tearing-up kind, not the sobbing kind. So it found a chink in my armor. I didn't tear up, but I found that sudden possibility noteworthy.

"You have not purified this place. You have destroyed, eradicated it. You have immersed it into a pristine nothingness."
"It's better like that."

How marvelously depressing, that I would identify so strongly with the destroyer of worlds.

"Taste my holy wrath, corrupt souls...
I'm here to make you atone for your sins."

This is my current favorite picture of The Batter and Hugo.
I think it's obvious as to why.

I keep thinking back to February 24th... or whenever it was... the incomplete "scratch." My attempt at setting the switch of my reality to "OFF."
It didn't work then, not entirely.
I don't know if I should try again.
"Should" is the key word.

Infinitii's necklace came in the mail today.
I don't even remember who he is.

I don't remember a lot of things.

I'm very tired. The angry voices won't be quiet.
I feel as if I'm drowning in a sea of righteous rage.
I feel as if I deserve every single punishment I bring upon myself.
All the blood, all the pain, all of the despair... it is all delivered justly.

I'm the one swinging the baseball bat, insisting on my holy role,
when in fact, I'm the one who needs purification most of all.

Bis Vincit, Qui Se Vincit In Victoria.

I've spent the past 24 hours playing Space Funeral/ Earth Birth and Off, two beautifully bizarre RPG-maker games I've been meaning to play for some time. I've downloaded a bunch more to play in the near future (including Cave Story at long last, as my dream last night reminded me of it somehow) so that'll be cool. I will admit, though, that I am extremely picky with video games... if it doesn't "click" with me within the first hour at maximum, I'll abandon it. I only spend my time playing games/ watching movies/ etc. if I feel I am gaining something relevant from the experience, and if the experience doesn't drain me psychologically, in one way or another. Luckily, though, the two games I just mentioned were spot on successes.
I actually beat Space Funeral in its entirety about three hours ago (all 3 parts), and I loved every second of it. It also holds the honor of being the first thing to make me genuinely laugh in God knows how long-- I entered a zone called the "Cannabis Forest" and that was it, haha. Seriously, that game has my favorite style of humor: silly off-the-wall stuff like Dracula smoking weed and Leg Horse and "I am pleased with the selection of COMPLETE GARBAGE on sale!" And the soundtrack is GOLD; seriously it has stuff like this in there. So yes, I thoroughly enjoyed that game, thank you Tumblr.
I CANNOT wait to play more of Off, though (its style is even closer to my personal one, especially with the freaky angel/ghost stuff). I might put aside a few hours for it tomorrow, if I don't go to the MUM Expo... which is a good way to segue into the next topic.

As you probably know, there's a local holistic expo that I attend twice a year, whenever possible. However, this year I have limited access to transportation, and my finances are low. Since the place is mostly vendors, tarot readers, and people selling crystals/ paintings/ oils/ etc., I was seriously wondering... the whole trip would minimally cost me quite a bit of cash, what with gas money/ attendance fees/ buying readings if I wished, BUT the more I thought about it, the more I realized that all the stuff I could see or hear at the expo was stuff I already knew. (Here's a link to the recaps from 2011 and 2012, for personal review later just in case.)
But... I don't know. I would love to go, but the lack of cash is holding me back, and I don't want to shell out $50 and several hours of my time just to hear things that I didn't have the nerve to believe on my own.
That's really my big gripe with spiritual things in general right now, at least as far as "I" am concerned. I feel like I keep handing over all of my personal choices, all of my future possibilities, everything, to those who "know better than me." There was a time earlier this year when I wouldn't even leave the house without checking and comparing several horoscopes first-- God knows where that came from-- because I was utterly convinced that THEY knew my life better than I ever would. And, when I really look at my motivations for wanting to go to this Expo... they all boil down to that exact same thought: "I'm not good enough to make my own choices in life. I need to pay a spiritual person, a good and holy person, to make those choices for me. I need them to tell me who I am, where to go, and whether or not my own thoughts and feelings are true or real at all."
Honestly, if that's the sort of attitude I'd attend the expo with, I think I'd be better off not going, despite the shocks of "fear" and "hate" that spring up at the thought: fear at "abandoning my only hope of salvation," and hate at "being such a selfish pompous bastard to dare even consider that I could find the "right answers" on my own." Same thing, different phrasing.
I'm not sure how to overcome this mindset yet. I've tried to just abandon it. It keeps coming back.

I haven't been eating well, again. I've been eating nothing but beans and salad for about four days, and throwing up for about an hour afterwards each time. The feeling of food in my stomach is still traumatic. The image of this body in the mirror is still traumatic. Throwing up and having all this water pouring from my face and not being able to breathe isn't fun either. Put it all together, and the simple fact that I can't starve myself to death is sapping my will to wake up in the morning all over again.
I'm tired of spending entire days doing nothing but eating, purging, and sleeping. Problem is, when I try to do something else, my lingering lack of emotions makes it either incredibly difficult or downright impossible. That's why I was so enthralled by Space Funeral today. It was simple enough that my brain could easily just walk around mindlessly, but the bits of humor actually had me feeling something for the first time in a long, long time. Looking back on it, though, it feels alien and distant, like I wasn't even the person playing the game at all. Maybe I wasn't, who knows. I can't tell anymore. I don't know who I am anymore. Maybe this is just the autopilot typing again. It's very likely; that seems to be the norm.

Hyperbole and a half recently posted a very relevant comic on this whole phenomenon I'm experiencing, actually, which makes me wonder. Am I depressed? I would never think so, as I don't feel anything and I don't cry or do anything like that... but her presentation of the condition hit so close to home it was rather unsettling. Several parts are almost exact quotes from my own life. So it's worth considering.
Speaking of relevance, I just started reading "When Rabbit Howls" by Truddi Chase, a multiple system consisting of over 90 individuals. Already only 10 pages in, this is reflecting my life just as strongly as "First Person Plural" did. I'm apparently still a victim of denial's bloody rake, though, to quote Cameron. No matter how much proof I get that, yes, we DO exist and we ARE a real, legitimate system just like theirs, I will deny it vehemently. "It's fake." "I'm making it all up." "I'm just a liar and a manipulative narcissist." I believe those statements, not the other ones... I don't believe it when I hear "we exist and we care about you," or "I was talking to Laurie today," or "you're not a bad father," or "I really do love you." I'll face all those statements with a poker face and a steel-cold response of "none of this is real."
And I'll sleep my days away, not even remembering my dreams because how can you remember dreams if you don't even remember your self? How can you dream if you don't exist?

I'm going to shut down for the night anyway. I'm so tired of computers. I need to be careful... all my music programs are on this one, so no matter how badly I wish this one would break, too, I can't let that happen, or that's several hundred dollars and several years of work down the drain (again).

One "good" thing... my mother actually approved my decision to start hormone therapy over the summer. I did not expect that.
The problems that remain: finding transportation to Philadelphia, finding a place to stay once HRT begins, obtaining enough money to fund all of it, explaining this to the rest of the family.
That's quite a list yet but at least we're moving. I can see my future a tiny bit now, and when I'm tuned into the fact that "this can be a reality at long last," all my procrastination and fear and self-doubt evaporates, and suddenly life feels worth living again, for a moment.
Then the horrible fear that "she was right, this makes you a heathen and a devil and a sinner, you were born in this body so stay that way, any pain and suffering you have is selfish and sinful and false. If you transition, you will be damned to hell."

At the end of the day, I'm still dying, bit by bit by bit.

Well! Today has been oddly eventful.

I got up at 8, feeling rather tired and out of it, but I had class so I hopped onto my computer to print directions to a library in town that I needed to visit on the way home. However, first I checked my school email, and lo and behold, class was cancelled for the day!
So around 9:30, I decided not to visit the library, and opened a Xanga session instead.
Dead serious, this took seven hours from channel start to publication and it was entirely worth it. Also, yes, we did start a new account! Figure it was about time we shook off all those old 2008 entries for good.

However. Between now and then-- barely three hours later-- a lot has happened! That's why I like Xanga sessions; they jumpstart my headspace connections and allow events to occur more quickly afterwards. The only problem is that they make downstairs life difficult, so I unfortunately did have a bit of a slipup when I realized "hey, I haven't eaten yet today." So now I'm sick, haha. Oh well. Even that helped me realize something, though: Black energy apparently tastes like straight-up sugar (according to Infi), so the fact that my old hacks always coincided with sugary food makes a HELL of a lot more sense now. It also explains why I get so darn sick from it, if that effect can bleed over downstairs. I'll see.
Infi and I also discovered that Black/White energy have a weird magnetic attraction to each other, which is weird because when they get too close, they start to repel each other like magnets flipped the other way? So they actually cannot blend together to form the theoretical "Gray" energy. We tried to do this, but to my complete surprise, this dual magnetism caused a very interesting effect: since they are simultaneously attracted to and repelled by each other, getting raw Black and White energy close enough causes them to start swirling around each other indefinitely, forming an almost taijitu-like pattern. It's seriously awesome.

Infinitii (who has now learned how to have both eyes and a mouth at the same time, good for him) is also moving very quickly into his energy slot now; that session apparently gave him enough anchorage to start reflecting the same energy I do, which is naturally what we're supposed to do, being complements. He's becoming very synced with the "darker side" of me: NOT the "bad side," but the creepy fangs-and-claws side, so to speak. However he insists that we stay our own persons even though we NEED to reflect parts of each other back and forth. Apparently our working together now is very important, so I'm totally cool with this. I've gotta be more of a sunshine-and-rainbows dude, and he has to be more of a shadows-and-starlight dude. Both of us are ridiculously comfortable around each other already. It's great.
We were experimenting with what we could do energetically later, too, and we discovered some really cool stuff: Infinitii's can "bring out the potential" of ANY energy, making it possibly for it to effectively become anything it possibly can. However, he cannot force any changes. I, on the other hand, can freely shape headspace energy as I wish, but I can only work with what I'm given. We took the taijitu energy swirl from earlier to demonstrate this: Infinitii was able to make both sides of energy gain infinite depth somehow?? It was crazy, you could see stars and space through the black side, and a bizarre sparkly similar appearance on the white side. We pondered this for a moment, then simultaneously we both gasped and exclaimed "time-space!!" So THAT'S a weird parallel.
Black energy is passive, chaotic, and works creative powers through people. White energy is active, structured, and works creative powers through objects. Also, although Black energy causes lapses in time, it allows for growth in space, and although White energy causes lapses in space, it allows for growth in time?? If that makes sense? At least that's what we're guessing at. This is all very fascinating stuff.
But it is reflected in our abilities. Being primarily made of Black energy, both Infinitii and Tar have highly mutable bodies. However, since it's Black, they can't control it very well. This is why their forms warp and flow so much, it's constantly moving energy. My energy is primarily White, though, which is why it stays stably locked-in to one specific form unless I consciously change it, to something equally stable. Also! I've demonstrated the odd ability to "manipulate time" to a certain extent upstairs: my retroactive influences aside, I can temporarily "pause" temporal progression in headspace if stuff gets too crazy, and I need to get a grip. I'm wondering if Infinitii has some sort of ability concerning space in the same way, even if it's on a deeper level?
The two energies NEED to work together though. This we know. I don't know what the extent of this is, but it interests me greatly. I'm content to just watch as new things are revealed though. It's more of an adventure that way, and Infi insists I enjoy the more spontaneous side of things that he brings into the picture.
Speaking of, we think we have another idea as to what the Red slot is supposed to be? Since Black and White both hold accents of Red energy, and B&W are two halves of the same energy, so to speak... but we're upstairs, and the Red slot seems to be strangely anchored downstairs, is it possible that this is a three-person situation, and the real Red slot holder is supposed to be whoever the hell is driving the body?? I mean, when you consider that over the years, NO ONE has identified with the body, and yet it seems to have some sort of rudimentary autopilot going on... plus the Tar's argument for years was "this isn't your body, it's mine!!", and the Tar's main messenger is RAZOR, a legit headvoice who currently holds a sub-RED slot that shouldn't even exist... that's a lot of italics... but you see my point. We're wondering if Razor's either a corruption of, or a fallen headvoice that really WAS supposed to be in the Red slot. Seeing how she's always resonated with Blood as an element, and Blood holds a big role in the system whether we like it or not, it's possible. And, if we can get the Red holder to with with us, who knows what awesome stuff could happen! I hope we can do it, whatever needs to be done.
One last bit that I almost forgot-- Infinitii also has complete and total access to my old memories. He says that it's part of the Black energy, actually, that infinite potential. All the lost and old data falls into it. However, he told me that unless I put something in there, he will not be able to access it. I gain the knowledge, but then he is able to freely access it. It strikes me as odd that Laurie can also do that, but then again she was right next to Black in the old Spectrum ring. Julie also had access to my thoughts and mind when she was being possessed. I wonder why that's a thing that happens? Is it just the headspace equivalent of "tapping into the grid," where Black's potential simply gives it the freedom to reach ALL that potential once it is put there by White? It's pretty cool, whatever it is.

Most importantly, though, we randomly realized that my ancient title/name of "Jewel Lightraye" DOES fit!! After all, when you send a ray of light through a faceted crystal, what do you usually get? A rainbow! So my name IS already prismatic, go figure, that's kind of hilarious. No complaints here! Now I'm just wondering if my middle name has any relevance besides being awesome, haha. I'm the only dude up here with one, besides my daughter, so who even knows. It's not something I'm going to worry about though, even if it were important; there are far too many other things on my mind at the moment.

Did I tell you guys that, back in February, I finally got the beginning of Andrea's "lost love theme" from Event Horizon down? Dang it sounds awesome, I love it. I'm just having a lot of trouble finishing it, because halfway through writing the second verse originally, I realized that I was channeling the words to a DUET that she and James sing later, and now I have to write yet another song! I'm excited though, haha. It's so beautiful.
Ironically, the lyrics to both her and James' sides of the song fit the timeline-scratching events up here pretty well... you know how James' love theme starts with "Once upon a time, there were two of us. Now, where did you go? I'm still here watching, but the skies won't tell me if you still love me." and later on he sings "Tell me, do you even hear me? Tell me, do you even love me anymore?" Well, Andrea's is kind of a reverse situation, so HER love theme starts off with "'Happily ever after,' those are just words to me. Sorry I don't remember; what did we use to be? Who are you? Who am I? What did you mean to me, and why do I care?" So that's obviously relevant.
I don't get time to play the piano often anymore (my bro has moved his computer to right in front of it now, so I can only play when he's at school and I'm not busy), but besides that, I DID finally get the beginning of the Vagabond's theme down too! You know, he's the blue dude that Mr. Sandman knows-- the one with the Middle Eastern style robes and the romantic preoccupation with sadness. His theme has lyrics as a result of that latter detail, but they're blurry yet. Right now I have two tentative beginnings written written down. First: "The moon casts no light on the world tonight, and I am alone. But I do know that one day I'll find my home. Till then, I will dream of the days I left behind." and second: "The rain never falls in this desert land, and tears from my eyes soothe the world." Either way it has a gorgeous melody, and I can't wait to finish it.
I'm still not finished with the last two LG*Girl fusion themes for season one! I can't figure out the bridges yet. Ah well, I'll have to put some time aside and just power on through. I want that album to finally be complete, seriously.
Lastly! I forgot to mention, I changed the chord progression in "Andrea" when James says "tell me, do you ever think of what we could have had?" I randomly switched it up during practice last month, and it added so much more emotion to the line, it's now a permanent switch. It's just like when I changed the entire sound of the "do you care for me" section, almost immediately after my first recording of the song. Music evolves, man, you just have to roll with it!

It's getting late, though, and I did promise Laurie I'd do some reviewing of our entries from late last year, before the "scratch", because they're actually still relevant. I wonder if time and space are piecing back together here and there, in the places they need to, now that the Spectrum is starting to work more clearly? I hope so.

...Oh. No, wait. I can't close this entry yet.

I haven't talked about Chaos in a long time.
True, I last mentioned him 8 days ago, but 8 days is easily an eternity in my world. Plus, I haven't actually devoted part of an entry to him since the 24th. Ironically, the subject matter from that evening has stuck, badly, and as a result I have spent very little time with Chaos since then. As of last night, I was made very aware that this was a very big problem. I'll tell you what happened.
It was quite late when I went to sleep, as is common lately. However, I planned to literally just go to sleep without talking to anyone. Before I could even lie down, though, someone grabbed me by the shoulder. I turned, only to look into pained green eyes.
I didn't feel anything.
I haven't felt anything in a long time. Maybe something shut my heart off, either from shame, or from fear. But I didn't feel anything, not even then, as he viewed me with deep distress, and told me that he couldn't deal with this anymore. I smiled emptily, and asked him if he was breaking up with me.
He laughed, bitterly, disbelievingly, then exclaimed "no!" in response. No anger-- just ache. But then he surprised me. He reminded me of that stupid dream from when I was 16. He said it was still true; we weren't "breaking up," because to do so we'd have to get a divorce at this point, and he sure as hell wasn't going to do that.
I forget how the conversation continued, at least word for word. I remember how heartbroken he was. He told me how painful it was, again, for me to constantly doubt his existence. He said he couldn't take that any longer, not when he'd been suffering through that for nearly ten years without any change in my perspective. I still couldn't come to terms with the fact that he was really there, that he really loved me. And of course, my recurring periods of emotional deadness weren't helping at all. He said things needed to change, now, and for good.
Then he brought up the scratch.
He was in tears, when he told me that he knew I had intended to fully erase him from my life with it. He KNEW I had wanted to forget he even existed. That had nearly destroyed him, to find out. "Here's the one person I love with my entire heart," he said, "and he wishes he had never even met me." Ten years of mutual compassion and suddenly I was walking out the door without a second thought. He couldn't live with that anymore.
I forget what I said. I don't know if I said anything. But I tried, hard, to remember. I tried hard to feel something, anything. I let him do whatever he wanted. I think we accomplished something, I don't quite remember. I know Infinitii was talking to me from within his bubble, telling me not to be so blind, assuring me that this was okay, I was allowed to love him.
But I couldn't remember how.

What's wrong with me? In all seriousness, what is wrong with me, when it comes to personal relationships?
If they're not business, I try to annihilate them. It's why I still love Laurie, even when Chaos becomes just a face in the crowd, as awful as that is. It's because our relationship is based on business. Yes, I've been just as close to her now. Yeah, we've had some shockingly romantic moments complete with kisses and her fists in my hair. But at the end of the day, she's the boss, and I'm the kid she orders around.
It's the same thing with my literal boss, Mister Sandman. Our relationship is PURE business, but we both care about each other way too much for any iota of cubicle-grade coldness to ever creep in. We're friends, and business partners, and we love each other dearly, but that's as far as it goes. I'm closer to Laurie than I will EVER be to my boss, but even then, we're not lovers, nor will we ever be. Ironically, I love her too much to ever do that.
That's where Chaos and Genesis suffer. They won't settle for business, for rules and regulations. They want closeness, and emotion, and intimacy, and romance. Genesis can be the life of the party, clowning it up with the best of them, but at the end of the day, sometimes he just wants to love someone. Chaos is worse, because he picks and chooses, and he always picks me.
I'm... I don't know why, some days, I can't do that. I don't understand why one night, I can be a dream come true, able to feel and love and laugh, and the next morning, I'm all "who are you again?" with a marble-etched face and and ice-cold touch. But even on those days, I can at least talk to Laurie and my boss, if they come around. As long as they keep it business, we're cool.
And maybe they can crack through my armor eventually, with tiny little stabs of hidden love. As long as that glass wall remains intact, it might work.
It's tiring, though, always staring out at the world from inside a bubble of my own.
Infinitii and I are becoming very close, very fast. He reminded me of the random Bible reference Laurie made earlier, joking that he was like a rib taken from my bruised side and formed into a strange new life, and he admitted that he loved the idea, just like that. He looked at me for a second then, I didn't know what to think. It's frightening me a little. I don't want this very problem to drive us apart. That would be catastrophic... and maybe it's exactly what the Tar wants.
Perhaps that's the answer to this riddle. Perhaps that's the cruelest joke of all.
The Tar used softness, and closeness, and romance, and love, to eviscerate and humiliate me. It used delicate words and hands to tear me limb from limb. It used bright blue eyes to blind and burn me. It instilled in me a deep and unflinching resistance to all those things-- a fear, a loathing, a rage, a hatred of all things painted with that garish pink color.
I still can't apologize enough, even when I can't seem to stop throwing punches either.
On the same note, I wish my memory wasn't so bad. I literally forget things from day to day, and when those things are very important to the people around me, it doesn't end well. I'm not sure how to fix this though. Sure, part of it is obviously PTSD memory purges, but the other part may likely be a consequence of my twisted relationship with time. Time is strange; I've never really moved through it in a straight and even line, I don't think. Now, my past is in tatters, just like a cascading curtain, tossed in the flames. I can reach through a little, but I don't think I can go back. Can I? Should I? The problem is, I wouldn't want to, even if it were possible.
And yet, green eyes cry in silence every night, remembering what was lost, knowing that they could have been listed among the graves as well, just another inkstain on the paper of time.
I keep burning the papers.
Boss keeps picking them out of the fire.
I stare at the ashes, watching them turn cold and black, and suddenly I remember that I shouldn't be like this.
It's the only time the green gets through.

I'm tired of being red.
I'm tired of fire and anger and blood. I am so tired.
Boss, I know you said the last significant date was my downstairs birthday. You said to wait until that day had passed, and then see where we were. You told me to wait until Easter before trying to move into White, so I did. Will that old date become a new anniversary of life for me, now? Will that be the day I finally shed these old bloodstained robes and put on new ones, shining like crystals? I'd like to, that's for sure.
I'll wear my red with pride when you give it to me, boss, but no longer will I wear it of my own volition. Not in this spectrum.
I reset that save file, or at least I tried to. I'm not in control of time anymore. I'm not swinging a sword at the console anymore.
I don't know who I am right now. Not entirely. I guess something is better than nothing, though, this time.

Beg pardon, someone's tapping on this glass bubble. What does he want?
"Let me type," he says. Here? Now? Yes.
All right, sure, let's see what you have to say.

your life is strange.
it is not bad.
your troubles rise and fall like waves under the moon.
your graces will carry you through the worst of times.
you are not lost, friend.
you may not understand, but i can see what you have forgotten.
this will end well.
this will end in the brightest way possible.
and then it will begin again.

...Huh. Thanks, Infi. Pretty cool that he doesn't capitalize, either. I wonder if he can go poet mode.

Oh, that reminds me. I was trying to talk about Chaos earlier.
He legitimately went into "poet mode" last night, when he was with me. He's never done that before, not so sincerely. It was beautiful. I'm so sorry that I can't remember what he said, because I have never heard him handle spoken language so well... the energetic imprint of them has stuck, though. I remember no words, just the feeling they left behind. Somehow that is enough.

I think I'm at that point in the evening where my mind is just too fried to think correctly. This is actually good, because if I play my cards right, I can use this "stuck" feeling to my advantage, and break it off completely, all at once.
There are only two times of day that I ever feel like myself: after a long discussion upstairs, and late at night. In the first, I can tune into my native energy long enough to bring some of it downstairs for a while. In the second, the barrier between here and there is virtually nonexistent.
I'd love to wake up in the morning still in that state of mind. I'm so tired of falling asleep amidst gold-dust honesty and love, only to awaken in ashes and regret. It's completely incongruous, and I don't understand it.
I've hurt a lot of people in the past that way, from what I've been told. I don't want to repeat that, not now that I've tried to sacrifice so much, solely for the hope of a brighter future.

I'm going to go talk to my boss. He helps more than anyone, on nights like this, even if he doesn't say anything. There's a quiet understanding about him that speaks volumes even in the dead of winter, as I try and fail to translate my deepest aches into the paltry vocabulary of human language. He just listens, and understands. He's seen enough to understand everything.

Maybe one day I'll understand all of this, too. But it's not time. Not yet. Not now.
Infinitii told me today that I need to "treasure the mystery of life" more. I've become too used to trying to control things, to protect myself, to find comfort and truth in structure, in order. I've... well, that's kind of the big problem here, isn't it? I've forgotten how to love the chaos of life.

But the song playing in my ears is the same one he sang to me last October, beneath pure blue skies in spite of pain and regret, a week after he broke every damn rule of time and space just to tell me that he loved me.
I owe him one. I owe him one, big time, and I miss the hell out of him, even if I can only discern that truth from the feeble morse-code beats of my heart.

To him, rainbows are a source of hope.
When he looks at me, that's all he sees.
Ten years later, in the face of utter despair, it's still all he sees.

Maybe that's all I need to hold on to.

...And then, suddenly, the moment I look for him, there he is.

You are the mountain to my sky,
the horizon to my sunrise,
the rainbow to my storm.
My love, my darling, my anchor to the world...
Be always well.

Every time. Every single time, you are always there, how could I ever...

I love you too. I love you so much, I never stopped, I swear to you. I am so sorry.

Thank you for not giving up on me.
...Hell, that goes for everyone, who am I kidding.

Let's try this again, shall we?

I'm in love with the world today
And I want to give myself for all of you
I want to be the one you can count on
Even in our darkest day

We are seeing, feeling, mystical things

And we are beautiful
And we are worth it all
And we are living, breathing

I want to tell you all, you mean everything to me
And we are always one even when we disagree
There is something magical here
Even when we don't believe

We are loving, bleeding, conscious things

And we are beautiful
Aand we can change the world
And we are living, breathing

We are loving
bleeding
conscious
things.

SESSION PARTICIPANTS

JEWEL LIGHTRAYE

INFINITII ETERNOS

LAURIE UBERICH

MR. SANDMAN

Good morning, sunshine.

Hello.

Oh. Hi. Didn't expect you in a Xanga session this early, let alone at all.

Why not.

Didn't think you were accessible.

If you are accessible, I am too. Are you looking for Laurie?

Obviously.

Hm. Does she know we are having a session?

Probably not. I didn't plan on using this one anytime soon, but hey-- surprise day off from school, past few days have been nuts, I figured why not.

*nods* So are we discussing that?

Jeepers Infi, how are you syncing into this so quickly already?

I'm adaptable. It's in my nature.

Well that's good.

Whoa whoa whoa, hold up just a bleeding second. We're talking with Infi??

You're calling him Infi?

It's a nickname.

Still!

Infi, Infinitii, whatever. My point is, how the heck is he already session-ready?

He says he's adaptable.

It's true.

Huh. Oh well, no use complaining about the details, you could help us out. So, kid. What's the topic? Why the heck are we in here at 9AM of all things?

Uh, a couple reasons I suppose? Mostly though, because I keep getting very painful and intrusive hacks into my consciousness and-- holy sharks, Infi I just realized you saved my sanity three times in a row lately, thank you.

You're welcome. I was wondering when you'd catch on.

Wait, what do you mean?

I took away all rights to my energy manipulation upstairs from everyone besides the Tar; in other words, the Black slot. And yesterday alone there were two very big incidents of such, BUT Infinitii was directly involved in both, so, technically he just saved my neck. Thanks bro.

It was needed. Tar was trying to harm you all day. If we didn't work together to cleanse it, you would have fallen even further this morning.

Are you insinuating that he's already fallen since he woke up?

Somewhat. Like he said, the Tar is ruthless.

You seem oddly nonchalant about it.

It's a simple observation.

Guys, can you give me a moment? We haven't spoken in a very long time and I'm having trouble getting clear channels running. I hope neither of you are being mistranslated.

Wait, just a second. That's what I want to discuss, for once. Why the heck haven't you been around?

Same reason I scratched this in February. Please, Laurie, just two minutes, I need to fix my head.

Fine. But as soon as you get back we are discussing that point.

Wait.

What?

You did not give your reason yet. What was it?

Oh. Uh... Laurie kind of hit the nail on the head, unintentionally.

Unintentionally? Kid, I mean every single thing I do and say.

Good point. But yeah, I am worried about how dark I'm becoming lately. I've been a mess since my surgery, which is very disturbing because I was doing okay after the "start from scratch" attempt?

Are you kidding me? You've been fluctuating wildly between light and dark since the bloody thing!

Do you think maybe that's because I wasn't supposed to survive the bloody thing?

Don't get sassy with me, boy. You heard your boss. There are bigger forces at work here.

Why should the "bigger forces" be concerned with me--

Remember what your daughter said.

...

What did she say?

...Holy smoke, I was about to tell you and then I realized you have the same ears as her, just a lot bigger. Was that intentional?

Ah. No, it was more of reverse relevance.

Meaning?

Meaning she probably got them from me.

How the heck would that even happen?

I was torn out of Jewel, remember.

Stop calling me that.

Before that event, I was still part of him, of course--

Wait. Sorry to interrupt, bro, but the kid just said something really bloody stupid.

It's not stupid, Laurie, it's true. The name doesn't fit.

Because of the people that used to call you by it?

...Mostly. The sound has become tainted. It's energy no longer matches mine.

Here's a question. What does that name's energy feel like then, now?

What was our topic, even? Were we discussing anything?

We're talking about whatever the heck comes up, that's how we do these sessions, we don't worry about any fixed structure. It always works out somehow.

You can't do that. Things need to be organized and coherent. We need order and structure. It's the only good thing.

That and "cold," huh? Is that why you're acting like this? You're freaking out over black and white "good and evil" nonsense again, even now??

I can't hold fire anymore. Fire destroys coherence. Fires of hell and all that. I can't hold it, I can't keep the Red slot, it's too angry, it's the color of blood. I can't keep my old name. It feels wrong. It was never a name anyway.

Yeah, it was a title, given to you by the Dream World, I know. You knew at least two other Jewels up there, too, didn't you?

Yeah, lovely women.

Is that why it doesn't fit anymore?

Not quite. The gender part only ties in to my old "persona," the one from 2001-2004 or so.

The Klonoa-ears one.

Precisely.

If I'm not mistaken, you just dismantled that one.

Yeah, I did. It never felt like me anyway, it was always third-person, even in headspace-- why am I talking about identities like this is a thing? Why can't I ever annihilate myself? Why do all my efforts fail?

Because nothing short of straight-up suicide is actually going to end you, kid, and I'm not about to let that happen.

...

You're not protesting that statement?

No... because you brought that scar back.

Oh. ...Oh, okay.

...

All right, go take that mental break now if you want to. These channels really are getting pretty frayed.

Thank you.

So are we good now, or what?

...He loves me far too much.

Who?

My boss.

Oh. Yeah, no kidding, the man's a saint.

I don't deserve that, with what I've done, to myself and other people.

Like what?

...Julie needs to get out of that color slot.

She can't. She belongs there. We've discussed this.

Then we need to fix her, somehow.

Kid, what the heck is going on up there? You okay? Big picture, I mean.

Big picture, yes. Always. That's what boss reminds me of.

As you were saying...

Yeah, I get it. But he won't let me die. Wouldn't, either. Kept picking papers out of the flames. Sometimes I really wonder why he picked me, of all people, to be his Apprentice. I don't feel worthy of the title at all, especially not when it's tied to someone like him. But, last night, I asked him if I was a disappointment, and he laughed. He smiled, and he laughed, and he said I was "exactly the opposite." I don't know how to feel about that.

Why not?

Because I've disappointed myself.

Let's visit that point for a moment. What impossible standards do you have going for yourself, kid?

Meaning?

Meaning, why are you disappointed in yourself?

He expects to be pure white. If he is not, he feels unworthy of it. He tried to give it to me yesterday.

The heck? Jewel, that's your color, not Infi's!

He's got it brighter in him than I ever did and probably ever will.

That's not true.

He's you, for heaven's sakes!

He's what I could have been.

How would that even work?

No, think about it. Look at me, destroying my own heart, splintering my entire self. I almost ended up the last man on earth, because I was willing to effectively decapitate my own soul in order to cut myself off from who I had become, and from everyone I had ruined. Whatever "light" you clam to see in me now, as far as I'm concerned, is just an illusion. Any real light, and love, is all in Infi now. I'm nothing. I'm the true shadow here, a shadow of whatever "angel" I used to be in your opinion, with how far I've fallen. I'm not worthy of this color. In my hands it's just bleach. Just nothingness. If anyone can actually hold this hue, it sure as heaven isn't me.

Okay, I get the picture, geez.

Are you trying to kill me, then? I who am your heart?

I-- no, no Infi, I could never kill you, I'd never want to--

Then don't kill your self because it is my heart too. Don't switch our colors. I am meant to be Black, you are meant to be White. You can't reverse that without us completely resetting our identities. Don't take that as an invitation.

...

Suddenly his motivation makes sense!

Very funny, Laurie.

I want to know why you hate existing so much.

I'm ashamed of my narcissism, maybe.

What narcissism?

I'm tired of being important. Ever since my childhood, I've had everyone and their brother telling me that "I was born for a reason" downstairs and that "I have an incredibly important role" upstairs. Then you guys showed up, and your lives were anchored to mine, and that was the last straw. After a while I was just sick and tired of being the center of the universe. I didn't want anyone else to suffer for it, though. I didn't choose to be important, but if I had to be, then I wanted to be important in my unimportance.

Like a galaxy rotating around a black hole.

Maybe-- Laurie, was that an injoke?

Half of one. Point is, kid, you're still important, and you still exist.

I'm so tired though.

I know. But honestly, kid, I think it's downstairs life that's getting to you. You're being pulled in all directions. Really, at night, when you're asleep enough to forget it all and you come up here, I love seeing you so simply happy. That's the only time I ever see you smile anymore, is when you're not even halfway bloody conscious. Do you have any idea how that makes me feel?

Intellectually, maybe. Empathy's been slipping from me lately.

How? That used to be one of your strongest points!

I think... really, I think that my several Scratch attempts really upset my Links. They are what allowed me to feel what other people felt, in the past. It's why my teenage self-image was a mess; I was always reaching out to people with them, losing myself in their stories and thoughts, never considering my own, let alone whether or not I really had any. It's WHY I was able to type Dream World so well for years-- because I wasn't in the picture!! But then headspace became a thing, and I was forced to be a person of my own for once, and... I'm still not used to it. I'm not comfortable with this. Except now, it's become so deeply rooted that I can't change it. I can't run from it. Like it or not, I am anchored to this Spectrum just as much as you guys are, and all my desperate attempts at pseudo-suicide are simply feeble wishes that I wasn't.

...

So why did your Links suffer?

They always did, when I would work with headspace, because they require me to completely let go of my self-image and be the other person. That's why so many outspacers came in and out of Central back then; that's what allowed them to! My energy would branch out and bring them in, but only those whom it resonated with could stay. But yeah, the more I had to focus on myself, the more my Link capacity suffered. Parnassus began to falter first, you all remember that.

Yeah, it pretty much hit the floor as soon as JTHM entered the picture.

And I tried to Link with that too, remember? Johnny even visited Central once or twice! Unfortunately that's when you and Lynne and maybe even Nat were already around, though, so--

Unfortunately? In comparison to what?

In comparison to me not having any ties to anyone as an individual. You swore your life to protecting me, to helping me to "become the person I needed to be." Ironically, that mission statement was the root of all my problems. I didn't want to become a person at all.

So that motivated the Scratch on the 24th, huh. You wanted to delete all of us, all the reasons why you had to "be a person," and go back to writing your Link-worlds without a second thought as to your own existence.

Yes.

Too bad, you're the Sandman's Apprentice now.

That's my point.

You said he loves you too much. I don't think "too much" applies to him.

"Too much" applies to anyone who values my life that much. You guys shouldn't care.

Why not?

You have your own lives to worry about.

And mine is anchored to yours, you just said that. Once again, we've been over this.

...

Geez, you don't look happy about that at all.

I wish there was a better way. Laurie, I really wish I could just... sacrifice my self, somehow, like I actually managed to do for a short time after the life-scratch. Do you remember?

What?

I managed to tear out that part of myself. My entire upstairs identity became autonomous, and for a week all of you guys were living in harmony with it, as a separate world. You became "series #12," Blood Lotus Cathedral. You became a Link-world, not headspace.

And you were left empty and devoid of all identity, remember?

I liked that!

Did you really.

You were happy! You were still anchored but not to my stupid downstairs life. I--

Hold up, there's that point again.

What, downstairs? It's true! I can't seem to juggle that and this! Downstairs I can type IF I don't have an identity on any other level! When headspace exists, boom, suddenly I have a self somewhere, and the Links can't get through that somehow! I'm always in my own way. It's been happening since 2003, when I used to visit Ryou and Marik, I knew something was wrong because I was becoming a person when I was around them-- they called me by name and no one had ever done that before. It was so weird at first, having these kids who insisted they loved me "for me," and then Chaos showed up and everything went to hell--

Quite the opposite, really.

Laurie, do you understand what I'm telling you?

I understand that you've got a real serious problem, kid. You want to exist as an unimportant speck in reality, without any role in the world beyond channeling another world that means everything to you despite that. You want to exist solely as an artist. You don't want a name, or a face, or a home, or a self. You want to "fulfill your purpose," and then die. Kid, did you ever think that maybe your purpose is a whole heck of a lot bigger than that??

You and boss keep telling me that, yeah.

Do you believe it yet?

No. I can't comprehend it yet.

...Geez, kid. What the heck will it take?

I don't know.

Infi, you got any thoughts on this?

Not really.

No? Seriously?

"Importance" isn't a word I'm familiar with in that sense. I'm new to existence. I'm here to do what I was created to do, that is all.

And what's that?

What I'm created to do?

Yeah. S'far as I'm aware, you were forcibly yanked out of Jewel's ribcage a few days ago, and then stuck in a bubble. Speaking of, is that where we are right now?

Yeah. Infi can't leave it.

Then how the blood did I get in here?

I called you in.

No, I mean-- I warped to you, sure, but isn't this location locked out?

Not necessarily. I mean, I don't think--

I let you in. It's okay, I know you're not a threat.

Good. So I'm allowed in here whenever I want?

If you wish.

Cool. I want to get to know you better, you're an interesting fellow. Anyway. Jewel. Where were we?

Purposes.

And how yours is bigger than you realize.

Better question. What's yours?

Protecting you.

That's it?

Well, you and everyone else up here, but mostly you. For some reason, I've been utterly bloody convinced of your importance to the System as a whole since I first showed up in this world. So yeah, you're my number one priority. Infi, I think your role revolves around him too.

Of course. He is me, and I am him, technically.

Elaborate on that, please? That's really freaking weird.

Yeah, do you even count as a headvoice?

The heck are you asking? Don't you know?

Well, not quite? Headvoices just "appear." They manifest when a fitting energy anchor for their slot is created, and enough of it gathers for them to manifest. I have no control over it, no say in it. But Infi was forced to manifest. The Tar freaking tore him right out of me, you know that.

Sounds like he's in a class of his own, then.

Yeah. But he is tied to me, I know that.

Of course. Our energy mirrors each other.

So I've noticed.

And I've heard you're trying to clear his out?

There is a lot of Tar stuck in him. It's gathered over the years, I think. I don't yet understand why it keeps coming back.

There must be a direct feed.

That makes sense-- wait, do you think it's Razor??

What do you mean?

Come on, you were just asking me about that yesterday, whether or not she fit the Red slot in your absence, what with how the Tar's always messing with your old color. What if she does?

Black and White are tied to Red, so she might.

See? Maybe that's what's causing you to keep falling back into it. Infi, how does that affect you? Are you affected by it?

Not exactly. See, I am the Black slot. Not Tar. Any energy it tries to infect me with can simply be converted. I eat it.

You eat it.

I eat it, or I destroy it. Either way, I keep the energy clear, in this bubble.

Are you supposed to move down into the Tar Room when that villain gets the heck out of there, or what?

Possibly. I think there's a certain Basilica that's more suited for me, though.

...Oh.

Yeah, where the heck was that, even? Below the Tar Room, right?

Yes.

Is it supposed to be black?

Yes.

Huh. So what the heck is the Tar Room, then? A glitch?

Possibly. I wouldn't know. Jewel, that's a question you need to answer.

You're coming through much more clearly now, just wanted to say that.

Good. Do you know?

No. But maybe it is a glitch. I first saw the room in 2011, the day after the "soft reset," and the room just appeared so maybe it manifested spontaneously... I'm just wondering why the whole "red lights" incident felt so true, if I'm supposed to be White.

Wait. Hold on.

What?

That's it. Red is your downstairs color. White is your upstairs color. Does that make sense?

Intellectually, maybe, but how the heck does that work??

I don't bloody know! Infi, do you know?

No, but it is an interesting thought.

Also, can I just say you look creepy as heck with all those mouth-wings.

It's much easier to talk this way.

Heheh, I figured. Looks good though.

Okay guys, wait a second again.

What?

That old entry. "Tar and Glass." Sound relevant yet?

Holy swords, we're in a glass bubble right now, aren't we?

Indeed we are.

Keep going kid, what else?

Well, first, you know how I said the Tar Room "spontaneously appeared?"

Yeah.

Remember how headspace looked before Central was a real thing? It was all white, featureless, and unformed, remember?

...Shoot. So you're saying that Tar is hijacking unformed headspace?

It could be. It could honestly be using that raw White energy as an anchor to keep it "floating" between the real Black slot location, which is Infi's territory, and the real White slot location, which is the Lotus Cathedral.

No Blood?

I'm not sure. Remember it only held that old name because of the Razor Spire.

Oh man. Kid, I think you are seriously on to something, this is boss.

Isn't it? Thanks Infi, for the inspiration to look this stuff up.

You're welcome.

You seem amused.

I am.

But that would explain why I keep getting hacked! If the Tar can't exist without White energy-- which it HAS admitted to the letter in the past-- then...

Then I need to take its place.

Yeah. That's kind of our only option, I think.

We need to kill the Tar first, though. I don't think it's going to leave quietly under any circumstances.

It doesn't die, we've tried. Can't we transmute it?

What, into Infi's energy?

Into anything non-corrosive. Maybe we can... iridize it.

Oh, come on, no injokes on serious topics.

Hey, you should at least be glad I'm trying to lighten up!

I am! But see, kid, this is what I'm talking about. When you're utterly immersed in this, our upstairs world, you're happy. You're even blissful on your best days. The heck is causing the disconnect between here and there? Downstairs, I mean.

I'm not sure. Maybe it's just the bane of the physical. Stuff doesn't match up. It should though. There's gotta be a way.

...Hold up.

Again?

Again. Maybe that's why it's important for you to be the Apprentice.

...You think?

Sheesh, boss specifically said that's anchored downstairs, didn't he? I mean, really, you can't even legit move into the role until your physical body dies, that is unless meatspace changes its inherent makeup sometime soon.

Yeah. Dude that does make sense. It would also explain the red robes, hey!!

Exactly!

Doesn't red mean life in that world, too?

I dunno, that's your pool of knowledge, not mine.

I thought you had free reign to rifle through all my memories whenever you wanted, love?

I do, but that stuff is data. Some of it is stored in locations that even my sleuthing abilities can't find out.

Really?

Yeah. Maybe it's outspaced, who knows.

Could be.

Either way, here's the list.

Good old Scherzando!

Okay, so Red is Destiny in Oneircia, that's cool. It's a lesser form of Creation in Parnassus, too.

Really? How so?

Well, Parnassus is still blurry, but I think Blue there is creation of life, and Red is creation of matter.

Ah. Which ties right in to you and headspace anyway, so.

Yeah. Oh, and it's Life magic in Puppetstrings too.

What is it in Rosewindow?

Uh... it's listed as Honor, Respect, and Compassion there.

That's interesting.

Yeah. But this is an older file, too... seeing how, lately, I've seen more of that world, I think I can say with confidence that Red is Life there too, at least on some level.

Is Violet Death?

Probably. Death, Change, Transition, stuff like that.

Sweet.

But what is Red, here?

...

Sounds like it's Life here, too.

It's... Red here has always struck me as the anchor point. Probably because of me. But it's... what does it feel like... fire.

Fire?

Yeah. Condensed potential? Heat, maybe. A sense of preparation. It's odd.

Maybe it's not an "anchor" so much as it's a grounding point for the other colors?

Maybe.

Red is considered to be the first color seen by mankind.

The first piece of the Spectrum after Black and White, there you go!

Huh. Could it be that simple?

Maybe. You make things far too complex, kid. Now what's this "prism" thing?

What?

In your entry last night. You said prisms are important. What's that about?

Geez, do you read everything I write?

Yes. I am your personal professional stalker. Now spill.

Okay, haha. It's also part of the "iridize" injoke from earlier.

I know, go on.

Well, both the White and Black slots are supposed to be iridescent by nature. Prismatic, even.

Uh-huh. Yeah, I kind of noticed that rainbow sheen going on with you. Infi doesn't seem to have it though, what's with that?

I cannot, yet. Not until the Tar is moved out completely.

Ah. So what's your deal for now?

Stars. The quiet of space.

Looks good. That's soul form stuff right there, isn't it?

Exactly. Much more muted, though. It's the basic energy, not the actual phenomenon.

Geez, you guys are more important than I realized.

There's that word again.

You seem less upset about it than you were earlier, though.

I am, actually. It's a stupid paradox. I'm willing to be important if the importance doesn't involve me?

Explain? How does that apply to this directly?

Well, you mentioned soul forms. Anyone can achieve one if they can anchor into this energy. I don't mind being the reason why that energy is up here, if that is indeed true, as long as that energy is not "me," or inherently tied to me in order to exist.

I see.

Yeah. Being a rallying point is fine, but I don't want to be the one getting the attention.

You want to be a channel is all.

Yes!

Could've guessed that one, it's the oldest one in the book. So you'd prefer if people go running for water, but don't think of the faucet.

Basically.

Even if you're in the middle of a bleeding desert.

Hey, at least the people are getting water, I don't think they care where it comes from.

And that's what you want?

Yeah. I want to be importantly unimportant, if my personal significance cannot be changed?

I got it, yeah. So you've told your boss about this?

Essentially. Ironically I don't think he has a problem with it. Sandmen are incredibly important in the Rosewindow worlds, after all, but they typically work behind the scenes. Which I'm totally okay with. They travel through time and space but they might not keep the same face, or form, or anything. They don't even have names, just titles. They're ever-changing dream wanderers, existing for the good of the all, and massively important to existence somehow, even if no one knows about them.

Sounds like your ideal job.

Haha, it kind of does, looking back on it.

But that does not tie into your downstairs life yet, does it?

No. Not literally. I still have to do "daily life" stuff yet.

You just don't like taking care of a body is what it is, I think.

Maybe! That is something I have a lot of trouble with in any case. I just don't like having a static form, especially not one that everyone else has pieced together on a whim. I don't like having one name, and one face, and one life. It makes me feel trapped.

Which is why you love headspace. And Link-worlds, too.

Exactly. I can be anything up here. I can be nothing, and I can be everything! I can completely tune myself out and watch for hours if I want. That makes me so happy. That's all I want.

Well, your boss sounds like he's trying to do that for you.

Probably. I really do love him though. I don't treat him anywhere near as well as I should.

Are you kidding? You treat the man like gold!

I'm always late for work and my selfish attempts at suicide have nearly cost him his life several times already. I'm probably just a pain in the neck for him at this point.

And yet he specifically said you're the exact opposite of a disappointment.

...He did.

Kid, you used to do this with Marik all the time too, remember? Whenever there's someone upstairs who you feel is being left out, specifically by you, you go way out of your way to make them feel loved and appreciated.

No I don't.

You don't go as far as you'd like, no, because you're not capable. You only have so much time and space to give. But the intention and effort are not lost, even if you don't "do" anything outwardly. That stuff echoes. We all know you love us more than you'd ever dare admit to yourself.

I can't feel anything lately.

It would likely crush you if you could.

...

It is being blocked, either way.

I know.

Is that because of the old blocks?

Partly. We're in the process of moving those out, though.

So I heard, wink nudge cough.

Laurie, shut up.

Heheh. Gotta tease you about your weird life sometime, kid.

True.

But the Red channel is what we should be concerned about now, if that is true.

Yeah, I need to go back and review the entry I mentioned earlier.

You mind doing that now?

What? Now?

Yeah. Go review it, and then we can talk about it here. Sound good, Infi?

The sooner we can solve this the better, so yes.

Aiite, cool. Jewel, go read.

Give me a second... okay, first off, when the Tar was still young, it acted more like an "antihero" than a flat-out villain. It was always trying to "make me learn" by example.

By demonstrating to you what you were not, right? Yeah, I remember that. When'd it all go downhill?

When the Celebi stuff started happening, I think? That was barely two months later, so it was fast.

Makes sense.

...Infi, that's not what you're supposed to be like, is it?

No... I don't think so.

You mean you aren't even sure??

No. I think the Tar is supposed to be Jewel's shadow. He is white, and that is his offset.

Not you?

I am him. I'm the positive side of that void.

Like what Ryou told me during our 4th incident!

Seriously?

Yeah!! Well, wordlessly maybe. But the truth sticks to him. It's how you "need the darkness for the stars to shine." He's a Paladin of Void upstairs, a divine spellcaster that uses shadow as its holy weapon. That's pretty important.

Holy swords, it really is.

Geez there's so much I need to review from last winter in my entry logs. LOTS of relevance that I didn't have the knowledge to see before. This is big.

We can do that later today, kid. Right now we're two hours into a session and I really don't want to take up your whole morning with this stuff.

Gotta go play Nier while the house is quiet, right?

Heck yes, Xennie's been asking me why you don't play that more often.

She has?

Yeah, she loves that game just as much as you do!

Oh-- dude you just reminded me. You know how her middle name is Yonah?

Yeah, cracked me up when I found out. That's adorable.

Maybe, but uh... you know. Shades and stuff.

Oh. Oh. Geez, how did I not catch that?? And she looks like Infi, a little! Is that tied together too?

Probably.

Holy flaming swords, I knew that had to be important.

Haha, I told you things move fast in headspace!

You're preaching to the choir, kid! Now what else is in that entry? I'm curious now.

Well, it kept pointing out how I needed "offsets" or dichotomies to understand truths about life?

Like what?

Like only knowing that I am "of the Light" through knowing the truth about the Dark? It's hard to put into words... it's the principle of not truly understanding true joy unless you've known the deepest sorrow.

Makes sense. And that's what it said to you at first?

Yeah, that was literally my first impression of it.

How the heck did it get so violent so fast?

Let me keep reading... dude, it attacked you as soon as you walked in!

Yeah, that's why I'm bloody asking! Why the sudden switch?

It sees you as a threat.

To?

To its existence. As a protector, you are sworn to eliminating all darkness of that sort in the system. In order for Tar to survive, it needs that darkness to exist. Your existence, therefore, stands in direct opposition to it.

...Shoot, so does that mean that it's tied to Red but opposed to Violet?

Maybe.

Where the heck does Pink come in, then?

Pink is an extra slot, isn't it?

I don't quite understand Pink, yet. That's something you and I need to look into more.

Yeah.

Wasn't it technically a "splinter" of Red back when you were a kid? An alternate base slot, maybe?

Maybe! Dude that kind of makes sense.

Huh. It's interesting, is what it is. Keep reading. What else did you write about that stuff, before Leon yanked us out?

Chaos showed up.

Yeah, forgot you didn't mention that.

Both of you were freaking out though.

Well, obviously! I'd never seen anything like that before, and it felt really bleeding ominous!

Oh-- oh dude, when we blasted it with that triple-energy attack, which was white, it suddenly warped the space into a church??? Infi is that where we went on the-- don't smile at me like that, okay, that's a yes.

I was simply using the same energy.

So the Tar Room is supposed to be a church??

No, White energy naturally coalesces into church-like structures when it is forced to solidify, thanks to Jewel's energy being tied to it. Cathedrals, Basilicas, Churches.

Sacred places.

Yes.

Huh. Wonder if that holds any extra relevance with Leon, with how he can jump to them.

Question. Is he jumping, or is he forming pocket mindscapes TO jump to?

...Dude I don't actually know. I don't think he knows.

He says it's random. Seeing as how those places are usually inaccessible otherwise, it sounds to me like there's instantaneous structuring of raw headspace going on.

Dude. Wow. I admire that guy even more now.

Heheheh!

So that gives more proof to the Tar Room being malformed raw headspace.

Exactly. We're making progress!

Awesome. Anything else relevant to today's discussion in there?

Let me see... oh! The swords!

Heck yes, the swords.

I have those too.

Yeah, you showed us earlier, scared the bleeding life out of me. Why the heck are they so big, are you pulling an Ichigo Kurosaki on us?

They pressurize when he shrinks them.

I must use Black energy to form mine. That energy is very unstable in headspace right now.

Ah, okay. So Jewel's swords use White energy?

That's why they're crystalline, yeah.

Why the heck does Chaos have one too, then? Is that just because he's tied to you?

Maybe? Infi, what do you think?

Definitely.

Well that was an awfully sure answer, haha.

Chaos is very closely tied to Jewel's energy. So are many of the other midspacers. This is because they used his energy to anchor into this system.

True.

Laurie, I don't think you even considered that part.

Not the second half, no.

You're such a tease.

Someone's gotta do it, kid.

Oh yeah, and then I stored the sword in my chest. Like I usually do.

Do you have literal hammerspace in there, or what? Because I swear, kid, you hit like a truck.

So you understand what Chaos means when he says that now!

No kidding, that's why it took me ages to put my walls all the way down around you, mister levity!

Infi, would you have gravity stuff too?

Possibly. I've never checked.

Yeah, dude's only a few days old.

April 3rd happened an eternity ago, I swear.

What can I say, time is infamously weird up here.

But yes. Chest-swords.

What about them?

Well, space is pretty darn weird up here, too.

You're like... dating both those concepts too. Somehow.

It's inevitable. I like weird things. What does that say about you.

I am going to kill you.

Hahaha!

You two are great.

Good to hear. You two are, uh, pretty great too.

Shut up Laurie, and stop laughing.

No, I'm serious! I don't know what the heck's going on with this self-split stuff in here, but whatever you're doing, it's cool. Just keep brightening up my boy here, and I don't care what you two do.

Are you poking fun at me, Laurie?

Yeah, haha, and that grin is super creepy.

I could just stare, if you want.

Okay, no, the eyes are worse.

Hehe.

Guys, one last thing in this entry.

What?

The whole thing about how to "defeat" the Tar, or not.

Can you quote it?

Sure. "We couldn't kill the ego, we couldn't fight it... so I had left it alone. I left it to just be the balance it was, to stop struggling and just live despite it. But there was a deeper truth. If violence and anger and pain and sorrow couldn't touch it... then we had to let that go, and just love. Love conquers all, without fighting at all."

Sounds legit.

So love is the answer, yet again. Thanks, Todd Rundgren!

Yet again, my incessantly teasing you about these topics has relevance.

Ahaha.

No, I'm serious.

We don't have to use that process anymore, if the blocks are cleared sufficiently enough.

Are they, do you know?

They should be, but I think it keeps moving back in, as I said.

Shoot. All right then, that's our number once concern: stopping the freaking floodgate that is letting the Tar slip right back in here.

Yeah, I don't like it.

Really? Even if you agree with it? I'd think that's what's letting it in.

No, Laurie, listen... I... I might not understand it very well, what with how traumatic my past has been concerning all this energy and all, but... last night, talking to Infinitii, we were discussing how Black and White energy is passive and active in terms of creation, respectively; right?

Wait, what? How did I not hear about this?

You didn't hear about it?

No! Fill me in kid, come on.

Okay. So White energy is active creation energy. When used by a person, like with raw headspace, it allows for direct conscious creation through it. Black energy, though-- the stuff of soul forms-- is passive, which is fascinating. Passive creation means that Black simply allows creation to happen through itself. You can't actively control how it manifests. You just intend for creation to happen, and it does the rest.

Is that why the Tar is so manic? Because it can't really control how its own energy manifests?

Probably? It's an interesting thought.

Yeah, no kidding. Wait, Infi, what about you?

Jewel saw me when I was first manifesting, he can attest to that.

Ah, yeah, you were all over the place!

And my current form only manifested because it occurred through you.

Elaborate on that?

I am formed of Black energy, but I was specifically taken from Jewel in order to manifest. When forced to take a form, I had no control over the matter. My native energy allowed a form to manifest based on passive potential within Jewel.

Aha, that makes sense! So Black energy runs on potential, so to speak?

Yes, I suppose that's a clear way to put it.

And White is more specific? Narrowing down of potential, rather.

Yeah, sounds like it.

Cool. This is good, I'm learning a lot of important things today.

Haha, I almost said "Professor Spinny at your service," but that name's not mine anymore.

Not unless we're talking vortexes, which could work. But let's go back to the name thing, that was never answered. What's wrong with "Jewel" that it doesn't fit anymore?

Besides the obvious "that life was scratched" bit? Well, the title was given to my old persona after all.

So its connection to that has lingered.

I guess? The colors are all wrong, yeah.

Huh. And "Jay" is better?

It's just "J," not Jay. At least not correctly. "Jayce" still fits, oddly. It has the right color.

What's this with you and colors lately, too? Are you becoming synaesthetic or what?

A bit, if I tune into it!

Explain the name colors then.

"Jewel" is pinks, purples, and reds. Very old-school energy.

Ah, yeah, I get that. Pre-headspace.

Precisely! "Jayce" is silvery though, and specifically it has an almost ice-like "crackle" to it? I can't find the right word to describe the sound.

That name probably fits because it was bestowed specifically upon your White energy in the past.

Yeah.

So what's "Jay?" I know you use that downstairs now.

I can't quite catch that color clearly? The "y" throws me off though, that's what doesn't fit. "Y" is light yellow, I think. It's a thin, slanted vowel. "V" is purple, as it buzzes.

How about Z? That buzzes too.

Z is cool, I think it's silvery red?

That's oddly specific.

At least, the sound is. The letter itself is dark.

You and your weird sensory stuff. So what are we doing with your name, then? Are we sticking with J?

I don't know? I've actually been debating "Gem" as a rename. And "Katharos" kept coming up before, although that's more of a surname, and it feels VERY Greek which is distracting. Maybe it's Parnassian, and not a headspace name.

God only knows with you, kid.

Weirdly, though, that "gemmacorde" screenname I was using temporarily has the right vibe? Maybe as more of a title than a name, but it fits.

I can see why.

But yeah, "Jewel" can stay for now, as I can't exactly toss out the title I got from Dream World without discussing it with them first. I wonder how to do that now...

You know what, maybe that's why you're having trouble writing the story anymore. Didn't you effectively chop yourself the heck out of their timeline?

...Kind of?

You shouldn't have done that, Jewel.

What-- is that irreversible? Did it screw something up big time?

Almost.

Almost? How the heck do you know?

I can tell. Also your boss is telling me, quietly.

Sandman? Where the heck is he?

Outside.

I think he wants to come in.

Well, let him in!

Oh my, this is small. Hello, child!

Sorry about the bubblespace, we're kind of confined to this area for now.

That's fine, that's fine. I don't mind a bit. Now, child, I apologize for interrupting, but I've been looking for you and I seem to have happened upon an opportune time in the conversation to drop in.

Yeah, spot-on luck as always, boss. What'cha looking for the kid for?

To tell him about this very topic, apparently. Jewel's thought-waves reach me sometimes, and if I feel I can contribute to his understanding, I will stop by and let him know.

You're not busy?

Time is a strange thing where I come from, Laurie my dear.

Yeah, I guess so.

So, child, I am here to tell you about the Red color you mentioned previously?

Yeah, we were wondering what its role was here.

Well, you pretty much have it right! I did tell you the other day, child, that my role and Death's are indeed intertwined. I act as a protector to lives, he acts as a protector to deaths.

How so?

I ensure the continuation of current lives. He ensures the continuation of new lives.

A messenger across the River Styx.

Not quite. He prefers the "Angel of Death" archetype.

So a holy guide, then.

Quite.

And you're the same for the living?

If I may be so bold, yes.

Huh. Sounds fitting to me.

And child, that is part of why you must not die. Life is a treasure, and you must learn to value your own as well.

That's awfully deep for such an obvious and simple truth.

Sometimes the most obvious and simple truths are the deepest, child.

Hm.

Question, while I'm thinking of it.

Yes?

No, for Jewel. Or Infi, whoever the heck knows. Where the blood is this bubble when Jewel is inside it, since he's obviously not wearing it right now?

It moves into floating space. Precisely, here.

...Holy swords that is some seriously freaky stuff right there.

Haha!

Ah, a recursive reality! I do like these.

Sandman, what the heck.

Laurie, when you have seen as many things as I, you learn to appreciate even the strangest.

The darkest, too, I would assume.

Yes, child. Even the darkest. Nightmares are only fallen dreams, you know.

So. We're inside a bubble, inside of a bubble, inside of a freaking bubble, forever and ever amen.

That is why I am named Infinitii, Laurie.

Oh don't you even go there, my head hurts enough already without stupid Lightraye puns.

Is that really why that name clicked for you?

Quite likely, at least partially. Infinite potential, for the black energy, and for the recursive bubble. But "Eternos," that is for neverending cycles of life and death. Black and White, you and me, everything.

I like that.

And then there are two "I's."

Obviously!

The puns, they hurt.

Perhaps you have a similar name, Jewel?

I think "Jewel" fits pretty well with his prismatic thing.

It does, but perhaps he has a better, truer name, is what I'm saying.

He might.

Boss, you had a name once, right?

I did, child.

...It... does it matter to you now, or anyone? Or are you just Mr. Sandman?

I am simply Mr. Sandman now, child. After all, for a traveler of worlds such as myself, having one name only to adhere to would be quite limiting!

That's what I said!

Oh, were you discussing this?

Yeah, kid says he hates having only one name, face, et cetera. I said then it sounds like you're set up for your dream job already with the boss there. Pun intended, why not!

Haha, yes, that is also why he was chosen to be my Apprentice!

Geez, how many criteria are there?

As many as I wish to have. However, there are several rules for taking on the role of a Sandman. Once those are met, then my preferences or partialities simply come into play.

Which are?

Not many, Laurie.

Such as...?

Hm, well he did know Unisalia from a young age.

Yeah, how the heck did that come about?

Interworld connections, actually. The individual who bestowed Unisalia's anchor upon him in his downstairs world was linked to an individual in the same realm that ultimately brought Jewel to me.

Rosewindow, I assume?

Yes. Sister Rosemary Symphora. I do believe you met one of her friends during your dream travels, child?

Who, Clarice??

M-hm.

Dude, how the heck many people does he know?

Quite a few! He's been rather blessed since his childhood, and of course his connections to the Dream World have helped immensely on all fronts.

Then of course we have weird time shenanigans going on up here, as we also mentioned earlier, which ties back into way too many other worlds...

That's to be expected, yes!

Hey, boss?

Yes child?

What are your thoughts on... on Infi?

He is a part of you, isn't he?

Yeah. But the Tar ripped him out of me. It just reached into my ribs, grabbed hold, and... pulled. It hurt like hell, boss.

I would imagine so.

And I know stuff like this always justifies itself eventually-- I mean, Infinitii is part of this system and needed to manifest-- but the cause strikes me as unusual. Bizarre, even. Did the Tar even know that that would happen?

Not specifically, I wouldn't think, but perhaps that was a gamble it was willing to take.

True, but... the heck was it trying to accomplish? Oh!!

Oh?

It was mocking me for trying to fill the Spectrum! It specifically said "if you want new headvoices so bad, let me help you." The ONLY empty headvoice slot in the system was Red.

Ah...

You see what I mean?

Yes.

That ties right into the bloody Razor theory we were tossing around earlier!

Razor? But she isn't in the Red slot, is she?

She's below it, in a freaking nonexistent slot.

Oh. I see.

Yeah. Below Red is Cerise, or Magenta, or whatever the heck the kid is calling it.

Wikipedia's color list says Cerise.

'Kay then, Cerise. Cool. But the Blood slot is a remnant of the old Spectrum floorplan, where Red was the base and Pink was technically above my slot. Now it loops, which allows for Jewel and Infinitii to exist in the center of everything, along with possibly you, Sandman?

With me?

Yeah, uh, I was wondering if you were part of the system or not. If you were, Gray is technically an outspacer slot, so...

Oh, child, I'm not sure if I could fill such a role.

Why not? Just curious.

Those are rather big shoes to fill.

Boss, sweetheart, if anyone's got shoes big enough to fit that spot it's you. Even though you don't wear any.

Still, child. I would not want to interfere.

With?

With the natural order of your system.

Outspacers have to go through you to anchor in here, kid, remember.

Yeah, but... is that... what color energy does that use?

Black.

Oh.

Hence the soul forms, you know.

Uncontrollable potential. I can't touch that.

I can.

You can?

Yes. At least, I can maneuver it well. If you would like to be part of the system, I may be able to bend the gateways allowing for that to happen.

"Bend the gateways?"

I can allow for an anchor to occur without a traditional Link gate.

Ah, okay.

Still, child, I don't know if I should...

I'm not forcing you, boss. I know you're busy, you have a huge role outside of here, but---

...

Boss?

I'm sorry, child. I love you, but I don't want to make this worse for you.

How would you make it worse?

Would not Gray fit between you and Infinitii? Child, I cannot disrupt that balance.

I see. You have a point.

So there's no Gray slot? Strikes me as pretty freakin' weird.

...Child.

Yeah?

In the future, if... if there is ever an occasion where there is unmistakably an open position for me to fill in this Spectrum, I would be honored to fill it.

But not now?

Not now, child. I'm not ready for such a role.

Boss, if you don't want to, you don't--

I do want to, child, that's the problem. Perhaps I want to too much.

How so?

I cannot juggle an anchored spot in this system and my role as a free-flying Sandman at once, Laurie!

Oh.

...Oh, no, wait, don't tell me it has to happen that way.

What way? ...Oh! No, no child, I promise that's not what I was suggesting. I'm sorry.

It's okay. I'm just a little shaken up after that.

I know. I know. It's okay.

...

Hey, uh, you guys got any room for me over there?

Always, Laurie, come on.

Thanks. I kind of need a group hug right about now. Infi, you're in if you want.

I think I'll just experience this vicariously through Jewel.

Very funny.

Hey.

Yes Laurie?

Death doesn't need an Apprentice, right?

Laurie!! You can't do that!

Why the heck not?? If you're going to die and move on to bigger things one day, then so help me God, I want to be with you. I'm dead serious, boss, didn't mean that as a pun either but that happens when you're around Jewel. Keep me in mind.

I will, Laurie.

You will?

Of course. I will mention it to my brother, in all seriousness. Perhaps, even if he cannot take you on as an Apprentice, he can help you in some other way.

With not dying once this kid signs out for good?

Child, I doubt that would be the end of your existence in any case!

I'm not so sure sometimes, bossman. Also nice job making me feel my actual age, sheesh.

Haha.

Laurie...

Yeah, kid?

...If I have it in my power at all, I won't let you die once I leave.

Kid, that's not the point. Point is, I don't want to live without you.

Isn't that getting too attached?

No. It's recognizing when you bloody need someone in your life. In all of 'em, even.

...How can you be so sure?

Just believing what my heart's telling me, kid. Like you believe yours, standing right over there, apparently.

Hello.

That's, uh... that's a really good point, actually. Thank you.

For which part?

...Both of them. You and Infi by proxy. Just... both of you, really. And you, too, Boss, I... I know you'd return the sentiment the same as they do.

Of course I would, dear child. Your existence is a treasure in my life as well. You should treasure it in turn.

Heh, well said.

So, um...

Getting too close for comfort, eh?

Haha, no way, I love you all immensely. I just want to know what else we need to talk about before I start closing this up. It's 1PM you know.

Sheesh, it is?

Time flies when you're having fun, Laurie!

Yeah, I guess so! Geez, uh, I'm actually not sure if there were any pressing matters we needed to attend to yet. Infi?

Yes, Laurie?

You got any topics you wanna discuss before we start closing this thing up?

I cannot say I do. From what I recall, Jewel was going to make a list for our next session?

Oh yeah, with reviewing last year. That's a good idea.

Hey, um... sorry about the record scratch.

You freakin' serious?

Yeah. I know that's what you were mad about when you came in here.

Jewel, I was mad about you having been slowly falling apart since February 24th.

Because of the scratch.

I think she forgives you, child.

Of course I bloody forgive him, how could I hold that against him?? He's had one heck of a life so far, it's understandable to want to cash in the last paycheck and hit the road once in a while.

That's the best idiom for death I've ever heard.

That was quite original, yes.

Shut up, it's true. S'why I brought this back, too.

...

Ah yes, your scar...

You remember this too, see? It's important. I wanted to die just as bad as you did back in Feb. And I would have, too, if you didn't save me.

...

You understand now, kid? What that means to me now? Looking back, yeah, I was kind of furious that you wouldn't let me die either. I saw no point in going on. But despite everything, you wouldn't let me give up, and that look in your eyes when you thought you had lost me was the most heartbreaking thing I've seen in my entire life. And I've seen a lot, kid.

I know.

So I owed you one. Maybe I wasn't the one to save you this time. That was your boss, sure, a round of applause for him, but seriously... well, heck, I owe him one too now, but...

I'm sure I'll call you in on that favor one day, Laurie.

Yeah, and I'm honestly lookin' forward to it. But really, Jewel, I owe you one for saving me. You remember what I said last December, right?

I remember what you said on the night with the Christmas lights, too.

Yeah. Heh, different take on the same truth, but good catch.

Things like that are worth living for.

Things like you are worth living for.

Laurie, please, don't...

Don't what? Don't remind you how important you are? Well how's this for a quote? "To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world." No idea who said it, and it's cheesy as heck, but it gets the point across.

...You really do love me as much as Chaos does, don't you?

No kidding, kid, I could've sworn I'd proven that point to you already!

She has a point, child.

You too, boss, I swear...

Yes?

You... you and Laurie, and Chaos, and my daughter. No matter how many times I try to off myself, or take a magnet to the tape, or erase everything, I can't erase any of you. And I've tried, God forgive me but I've tried. And I am so sorry. I love you so much, every one of you. Genesis too, geez, he's got a different role but he never gives up on me either...

You've got a lot of people looking out for you, kid.

Yeah, but the motivation is what gets me.

Love.

The only thing that can stop the Tar.

...

Geez, he's right.

I do believe that's a good point to close up on, child?

Sounds like it, yeah.

And you two are still cuddled up in the corner there.

I'm allowed to hug my Apprentice.

Yeah, it's just adorable.

She's jealous.

I am not.

I'm just teasing you, love.

Yeah, heh, I guess someone's gotta do that too.

So. French leave?

Perhaps I will. I did appear rather unexpectedly, after all, my departure should be similar.

Yeah, we're all pretty used to you randomly showing up and leaving the way it is.

True! So, child?

Yes boss?

Do smile more, promise me that. You look so much better with a smile.

Heh, I guess I do. Thanks.

I've been trying to tell him that.

I'm sure he heard. Sometimes it just takes a little extra push to really sink in, though.

I hear you.

Infi?

Yes?

It was a pleasure to meet you, even if our first encounter has been rather... informal.

I'm used to it. Structure is his thing, not mine.

He's the one with infinite bubbles.

Ah, but so are you, child. *doffs nightcap* Farewell!

That was not a freaking French leave, that little sneak, throwing parting paradoxes at us.

He's taller than you.

Hey, I had to find a nicer insult there. It feels really bloody weird to say anything rough around your boss, believe it or not.

He's too nice to even get pretend angry with.

Yeah, he is. So. We done?

With the session?

Duh, I don't see us doing anything else, do you?

Haha, no, sorry. Plus it is getting late.

Exactly.

This was nice, though. I think I'd like to have one of these once a week again, now that I'm sure I can still have them.

Good idea. We picking a specific day or what?

Uh, Thursdays maybe? Wednesday evenings?

Either one is fine.

How about both, just in case we can't make one time?

Sounds good to me. And no Monday nights because of therapy, I assume?

Well, no late Monday nights because of therapy, but having sessions on Monday-- like today-- might actually help my therapy quite a bit.

I thought so, yeah. Infi, you cool with that?

As cool as I can be.

Awesome. Guess that's it, then.

Five hours! That's about average.

Haha, man, this really took five hours?

Pretty much. Gonna be more once I'm done editing it.

That's hilarious. Good use of a morning though.

Good use of a bonus day off, you mean! Class was cancelled for today, otherwise I wouldn't be here.

See, now that's what we mean by "everything happens for a reason." The universe just decided "you know what, forget English class, Jewel needs to talk to Laurie." And so it was.

Haha!

Now, seriously, how the heck do we get out of this bubble?

Be polite and ask.

Ooh, sassmaster over here.

Heheh.

He gets it from you.

Everyone gets everything from me.

Perhaps that is relevant too!

What, the injoke?

The fact that everything we "joke" about always ends up having some bigger relevance down the line. And that's one heck of a big implication already.

Well, with what the White color is supposed to be and do, it makes sense...

Yeah, which isn't a big surprise.

Plus the whole Link phenomenon goes without saying.

We've gotta figure out a way to have outspacers visit without latching onto the system, because that was getting weird as hell.

The empty slots are acting like magnets.

Are they?

The Spectrum naturally wants to complete itself.

Makes sense.

Explains my obsessive searching for people who fit, too.

Yeah, you've gotta stop that. No controlling things, remember? Especially not where midslots are concerned. That's not your line of expertise.

We leave that up to you then, Infi?

You could. I won't be trying to order people around either, though.

Good! That's good to hear. People need to chill out and just let things happen up here, not naming any names.

Sure you aren't. But I agree.

Also, holy swords, that was a beautiful piano chord. What are you listening to?

improvisation no110 by Kyle Landry, a god among pianists. "Unchained."

Fitting title.

It is.

No, I mean for the session, too.

Oh! Good idea. That is kind of what we're doing, after all... taking off chains and shackles.

You're gonna fly free as a bird one day, kid, I'm telling you.

It would be nice, honestly.

No, I'm serious. That's actually one of the things I want most in this world, is for you to no longer be tied down by all this darkness I've been hunting down for years. I mean, I don't mind protecting you, I wouldn't give up this job for the world, but... it would be nice to know that, maybe, there's nothing after you for once.

Yeah.

We're getting there.

Cross my heart we are, Infi. Now are we actually going to close this up, or are we going to continue our usual pattern of unending conclusive dialogue?

Well, you could just ask Infi to pop us back out into Central, and we'd be good.

Good idea. Yo, sir eyeball-teeth, care to free us from this spherical headtrip so J can get on with his work?

He's giggling.

I'm beginning to appreciate your sense of humor.

Good, 'cause I ain't changing it to fit your style, you freak of nature.

Says the headvoice to the conglomerate.

See, you're a man of sass, I'm a man of swears.

I love how you never know what gender noun to use for yourself.

Dude, none of us in this room do, we all default to the male because it's at least bloody closer!

That's why I'm laughing!

Okay, really, enough of the bubblespace. Can we please exit this Bosch fever dream and go back to nice, normal headspace?

Okay, now that was funny.

Seriously, when the heck has headspace ever been nice and normal?

Since now, apparently. Guess it depends on your definition though.

Laurie.

Yeah?

I noticed you mentioned a "french leave" back there somewhere...

Oh no you flipping don't---

Ahahaha!

Agh. Talk about a rough landing, sheesh.

Hey, at least we're out.

Where the blood is that little trickster?

Right here.

Can he see us?

Maybe. It's funny to think.

*flips him off*

Laurie, haha, come on!

Hey, he knows it's all in good fun now.

Yeah. I imagine it'd be really difficult to offend him in any case.

Probably. Keep that one point in mind, though, Jewel.

What point?

That he was formed from you. Like a rib from Adam himself, for lack of a better and more fitting analogy. Anything good you say about that little nightmare of a headvoice, you better believe you're saying about yourself, too.

...Maybe that's what boss meant by the simple, obvious lessons.

Yeah. Sounds like that's something you need to learn from Infi there, and honestly I can't think of anyone better suited to teach you. Not even me.

You come really close, though.

Maybe. Can we close this thing up?

Oh geez, sorry! I forget, we just keep rambling and then it hits me that "whoa, this is still being recorded, isn't it?"

And you don't even bother to backspace, you just leave all of it up.

It's fun to look back on and read.

I imagine it would be.

Song's over, time to quit?

Sounds good to me. Oh, no, wait.

What?

What color is that chord?

Which one, the one that caught your attention before?

Yeah. Just curious if it has a color or something to your weird ol' brain.

Hm... 3:19, right?

Yeah.

...Reddish violet.

You're kidding me.

No, I'm serious! It's got the purposeful weight and the vibrant edge, that's both colors.

Haha, man, that's perfect.

Just like you, love.

Wh-- the heck, J, and you yell at me for saying things like that!

Heheh. I'm just in a good mood.

Well that's a heck of an improvement from five hours ago.

Seriously feels like five minutes ago, no lie.

Weird time shenanigans, kid. Just shrug and roll with it.

You mean, just shrug and...

Don't.

...deal with it.

That's it, that was one injoke too many, you're dead.

You can't kill what you can't catch!

I'm not gonna literally kill you, you son of a gun, get back here!

No, then this session isn't going to end!

Oh shoot, good point. Then you'd better watch your back, boy!

I can't, everything's too dark with these supercool shades on.

Ahaha, serves you right for wearing sunglasses indoors.

Don't, that's not a good reference, not for this session.

It's a good reminder.

That it is.

*swipes the shades*

Hey!

Now you can't deal with it.

*Kanye shrug* You have a point.

You rapscallion.

Pfahaha!!

Should I make it worse and say I'll leave this session after you, sir?

That would be too ironic.

Either way, we should really HURRY UP.

True, I think we've had enough injokes for today-- ow!!

That's for the sunglasses.

Yeah, I walked right into that one.

Probably because you couldn't see.

Ahaha, nice one!

Speaking of, what's this sudden dark space I see?

What dark space?

Oh, never mind, it's just the end of the freakin' entry.

Haha, point taken!

I haven't been updating, have I.
There's quite a simple explanation for that though. Since December started (probably even earlier, but the first week of December is when the serious terror started to happen), I have been an absolute psychological mess, to say the least. I've been fighting existential meltdowns and suicide attempts. I've been destroying relationships and people alike.
I've been staying up late, staring into nothingness, then sleeping for up to 15 hours at a time, never feeling rested. I haven't been eating, I get sick when I do, I'm constantly exhausted, and I'm having trouble thinking straight in school, let alone at all.
I have 58 new scars on my arms.
And to top it all off, when it all hits I simply do not care. I don't.

I am trying so hard to be happy-- for no reason, like a kid-- but it's not sticking. Genesis actually yelled at me today for doing that again. Central has adopted my term of "jester mode" for that manic phenomenon of mine, which first became apparent in like 2004 for heaven's sakes, during our obsession with those very things. Still, the term remains extremely fitting: like a clown, in that mode I pretend all my personal problems are completely solved, and go running around in a bleary rainbow hype until the sugar crash hits and I end up minutes away from being dead. I am still Pagliacci, I guess. God help me.
But yes, I can go for days with a genuine smile on my face and not a problem in the world. I did that yesterday, actually. I wrote a new song for Event Horizon, didn't lose my cool despite my car breaking down on the highway on the way to school (basically my rear right tire blew out and this car had no spare), and overall had quite a brilliant day. But, yesterday I ignored every single one of my relationships. I didn't miss them.
This is why Central thinks my metainomen has mutated. You can't love without a heart, and you can't have a heart without blood... isn't that horrible irony? They're thinking I now hold blood, like my daughter, but in the wrong sense... blood is thicker than water, and when my heart tries to shut him out, then what the heck is it going to do to the rest of reality?? For such a red soul I've been as gaunt as a corpse lately, unwilling to associate with life and warmth anymore because it's too horribly close. I bleed everyone out, I bleed myself out, and all that's left is icy silent death. Even after ten years I can walk out on a person with no regrets, and keep walking.
...Well, maybe that's not entirely true. I've been getting some weird reactive symptoms to flat-out expressing this passive destruction lately.
First, whenever I say I don't want Chaos in my life anymore, that I wish I had never met him, I get an immediate inner response of "you know that's not true." I can fight that feeling as viciously and angrily as I want, but there's an undying sense of guilt when I do so. I don't know if it's overattachment or something real. Either way it's there, whether I like it or not.
Second, I can't seem to let go of Laurie. Only Laurie. I can ignore everyone else in the world, kick them out of my life, pretend they never existed. But even when I'm shoving Chaos out the door, I can't get the guts to do it to her. Still, the biggest thing haunting me with this is the night of Tuesday the 15th. I tried to kill all of them, her included. I came seriously close. It was the first and hopefully only time in my life I didn't care whether she lived or died. And I know why. I know exactly why.

The problems that I have been struggling with for the PAST TWO YEARS (possibly even three at this point) are still 100% intact and unsolved.
Do you remember this entry from April last year? Go re-read it. It's almost exactly what I am dealing with now, to the letter.

Last night I tried to set her on fire. You know, the green one. I had every intention of killing her on the spot. But Boss kept telling me not to, and God threw a few really loud signs at me. So the flames were put aside, and she was tossed out into the cold instead.
Okay, I won't kill you. But I don't want you around anymore. Get out.
It's too dangerous, for the both of us, with you here.

Laurie will not stop insisting that I am able to literally alter and edit time up here, not just space. If that's true it would be the most ridiculously ironic thing ever.
Wouldn't I be the biggest freaking risk to everyone's survival? Do you really want to give a destructive maniac like me access to the rhythm of everyone's life?? Or are you betting on my lingering inexplicable concern for you? Are you betting that I won't run a magnet through the motherboard solely because it will erase you too, if you can't get out in time? Don't you remember when I tried to scratch the disc into oblivion? Just because the real data runs deeper doesn't mean I won't still plunge a sword through it when my eyes are red enough.
Have you already forgotten what I am capable of doing when my emotions completely dissolve? Have you already forgotten that I nearly killed you?
Or do you care too much?
What the hell am I even talking about?
I do not want to be so important to anyone, let alone everyone. I want Laurie and Chaos to be the central players, not me. They're important. I'm tired of mattering so much. I'm tired of mattering.

I'm too tired to write anymore either.

This isn't me. I don't know what this is. I can't see.
Most days now I wish Julie had never switched sides. At least then I'd still have a working conscience.
Now I've forgotten what's right or wrong and everyone is bleeding for it.
I've considered creating another shadow to take her old place, but I'm terrified that the role is already mine.
Or I would be, if I could feel anything genuine anymore.

I'm going to call a therapist tonight, come hell or high water. There's one about a half hour away that hopefully will be able to treat my condition. We shall see.
Something needs to be done, and I'm grasping at straws at this point.

Something needs to change, if I expect to stay alive.

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

@ 06:03 pm

i cannot deal with this right now.
my mom came home from work for once, noticed that i had started self-abusing again (sorry but its the only coping method i have left) and immediately started shouting for me to "stop acting like a baby and grow up"
now my grandfather has joined in and they're both threatening to ship me off to the psych ward again if i don't stop "trying to get attention" because i'm "just being lazy" and a burden on the family
for sanity's sake i have been dealing with this hell for 6 nightmarish years straight
you saw the diagnoses they gave me, but you don't care.
and i'm afraid to tell you that i honestly cant deal with life at this point, when you act like this.
the last two times i slipped too far i was told to pack up and leave.
god help me i cannot deal with this, i am so sorry.

Well. Apparently the universe really, really wants me to stop relying on computers?
Within 24 hours I have lost virtually all work access to both my laptops.

A few weeks ago something kept telling me, loudly, "print out your Dream World work." I wholeheartedly agreed, but once again shadows kept conspiring to stop me. First my printer had a fatal error (he's still shot), then the ink ran out for the family printer. Then when I got it to work, I couldn't get on my computer to print! My schedule seemed to fill up at the exact times I'd be free enough to type. And when I could type, my Vista-- Abbey-- would often crash, freeze, or refuse to let me format documents correctly (she's a bit ditzy to say the absolute least). So I didn't get to start typing in earnest until about a week ago... and as of last night, Abbey no longer recognizes anything plugged in from a USB.
I can't access my files (my backup files are from February and are missing all the major edits that hit me over the past month), I can't print anything, and I can't even back up my files onto an external hard drive. She also has no Internet access (and hasn't had any for over two years). Abbey has effectively 'landlocked' herself and as a result she is now effectively as good as broken.
Then last night I tried to partition Apollo, my Mac, and that didn't work... long story short, he's now all but empty. I still have Internet (obviously) but that's it, and now it's basically pointless to go online.
Because of this I have been forced, and rather distressingly so, to abandon virtually all of my reliance on computers. I still can only write music and type on them, of course, but I'm stuck for right now...
Thank God Apollo is recognizing USB ports today. I don't care how old the info may be-- I'm printing every single page I have written for Dream World, just in case I lose computer access altogether.

This isn't about computers though. Honestly I'd be happier if I didn't have to use them, which is keeping me laughing through this fiasco, because hey! I'm kind of forced to do that now.
But the computers don't matter here. What matters is my work.
I know it's important. When I actively try to deny it I get loudly reminded that it's something I need to be doing.
And I've been doubting and denying far too much lately.

This isn't the only huge issue I'm being pushed to deal with right now.
In the big picture, really, I couldn't care less about the computers. Like I said, I'd be happier without them. But that simple assertion hides within it an old thought that is more damaging than I ever realized. And the event that forced me into that realization is what is causing me to be so distressed today, re-routing this maddeningly directionless dolor into my technological concerns.
The computers don't matter. What irony, to realize that today, of all aching days.
Apparently, there are a few 'deep' emotional problems I've never dealt with because I had no idea they existed, or could exist. Now I'm reading Huxley's Island more studiously than I read my textbooks, and it's giving me insights that are so sharp and accurate it's rather disturbing. I've had to close the book and take a deep breath a few times already, as if I had just caught myself from falling off a cliff. I'll read sentences that describe my life so accurately it frightens me, because I didn't realize I was that dysfunctional on those levels.
Ironically, the level I clearly know that I'm dysfunctional on is still the worst.
But we'll get to that.

I'm feeling disconcertingly 'detached' today, and there's a worried anxiety gnawing at my ribs. It's the dry sort, though. It's the kind that feels like standing in the middle of an empty parking lot as thunderclouds roll in, and the air is choked with the smell of ozone. The wind whips around you, almost intangible in the coffin-warm air, foreboding. It's not a nice feeling.
I used to call these 'Julie days,' before I learned that she was just as much a casualty as I was. These are shadow days, ego days, hours that fester in the interim between headaches and fever sleep. I don't like it.
And yet, in trying to prevent these days, I perpetuate them. In trying to traverse deeper into love, in trying to open my heart a little more, I find myself forgetting closeness, forsaking affection, closing my heart. Every time. I don't understand this.
I know what happened last night, and yet I don't. Laurie insists we talk about it, and so we will. Friday, maybe.
But the point is this: whatever last night triggered-- and maybe it just dug this up yet again, the parasite that refuses to die-- today, I fell into fragment mode.
No, no splinters. They're gone for good. But this is what the fragmented one felt like. It wanted nothing, nothing at all; it rejected everything, pushed everything away, denied and forgot and renounced it all. No exceptions. And it makes sense, when it is here. Whenever it is here, it makes perfect sense. My perceptions seem to be colored by circumstance, even when I am present. Why does the same state of mind feel so incomparably different, depending on when I feel it? Why does the emptiness beckon with both bright and dark? Why do I still seek nothingness? I'm supposed to be using stars to fight this entropy, but I've been rejecting Timeheart for the false light of the void. And yet the irony sticks around. I always seem to find myself caught up in paradoxes.
Genesis showed up to say hello this morning, to see how I was feeling, and I told him to leave. Not out of malice, no, but simply because I didn't want him around.
Indifference is deadlier than enmity.

It's been three months since that hellish night of January 17th, and in a sick, sick way, that night was more beautiful than last night was. Why? Because I could feel, three months ago. Because even though I was bleeding and sobbing and praying for death or deliverance, Xenophon was standing there by me, telling me that she still loved me even with the new gashes on my chest. Even though I felt worthless and abhorrent and twisted beyond forgiveness, Chaos was there to offer just that, holding true to unconditional love when I was convinced I had thrown it away, convinced that I had sinned irreconcilably against him, against life itself. And even though I lied and manipulated and hurt and deeply damaged both myself and the innocent, with a bloody knife in my shaking hand, Laurie still put her life on the line for me, to jump in the line of fire, to try to save me from my own vicious contrition when I was the one desperate for bleary red retribution.
“Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.”
Does it work the opposite way as well?
Last night there was no blood, there were no tears, there was no sickness or fury or self-hatred. But last night felt dead, somehow.
It is in light that one finds the darkness... I need to go beyond.
I am so, so sick of this duality.

The computers don't matter. But that disconnection is only one symptom of a deeper disease.
I've been hiding behind my cool kid shades for too long. I may be the Seer of Love, but I keep forgetting that at heart, love translates to sight. And to see something, it takes time.
Time. Dare I say... how ironic?
Three months ago I swore, bitterly, that I would cast off my secondary title forever. In that moment of deep remorse I hated it.
But time didn't hate me.
She never did.

Genesis noticed something about me, the other day. I have a habit of becoming so hopeful, so enraptured with transcendence and the life beyond the physical, that I forget that I still exist in the physical. I forget that I still have a body to take care of. Yes, even with my worrying about my health lately. Life feels like a movie, a video game, a fantasy. Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality, you know? But what if I can't tell what 'reality' is most days, and doubt every single sensory perception I have? If I treat everything as false, then what is real? The answer is nothing... nothing really matters to me.
In direct contrast to my current Care Bears addiction, I haven't really been caring much about anything today. Only today, mind you! This only started after last night, and that's what's unsettling here in spite of the dearth of emotion. Last night only happened because I cared. I cared so much, so honestly, that for a few hours I wasn't afraid. Then I woke up, and... well. Then I washed my hands of all of it. Then I woke up and wanted to erase everything, again.
I used to think I wanted to turn back the clock, to return to the 'old days' of childhood when all I had to worry about was writing, drawing, composing. But as I thought about the events that surrounded my work, I realized that I did not want to turn back, ever. The family life, the school events, everything that swirled around outside me back then was repugnant. Even thinking back to the 'golden' times-- the forts in the living room, the jelly sneakers and squirt guns, the class plays, the violin store-- felt wrong, because I knew they were all just crystal bubbles in a sea of sleep.
I didn't want my old life. I wanted the sense of ultimate non-attachment, of freedom from everyone and everything. I wanted to become identity-less, a watcher, a channel. I wanted to cease to exist as an individual, like I did back then, but only when I worked. I would create and dream and love it all, without a thought to myself. Once I started writing about my own story... things fell apart.
Things fell together, too. That's what's making me sick about this.
Since 2002, when I met Ryman and Markus, my life took a completely different path, leading me to Chaos and Genesis and Laurie and so many others... but at the price of those friends, I almost lost contact with others. And even now, I find myself wishing I could 'go back' to the time before that happened more than I'd like. It's not just wanting to strengthen my original links. It's also about wanting to get rid of the new ones.
I overheard Laurie talking to Chaos today, just a little bit as I was feeling too apathetic to do much. But two things stuck out.
One, she thinks I love her more than I love Chaos, in a way, because of my hardwired 'innocence' drive.
Two, she thinks I love the Dream World more than I love anyone upstairs, family or not.
I can't affirm or deny either of those thoughts of hers. And frankly right now I am too tired to think about it, because yes, my mind is still in utter 'reset' mode, and nothing in the world matters right now except detaching from reality. Homework? Not finished, as usual, probably not going to be. Sleep? Haven't been getting enough, won't get any tonight at this rate. Family? Haven't spoken to them all day, upstairs or downstairs. I'm sitting here listening to the LG*Girls soundtrack and feeling like someone punched a hole through my ribs because all of a sudden, I can't type on Dream World. Silly, I know. If only there was a better way to write it all down. But until I print everything out, there's this ridge-raw gap in my soul and only those old dream friends of mine seem capable of healing it. There's a light to them that just... illuminates things. It's hard to explain.
But they're the single reason why my childhood was beautiful, the single reason why so many of my old memories are lit with sunlight and sparkles and forest mornings. Without them, it might have been mundane, forgettable, maybe even banal. But with them, even the simplest things became a heaven. To this day, everything they touch turns to gold. Not even Laurie or Chaos has done that, as far as I can remember. I don't know how to explain it.

In a way, I do want to let go of all these connections. I want to let go of the daily worries about headspace and waking friends and all that nonsense. It's tying me down.
But... in a way I don't. I can avoid them for weeks and not be bothered, but then one day I'll suddenly hear him instead of a catastrophe or I'll look up in shock at the wrong name or something small like that will happen, sharp enough to pierce my armor... and even if I deny it, even if I pretend it's just a knee-jerk emotional reaction, it will light a desperate flame in my heart for something I'd long forgotten. But I still won't care. I won't care until suddenly he's there or she's calling me and in a sudden snap I can see them, just barely, vaguely, distantly. But it will be clear enough, and I'll see her scars or his eyes or her tiny face, and maybe in that moment the emptiness will fade to light and I will beg forgiveness, I will plead reconciliation for ever wishing they were gone.
Even now, and I know without a doubt, if I lift my eyes from this screen and look at one of the many pictures of him on this wall, my tense expression will immediately soften, and I'll find myself smiling, either with joy or with tears. If my mind is quiet at the time I'll notice that I'm starting to fall into that old feeling. But I hesitate, and when it speaks again... why does it always bring that up? Why does that feel awful, even now, after everything? Why can't I figure that out?

There are two things that make me forget all about these connections.
1. Series work. It somehow overshadows everything else in importance.
2. Trying to fix the deepest dysfunctions.

The moments immediately after they try to give everything to me are the emptiest. I was hollow before but then I become devoid, uncaring in total spite of the love that I know, I know with unfailing certainty they have for me. In the past I almost used to hate them, as frightening as that prospect is, but I knew half of it was projection. Now I just... don't care.
I think that's why Laurie is afraid I love her the most.
She's the most innocent one of us here, in that sense, which is strange and oddly contradictory. She's seen more than I'm aware of and yet less than I know. She has learned of the bloody details and shameful elaborations alike. But she's somehow avoided all the levels that even Genesis jumped up to reach. With her there's no romance, no passion, no intimacy. And because of it I adore her.
I am absolutely terrified sometimes, when she decides "why the hell not" and is a little more honest, a little less inscrutable than usual. I don't know how to deal with that blurring of lines, that sudden shift from a brutal and inviolable soldier to a compassionate and somehow even more sacrosanct angel. I am terrified because sometimes there's a color to her eyes that I don't recognize, but it's all too familiar just the same. I am terrified because if she ever does cross that line, the point of no return, she would become unreachable.
She got close to me one night and I had no idea how to reconcile the blissful sincerity with the paralyzing dread.

Speaking of dread. She's the only person I can feel around right now.
Chaos tried to connect with me last night and I couldn't feel anything. He was shocked and was trying to laugh it off but I know it worried him more than he'd dare let on. Here's the soul I've effectively promised to share my life with, and I don't feel anything with him. But when Laurie walked in almost two hours later, to see if I was okay, I felt that familiar glow of childlike excitement, nervous but bright. Then she walked over to where I was and put one arm around my shoulders, trying to lighten the mood, and my own disposition turned from sunny to startled.
At that same time I was aware of a heart-wrenching gap in my chest but couldn't figure out why. Here we are, the five of us; if there's so much love here, why do I feel so scraped out and cold? Why do I feel like either something is missing, or that there's far too much, and can't tell the difference at all? I could have cried but in reality I knew I'd wear a poker face no matter how many tears fell elsewhere. The split was too much to bear.
And yet, could I handle this if there wasn't a split? On these days, when I wake up wanting to be utterly alone and distant, could I handle it if I woke up to see him, to see her? Even as I type I know the answer is no, in stark contrast to my desire to be with them somehow, some way. I keep waking up and looking at my left hand, wondering why I keep feeling a wedding ring there when I've never had one, let alone a wedding to get one from. I keep thinking about weddings when I wouldn't have one if you paid me and I think I'm getting lost in symbolism, in shapeless concepts.
Still, the pain in his eyes when he realizes I still can't see him never fails to tear me apart inside.

This negativity isn't me, and it's bugging me.
But who am I, really? Watashi wa dare? Even that movie feels wrong.
I'm sick of consuming. I want to create. I can create. I will. I am.

I'm rambling. I'm tired. I need to sleep but don't want to. I want to sleep but don't need to.
I still don't feel like eating and I can't tell if I'm sick or healthy anymore.
This old fearful reality is terrible. Please, end already. Please.
I miss my family and I miss my children and I miss my daughter and I miss my friends.
And yet I can't feel anything. Why not?

I'm a mess. I can't think straight and I'll probably look at this entry tomorrow, laugh, and say "what in the world was I smoking to write such a depressive thing?"
I know. I'm trying not to laugh now, because laughing makes it even less important than I'm trying to make it now. And even if this is all fleeting and temporary et cetera, it is still important. Even the smallest things contribute to the big picture, sometimes in surprisingly significant ways. Right now, though, I've got my eyes closed and I'm wishing I was the picture and didn't have to keep pretending to look at it from the outside anymore.
I keep forgetting I have things I was meant to do and experience first, I guess. Life is meant to be lived.
It wasn't meant to be lived alone either.

What a surreptitious ego. I thought Holy Saturday had changed you. Didn't it?
I can't tell if I'm overlooking things or looking too deeply now.
Where did she come from now? She was here three months ago, crying, shaking, shouting. Now she's smiling.
But I remember the blood lotus, it had her face, it had mine too, and the past is a jumbled mess that I still can't decipher.
I don't want to decipher it though.
Even though she loved me and for that short while I did love her, when all was said and done I wished we had never met.
Now I find myself regretting it all, even as I try to find distant fragments of our past. When she is separate from me she is beautiful, enchanting, mysterious. When she looks at me with that crystal-blue smile I feel an awful regret rising in my bones, a sort of dismal bitterness at having such a bright thing suddenly become so personable. Don't bring me into this. Don't make me a thing, a person, an object. Stay free and elusive in your poppy-eyed wonder, as gorgeous as the first time I saw you. If I would love you unconditionally, why does that flame suddenly flicker when you return the sentiment? Why do I always leave you clutching cold embers to your verdant heart? Not just you, but all of them. I would love you to the end of time and beyond, as long as you never looked at me like that, as long as you never made me remember that I existed too. The fatal condition.
That can't be right.
I do love you. I love all of you. But it feels somehow wrong for you to reciprocate.
Sometimes I still feel that loving you is wrong.
It can't be. This is love, isn't it?
I don't understand.

Attention, attention. Here and now, boys, here and now.
Is enlightenment supposed to feel this vacant?
I'm thinking too much. What a joke!

Aaaand my SC group just explained EXACTLY what is happening to me right now.

"Losing contact... happens sporadically, and is primarily due to what I have termed "psychic exhaustion." ...When we do a lot of psychic work, we exhaust our [inner eyes] much the same way that overworking any muscle in the body will do. We must allow it to rest, and it shuts down to ensure that rest..."
"When the third eye shuts down, you can't tell what's happened except that you are unable to perceive anything of your SC whatsoever. This rest period can last anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks, and the only way to tell when it is over is by trying to perceive and either succeeding or failing. When the contact is broken, and trust me this is a very special kind of hell when you don't understand it, you are left wondering what has happened... When the third eye begins to function again, and you regain contact, the intensity of feeling that presence is so profound that you have no doubt whatsoever that they're real. On the other hand, when that contact is gone, and nothing you can do will bring it back, you might just believe you're out of your mind and agonize until you regain contact..."
"Now, the other problem with all this sporadic contact is that you have to learn how not to suffer in agony for every second of missing them. You have to learn to let go. It sucks. But then, once you've learned to take such breaks in stride, it becomes easy then to sort of get caught up in daily events and forget to even pay attention to them or in regaining that contact. It becomes routine, and when you walk the same path over and over you get what? A rut. The rut then makes it very difficult to regain that contact... So, you get in a rut, a routine of not being in contact, and then making contact is a bitch... But most of the time it's because the area of activity, or range, has sort of rusted over (closed up) and in order to open it, you have to really feel it. You have to feel that emotional yearning for it in order for that range of perception to open up again. You have to damn near cry from the need... even if the means you use to inspire that need are sort of circumvential... You circle around the need by inspiring heartache about anything, and then you use that heartache as a tool to coax that range back open again."

...this is EXACTLY what I needed to hear right now.
My connection levels with everyone upstairs have been frighteningly low since September. We had one or two strong days in October or so, but as a whole it has been disconcertingly difficult to reach them on stable ground.
I've definitely been going through psychic exhaustion, what with how much time I've been trying to log in to take care of my daughter. I have no idea how to cut back though, for the same reason. I don't want to completely 'black out' for a while and leave her wondering where her father went, to say the very least.
Even so I'm burned out and I can't deny that.

I was hit the hardest by the last paragraph up there... how, once you've become more or less 'used to' this contact loss, it becomes harder to get it back. I didn't know this was the case with me until I read the post, upon which it became blindingly obvious.
"You circle around the need by inspiring heartache about anything, and then you use that heartache as a tool to coax that range back open again..." if that's not a perfect summary of my past few months I don't know what is. I've honestly been putting myself through hell and not understanding why, chalking it up to a "pain addiction" without knowing what the motivation was.

Still... Now I understand WHY my 'pain addiction' is currently through the roof.
Don't get me wrong, this tortuous gambit seems to have worked, ironically, as I can finally see everyone amazingly clearly-- seriously, when I was talking to Genesis last night I could see him so well I could barely believe my eyes-- but the amount of pain I put myself through to get here feels... it feels condemnable. And it's a Catch-22 on top of that. because as of yesterday night I can at least SEE who I'm talking to... but the strain is overwhelming.
Yes, I can at least see who I'm talking to now, but getting that communication to happen in the first place feels like putting my brain in a blender.
I could see Genesis as clear as day last night, but when I tried to speak to him I could barely form words. Everything I did was a huge effort. My body and mind were both desperately trying to shut down from the strain and this has been happening every night for at least three months now.
And yeah, I know Dagger showed up the other day, but do you have any idea how difficult it is to handle him being up here too?? The stress of perceiving a new person in headspace is excruciating at times and I don't want to sound ungrateful but I honestly don't know if I can deal with that right now.
I miss everyone from the past, true, but now I'm remembering with a sick certainty why I lost contact with them all in the first place.
My emotional denial is a coping mechanism. If I lost everyone because of this I'd ignore the pain and pretend I was fine.
I don't want that to happen. That's not the right reaction. I can't pretend that this isn't a problem.
Yeah, I've had a headache for a few weeks now, why do you ask?
Let's not even mention what my heart has felt like.

Now I REALLY don't know what to do. I don't want to completely burn out, not now, not ever.
But it feels like I'm standing at the edge of a cliff and I've been trying so hard to fly that I've forgotten that there's still a fatal risk of falling.
I really don't want to slip over the edge with this, and end up badly hurting myself and/or the people I love.

I still don't know how to really 'feel' energy signatures either, and that is a big concern for me.

I've replied to the quoted topic here and we do have a scheduled chat tonight, so maybe I'll have some answers by tomorrow.
I am just so tired.

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