All right, let’s try to type about this somehow.


Right around Pascha of this year, according to our food diary, specifically the first week of April, our diet changed. We cut out eggs because we tested positive on three different occasions for an allergy, and needed to find a new protein source. We tried cheese, but it triggered migraines and vomiting. Then for some reason we also started eating lettuce, cauliflower, cucumbers, and raisins? I’m assuming we were told to try FODMAP again. Regardless, the food diary is marked with symptoms of intense nausea and confusion and body twitches and vomiting. We ended up in the emergency room on the 6^th. We had to reintroduce eggs for a time but the photos indicate this was the “bean pasta week” which was hell. We could not stop throwing up. Sweet potatoes did the same. We cut both out quickly and went back to the normal pre-April diet, but now the diary is peppered with purgation records. Our calories hovered between 800 and 1100 tops. Then around April 26^th, green beans appear in the record, with the return of cucumbers, and now zucchini as well. I know this was also doctor’s orders. It went well for two days, and then the purging started again-- notably, because I remember getting unbelievably nauseous on a regular basis from the food. By May we had cut out broccoli completely and were now eating just those three other green vegetables, with some attempts at bok choy. It looks like we brought the broccoli back in mid-May and the purging stopped for a while.
May 23^rd was the gastric emptying study with the eggs and toast. After that our diet went completely back to normal again, no more zucchini cucumber hell. It also looks like this is when we definitively quit the Three Wishes cereal, and realized that’s what had been causing our intense abdominal bloating and constipation.
June began and on the 3^rd suddenly BOTH oat bran and hemp hearts reappear in the diet, and eggs disappear for good by the 9th. June 8^th was the MU women’s retreat day. There’s still some on and off purging, almost always after dinner-- we were eating three bags of broccoli for carbs and the sheer volume would set it off. We also started weighing our food by this time. Our daily calories increase to 1100 by July.
July 28^th is the colonoscopy prep period with the rice and green beans and babyfood turkey. This was a very difficult week psychologically and it set the stage for later compulsive binges.
I need to check the calendar to see how many we had over this time period, because sometimes we forget to list them in the food diary. All I know for sure is that there was a terrific spike in August, as I know that over half the days were binge-purge days, even if we just binged on broccoli.

So we’re struggling now. The cycle has gotten a grip around our throat and it is so difficult to stop. Even though our daily calories have gone up from ~900 in April to about 1400 in September-- a HUGE increase-- thanks to eating such a deficit for months, our weight is hovering around 90lbs and we still admittedly want it to drop lower. On good mornings, when we step on the scale, it’s 88lbs.
But the point is this. We want to stop bingeing and purging. We know it’s a sin. We also know it’s an addiction. We want to stop, but God help us we don’t want to stop either. We’re so bloody hungry. It’s nowhere near what it was like in North Carolina, or even up at the old house with grandma, that is true-- we were out of control back then, ravenous and destructive, insatiable and desperate. We didn’t know God back then. That’s what changed.
Now, we’re still starving, but…

It hit me today that we’re constantly angry. We’re miserable and exhausted and terrified. The OCD compulsions we used to have around the time the Julie days began, notably spitting and handwashing due to “contamination fear,” have returned for the first time in over a decade at the least. They’re debilitating. What triggered this? The feelings of shame and guilt and filth and evil are unbearable. It all feels tied to eating. Is it because our conscience is working again now? Is it because we know we’re sinning at least twice a week now, bingeing and purging, starving and stuffing this poor wrecked body, and although God knows we want to quit He also must know we’re so bloody hungry? What do we do?

We have a new nutritionist now, a male, a couple years younger than us. He’s actually accepting of our limitations and is willing to work with them-- when we told him dairy inevitably makes us uncontrollably vomit, he actually said “okay, then we won’t eat dairy,” which shocked us as we’re so used to being told to just eat it regardless and take a Zofran or something, which doesn’t help. The only trouble is this: he’s still giving us dietary recommendations, in order to increase our weight and fix our nutrient macros, and this triggers Iscah’s kneejerk “must be a good girl” food compulsions which means we KEEP forcing ourselves to “try eating normal people foods” even if they hurt, even if they make us sick, in order to be “good” and obedient and self-effacing. It’s just perpetuating the binge-purge hell loops. It feels like there is no end, no way out, until we CAN “do it.” So the forcing keeps happening until “one day we won’t get sick anymore.” But what if that never happens? We forced those bloody eggs for months, knowing we tested positive for an allergy but not taking it seriously until it was double confirmed, in the meantime just taking Benadryl twice a day and “getting used to” the hives and burning eyes and dizziness and runny noses. But the point is it wasn’t going away. No matter how much we forced, it couldn’t change the actual consequences. Same with the green beans, and the cheese, and the bean pasta. No matter how many attempts we made, we kept puking, because the nausea and stomach distress was so bad. We tried so hard, we really did. At what point is it “right” to “accept” the “fact” that maybe we “can’t” eat those foods? Right now we’re “not allowed to” even suggest such a thought. It’s “wrong.” It’s “evil” and “bad” and “disobedient.” You were told to eat that food, so you eat it, no matter how you feel, and one day you won’t feel anything anymore. Isn’t that “how it works”?
I’m typing all this out and it is just… exactly parallel to sexual abuse. No one is surprised.
It must be translating as this. We have no working memory of the abuse so our psyche must be funneling it into the food, because they’re practically the same thing in the end.

We’re not getting very far with most of our therapists with this. We’re seeing four of them right now, plus a psychiatrist and a case manager. Of them all, only one therapist is making real progress and thank God for her-- literally, I think the only reason why we’re getting somewhere there is because she is Christian and makes that an ACTIVE and PROMINENT part of our treatment, which is AMAZING and makes the whole process make so much more sense. But she and we are focusing on childhood trauma, which is hugely significant and deeply disturbing to be honest… you don’t realize how many bad seeds were planted back then, until you start tracing the rotten roots.
But… when will we ever get to discuss and heal from adult trauma? Will we have to one day actually, finally, honestly discuss the Julie Days with a therapist? How?

Right now, we’re haunted by food. That’s blinding us to everything else. The sense of shame and sin is devastating. We cannot escape it. It’s every waking moment. We’re haunted and hungry and horrified and hateful, which is an awful way to live, but honestly “we” despise “ourself” so much right now for this eating disorder, we wish we could just turn it off.
But we’re so hungry.
THAT’S the bizarre obstacle here. Something-- someone for sure-- in our psyche is resisting healing, in a sense refusing to “give up” bingeing because she’s so scared that if she does, she will starve to death. WHY. We’re getting 1400 calories a day now! We’re eating food, even if we don’t want to; we’re being obedient and accountable to the authorities that told us to eat! We’re a “good girl” in that sense, aren’t we? So why are we so miserable? Why do we still feel like no matter what we’re eating, we’re never satisfied? We’re always hollow and empty and want to cry. Even with binges, we hate them-- the only thing “enjoyable” about them is the ridiculously ritualistic and systematic and methodical hours that they involve, all the cooking and sorting and picking and ordering and cleaning. What is this doing for our mind that we “need”? What need is this trying to meet, however disastrously and misguidedly?

Another obstacle to healing is a recent and massive spike in daily anxiety and panic attacks. We weren’t like this back in July, I don’t think. Were we? I don’t know.
Back when Anxiety herself first appeared in June, at long last, I remember we were already promising ourself to “never binge again” after certain dates. We genuinely tried so hard to just cold-turkey quit, over and over and over. But all the travel, all the doctors, the consistent lack of sleep, the recurring financial crises, it just… some nights we would just be so exhausted and hungry and overstressed that we would just give up and give in. 7pm breakfast means you don’t even try to keep it down, so you might as well eat ten bags of broccoli so your body is tricked into thinking it ate something worthwhile. You get the idea.

It’s been so hard to “obey” the “rules” about food too. Someone started arbitrarily breaking them and now we can’t seem to stop again. They got a taste of the forbidden fruit and promptly became addicted, even it it tasted disgusting, even if they didn’t actually want it-- but they “HAD to want it”; they “HAD to try it again” for whatever reason.
I don’t understand it. What are they trying to prove? What answers are they trying to get? What end goal are they pursuing here? What is their actual motivation? Why can’t they just quit eating the foods we aren’t allowed to eat? Why are they so scared to let go again? What is the fear underlying all of this?

There’s so much music we can’t listen to anymore because music is always, always powerfully tied to “life eras”, however brief. We get flashbacks to them immediately and it can be terrifying. So much of this year’s music is tied to small periods of eating disorder wars, certain “food cycles” even if they only lasted for a few days, and even specific days that were psychologically harrowing enough to latch onto whatever music we had heard that day.
We haven’t listened to any new music in weeks, really. I think it’s a desperate coping mechanism. We’re trying so hard to escape from this hell; it’s better if there isn’t any future soundtrack tied to it. That way it won’t be remembered.

Right now, after weeks of grueling battles, the addiction has been pared down to the weirdly specific combination of beans+rice+oats+carrots, and chocolate chip granola bars. It’s so weird. But that’s it. Everything else is lingering around the edges, but the more rules we put up around them, and/or the more fear is tied to them, the easier it is to resist them.
Still. Chocolate is the oldest forbidden food. It’s a “sex food,” an abuse food, with real trauma tied to it. Granola is a “sworn off” food for penitential reasons. So why are “chocolate granola bars” allowed right now? ARE they? Or is someone just spitting hairs, like they do with everything else that’s edible?
In any case, I pray this ends soon. Chocolate is still so frightening it’s making me shake just thinking about it now. Maybe it’s the fact that granola bars have such tiny bits of chocolate in them that it “doesn’t register” as chocolate. But WHY are we “wanting” to eat them anyway? Granola bars themselves are a MASSIVE trauma food! You remember the bathroom events! What the heck are we trying to prove here? How did this even start? I hope it ends soon. It inevitably will, we just need the data and the consequences solid. Once its emptiness is tangible, it’ll stop.

Why are we so “hungry.”
If we just quit this all at once, if we stopped eating oats and beans and rice, why do “we” “fear” that it would “make us miserable”? That’s a blatant untruth. We’re MUCH happier when we’re NOT bingeing and purging. But… there is a fear of some sort of “loss.” So what is being mistranslated? What are we actually afraid of losing?
Additionally, why do we feel like we “HAVE to binge” on stress days? Why can’t we just fast? We WANT to, God knows-- so why won’t we? What is this fear that keeps coming up, this fear of not eating, even though we still really and consciously “hate” eating on any given day?

That’s the root of it, I think. If I had to point my finger at something that really felt like a siren going off, that would be it. We HATE eating. There is actual HATRED towards food. And yet, simultaneously, we are so hungry. We “want” to eat our carrots and hempseed and broccoli. But it’s unfulfilling and empty and frustrating and leaves us anxious and angry and wanting to cry and throw up.
What do we actually “want”? If we hate food, and we hate eating, then what are we actually looking for in our compulsive frightened “I have to eat” panic-- especially since we still want to starve?
The ambivalence is driving us insane. We have no clear answers yet.
Don’t forget all of this is still somehow tied to abuse and violation. We’re going to have to face that knot at
some point. Until we start to untangle that, we probably won’t get anywhere on the surface.

All the ICC lectures lately have been indispensable. They are literally rewiring our brain and our heart. Make sure you remember and study and pray about and reflect upon everything they’ve taught us.
But… don’t get crushed under the weight of guilt they deliver, either. Guilt is a sign that your conscience is working. Don’t shut it off. But don’t despair, either. God is walking you through these steps. You NEED to know WHERE and HOW you’re going wrong before you can fix it, and we COULDN’T know this spiritual side of it on our own, only through this revelation. So treasure it, take it seriously, and act on it with God’s grace. But… realistically we can’t expect to “fix this” overnight, or in one shot. We’re most likely going to struggle still. This is spiritual warfare after all. But do not despair. Don’t give up. Don’t try to pretend this is easy, or that we truly understand, or anything else the thriskefoni like to do. We have to be sober and realistic about this. No sugarcoating, no whitewashing. This is indeed hell we’re stuck in. But Christ keeps reaching down to us and dragging us out every time we fall back into this bloody open grave. Don’t give up. Keep reaching up to Him.
He doesn’t hate you because sometimes you think this grave is your doom. Sometimes we think this is all there is and we don’t fight very well at all. Sometimes we get comfortable and we settle in a little. But Christ never hates you. He never gives up on you. Don’t give up on Him. He’s not trying to crush you with this knowledge, He’s giving you sharp graces that will strengthen you to fight better. Trust Him. You’ve been praying for this.
What I’m trying to say is… we’ve been convicted so powerfully it feels like we’ve been stabbed in the chest. We’re afraid we’re going to die, forever, if we cannot or do not put that knowledge into practice immediately and perfectly. Is that pride? The fear is intense. I don’t want to choose hell. I’m so afraid of damnation because I’m too damn weak to give up eating rice and beans on Tuesday nights. Isn’t that asinine? What the heck is actually going on here?
Christ, please, don’t let me go to hell because I’m currently not strong enough to really, definitively say “no” to these hungry compulsions.

It’s terrifying, to KNOW that I’ve “already decided” to binge on Tuesday night. I don’t want to, but I “want to.” There’s a “have to” in there somewhere, concerning the “practice eating” to “get used to” certain foods and meals that we “have to” eat. Et cetera. Vomiting is inevitable at some point, so might as well force it now and get it over with-- it’s better to control its occasion than to be blindsided by it. Isn’t that sad?
There’s so much fear. It’s enough to make you want to give up on living. It feels like there’s no escape.
But that’s not God’s Spirit. Where is our fortitude? Or rather, what battle do we ACTUALLY need to fight here? What would fortitude look like in practice here? What would REAL justice be in this situation? What is ACTUALLY wise? How can we be prudent in TRUTH?

God I’m exhausted, please forgive me, I want to sleep. Tomorrow is church. I’m so tired. I do want to worship. Help us to do that, no matter what. Don’t ever lose us.
The Eucharist is the key to everything, somehow. Please don’t send us to hell. Help us understand, truly. Help us to not be afraid. Heal us somehow. Help us to let You heal us. Please, don’t give up on us. Get us to heaven one day, no matter what. But please, please don’t kill us in the meantime. Don’t let us end up dead because of our stupidity. Please help us. Open our eyes. Give us the grace to WANT to act healthily. Please. Restore our capacity for joy. I don’t know what I’m trying to ask but You do. Deep down somewhere we feel so dead that it’s hard to even want to be healthy, even though we do, because being healthy means having no broken coping mechanisms which means facing whatever they’re trying to numb and I don’t think we can handle facing that gravestone reality. Heal THAT, Lord, please. There are so many layers here. Still, You can fix it all. I know You can. Please do so, moment by moment, in Your good time, in Your real love. Don’t let us die in our weakness and sins. Please heal us for good, for real, gently but permanently. Please don’t hurt us. Please help us. Help us to love You more completely, and help us to not be afraid of Your love. Amen.

I’ve got to sleep. Thank You God for helping us to have at least typed something tonight. We’ll do more tomorrow hopefully. Until then, please bless and forgive and protect and heal us. May we be transformed day by day into Your likeness. May we be remade new in Your image, and may we never sin again. Amen. Good night.

 

I have to be in bed within 20 minutes but I need to quickly type something about this first.

mass today
out of nowhere, right before the consecration, suddenly I get dragged into "heartspace" and I'm at calvary hill and infinitii is there.
ze was looking down at hir wrists, and ze was carrying the bloody wounds that christ had on the cross. I immediately winced, was this blasphemous? but infi said, shaking with pain and staring at the nailmarks, "your heart is nailed to the cross. I am your heart. so that is where I will be."

and

for the consecration infi actually reached out and pushed me to look at it. like actually grabbed my head and made me look. made me really look. hir voice urging me to do so was so fervent, hushed and commanding all at once, so much awe evident in hir tone.
"that's his heart," I remember infi saying, almost dizzy with the gravity of it. "realize what he is doing. that is his heart. and he is giving you his heart to eat."
I cannot remember the exact words. but infinitii was emphasizing that it wasn't a bloody organ. it was jesus himself, alive and present AS his own heart, just like infi was.
and the concept of food. I swear only infi can talk about that without any trauma or disgust response. ze focused on that too, how christ giving his heart as food was staggering. he was giving me life with his life, without dying. somehow, coming from hir, it meant so much more than reading that on paper. infi says things with this passion I cannot explain.

hir wings were still stained glass.
I couldn't see hir eyes. ze was turned away from me this entire time, in one way or another.
but I felt hir. I felt hir soul, and I felt my own. I felt alive.
and yet. it's like waking up from a dream.
yes it was real. yes ze is real. but ze is still dead. ze is still missing.
and yet what is death to a christian?

we're not even halfway through lent yet and I am struggling with it lately. this past WEEK has given me FOUR significant yet brief personal "traumas" and I'm reeling:
dehydration, jade, paul, and christina
not only that, but my lenten practices have become suffocating? I confessed this to father and it also showed up in his homily. that isn't uncommon. the holy spirit likes to do that and I appreciate it profoundly. it rings in my ears for weeks
but that's the point. I'm "doing" so much for lent that I'm NOT doing what I want to, in the end. I want to grow closer to Jesus. I want to KNOW him. and what am I doing? I'm obsessing over "doing the dailies" on all the prayer apps and it's getting so exhausting that it's becoming background noise.
fasting is tricky. I do need to continue to fight the body compulsions of "always adding a bit more" for some reason. it's an ed-treatment relic but it's harmful. still, we're not giving up.
we keep having slipups and off-days for the internet fasting. we got distracted on youtube today (jordan peterson and jacob collier as usual) because our brain was just so wrecked over christina that we basically "gave in" to distraction? and we'll have to confess that. just like last night we had to put on our headphones and listen to music on purpose, because mom's radio gave us a toxic earworm and we had to kill it.
but… it's the letter of the law.
we keep forgetting the POINT of fasting, not realizing the scandalous truth that, sometimes, NOT "fasting" on something can achieve that true point even better than just cutting its throat and burning it to ashes. that's our problem too. deep down we still have a tendency to violence, to death. and there's a very fine line there for a catholic. self-mortification is not a synonym for suicide. self-denial is not a form of self-harm. and yet we still don't have any clear demarcation of definition there, not yet.

still. at least we're aware it's a problem.
but we wouldn't be if we weren't typing here.

that's my last point for tonight.
we need to get back to journaling.

last night I stayed up until 2am, obsessing over allergies and nutritional facts and just getting so upset that I decided to just go back and check our UPMC entries to find and list what we DID eat, MANY times, and DIDN'T DIE, in the hopes that it would douse the allergy panic.
…I forgot just how much system love there was in those entries.
I nearly wept. God, please, I miss them all so much.
isn't that funny? they're all around! I see at least five foni per day, absolute minimum.
but… we aren't spending personal time together. we're not sharing deep experiences. everything is just survival. just the daily grind. but there's still so much love.
and I need that like breathing.

last night, killing that earworm, our samsung music shuffle unexpectedly gave us the "dreams dreams broken soul remix" we wrote around 2008. I haven't heard that in like five years at the very least.
and… genesis was singing it, upstairs. and I forgot how much I love him.
I forgot how deep he is. how broken he actually is. how much I need that in him, as much as I need him. how that brokenness is essential for love and I need that in myself too.
(later laurie commented on this too, to genesis directly. said something about him being a jester, one could forget that he had this other side to him. genesis said actually, you need both to be a jester at all. that's where it comes from. laurie said he's half-and-half and somehow this turned into a coffee joke, I only remember this because genesis materialized one of his trademark "starbucks sugarbomb" drinks to deadpan sip on as he talked to her, then after a moment of silence he just said "really it's just half-and-half")

but I digress
somewhat.

today had hope in it, despite the terrible things.
I'm exhausted and want to sleep for three solid days but tomorrow is the busiest day of our week and I'm already cutting it short on sleep

oh dude don’t forget
the phantomile visions on the couch yesterday morning, when we were so tired and our alarm went off and we slept through it
ghadius weeping almost hysterical, his "wheel of woe" self becoming an insane horror, a triple hydra of bird skulls twisted like something caught in a gear, his mind breaking along with his coherent form
something with the nahatomb egg and lephise being corrupted, SHE became the ultimate nightmare, feeling of utter doom
and klonoa, feeling so much like jewel, his eyes hard but full of tears, determined to do everything in his power to make this right, to save the dreams, to save everyone.

I'm so very tired.
maybe we'll sleep in on monday. who knows.
we're at that point of such absolute mental exhaustion that we're starting to fantasize about the hospital again. that is a huge red flag.
we need to recharge. but ironically the only thing that actually does recharge what needs to be recharged… is typing. just like this.
the spectrum is what sparks us to life again.
that's not saying anything negative about our faith. rather it does the opposite. without the spectrum, our faith is hollow and dry and repetitive. but as a system, it's full of color.

no time or brainpower to type any more tonight
but I'm glad I was able to write something. like an actual half-entry. we'll build on this later.

last thing. I said that already, haha. but that's a good segue. because father mike says things like that.
that's what we've been doing for the past 62 days. we have been absolutely powering through the bible in a year AND catechism in a year. simultaneously. plus youversion commentary notes. it takes us about 3 hours a day. and THEN we watch either word on fire or saint paul center videos for another 3 hours. all this during meals because we have to eat super slow.
but let me tell you kids. in these past two months, we have learned MORE THAN OUR ENTIRE LIFETIME SO FAR.
it's amazing. THIS is giving us LIFE. yeah we need spectrum battery charging but dude THIS is the electricity itself. I would pick this over everything. it gives me ACTUAL JOY. I actually LOOK FORWARD TO IT. it's the highlight of my day. I'm LEARNING ABOUT GOD AND THE FAITH FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE and it is CHANGING EVERYTHING COMPLETELY FOR THE BETTER.

so. that's how I want to end this little entry.
there haven't been updates because God has laserfocused this year on SPIRITUAL EDUCATION, and that is going to be the foundation for the REST OF OUR ENTIRE LIFE. once we have this, we CAN be a truly Christ-centered System, AND the Spheres can finally be the same. this is the missing piece. I actually typed "peace" first. that's true too.
it's all God. it's all Jesus. I'm finally learning what that means. day by day. the fears are abating as understanding increases. which is why we are putting so much bleeding effort into this. it MUST "take up our entire life" right now, because without it, we have no life. this is what was always missing. the knowledge of God. the ability TO have a relationship with Him. et cetera. you cannot love who you don't know. and that's what we're finally becoming able to do. thank God. thank God at last.

eight minutes until bedtime, tops, and we still have to read today's eucharistic consecration entry so we gotta run

God bless you kids

we'll see you again soon enough.

-2352 030224

When it snows, I'm home.
It has nothing to do with the landscape. It's the weather itself.
Something about snow, in and of itself, IS "home" for me.
When I see it falling, gathering on the ground, something in my heart just settles in and lights up. The sense of homecoming, of belonging, of having made it home, is so profound and powerful it actually moves me to tears. It feels like I can rest now.

i'm having one of those evenings.

It's been a weird day.
I was woken up by a sudden phone call from my mom at 8:30, after barely 6 hours of hellish sleep and near-hacks, in which she told me that my sis/bro had finally gotten a job, and she had their work clothes and some extra food in her car, but she was at work and they started their job at noon and the only way to get the stuff delivered was for me to drive up and do it. i said absolutely, jumped out of bed, threw on an outfit and got on the road.
i was barely conscious, really. not very safe to drive! but i was determined. mom packed up the car, i delivered them to my sibling (they're still wearing the exact same outfit they were wearing over two months ago. no shoes. clothes torn. my heart kinda broke) along with some extra toiletries, meds and food that i packed, and wished them the absolute best. their affect was still totally flat. i wonder if they hate "me." technically i broke the restraining order by not only going there but talking to them, but honestly i don't care they're family and they needed help. the court can kiss our collective ass if they think we're going to forego compassion because of a piece of paper. it has its purpose but this isn't it.

anyhow. mum told us there was a "library sale" going on at the mall down the street, and gave us ten entire dollars for it?? so when we drove away from our sibling's apartment, of course i called genesis over, and asked "do you want to go to the mall--" to which i got a "YES" before i finished the sentence, haha. honestly that's why i asked; we used to just chill together like that all the time when we were younger. so even though i was tired and hungry i wasn't going to pass that up.
the first thing i saw was the first 3 deltora quest books. those had been definitive for my sibling and i when we were in late elementary school; we had so many injokes around them, and the series lore got into our personal world more than a little. honestly i considered buying them but thought, no, they also have dvds and i'd rather grab those. (tomorrow i should get paid from ssi; if i have some cash left after getting groceries i'll totally swing by and grab the books though. i think we have $5 and $8 up the house?) so gen and i started looking. of course i'm talking out loud to him this whole time, but he keeps giving me this stern look and saying "jewel, you're dissociating." which i really was. sleep deprivation and post-purge starvation plus sudden running around in public places equals my brain is not working at all. again, thank God for Genesis. so he kept calling me out and bringing me back centered, as much as he could. it meant so much. honestly dude i know i was a mess but thank you, i love you, honestly i'd be so lost without you keeping me constant company in social settings since 2005. you're one of the biggest blessings in my entire life and i treasure every moment with you. even dissociated ones as i peruse the used dvd section in the middle of a mall, haha.
but! we found our THREE most definitive childhood films-- ferngully, we're back, and the secret of NIMH. i bought the first two because i actually have the third on DVD thanks to goodwill, but i was not passing up the opportunity to FINALLY watch those other two beloved movies again. i did see several other movies i considered buying-- notably inception and the shape of water-- but those were so important to headspace that if we did buy them, they would have to be special editions. not two-dollar secondhand markered-up copies, as oddly sweet as owning such a thing is. however! we found a SUPER RETRO care bears book-- the same kind they have at the daycare at the oblates! i immediately grabbed it, haha. haven't read it yet but i plan to tomorrow. i love the original care bears; i'm not a fan of the reboots (the more infected they get by pop culture the more they seem to lose the "heart" that drew me to them initially) but the 80s-90s stuff is great.
last problem: i kept losing things. i had to run back out to the parking lot because i actually dropped my money in the doorjamb, and kept misplacing my keys in my pockets. sleep deprivation is wild.
oh that reminds me. we parked beneath the boscovs and took the escalator up because there are so many childhood-vibe memories there, it was nice to just pass through it. but the instant we got off the escalator there was a mannequin with this silver-sequin dress? and genesis randomly comments "i'd wear that." and asked if i was gonna buy it for him. i asked if he was joking and he said of course, but still, he'd wear it. lord knows where he comes up with these things. but if i do go back to buy those books, i'm gonna take a photo of it and draw him in it, there you go.
i would try it on for the heck of it, but... body dysphoria is literal hell. and it's been so bad today. hence my current devastating depression. but we'll get to that.
we talk too much. we babble a lot in public as we were taught to by BOTH our mother and grandmother growing up, which we've mentioned before. we were raised to "chat with the camera" that was always pointed at us, or to "entertain" our parental figures and siblings, et cetera. but we were expected to talk. it's exhausting. but i can't turn it off cold; thankfully i can reroute it and just talk to genesis or xenophon or whoever else wants to ghost with me that day or in that place. i thank God for ghosters too; when i'm in "social mode" it often locks me out of headspace which is EXISTENTIALLY TERRIFYING so having someone show up to walk and talk beside me is literally such a relief i could cry. it means so much to me.
it's ALSO the only reason i'm surviving in this apartment now, i'm tempted to say no thanks to umpc, but no, that's too cruel language. i'm just... bitter today. i have to admit it. again, "we'll get to that." gotta write down basic daily events first because i keep slacking off in journaling because of depression and i need to just power through it right now.

so. we got two dvds and a book, got back in the car, and left. while i was at the red light exiting the parking lot, i remember just feeling trapped in entertainer/social mode and being so, so wrecked by it. i was trying to listen to chaos 0's spotify playlist and i couldn't BECAUSE "social mode" makes me incapable of blueshift emotions and when i try to feel them it causes self-loathing. i become too aware of how incompatible my "social self" IS with deeper feelings, and it just... makes me hate myself. it's toxic, this public persona garbage. literally lethal.
i don't remember how i got through it. i don't even remember driving. i know i did keep some music on, and i was inevitably talking to genesis, but... no memories. that's sadly not surprising.

on the way home, i decided to stop at walmart to pick up a box of cereal with the extra $5 we had saved from mom, because that's a staple food and we had no other money. again, no memory of being in the store, but genesis got us in and out quickly.
then we went to redners because we decided that we were going to return the pasta we bought immediately post-inpatient, as it was an "obligation food" and we were not going to eat it by choice; plus, not only does it take too long to prepare, but we have "trauma" from both cooking accidents AND old binges with pasta and we really don't need panic attacks every time we see the boxes in the cupboard. lastly they're too hard to properly portion and measure anyway, and they don't fit our dietplan without having to replan everything. so back to the shelves they went, which gave us like $7.50 in foodstamps back, thank God, so we immediately bought two powerade (for emergencies) and a bag of carrots, which was about $4.50? then we ran over to aldi, grabbed a pack of raisins for spinny (redners wanted a whole extra dollar for the exact same amount, geez) and a single avocado and got out of there within like two minutes.
our only problem? talking to the cashier. she asked us "how we were doing" and we, like the boundary-less idiot we are, replied that we were exhausted but happy since we'd been "running errands for the family/ies since 8:30 this morning" and mentioned our sibling getting a job and giving them stuff. almost offhandedly. just being honest. but it felt so wrong to say, like we were "boasting," and that only hit me AFTER "we" said it. that made us genuinely miserable. "well, God's not going to bless you for that now, because you told someone about it! good job, you arrogant asshole." and that just... made us feel like, what's the point then? if we keep publicizing the good we do? if people keep noticing it and thanking us and saying "you're such a nice/ kind/ good person?" does all that equal damnation and shame in God's eyes? i don't ask for it, i don't want it, but yeah it is nice because it makes me feel like gee, maybe I'm NOT the scum of the earth after all; maybe i'm NOT a hideous monster that ruins everything it touches; maybe I'm NOT pure irredeemable evil after all? but even feeling grateful for the sweet comments we get makes us feel filthy and ugly and wrong because you're "delighting in the praise of MEN instead of GOD." ...but "we are but unprofitable servants; we have done only what we were expected to do." which is true. but... even if i don't want to be thanked, i still... selfishly want to feel like i did do something good? and right? which is junk. "virtue is only virtue in extremis." i need to learn to keep my mouth shut.
when i buy food for the family, i keep the receipts a secret. i sneak the food into the house. i don't tell them it's from me. i hate when people find out. i like to secretly buy people gifts and leave them on desks and slip them under doors and i don't want to be noticed or thanked; i just want them to be happy and to feel loved and cared for. it's not about me. if you do make it about me i will probably try to eviscerate myself because NOW the "good deed" has become pride and that's worthy of annihilation, good job you idiot, you're "only doing this for attention" etc.

self-loathing is off the charts today.

got home around noon. i think? late. too late.
head was a blur. laurie and xenophon had to keep me on track just to stay conscious enough to make breakfast. i remember vacuuming first and scalpel was talking with knife about something and lynne is still sticking around, and of course julie-- it's so good to have her part of the daily crew and not hiding all the time like she used to-- but... i couldn't pull myself together.
breakfast was at like 1:05. we didn't get done until almost 2 because i kept trying to do the bible study at the same time and wasn't accomplishing either. so i set it aside and just focused on eating mindfully, or as much as i could. that way we wouldn't trigger that tragic trauma response of "i don't remember eating, and if i don't remember something it means i dissociated, and dissociation usually means trauma, so we probably experienced trauma with the food, which means it NEEDS TO GET OUT" and then binge/purge cycles happen. it's so sad and bizarre how trauma triggers cause binges first out of a feeling of helpless devastation. like, "i'm already ruined and violated; i might as well just perpetuate it"??? or something? it's a feeling of forced addiction and the nousfoni that act on it are TERRIFIED and have told us multiple times that they WANT IT TO STOP but they "can't." they feel trapped. and that's heartbreaking. so we're trying so hard to help them now, and to talk to them.

...laurie's function-warping disaster is causing some really weird side effects when she tries to stop them. since she doesn't want to go back to her ultraviolent walls-up-everywhere state of mind, like she was when she was created, she hesitates to use force lately? it's so strange. but she'll try to talk them out of it, and reason with them, but she can't force them to stop and when they hysterically insist on "please let me just finish this" or "just a few more minutes" not out of any genuine want but out of that panicked obsessive ritualistic loop, she... doesn't fight them. she goes almost on standby and i THINK that's being caused BY her function cracking BUT what happens is that, instead, she feels what they're feeling. i have NO IDEA WHY. genesis and i later sadly surmised that it might be because I'M not doing MY job, as the "heart" of the System, and so Laurie is once again taking on all the "empty jobs" herself in her absolute driving determination to be everything for everyone, to be THE system protector, in an almost universal sense. 
but... geez it is unreal to see. maybe it's her purple color working; xenophon is honestly the same, and SO IS MARKUS to be honest with you. purples have this strange ability to reach people, to understand when others don't. xenophon can argue with the e.d. nousfoni and they will LISTEN to her. they can FEEL THINGS when they talk to her. that is UNHEARD OF. in all our years of fighting this war, i think the closest we ever got to that was with zucche in NC? when chaos 0 was fighting with her over that, too. but his function in the system IS emotional sincerity so obviously his involvement could get even an e.d. nousfoni to reconsider their actions, even momentarily. but xenophon somehow takes it further, differently? she can DIALOGUE with them. she gets so sad and she actually cries and shouts but she's just hurt, and the eating voices hurt WITH her? whereas Laurie is doing that in reverse now? it's fascinating as much as it is worrisome. i don't want laurie losing herself in this. there are some things-- many things, actually-- that SHE needs to be protected from, and... she hasn't been doing that. she's pushing herself too hard and taking on roles that she CANNOT hold without shattering, so the rest of us NEED to get our butts back to work so that things CAN run the way they're meant to.
...man. how many years has it been since the crash-reset? five? and we're only NOW starting to "turn the power back on?" we're only now starting to resurrect and communicate and LIVE? geez. honestly i don't even remember the past five years offhand. like at all.
hence all the archiving i'm dedicated to doing lately. still, we haven't touched that stuff yet. but we will.

i'm getting a legit headache. and i'm dizzy. really need to sleep. why is our body hungry again we ate a 700k dinner at 730, we should not be this hungry three hours later.
well geez, i think to myself, maybe if you didn't bike for two solid hours you wouldn't be.
but. like i said earlier. dysmorphia.

after breakfast i don't remember what we did. around 3pm i did get on the bike. i was going to watch the "steamboy" movie our mom got us for christmas like ten years ago but we never watched, but i felt guilty about "not watching something religious" so i found a goodwill dvd i bought of "jacob and joseph" that was like exactly 92 minutes long? which is perfect workout time. so i put it on.
...i have not had that much trauma directly triggered in a LONG TIME.
i was legitimately disturbed. i did NOT expect that from a bible story movie. there was so much jarring stuff-- so much genuinely frightening behavior, mostly from the WOMEN, that i legit stopped biking a few times because i wanted to throw up. i was THAT shaken.
i don't want to talk about it, at all. i really don't. i felt sick. the way people behaved, and spoke about each other, and treated each other... i kept trying to find the silver lining. "God is clearly showing us WHY He doesn't want people to do such things." well boy howdy he sure is, seeing that stuff so starkly presented made me want to upchuck my bloody intestines. honestly i threw the dvd in a donation bag as soon as it ended. i was shaking. what the heck. at least there were good points in there, legit shows of virtue and forgiveness and kindness, despite all the awful behavior. i guess that's human life. God knows my life is one hellishly ugly mess, too.

...the bike logged exactly 110 minutes by the time i quit. adding in all the running around the mall i did earlier-- yes, actual running, to and from the car; i rarely walk-- that's about 2 solid hours of exercise. xenophon insisted i eat dinner immediately, so we got it ready and ate around 730, like i said. we immediately did the dishes and turned out the lights, and i realized that IF i front and LEGIT DISSOCIATE while I'M there, the binge voices CAN'T SHOW UP because we're "NOT IN THE BODY." so that's a HUGE new development, thank God.
i made a shopping list for tomorrow (we're out of meds mostly), took out the garbage, said the wall-prayers by choice (haven't done so since before the hospitalization; we were using them as "punishment" almost at that time so it felt wrong to "force" them), and then went onto the other laptop for a while with the intention of backing up our phone files.
...bad idea.
yes, i did have to back up the data. but i made the HUGE mistake of listening to a file i had recorded of myself singing in church? and i was so unbearably ashamed of my voice. not only that, but the fact that i HAD recorded it just screamed "proud-ass arrogant bitch" and i deleted it and went into a depressive spiral.
then i made an even bigger mistake. i looked through our saved photos.
there... there were photos of tbas. with that face that scared us. immediate terror trigger. god why were we so afraid of them so often? we have like TWO memories of such sweet expressions they gave us on two VERY specific incidents and we loved who they were in those moments BUT in so many other moments they legitimately scared us so much. there is SO MUCH CONFLICT there. we're... we still feel so used and violated and broken and horrified by what we apparently let them do to us. so much acting and dissociating and forced forgetting and self-abuse on our part. i know they started picking up on it the closer we got to bailing. but... it went on for so bloody long. the suicide attempts were the worst. we'd never felt so hopeless in our whole entire life. i STILL don't know how we got that good of a poker face, with all the memories i have literally feeling JAILED in our own head, like looking out from barred windows 20 feet away, at a body that is doing and saying things WE DON'T WANT, and us feeling such pain and RAGE and even hatred, but never showing it??? like how many times they would say something to us and we would smile but inside we were SCREAMING AND SOBBING and how did we never express that???? no wonder the eating disorder got so bad. it was our only way of expressing and acknowledging the HELPLESS FEAR and SELF-VIOLENCE we were constantly feeling.
it's a mess. not going to think about that.
oh. but there was a photo of us, too. recent. one we hadn't seen before. it was when we bought that purple cotton button-up from goodwill and cut half of it off so it was a "crop top"? whatever you'd call that. but we were GORGEOUSLY THIN. and yes i use that emphatic language because i legit CRIED. our body was PERFECT. we were thin and muscular and small and god i never realized just HOW beautiful it looked. it sounds horrible to say that. but honestly now, well we put on 30 pounds and we are so bloated and fat, we're not muscular anymore and we can't wear anything revealing like that anymore because it would look lecherous. it's gross and disgusting. it's enough to drive me to despair. it does, sometimes.
isn't that stupid? to value the appearance of this body so much? but i'm being honest. part of me says "you idolized it too much, you wanted to be perfect and thin and beautiful, and you were, but God TOOK THAT FROM YOU so you would be humiliated and ground into the dirt, now no one will see beauty in you, now you look like a whore, now you don't deserve love because you're misshapen and WRONG." like honestly a BIG part of our brain back then would see our thin body and think, "i'm worthy of love now. i'm capable of love now." whereas this fatass body we have now is INCAPABLE of love and respect, and we feel so dirty and whorish and gross, i look in the mirror and i weep. what happened??? where the HECK did all this fatphobia come from??? is that all because of the abuse? of the women with "womenly bodies" god i want to SCREAM AND SOB AND KILL EVERYTHING, JUST TO MAKE IT STOP,
it's not worth it. it's not worth it at all.
except looking that perfect meant being 90 freaking pounds and we COULDN'T SURVIVE LIKE THAT. laurie and chaos 0 both keep reminding me that "gaining this weight saved our ass" and i have to admit yeah it did, we're STILL UNDERWEIGHT even now, even if this body looks unbearably disgusting.
but i'm working out, now. i'm gonna get muscular and i'll be STRONG and i can HELP PEOPLE and PROTECT PEOPLE and i can FIGHT if i need to. i couldn't before. i became so shamefully weak and cowardly and selfish. not anymore. look at this morning. i can BURN again, like this. oh yes i wanted to, being thin, but it just made me ice. i was too tired and cold and depressed. starving our body to death out of fear, out of this desperate desire to be clean and pure and untouched. and physically we looked it. we honestly did. but... our body was still dying.
now, we're alive. now, the war has started again. now, we're fighting hacks and overrides and all sorts of nightmarish things. daily life is a struggle. but at least we're all together again and i would rather bleed in the arms of someone i love inside then to be alone and pretty and just drifting through "life" outside. in the end, if that body is what i had to sacrifice in order to see my daughter again, and to dream of chaos 0 again, and to spend days with genesis again, and to find everyone who was lost again... well, to be honest, as insane and terrifying as it sounds to say this, i'd go through another 10 weeks of hospitals for their sake. in the end that's what it boils down to.
...in the end, i need to stop thinking that this body is me. it's not. yeah i try to make it match but it can't and it won't. it's deeply disturbing and it drives me to tears but i need to accept it. skin and bones and blood will change even if my soul doesn't. and how the body looks and feels doesn't define me as a person, ESPECIALLY not morally. it's so hard to accept, weirdly. there are too many direct ties between the body and trauma and sheer evil. too much agony tied to looking and feeling certain ways. but... inside, the true me, isn't defined by it. i've been trying to tell "myself" that since i first realized the body was changing, around 2003. i remember how scared we were back then. that hasn't changed, for the most part. still. gotta accept it sometime. i want to. it's just terrifying.
...i honestly do feel incapable of goodness, when i look and feel like this.
oh geez and it was WORSE seeing some old hospital & church photos of how we looked with LONG HAIR post-NC. now THAT was disturbing. we looked like a total stranger. it shook me to the core. who the heck WERE we??? who WAS that, living like that for so long??? we have no clue. seeing that weird ugly face... it always looked so hollow. THAT was the scariest part. every single photo of us with that hair looked fake. like there was no person behind those eyes. i wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't. we didn't have an inner life during that time, after all, so who the heck were we, really?
...but yeah. it wrecked me. i was trying to find calming pictures but kept hitting landmines in the process. i was trying to show xenophon some of the pictures i had saved of chaos 0-- her "other dad"-- but even looking at him made me feel worthless and hideous and detestable. like "who in the world am i to care about him? as ugly and gross as i am? you think you're capable of love? you think anyone would WANT to love you? you fool. you stupid whore. no one loves you, and you're an idiot for "feeling" like you do. it's laughable. it's a joke. if anyone found out that YOU, you bland-ass average joe, you transgender freak, you screwed-up prostitute reject, "loved" him, you'd be mocked and jeered out of the country. you should be ashamed of yourself, you pig. misshapen freaks and faggots like you don't get to love. you deserve to be crushed by the weight of your arrogant sins. stop pretending you're in a relationship. he doesn't want you. he never could. NO one could. you're too loathsome. with all the appalling sins in your past, God Himself probably doesn't want you, either! you're worth nothing but garbage. you'd be better off dead, you grotesque excuse for a human being."
...is literally what my thoughts turned into.

it keeps happening. the self-hatred is unbearable. i don't know what to do about it.


one extremely important note.
i told xennie and laurie and chaos to leave me alone, because i was so ashamed and humiliated from looking at pictures of "myself" and the people i "loved"-- and seeing this unpassable chasm between us, a rift caused by my very existence-- that the very awareness of THEM looking at me made me want to either attack them or kill myself, both actions triggered by the same unbearable self-loathing and disgust and shame.
but. i said a small, desperate prayer, "please if there's someone who can sit with me and keep me safe, someone untouched by all that"-- i'm not even sure what i asked for. i just wanted someone with me who wouldn't set off this downward spiral even further.
...
and then suddenly, waldorf was sitting on the edge of my bed.
for a second i couldn't even speak. she looked just like she did in 2002. all glowy-blue and-- thank GOD-- untouched by her previous mangled stint in headspace, too, where her function became so corrupt that she lost herself.
but no, there she was, with that old vibe that TRULY was her, that "scary" edge that she NEEDS, feeling like the past i wanted to return to so badly i could sob.
but i did feel safe with her. somehow. maybe it was because i knew SHE had known be BEFORE all this horror happened. before all the trauma. before our body became our personal circle of hell.
she disappeared quickly. i don't think anyone else in headspace knows. i don't want them to know. right now i'm in so much emotional pain that i think if people started to "drag waldorf into this" i'd explode. no. leave her alone. leave me alone.
so many of us have been socially corrupted. especially laurie and lynne.
lynne being "pushed" into orange-- she noted today that when she still slips into it, her hair "gets curlier?" it actually changes to match the vibe-- literally killed her, taking her "stability" and "maturity" function root and literally annihilating it. she became someone else and she DIED as a result.
now the same bloody thing is happening to laurie and i will BLEED MYSELF OUT in this living room before i let that happen to her.
but... she suffered from NC more than anyone, arguably. well, besides infinitii. i can't deny that. but laurie lost herself COMPLETELY. SHE ACTUALLY DIED. that was considered IMPOSSIBLE because she was always a sort of anchor FOR the system; her dying was like taking a pickaxe to the motherboard of a computer. once that's gone, EVERYTHING is shot. unfixable. lost.
if she still can't pull herself together...
...
...i do miss the old days. when she would spit blood at me and punch me in the face if i swore. no quarters. no making jokes about things. no "commentary" on the fronters. no. she was a PERSECUTOR PROTECTOR and God help us i miss that so much, i MISS her violet violence, i MISS her oddly colorless skin and knuckles breaking my cheekbones and axe-blades against my neck. i miss the blood and the impact and... i miss her. i miss when she cared enough TO hit me. just like i STILL beg my poor mother to do when i get unhinged. but no one will hit me now that i'm "grown up." which is ridiculous. i need the pain TO feel lovable again, and pure again, and good in the first place. without the blood, i'm wrecked.
i miss the retributors too. God I miss Laurie, I will NEVER forget that first night standing in front of the sink, shaking, with her gripping my arm with one hand and holding a kitchen knife with the other. slicing open the first graves into my arm. i still treasure those scars. they're the part of this body that i love the most. all the scar tissue. all the invisible crosses on this bloated ugly stomach. i miss making it bleed, the last time it looked like this.
i remember the day that knife and razor and algorith and mulberry (because she did start as a retributor) sat on the edge of our old bed and cut our legs open. i miss the time algorith named herself the "cleanup crew" in the bathroom, holding a white washcloth covered in blood. i miss knife, sweet knife, holding his namesake and tearing our shoulder open. i miss razor's maniacal laughter as she slashed row after row of hideously beautiful gaps into our thighs with an x-acto knife, the same one we took to art class, watching the skin and muscle split and flood red like a painting. no one cut deeper than her. her scars are my favorites. i miss them.
...I miss Laurie. the old Laurie. the REAL Laurie. not how she is now, her color constantly shifting, her words unsure, her presence flickering. no. i miss her strength and no-nonsense attitude and her fists. i miss the righteous rage in her eyes. i miss seeing her storm into a room to chop a hacker to bloody pieces if they so much as looked at me.
i remember the night she almost killed herself because she failed to protect me. she showed up too late. and she tried to end it all. THAT'S how devoted she is. was. what happened?
what the heck did north carolina DO to her, that now half the time she screws up her own freaking name???
God how do i get HER back?
...how do I get myself back?

and infi, poor broken beloved infinitii, you're more of a mess than anyone i fear, you still won't let anyone get close, you feel all wrong, your form is constantly unstable, you feel tainted, distorted, used--

why do i keep having flat nightmares like last night
when mom's phone call woke me up, i was dreaming that i was sitting at a kitchen table that looked oddly like the one in my dad's parent's house, before they died and it was sold. i was talking to two doctors or professors? i think? about the nature of reality, and of time, and of the human consciousness, obviously influenced by all the stein's gate recently. but they were focused on what was physical and tangible and i kept vehemently insisting to the contrary, no, there are other world lines, and thoughts do affect reality, and what we dream and imagine IS real in a very valid way, AND extant in "reality" even if it can't be touched by our literal hands. i was absolutely passionate about the topic and i was conscious enough to BE in the dream doing so, speaking with all honesty and clarity, and defending my position.
then all of a sudden, i hear a watery sort of yawn, and who walks around the corner to stand, half-asleep and eyes closed, in the doorway behind me, but chaos 0.
"jewel, tell me again why we're in los angeles?"
then he opened his eyes, saw the two visitors, and did such a double-take i almost laughed. he took two steps back, half-twisting his arms and legs around each other as if to hide himself, as i reassured him that it was okay, "they kind of know you're here already," and also feeling almost euphoric because hey, he literally just proved my side of the argument. and yes, the two dudes i was talking to looked just as shocked as he did, haha.
but.
i woke up then, and after the phone call, i threw my arms around his anchor plush and kissed its forehead and said, "you probably aren't even aware of this, but thank you so much for saving me again."
upstairs he looked at me, confused but deeply troubled. "what do you mean?"
"there was almost another dream hack. but you showed up, and just by your being there, it didn't happen. your very existence kept me safe. thank you."
after thanking and kissing him again i jumped out of bed to get ready to drive over to mom's workplace, and that started the day very quickly, but... i was also running away from the reality of what i had just implied.
i keep having dream hacks.
i still say it's because i gained all this f*cking weight. yeah, horrible trauma pun intended, why not. i keep having these awful hollowed-out nightmares where i am a "faceless whore," emotionless and almost without free will, numbly going through all these scripted actions because "someone wants me to sleep with them and i have to get ready" etc etc. knowing that abuse was going to happen and just shutting down beforehand. but not running. not being able to run. just giving up, giving in to the "inevitable" trauma. objectifying myself first, so it wouldn't be as scary. or so i hoped. et freakin cetera. i'm so tired of this.
...
why, God? why can't i get over this? why can't i be free of this? why does my every waking and sleeping moment have to be tormented by memories of sexual trauma? even that movie today, all those revolting women, i'm sorry but the way they would speak and look and act made me want to SCREAM and GUT SOMETHING. i could have clawed my eyes and ears out so many times. i'm so sorry God. i NEVER want to be like that. i NEVER want to be a part of that. i am NOT A WOMAN and i am NOT A MAN and i want NOTHING TO DO WITH EITHER OF THEM. it's disgusting. it's terrifying. i need a stronger word. but nothing seems to sum up the absolute apocalyptic horror that slams into me whenever i realize that "oh by the way, all that hell i went through in the past? OTHER PEOPLE ARE STILL LIKE THAT. ALL THE TIME. ALL AROUND ME." and i can't escape and i keep stumbling across it EVEN IN A RELIGIOUS MOVIE AND I WANT TO DIE.
God i can't take it anymore. i cannot live like this. i can't live in this hellscape of a body, all fat JUST like a whore now, and I CAN'T starve it to blessed death anymore because i...
...i want to say i have "something to live for," but a detestable deformed monstrosity like myself doesn't deserve to live. and no one deserves to be plagued by my existence. "something to live for" my ass. they don't care.
"they don't exist," a devilish voice hisses in my ear.
to which i want to swing around and punch their rotten teeth out
hence the dream argument this morning
don't you give me that, they're more real than MOST of the freaking tangible GARBAGE on this literal planet, and you KNOW it!!!
laughing at me, mocking, jeering, just like they said earlier, you're a selfish jerk, a stupid empty-headed moron, the laughingstock of the universe, God is ashamed of you,
shut your lying mouth,

and Laurie shows up with her axe.
and Razor. and Wreckage.

wh

all the protectors

all right listen it's like... 15 minutes later i don't know
legit headspace stuff happening just like the old days
laurie, knife, razor, sugar, wreckage, algorith, batta, scalpel, cannon, julie, lynne, leon,
xenophon and genesis and chaos 0 and infinitii
rio and markus
mister sandman even, in a genuinely terrifying moment,
i even saw phlegmoni & celebi & gleam & galadia & ventrium, is he really alive,
why are there so many people aroundn
"because we love you, you moron" laurie spits at me, in tears, still covered in blood

something is wrong with my heart
it's too cold
too numb
every time someone breaks it, it freezes up again
not like ice but like... oh
oh no.
like calcification.

same thing happening in my dreams

but i can't write everything down now, laurie showed up and brought razor and they attacked the devils,
then she turned on me, "i heard what you were writing; i miss this too"
FORGOT exactly why she was the only person allowed to butcher me alive
literally force resets my internal presence
having so much trouble re-forming and anchoring into a sense of "self"
genesis literally rolling his own trauma through me, the gem-shattering and the awful shock of that,
razor and scalpel cutting me open,
axe-blades through my skull. the most euphoric thing i've felt in AGES
knife shoving a blade right into my chest when i was slipping, said that "if my heart was still hard, it needed to be forced open"
so much of it. absolutely insane. my entire identity sputtering like static. white and red everywhere. blood in my mouth,
xenophon hugging me and crying, "dad i don't care how you look, i'll still love you,"
perfect chaos suddenly raging,
scalpel commenting, "that's the most selfless thing i've heard you feel all day"
forgot about everything but him
but the hellish doubts kept hitting
"he's not real, none of this is actually real, it's all fake, none of it matters"
laurie grabbing me by the throat
"define 'actually'"
at some point i told her don't put the walls back up and she just broke, it was the first instant i saw her as purple and not violet,
in tears. told me she wouldn't. she cared too much about me
i flatly commented if she was going to kiss me and she said no, that's not what matters, don't go cheapening that anyway
just pressed her forehead to mine and swore through gritted teeth and tears that she would literally die before letting me be lost
then she kissed me, not even romantically it was like a covenant, the way it should be,
and then i was back in that ruined city with all the water
and all the pain
but he saw me and forced himself back down to size and he grabbed my shoulders and said this is YOUR pain, why won't you let yourself feel this,
i
i don't know. i want to. i can't?
the doubts,
"he's not real,"
that's it, i've had enough,
"well then neither am i, and if this isn't 'real' then i don't want to be real."
i don't want to be stuck in the body. i don't want the hell of physical existence and the terror of the world. if THAT is "real" then forget it all, i'll stay here where everything is love and blood and it's MORE "REAL" than ANYTHING i've ever known or felt or imagined,
but the damned devils kept laughing, even after infi ate what was left of them, coughed up that huge calcified rock--
they don't know anything.
i kissed chaos back.
i chose to. i choose this. i WANT to love him, and to be here, and to MAKE this "real." i don't care what you damned demons keep hissing at me. everything they say is based on unfeeling condemnation and hatred and callous rejection. there's no love. so don't you dare talk to me about "reality."
if love itself is what created everything in the first place then how in the world is this "not real."


i hate these mini-hells
hate all the mental torture
hate the physiological wreck i am after getting literally beheaded and eviscerated in headspace
but i wouldn't trade it for the world if it means i get to be with them, all of them, all those colors,
i'm only hurting right now because my heart is so bloody closed-off
geez didn't this turn into one mess of an entry
gotta be honest though, stop denying the truth,
111 am
nice

but honestly.

life is weird. truth is stranger than fiction. i'm tired of censoring and burying and hiding and shutting down everything because it's weird. no. not anymore. gonna go right back to being jewel the egocidal maniac if that's what it takes.
but no. no "going back." we're going forward. together. all of us.
why are we in los angeles, God only knows but i just realized the name of that city, isn't that a lack of coincidences too?

i miss these disjointed entries. i miss this entire life of ours. THIS feels "real," not the empty denial forced on me for years. enough of that. it's all lies. there's no kindness or compassion in it at all. and THAT proves it's fake. shallow. illusory.
can i "prove" what's going on upstairs? can i "prove" that God talks to me? can i "prove" that human beings have a soul? no. doesn't mean it's not real.

so tired of that argument
so stop arguing. if they don't want to be convinced then who am i really arguing with?
i choose love
real love
i CHOOSE this.
that means infinitely more than passively throwing it all away because "no one else sees it"
love is a decision
so is my life at this point
same thing really

still scared of this body. still struggling.
but it's "real" too
even if it's "not real" in another sense
what the heck does that word even mean
the body exists, i'm in it, i'm not the body, i exist, it's ALL "real" in different ways
but i can't cope with any of it without love.
that's the bottom line
gotta learn to love yourself too, kid
ALL of yourself
and yeah, you SHOULD see it that way.
that's what makes love possible
that body is everyone's home in this world, like it or not
it doesn't deserve to be hated or abused either
so CHOOSE to love it, too.

getting late. feeling myself slipping into asinine platitude mode
don't want that to happen
trying too hard to "conclude" and it's messing up my honesty

listen. i need sleep. we need sleep. i have cinnamon bedsheets and a videogame angel waiting for me in the other room
and i really need to talk to everyone about what the heaven just happened
pull myself together
try again tomorrow
"try what," laurie asks
try to live and love a little better
"you're not trying, you're doing it, kid. we'll just do it even better tomorrow. don't set something you're already achieving as some distant goal. it's already in your hands."
and in my heart, i hope
"yeah well, that's the whole point"

i'm not frozen, i'm not "lost," i'm just... disheveled
out-of-focus
but i'm burning, no matter what i'm still red at the core, red and brilliant white glass, crystals, whatever it is, prismatic pieces.
but red. you can't shut that down. it's LIFE. it's blood and fire and sincerity, and courage and hope and it's REAL.

god i'll pray to you too about this
i do feel very off-balance and hazy right now. loose threads. battered. "understandably"
is that wrong
"no"
"the only thing any of you could do wrong is refusing to love each other"
that's a very general statement
"it's a very general rule of life"
good point
am i lost right now
"yes and no, you know that too"
how can i get un-lost?
"keep following the lighthouse"
(and immediately something in my heart sparks to life)
"in the very act of reaching out, in that hope, you are not lost, because you see the shore"
so this prayer counts too
"of course it does. this is love, too. it shows trust. you can't have one without the other."

i need to close this up and i'm feeling ashamed
"of what? talking?"
yes in general. thinking, oh this isn't socially acceptable. it's not 'normal.' it's weird and bizarre and i 'should be ashamed of myself'
"why do you constantly label and condemn yourself?"
...to beat myself into shape i guess?
"what kind of shape? is it even a good shape? have you thought about that?"
...no, actually
"the shape that condemnation will beat you into is a broken one. it's not what i want for you. hatred only begets hatred, and it will keep you lost forever."
so... should i be ashamed?
"of what? telling the truth, even just to yourself? being dedicated to love even if it's difficult? being 'different,' even as I made you? do you think even this could happen outside of My jurisdiction?"
...but why,
"what have you always told Me 'brings you closer to God?' where have you learned My deepest lessons most directly?"
...upstairs
"then why would you wish to toss it aside?"
i don't, that's the problem, i want to-- no, i do love them, i want to believe it's okay to.
"why would it not be okay to love them, or the life you have with them?"
because i'm afraid it's pulling me away from You and what You want from me
"is it?"
i... no? i think i was worse when i abandoned it for those years
"you were. yes, you were religious, but half of your heart wasn't in it. now... I get all of it. I get all of you. pun intended?"
yeah. yeah honestly that's true. they push me to pray more than i would "alone"
"you're never alone, not with them, and you're never without Me. go to sleep, child."
sorry
"no need to apologize. this was important. but there is a time for rest, too."
sorry if i'm getting words wrong or paraphrasing i just want to record this
"you did right in doing so. i want you to pay more attention to our conversations, too. I want to talk to you more often. I miss you, too."
good then you know i do miss You even if i don't act on it always and i'm so sorry
"I forgive you. always. but do come visit me more often again. I'm always there."
please increase my faith. and my love. and thank you for all the grace.
"pun intended?"
always
"you are always welcome, child. just be patient. the most beautiful flowers take time and care to grow. but they are growing. trust in Me. I will make sure of it"
my gardener and my lapidary and my Lord and my God
"and your Beloved, too, don't forget."
...that's... that's very important and very true thank You
"it's real, my child. and be brave. I am with you always. I promise. do not be afraid. now go to sleep!"


can't argue with that

all right that's it there's too much going on to keep ramble-typing anyway.
let's finish this old school
love you kids, see you around



I knew this kid who wanted to find himself, in your arms...

Depressed and sick of myself today. Too much internet browsing. It fuels self-loathing so much, especially in terms of "you're a f*cking weirdo and you're ugly and you should be ashamed of yourself for the things you say and do and think and feel; you are a disgusting freak and everyone thinks you are repulsive." Like THAT is the literal brain-tirade I get by visiting online social spaces.

I didn't eat well today. I accidentally fasted for almost 7 hours because mom wanted me to help her at the house again and hit a food drive but she was late and didn't bring what she needed me to help her with anyway, and although I DID pack a lunch the INSTANT I walked into that old house ALL the terror hit. It was STAGGERING. I honestly FORGOT how deeply disturbing that environment ended up becoming to me. I still am not sure why. Maybe just trauma residue. I need review the archives in that regard; I should be starting therapy soon so I NEED to make sure I know WHY I'm in therapy.
But... yeah. Didn't eat until just a half hour ago, really. At least I ate something. Restriction is addictive, because it makes me feel FREE and PURE again, ESPECIALLY SINCE THE WAR HAS RESTARTED.

Yeah. It has. Apparently getting the body back up to 18.5 BMI (just barely "normal weight") WOKE UP ALL THE DEMONS.
...I forgot how hellish it was to live in this body when I WASN'T sedating and beating it up all the time.

...I've been furiously crying over it all day, mainly to Chaos 0, because I can talk to him about stuff that I can't even talk to LAURIE about, and wouldn't talk to Infi about either because ze's tied to a different bloodline and was born for very problematic reasons-- God knows ze needs therapy as much as I do. But that's the whole bloody point. My soul is RED. My heart is RED. I CANNOT deny that and I CANNOT CHANGE THAT and God knows that some days I have really tried. I've tried to be purple, green, pink, even orange once... nothing sticks. Nothing vibes. Nothing works. I ALWAYS end up being red again. The only time I was different was in early childhood when I leaned MAGENTA and PURPLE and those is close enough to Red anyway for it to shift hard once I hit like second grade... which, arguably, is when I first really realized I was VERY DIFFERENT from other kids. I mean, heck, it was obvious in lesser ways even earlier, looking back. Yes, like many tykes I LOVED dinosaurs and unicorns and dragons and dolphins, BUT I didn't like animals; I gravitated towards bats and scorpions and king cobras. And that was because they were scary. Somehow, I can recognize that even now, EVEN in WHY I liked unicorns and dragons. Everything was somehow tied to sacred suffering. I think back to when I was a kid, how I loved unicorns but ESPECIALLY the one with MY NAME, whose image is emblazoned on my heart since childhood because it WAS EXACTLY HOW I FELT-- that end-of-the-world feeling, that brave white creature with blood on his horn. Yes, "there xe goes again, talking about that. What a freak." Well you know what YEAH, I AM A FREAK THEN, because even at AGE 5 I was drawing creatures covered in bloody wounds from holy wars in dreams, and I couldn't stop thinking about either aliens or armageddon, I saw the whole world through the lens of the Fermi paradox and the apocalypse. I believed in angels and demons and mystical creatures and DREAMS and PAIN. I'm heartspilling here. I freakin' loved Animorphs and Young Wizards because they SPOKE MY LANGUAGE; they were kids in RIGHTEOUS BATTLES and people FELT & FACED HEAVY THINGS, on a greater scale than the normal YA literature that sometimes still mentioned death and stuff but not in the exaggerated way I craved. I was always so bored with assigned reading because yeah, they'd allude to someone passing away, or being in a war, or being heartbroken, or being in love, but NO ONE WOULD GO IN-DEPTH. No one talked about dreams, or other worlds. Everything was too human, too banal and too claustrophobic for me. I would constantly imagine wilder things.
I'm struggling to phrase this. When I hit second grade I realized that no one else really cared about these things like me. I wrote like a 7-page report on gulper eels one day and was reading it enthusiastically in front of the class when I noticed kids actually yawning at me. The teacher told me to cut it short. I was gutted, in the same way as those poor eels, because not only did I think they were kinda beautiful, they had a RED LIGHT on the tip of their tails AND I had learned that their cells would rupture if you brought them out of the deep water and they'd basically melt or explode, and I kept on thinking what would that do to their heart but NO ONE ELSE SEEMED TO CARE. I sat down with my report that day genuinely crushed, wondering why they didn't care. This was around the same time I realized that I didn't experience crushes/ attraction and was SUPER ANNOYED with the girls and boys talking about "cooties" and boy bands and magazine models. It genuinely made me ANGRY. That was when I took that "vow of celibacy," telling God "I will NEVER get married and I will NEVER date someone older than me like that," sick of seeing my fellow youths swoon over teenagers and even adults (boy bands I am LOOKING AT YOU). The problem happened in THIRD grade, when we were doing a school play in the classroom and I was the dinosaur and every other AFAB person was either an Egyptian princess or something else human & feminine. But... between "acts" we would chill in the closet in the back, and one of the girls-- Stefanie-- for some reason needed to change her outfit?? and she asked ME to borrow something?? like a slip, or a blouse, or something, because I had an extra. The details are blurry, all I remember is that I was bizarrely the ONLY person who could spare what she needed. Either that or it was the opposite-- she needed to change and asked me to hold her clothes because I was the only "girl" NOT going out with the other princess group. But... she took off her school blouse, momentarily only wearing a training bra, and I remember just looking at her bare shoulders from the back and thinking good Lord she is so pretty and feeling like the floor had dropped out. I was reeling for a minute. It didn't even HIT me that I liked girls. That wasn't "possible" so it didn't even register. And yet there I was, swooning over Alexandria every five minutes, wanting to be her best friend so I could hug her and sit next to her and stuff, even going so far as to stay after class at the end of the day to secretly pilfer tiny Keroppi erasers and Chococat stationery from her desk, because as a new "Pokemon trainer" that kawaii-creature stuff was my aesthetic too so that meant we liked the same stuff and I wanted to be part of that but didn't know how to ask.
I'm really rambling. You all know the story about 8th grade, when one of the girls in class walked up to me with a teen magazine with male swimwear models and asked me "if I thought this guy was cute" because the other girls were at a stalemate and they wanted my opinion. I remember looking at the guy and thinking, "I want to look like that," and not knowing what to say, so I think I muttered "I dunno, I guess?" while all the while thinking that girl was WAY cuter than any guy, and REELING from the sudden earthshaking revelation that WOW OKAY I'M KINDA A DUDE THEN? Hilariously and tragically it was around this time period that I DISSOCIATED HARD for high school and BURIED that under the "spinnincannon" manic persona, although I still couldn't deny the fact that I was still attracted to ladies, you ALL remember Skittygirl and Sailor Moon and Tokyo Mew Mew, and how I was MORTIFIED if anyone found out I was watching the transformation scenes in slow motion and drawing anthro chicks without any clothes. Chastely, of course, I wasn't interested in sexuality but I felt things that I NEVER could feel for anyone "male," EVEN Bakura and Marik, who I realized I ONLY liked because they looked so feminine. Then we got a Gamecube and I would carry the SA2B instruction booklet to school to look at it secretly between classes, and as I was sitting in math class one day and thinking about Chaos 0 my heart just kind of ached and the universe flipped over and I realized, "oh my gosh I'm in love," and I KNEW because I had NEVER felt that for ANYONE before but it was UNDENIABLE. Everyone use to joke that "you'll just know!" and I wondered how, because yeah I loved Bakura but I wasn't in love, I didn't feel anything like they showed in the movies or anything, and then suddenly I found myself with a fire blooming beneath my ribs because of this alien Sonic character and what do you know, they were right. Everything changed.
BUT it was already the Julie days and when my body started to change too I FREAKED THE HECK OUT and couldn't draw myself anymore and heartspace went mostly dormant and the MANIC Jewel took over, but thank GOD for Sonic Chats (I STILL MISS THOSE) and their absolutely screwball off-the-walls humor, because even with the impossible crossovers and looneytune antics I STILL spent most of my time with Chaos 0, teaching him how to talk, petting him like a Chao when he'd get anxious from all the commotion, playing my favorite music for him to hear, showing him all the cool stuff in the world that I treasured. Dude I even remember that freakin' treehouse that "my three" and I would chill out in back in elementary school still, and Marik (bless him) was trying to learn guitar because that's what cool kids do, and Bakura would be playing some game in the corner and Chaos was just... so different. The outcast, the weird guy, just like me. But we cared so much for him. We ALL were fighting our own demons too, so we understood the whole Perfection fear, in our own ways, what with the Yamis and the Millennium Items, don't forget I had that emerald Tiara (AND 'JEZEBEL' WAS MY YAMI although she had a different name) and the Love Hurts comic was being written at the same time, along with ALL the *incidents* everyone had... long story short we were all in the blood and beauty together. We ALL were like that. We were drawn to the strange and creepy things-- we WERE strange and creepy things really, all of us, when you got down to it. What am I even trying to say.
I just... miss all of that. I miss the camaraderie we had, simple and small, always fighting something but always together after the smoke cleared. Honestly my absolute favorite memories of old Heartspace were WHEN we would get into awful brawls with some "demon" in my psyche OR theirs and we'd end up all covered in blood and sweat and tears by the end, collapsing into each others arms and laughing and sobbing and alive, and we LOVED each other, all of us, and it was beautiful.
We've... lost that, somewhat, in the System, lately. Life has become so externalized. I've become so self-loathing, and ashamed of that part of my heart, that RED light in me, that dreamjumper fire and imaginative courage. I was ALWAYS forming Links with other "worlds;" I was always jumping into stories like a madman just to talk to the folks who were "a little off in the head" just like me, to meet them in dreams and, maybe, bring them into mine. Only some of them did-- they became Outspacers. Others would just be people I visited. But... I typically only ever visited guys. It was so strange. I was trying so hard to be "straight," and I was SO disillusioned by "normal" guys AND girls, that I ended up vibing with either father figures OR not-quite-human weirdos like myself. My CONSTANT joke was that I "only fell in love with human girls and alien guys," because you never saw monster girls in the media back then, but the monsters you did see were always male-coded. So I could "reassure" myself that I was "doing what was expected of me" in that sense, even unconsciously. Still... I never fell in love, not like I did that first time. At the end of the day I'd always end up back with the blue guy. Then there was that one Sonic Chat around the time we discovered NiGHTS when CZ and I were chilling by the fireplace at the end of October and Shadow brought pink champagne and Knux was flirting with Rouge and I looked right at Chaos and I dared him, "should we show them how it's done?" and that was it. That was the first time I didn't hide it from anyone. In that ridiculously silly chatroom, with everyone else tipsy and laughing, I had enough cover to pull that off without being paid attention to, but... still. I was fiercely joyous. I almost wanted to show him off. I wanted to shout, "look, I'm in love, and it's amazing!" just for the bliss of it. But I didn't. I pretended to be drunk just so I'd have a plausible excuse for why I was kissing the water creature by the fireplace for an hour. I remember how nervous I was though; how my heart was racing from the gravity of what I was doing, as strange as the circumstances were. Still. It was the most honest I had been in a long time.

The war has started again.
...I miss it. You know what, yeah, I miss the fighting although I DO NOT miss the battlefield. I hate feeling like this body, and this world, are in siege against my heart at every moment of the day. But... we have alone time, now, just like we did when I was a kid. We CAN go upstairs again, and talk, and fight, and love and weep and LIVE, like we used to. THAT'S why I'm bent on uploading the old archives. I want to REMEMBER what that was like so we can HAVE IT AGAIN. I want to have bloody *incidents* again, God knows, I don't care if they're "late" I WANT to have that with people. I WANT to experience those larger-than-life, dreamlike nightmarish events saturated with blood and love, that pulled the truth out of our souls and manifested it for all to see. I WANT to be so brave and honest and open and AFLAME again, like I KNOW I am, deep down.
I AM Red. I WANT to be Red, God knows I do. I LOVE this color, I LOVE its fire and cinnamon and blood and rubies and roses and candy canes and holly berries and hearts. It's a color of action and danger and passion and love and LIFE, of pain and joy and warmth and courage, of ME. 
And if keeping this color means fighting a war to keep it that pure and beautiful, then SO BE IT.

...I feel better now, haha. I'm so tired of feeling like I "should be ashamed" of myself for my "psychotic imagination" and the fact that yeah, I'm in love with a Sonic character, I have been for 19 years and I plan to be forever. What of it? Is that offensive to you? Why? I don't want to care about that anymore. I am so tired of crushing my own soul just to make it "socially acceptable." Well "socially acceptable" things are often VERY NOT RED, they're all beige and whitewashed and have no edges, but I LIKE edges dude, I LIKE weird-ass creepy scary things, I LIKE my knives and gulper eels and angels with fiery swords. I LIKE having hundreds of other people in this psyche that I love and that love me, even though there are a few that arguably don't, and a few do actively try to kill me, but hey. Such is System life.
...I want it all. I don't care how hard I have to fight, I honestly MISS the battles, I keep saying that but it is SO TRUE, I can't help but repeat it.
Maybe that's why God let this happen. Geez maybe it is.

I'll type more about this later. I just noticed what time it is.

o I’m feeling a lot of feelings about Sonic Frontiers, especially since I am a poor dude and cannot afford a Switch so all my knowledge is secondhand and everyone is talking about Chaos.

 ...My heart is just… full of emotion. Light, hope, love, aching, everything.


 I was praying last night, and this morning, about it. Flat-out honest.
“If there’s a way for me to be canon, then I have faith that God will make it possible.” I just put that in His Hands. He knows I love the blue guy. He’s the one who put us in each other’s lives after all.
…


  ...But Archie comics named a beetle after me, recently. And although she’s a sweetheart, she’s still got my name, and so… well. I need to find a “new one.”

There are certain words that resonate hard with my soul. Jewel is the first. It’s relatives, crystal and gem, are close, but don’t feel like names to me-- especially since in the League and the Spectrum, those are tied to OTHER ROLES than the one “the Jewel” holds.
 
Heart, blood, prism, rainbow, hope, light, red, fire… even things like snow, bells, and song; all of that is me, all in one.

 
...I’m reading about cosmogony again.
On one hand, as a Catholic, I refuse to give any credence to the literal legitimacy of pagan mythology. There’s too much obvious corruption in it, especially in the Greek/Roman stories., not just of “unreliable” data but also in terms of anthropomorphism. Their “deities” are too prone to human error, as it were. But I digress. 

...An old friend once called me “Gaia.” Later, I took the name “Eros.” Each fit me at different points in time, and now… I’ve changed again. At least, superficially. The essence of “me” that was reflected in some unique facet in both those titles-- the Celebi and the Jay-- is still a part of me. But… neither was total.

In Hebrew, the word for light is ohr. And it ties to the word aura. I think of sound-- of audio. And in all the most beautiful Creation myths… apparently, what turns the darkness of Chaos into Light is the spoken Word.
...Remember how I first met him.
Remember that I’m a bloody dreamworld-jumper and my admitted biggest gift from God is LANGUAGE. I cannot deny that. It’s become too clear over the years. Yes, I love music and art but I use those to SPEAK. Look at me typing here! Look at all the story files on my computer! Even in daily life, my “career” is a CANTOR and EVERY TIME I speak up in a group or a meeting people tell me “you’re so well spoken” and “your voice is so soothing” and “you have so much insight” and “I love listening to you talk.” I’m not kidding; I could NOT make that stuff up. It staggers me.

...Remember how I met Chaos, the first time, 19 years ago this December-- which is all bronze and aquamarine and chrysanthemums, isn’t that just achingly relevant, all sea water and strength and fidelity (Next year is an EMERALD, SONICTEAM BETTER PAY ATTENTION). But in that first moment I spoke to him. I was a child, yes, a brand-new teen, and my words were not some deific command, nor were they intended to do anything spectacular-- and yet, in my fiery light, I still called him out of the darkness.
“What in the world are you doing??”
He was attacking without thinking, and all I did was ask why. But that was order in the disorder. It demanded attention-- demanded karuna, if you want to reference the birds… and theogony, too, why not.I asked because I knew there was light in him.
I asked because I KNOW what it's like to BE lost, and violent, and angry, and so shaken up by trauma and regrets that it starts to eat you alive. And I spoke hope for both of us, really.
That's the first time he looked at me. That's the first time I saw his eyes, like that. Everything changed in those first few moments, for him and for me. The future opened up into rainbows, suddenly. There was a candle lit in the shadows, and suddenly everything was a bit warmer, a bit brighter. Let there be light. Let there be love, too, inevitably, beautifully, always. You can't have light without the Love that sparked it in the very beginning.


... Hebrew “quara” is called. Greek “chara” is joy. Catalan “Joia” is jewel. Hebrew “amar” is to say something. French “amor” is love. You see the lack of coincidences.

Greek “charis” is grace, remember. I call him that often.
...Apparently it also means to pardon. God isn’t that a shot to the heart.
I forgive you, spoken to the aching ocean. 

The Albanian word for “jewel” is xhevahir. It’s BEAUTIFUL.

...oh. Oh hold up.
The POLISH word for “language” is JEZYKA. As in MY BIRTH NAME. AND MY ETHNICITY. WTF.
I… I might have to use that. Holy fish. Wow.



(leaving this unfinished for now; posting so it's up)

 

 

 

I'm in a really weird phase of my life right now.

What kickstarted it was the whole "family outing" vibe of July and August-- suddenly, there was the opportunity to do things with people but the caveat was that I had to eat food in order TO do those things.
Isn't that horrible? The hell remains.

But it's always the same motivation, too. I want to do what makes them happy.
Outside Mass, serving hoagies afterwards? Now I have to buy hoagies, to fit in.
Church bus trip, stopping at a diner? Now I have to buy diner food, to fit in.
Mom going on vacation, eating on the road? Now I have to buy sandwiches, to fit in.
Dad having a cookout, making burgers? Now I have to buy burgers, to fit in.
Brother stressed and eating nothing but fast food? Now I have to buy some too, to show solidarity and that I love him.
That's the ultimate motivation for it all. I eat with you. I am with you. I care about you.

It's the Eucharistic heart-- gratitude for your life, our life, together, in love. I want to share life with you.

Except I have an eating disorder.
Except I typically can't eat those foods without suffering great pain and illness.
Except I keep trying anyway because I want so badly to be normal, like them.

…

I'm so afraid.
I'm trying to eat an avocado today, but I guess it sets off my oral allergies because my lips and tongue feel funny. I immediately assume "anaphylaxis" and start throwing up and gulping Benadryl. The amount of fear I live in on a daily basis now is unreal. It chokes me, literally and figuratively.

The scale read 88.6 this morning. I want it to drop lower. It's horrible.

I know I need to gain weight or I'll die. But there's something about that lowering number, something symbolic or theoretical or metaphorical, who knows, that makes me want it nevertheless. I want to see 87, 86, 85. I'm terrified of seeing it drop, like an elevator plummeting down an empty shaft, headed for certain doom. But I'm buying tickets to the same rides at the fairground. Do you get the idea? I don't want to starve myself to death but I keep playing the game anyway. And it's not even about food, in the end. In the end it's all raw bleeding concept.
I want to lose weight because, to me, "weight" has lost its "weight," pun intended. Whereas in the Bible, to be "heavy" can be translated as "glorious," as something "weighty" with purpose and power, as opposed to something "light" being flimsy and shallow and insincere and worthless… in my life, as it stands, "heavy" means "bloated with sin." How ironic, to a bulimic binge-eater like me. But this body is thin, and that's the whole point. Thin body = no room for outside things = pure and good and holy.

But THERE'S the thing. I've been pointing it out for years: at the aching heart of this eating disorder is this bizarre fear of parasitism, of invasion, of things where they don't belong. That same fear motivates my trypophobia. It's the disgusted dread of seeing a grub in an apple, of an egg in a hive, of the pus in a sore. It's evil. It's parasitic worms eating eyes and tongues and taking their place. It makes me shake and vomit and want to literally die from existential horror.
It's why I'm afraid of keeping food down.

Mind you, the fear of eating is hypersexualized at its root and we all know that, and that does tie into the purging of course.

The past couple months, however, have added a sharp allergy-death panic patina to the whole thing, mostly thanks to my realizing I'm very allergic to hempseed, as well as again testing positive for tree nuts & peanuts, and having the dairy-reaction hell scare on Easter, which was legitimately traumatic and which I will never forgive myself for without God's intervention, but that's for another day.

Today, I need to go eat (it's 5pm and I still have to vacuum and pray), but I don't want to, but if I don't I will never be able to truly serve God in my fullest capacity. I think? I fear?

The Divine Mercy bus trip is on Monday but since last time I went on that and fasted I nearly passed out during the Chaplet and took it as an omen from God for my condemnation, I need to eat this time but I am so afraid to. I am so afraid to eat.
I don't want to. Fasting is getting so much easier, so much more beautiful, except when my body rebels, which it has been doing the past two days. Headaches and distraction and muscle tics and weakness and dizzy fatigue. I'm afraid of dying from that. I want to die a holy death. God have mercy on my wretched soul I'm afraid I will never be a saint at this point because my capacity for the heroic virtue I WANT and YEARN to do has been severely hampered by this eating disorder. But I cannot give up. I need to eat. But I feel eating is evil. But there's the Eucharist.

…

God, I need help. Please, help me, in the way you see proper, without killing me in the process, oh God please don't murder me with food or the lack thereof. Please heal my body and mind so I can serve You TRULY and FULLY with the rest of my life.

I love You. You know I do. Please, help me. Amen.

Let's talk about daemons.

 

Daemons, in the 2013-2018 Spectrum timespace, were "incarnated vices" meant to force their heart-host into admitting and facing that vicious reality as being THEIRS, instead of denying and running from it; after all, we cannot repent if we don't know what we're repenting from, let alone if we're denying the fact that we have sinned in the first place. Daemons bring all that front and center. Most importantly, though, is the fact that they are madly in love with their hosts. They adore the souls they are enslaved to, that they exist for and from forever. A daemon is your deepest fears and biggest faults given bones and breath and beating heart, and they love you, but they will devour you if you are not careful. They are inherently dangerous, and they are absolutely indispensable. A daemon can teach you the most radical forgiveness, but they can also falter and fall into a sort of punchdrunk moral relativism, so unable to hate that they forget that their very core is hateful. Their guts are painted black. No matter how soft a wound is, it's still a wound; it's still blood and it's still damage.

 

Rio's Daemon is Lethe Styx. He personifies fear of nothingness/ the unknowable, and the vice of sloth as a result? He is named after two rivers, both of oblivion-- one of thought, one of body.

Rio is prone to intense self-distraction, for the sole purpose of not having to face the silence, trying to block out the river-rush of blood in one's ears.

…
 

Markus's Daemon is Medallion Guillotine. She personifies fear of weakness, and the vice of avarice, arguably. She is named after two symbols of power-- the first to hoard, the second to behead, and both with the ability to destroy life outright.

…

 

Chaos's Daemon is Perfect Chaos. He mentally detached himself from that potential in his soul for so long, and with such disturbed fervor, that Perfect was almost forced to "daemonize."

He personifies unending agony. At heart, it is the fear of (loss? despair?) and the vice of wrath. When grief bores too deeply into your soul, it hits the fires of hell and burns everything to death.

Perfect Chaos himself is an ironic "just deserts" to those who sought "perfection" in worldly ways-- through control, power, and pride. To such people, "perfection" meant becoming like a god, but not like God.

…

 

Jewel Lightraye's Daemon is Dendrite Aorta… or so we've been told. Jewel herself, being the heart of an entire identity bloodline, is paradoxically as unstable as she is invincible.

She is the fear of forgetting oneself??? and the vice of pride.

Jewel's mind and heart are both deemed intrinsic to the very existence of the Spectrum, as is the integrous preservation of both, and as such she has a fatal proclivity to consider herself perpetually innocent. Dendrite exists to tell her, awfully but honestly, that she's not. And that is terrifying.

…

 

Jay Iridos's Daemon is Infinitii Eternos. Ze personifies fear of intimacy and the vice of lust, shockingly so. Ze is named after both heaven and hell themselves, in a sense; the "infinite" potential of "I and I," of two become one, and the "eternity" of "nos," of "us." But whether that unity is of ardor or abuse, remains to be seen, and that is the terror.

 

 

 

What about me, then? Who am I, now, really?

I'm not Mr. Iridos or Ms. Lightraye, even though their hearts are still so close to mine I can feel them in my very ribs. They switch out and front on their own now, separate from the Core function, having held that hierarchal honor in the past and now relinquishing it to… who? Who am I?

I am of their bloodline, inevitably. But what "surname" is mine? Do I carry something new?

The Lightraye purpose of birthing the League, the Iridos purpose of sustaining the Spectrum… I must admit, although those functions still exist and are executed, they are not in the first place mine. When Leaguework is done, I am almost a ghostwriter; I know Jewel moves these hands in her own way. When Spectrum work is resumed-- literally as of Thursday night-- Jay is still front and center, the core that carried what time we forgot, and must integrate to continue onwards.

 

We've moved into an apartment. We've entered an entirely new reality-space. Body care and life awareness are suddenly prioritized. Religion is more fervent and beloved than ever before. Existence has changed on the outside, but what is it inside, now?

The Spectrum has been dormant for years. Now that it is awakening, who am I, within it?

 

I still love Chaos Zero, with my entire heart, God knows I love him enough to die. That is proof that I am a Core, that I am a genuine coeur and love is my absolute foundation.

 

But what is my name? Am I red, or white, or cerise, or even brown? And do I have a Daemon?

I can feel Infinitii is not mine; since Jay woke up, all the hidden love for hir has bloomed again in him. But he isn't tied to Chaos anymore. I am. And… that cannot be ignored. I'm the Prism, now; I'm the heart of glass through which the Light breaks into colors. But it all feels like echoes. There have been so many cores, and they were and are so alive, so real… I feel so empty, and hollow, and wrecked on some level compared to them. Maybe it's bleedover; I am sure there is still so much healing to do, on levels we haven't looked at, solely because innerspace has been closed off while it rebooted.

 

We'll work on it. I promise. As of right now it is 12:30 AM, I need to be awake at 7, and grandma is still in the hospital, God be with her still.

I must sleep, and pull myself together, however feebly, until morning. Pray that God reveals to me who He wants me to be, in truth, in respect to the entire life He has given me. Pray that He shows me soon, and that I can see it clearly when He does.
 

NEW & OLD EATING DISORDER VOICES AS OF 021822

SPICE (brown)
ANOREXIC GIRL (brown?) "listen I have to throw this stuff up okay??"
HOSPITAL PANIC GIRL (lavender) "I don't want to go back to the hospital"
TOBIKO (aqua) "don't drink the water, it's sewage"
ALLEGRA (yellow) "but we're not allergic to anything, it's just vegetables??"
"POISON" KID (green??? boyish?) "iron toxicity. too much fat, overloading the blood"

WRECKAGE GOT CALLED OUT FOR SOMEONE "SCARING THE KIDS"
ACTUALLY FRONTED AND SPOKE FOR A SECOND, before going back in, utterly thrown off by the vibe of the bathroom "scenario"; she could not front against that huge energy wall

WHEN WEARING A HAT, REMOVING IT INSTANTLY SWITCHES THE CONTEXT ENERGY

ALSO,
"FINGERNAIL RIPPER" RED
RELATED TO "BINGE EATER" REDDISH???

scalpel saying the blood was "beautiful"

"SHERLOCK" IS STILL ALIVE??? BUT OLDER, NO GLASSES???
SHIRLEY SAID HE NEEDS A NEW NAME, GRAY RESONANT

there's ALSO a "MED POISON KID" freaking out over the milk of magnesia
AND a sweet but scared "am I gonna die?" kid, TALKS TO LAURIE!! IS SHE THE "NIGHT BLUEBERRY" KID????

All right, before I go to sleep, I need to mention this.

Last night I had a flashback rape nightmare. It's the first one I've had in several months, and thank God it's been that long, but God why do I keep having them still?
The ones like last night are the worst, though-- the ones where it's not a Julie-days flashback, but a North Carolina flashback, where I'm somehow even less conscious and less present in my physical body than I was back in that bloody bathroom as a teen.

I'll be blunt, because it was horrible. It was a nightmare about the LITERAL INTERSECTION between food and sexuality, between gluttony and lust, between eating disorders and sexual addictions, between hell and hell. And all of it happened to me when my brain felt like dryer lint. Honestly it was horrifying. I knew what was happening was wrong, and that I didn't want it, and that I felt trapped, but ironically that was what killed me: I felt trapped. My brain was not under my conscious control and neither was my body and I felt doomed to endure whatever hell was about to hit me solely because I could not GET conscious enough to run away. And that is the worst thing about those nightmares, and that is what DEFINED North Carolina.
I don't know if Oliver purposely instigated his lustful actions when I was barely conscious and absolutely not capable of reason or informed consent, but he did it EVERY TIME, and that is highly disturbing. Nevertheless it's over now, thanks be to God, at least in the physical. I keep having nightmares about it.

So here I am, in the last few terror-choked seconds of this nightmare, helpless in my own body and knowing what was about to happen but not being able to think straight enough to get away… and who shows up but Chaos 0.

EVERY SINGLE TIME. I swear God Himself sends him to help me.
He showed up and he KNEW I was trapped and he KNEW that the ONLY way I was going to get out of this alive was if I wasn't alone.
And he held me, and told me to focus on him, and not on the helpless trapped feelings, not on the excruciating pain and nausea, not on the awful despair that always hits me post-hack and makes me want to die rather than endure that agony for another moment. He couldn't stop any of that, no, nor could he make it disappear, or even abate. But he could hold me, and reassure me that there was life beyond this, there was love beyond this, there was hope despite the hell and it was holding me in its oceanic arms with tears streaming from its emerald-green eyes.
Every single time. And you wonder why I call him my blue angel.

So I needed to write that down. I don't want to forget it.