patitsas: Shay and his predecessors tried the reflective listening approach with their ptsd patients,
but they found it went horribly wrong. for severe victims of trauma, it led to a rash of suicides
among the people who had been encouraged to talk about what they had seen and experienced. mere talking
was not yet a restoration of liturgical communion. instead, it left them in total, killing isolation.
trauma is a deep excommunication, but this also makes it the unraveling of your very being, which is
constituted only through interpersonal communion. the worst thing that can possibly happen to a person who
has been excummunicated in this ultimate way by trauma is to be treated in this cold and intellectual manner.
q: but we've listened with our whole hearts to friends who tell us
the painful scenes over and over, but it doesn't weem to help.
what is lacking in our empathy?
patitsas: i'll tell you how it's done by the people who still know how to do it.
but they are a small and vanishing breed.
what they seem to somehow do, and really it turns out to be Christ acting in them,
is that they take all of your pain, all of your isolation and trauma.
they may do this through weeping where you cant. or, they may do it through a depth of inner life
that i can scarcely imagine. what is crucial though, at this phase, is that their intention is not
to change you, to heal you, or even to help you, in a sense. their only aim is to suffer for you.
only then -- and this may take years of close spiritual friendship -- does it begin to dawn on you
that they are suffering in your place, that they are taking on your burden. and then you yourself
will demand to take some of this burden back. but now you will be ready.
q: can you pull together these principles of healing trauma in the context of Christ and the Church?
patitsas: the first level of those who truly help is not only listening but mourning with you.
if the healer is able, he can go further and take your traumatized life on his shoulders and carry it,
but this is much harder because you are often going to lash out at the person who tries to bring you back into communion.
you may hate them before they are done loving you.
thus with healers in the church you will notice that there is no visible "trying" to help you.
the right hand does not know, as Scripture says, what the left hand is doing.
everything is handled with great subtlety.
in a sense the priest or therapist or friend doesn't have to take on the burden of the person they are helping,
because Christ does it. and in fact, if they do it in a wrong way, it could harm them both. they have to let Christ do it,
and that is exactly what Christ did on the cross. it's not only his trauma Christ is experiencing there --
his torture and crucifixion -- but all of our trauma from all of human history past and still to come.
this is real divine justice: you've been traumatized and you have, in a way, the right not only to not forgive,
but to strike back somehow. the striking back doesn't accomplish anything, but that impulse for self-defense is God-given,
and Christ lets you do it to him, if you must.
september 19
i am violent berserk and, fine i will cut all my ties.
it
it is not good. please make something different. if i do this
september 17 a fair-weather society
i have not been depressed like this in a long time and i am not really sure what's going to happen.
i am beginning to not really care. i have tried telling people about it and they dont know what to say.
some are afraid of me and some try to piece together what i have done wrong.
when joseph was sad in taiwan, they told him he must have done something bad in his past life.
americans would call that cruel but they secretly have the same thought, only a lot less spiritual or interesting.
being depressed is a damned-if-you-do,damned-if-you-dont situation. it is a matter of morality.
everything you do and say can and will be used against you, including your inaction and silence. they call that "isolating".
you are inherently wrong until your body is no longer protesting the sickness and violence of your society.
whoever tries to save his life will lose it.
september 16 2024 secrets
because there is always nothing to lose when life is on the line.
it is like that every time. i think i was given a body that runs on god.
it is falling into disrepair.
what wasn't for show must be now. its own wasntness makes me even more attached.
"look at me now. no -- look at me then, but now. i will act it out for you."
i must pretend for the people i am still in love with and the ones who have hurt me deeply.
i am especially talented around her who said rightly that i would never be loved again.
it is like a horrible curse, and her greatest blessing is my deepest pain.
yesterday my roommate declared that some wounds cut too deep to fully recover.
if that's true i must kill myself, and i'm lucky to think he's blinded by a broken heart.
i'm lucky to know my own godlessness. i know because i have kissed His lips and died to perfect intimacy.
today i wondered how to escape. why do i do it? because i already do. oh yeah, i say.
i tell myself to slow down. i tell myself i don't know why things come and go, but they do.
i have never seen a circle but i know there is one within and without me. don't ask me how, i say.
i pray about it and fall asleep. i dream a dream that never stays with me. i write emails and its gone.
a man whistles at me and its gone. gone to the nearest wood, to my swollen knuckles and some primitive sigh.
thank you. i rewrite the sensuality of my body with its own violence, and its gone.
but when i enter Your home and look into Your eyes i melt into nothing, into that dream i keep forgetting.
i am preparing for my death. each time, i have the urge to cut all ties, and that is right.
the earth dies in winter. the house cat dies in a bush. my love tortures my mind. i am leaving you all.
september 5 and 12 2024
L has heard "shoot me" and she gets it. and i get it. and i got it. and i am tired and lonely
and maybe appalachian, though i will never belong there. where is my land? i lost my accent to belong to another place i never could.
my mother lost hers to outrun the violence. she could not. i could not. we could not, and hers is in my body now.
it makes me say "shoot me" and "oh my God". it makes my bed swim, my couch drenched.
it makes me scared and scary and maybe hard to love.
i miss my mom and my grief is too violent to know. i glance from the corner of my eye and i think it will kill me.
it is something like red hot knotted and sharp, tangled barbed wire and my mangled naked body ripping, gnashing, wailing,
pleading. name it and look away.
it is now one week later and it is all the same. tonight i saw beautiful dancing mothers and
a crowd of thank yous. they cheered and cheered, and me: i could not stop my body from breaking open.
it was not the violent injustice that made me cry, but the ode to beautiful dancing mothers and the crowd of
beloved children. i sat in their midst like a bather's island and wept for something i have never even known
september 3 2024
1:33 past midnight and my frugality keeps me awake this time.
why buy a blanket when i have two pieces of fabric that i can layer just so?
one for the bottom of me, one for the top of me. it worked until it didn't, anyway.
tonight im chilly and I feel like a wild animal. ive been called feral and that makes me blush.
am I so obvious?
school makes me feel wild, too. i do not know those big fancy empty words
and i dont know how to pretend, either. i dont know the difference between "colonialism" and "coloniality",
other than I think the -ality one is made up to sound better-than-me.
if i don't find the other estranged hillbillies soon, i think my ferality will grow at an exponential rate.
september 1 2024
it is always late and alone when i suddenly want to be extremely honest.
it has usually just rained and i am usually too sleepy to sleep.
i am usually making my life palatable, speaking with a veil-like vagueness
that makes me not know, too, and i don't know where to start or if,
and i wonder what's to lose but what's to gain, and i wonder if i start with
the facts and the facts are uncomfortable, can i be blamed?
this is our part of the holler in eastern kentucky. my mom lived in the trailer on the right.
i think i did too, but she never talked about our lives. she never talked really.
i have had to do a lot of digging and a lot more wondering and even more not-knowing.
ive had to wonder why i cant know, too. but i do know this: i was freezing cold one windy night,
my little body next to a broken window. i was either too little or too cold to move.
my big sister pressed a raggedy ann doll against the window sill and hugged me until we fell asleep.
the moon was so big. i think it happened here.
august 27 2024
i have been in school. somehow, i made it back. what does it feel like? it feels like
there's no time to even ask myself that question. it feels like information overload.
it feels like endless possibility and infinite opportunity. i want to eat it all.
waves and waves of ideas rush over me and i have no idea how to ride them.
instead, i quick hold my breath and go under. i come up wondering where they would take me.
i think if only i knew how to surf, i would know how to make something of it all.
S is a surfer. i will ask him how tomorrow
intensity is what i chased, the impulse to do so kept at bay this past year.
i feel it rise up inside of me now. its the solution you need, says my body.
its 11:06pm and my body tells me to take the 45 minute trek up to my studio,
tells me to create create create like the madman i am,
tells me to sleep on the floor and keep working in the morning. silly body, i say.
i love you too much, i say. (maybe tomorrow) i whisper and wink.
j pt 2
refeeling is thirteen point five gigahertz electric insanity ) your touch was,is jolting and
i do not want to relax. i cannot relax. i cannot cry without hearing your moan.
you have made an echo chamber of my grief
j
your email selfish and cruel,i close my eyes and refeel my entire life.
do not put my puzzle together. you have gotten it all wrong.
after all that i have been through you say, and i think you are a fool.
you are the kiss of judas and i am the tree where he hangs.
august 24 2024
it was a day of people. m, e, and e. and a, too, who doesnt know it.
e number one, i fell in love with. i have known she is just like who i was too.
she figured it out today, asked me how i got better. when i told her, she couldn't understand it.
i dont understand it, she said, if you are better you must be different than me, but i know you arent.
im not, i said. its a miracle, she said. yes, i said. you must be so proud, she said.
no, i said. grateful, she said. i told her what i did. how does it work? i dont know.
want to try it? i guess. okay. i love her. she loves a.
she loves him so much she cries, so i cry too. she touches my knee. i love them both.
after e was e, who i fell in love with. it is always easy to do. dinner,
10 minutes before closing at a nice restaurant. i felt inconsiderate and kept apologizing and thanking the waiters for my own sanity.
my dinnermates did not notice. they were taking flash photography and making loud jokes about poop.
an old classmate i always liked sat one table over. she is in grad school now. i wanted to hide. how did i get here?
i wasnt sure. i looked at the ethiopian art on the walls. i wanted to be them -- those happy sun people with the big eyes.
i looked at the waiter who always looks deeply into mine, smiling only at me. he was smiling only at me. i smiled back. we looked into
each others big eyes for a length of time that would have felt uncomfortable were i not seeking refuge from
my strange social situation. this is when i remembered: i do not fall in love with people for the shows they put on.
i am not interested in this group game of who-is-quirkiest. after seven semesters of art school and drugs, i am bored of edge.
i yawned and said goodbye. i felt one million years old. i will love these too, but from the sidelines.
their world is one i have grown out of. mine is different now, other e knows. we were just talking about it. so were m and i.
everything is foreshadow, i am coming to understand.
i thank god for a sneak peak of being a nontraditional undergrad. thank you, i said, walking home well past my bedtime.
i am curfewed. i have to be. and this is more of the different place i am in: walking home, i listened to these patterns
and thought of nothing. i thought of nothing for so long that time skipped over itself and i fell flat on my face into
a place that i couldnt understand. it shocked me. scared me, even. what was that? nothing. here i am.
there is that, like yesterday. and there is the bicycle too. the headlight is still on. it is still leaning like that.
those girls are still walking. this song is still playing. it is still night time. i am still missing.
the street is still empty. that man still sleeping on that bench. i am still in these clothes.
i am still a little bit crazy. i must have gone back in time, i thought. it was a thought too close to psychosis for comfort,
so i did not entertain. but i will now, because truthfully i think i have accidentally fallen into yesterday. it could be. and it does not matter,
except that i got one extra day. that is not so bad at all. i can accept this
missing
it is something like dying or worse. i have not met anyone unafraid of me.
god only knows (the one hiding behind my end). please wake me up. please shake me.
do it now.
reverb
it is because and besides that i understand now as never that it is that and always was what i lost that i gained.
the weight means nothing with and without but the tolerance and i am raw to the world like a baby.
cycles of forgetfulness and complacency and too too to serve those more charming which is more sure of what they don't know they don't know.
the thing that was what always is is i don't want to get hit. sometimes i kiss not to love but to live and im just as.
sometimes help is fear. confused humility becomes self-righteousness in a heartbeat.
i have lived (a secret life). sometimes when the weather is nice we sit on the stools made by that woman who lived one million years away, who killed our cat or tried.
do you remember? i am remembering. i am glistening with excitement. i am dripping with sweat. i am a turn signal and you are a hungry boy begging to be fed.
i am you but dont make me but i will if you want if you want i will roll up my sleeves and stay a while. i could never find a vein but i tried i tried i tried
i am a hungry boy and you are glistening with sweat you are now screaming stop it you you you. your dad died that way and so will mine and so will i i said you said stop it you you
you scary hungry sad boy you are we are on the floor, writhing like that that memory i always have at night. and there is weeping and gnashing of teeth and oh god have mercy.
who said this was easy? it was me who said everything i said, i said. and did you say it too or did you simply fall in love before i was born
(i know, you say, i know) (with me) i am an arborist and a mason and i am losing my mind in the corner pretending to pray to a god i cant know.
you tap my shoulder in english and kiss my lips with your eyes (your lips like honey), that small mole down and to the right i want to touch. you.
and i do and i dont and we read john who kissed the lips of jesus (lips like honey). let it be blessed you said pulling God through me like thread through the eye of a needle.
you who are so devoted to Me that when i rub my cheek against yours out of lust, you point to a butterfly i have seen a million times, saying "look"
today i called A and she answered. i don't know why i called, except maybe to hear her voice and remember that i didnt dream her up.
there is only so much we can say with words and that much is very little, but we started with goodbyes and talked till our phones died.
it was the inflection of her voice which really said anything, like melodic phrasing, like the dynamics of a takashi yoshimatsu.
she was always like that, but her big eyes said more. i have a diagram of them somewhere.
with our words, we talked about how wrong trying is and how stereotypical the french are and how lovely the italians
(she doesnt yet know about the greeks). our words told me i am very different now. i have left and returned.
returned to what? im not yet sure. something different. something more gentle and sincere and whole.
something that lets me love others instead of wishing i could. i am grateful for that.
but one thing that remains the same is that i miss you -- 'you' being What Is beyond your personality, beyond any individual, beyond even all of my lovers combined. it is always like that.
it is always You. it is always Love i miss. it is the Lover. it is All of It. anyways.
you are walking. its dark and late and you are half asleep and lonely. you have a few friends and almost all are increasingly self-protective and sad and saddening.
you want to shake them out of their selves but their selves refuse to be touched. you want someone to shake you out of your self but they refuse to touch you.
you think about the tribe and the holler and the 12th step and the volunteer work and the falseness of separation and the trueness of communion. you think about jesus's sleeping friends. you cry a little bit and it feels good.
your stomach feels good too. it is so full of nothing that it begins to eat itself in that way you arent supposed to like. it feels funny and fake and strange.
everything feeds the dreamstate. you feel close to life. you thank god just because, and god comes to you in a cicada to love. you do.
especially because it pokes its needle into your skin.
you give it three kisses back. thank you thank you thank you.
and this is out of your hands. remember? they will know the great secret when god tells their open ears.
this is not for you now.
i'm back but i wasn't gone as long as you think i was.
i've been writing to you every day, and many of my entries have been recorded here but they were so edgy that im keeping them secret.
edgy? maybe i mean that i felt unstable, rapidly switching between vastly different perspectives. why am i ashamed about that? hmm i'm not sure.
the cruel and hurt part of me says "ugh! you're crazy!!! and you're dramatic, too!! and unreal and silly and volatile and maybe even violent!"
i will challenge the cruel and hurt part of me by saying "well well well how can you be so sure you know whats goin on!"
the more likely truth is that writing often feels like falling deeper and deeper into a single part of myself, thicket so heavy its sometimes pitch black and all i can do is feel around for the next step, the next word, deeper into that narrative.
i am like that. i am someone that falls deeply -- in love, in fear, in joy, in god, in hell, in pain, in blah blah blah.
as i grow i develop some kind of night vision, so that even in the darkness of that deep i can see more clearly.
some of my writing lately looks otherwise. something in my present has been extremely triggering of something in my past. so it goes.
i am gratefully beginning to wake up to my new life.
anyway, when i become liberated and fearless again, i may unsecret these writings so we can both see what i mean.
i moved back into a new apt in town after a too-short, two-week respite in the country.
today was day two. yesterday, day one, i fell into platonic love (deeply as i do)(all love is the same, said ST, said the greeks. familial, romantic, platonic, sexual, food-love. all love (all life) comes from the woman's belly, she said.).
i fell into love with a girl i had just dreamed about the night before. in the dream, the boy with whom i have fallen into romantic love (into love(deeply)) was falling into love with her and trying to hide it from me.
what a mess! i woke up thinking "i do not like this girl, and for all the wrong reasons". five hours later i ran into her at the thrift store.
i quickly became the fastest, wittiest, charmingest version of myself that only comes out when im intimidated or courting or both.
this resulted in one of the best conversations i have had in a while. it reminded me of A (are you reading this? it reminded me of you.)
conversation is like ping-pong, i decided, and we were playing a well-matched game. that is quite rare for me.
i want to tell you more but its 3 am and im falling asleep. there is always more to say (and more).
i will leave you with this: the story ends more similarly to my dream than expected, and i am again and again reminded that i fall more deeply than most.
often i fall deeply into devotion, and i seem to always find my devotion is unmatched, unreciprocated to the same degree. (yes, even after a great game of ping-pong)
only once did i feel another more deeply devoted to me than i was to her--and oh god, i had fallen more deeply into all of it then than ever before.
she fell even deeper. she was so deeply devoted that she saw me as Me, all God and no ego. so devoted she pulled God through me like thread through the eye of a needle.
so devoted to Me that when i rubbed my cheek against hers out of lust, she pointed to a butterfly i had seen a million times, saying "look"
i don't really know what im doing or feeling or thinking, so im going to try writing about it.
how has my day gone so far? i woke up from two dreams. one was about you who i am in love with.
the other was about my mom who has hurt me. the dream was related to a traumatic event -- the last time i ever saw her.
it involved me begging bystanders and policemen to help me get away from her, and her successfully convincing them all i was having a breakdown.
some looked at me like im an animal, some turned away. that happened. i woke up feeling so sad.
i have had periods of being so grateful for everything that has ever happened to me. today i am not.
today my brain feels knotted and impossible. it feels like i cant navigate simple, daily tasks. it feels unmanageable.
when i was a kid, i was obsessed with characters who had hard lives. the baudelaire children in the series of unfortunate events, for example.
i had great respect and admiration for the way their pasts shaped their minds.
it made them reflective, sensitive. they were creative and knew their story.
their experiences extended through them with momentum and grace and beauty.
it was always so appealing and romantic, even though (and maybe because) their stories hardly ever ended well.
the tv show skins and was the same thing. the recklessness, the drugs, the drama and the death.
something about it all satisfied a deep and painful longing in me.
it made me secretly want to have hardship, i thought.
little could i see then, i was already living it.
when i'm feeling guilty and ashamed, this is a good way to blame myself -- i somehow attracted hardship because of my secret lusting after it.
there is a small part of me always present that really believes that.
i know the truth is the other way around. i know i was drawn to these characters and plots because of pain i couldn't yet own.
anyway, here i am with my own series of unfortunate events and i know now that trauma is often a block.
usually, even. it doesn't immediately pull the victim into a state of sensitive presence and wise reflection with poise like violet baudelaire.
(this can come later, maybe, if youre lucky.) in real life, trauma is not romantic and easy. it is messy and confusing. it is complex and painful.
it makes me feel absent. it makes me know nothing but escape. it does not make me creative, but paralyzed. it makes me sick.
it makes each day survival. it is excommunicating from others, from my self, from all of life.
it ties my brain into knots so that i dont even know what i think, what i like, whats real and what isnt.
i dont know the stories, i dont understand the events. i can hardly remember, hardly bear to look.
and when i do, will i survive? will i lose my mind? i have before and i almost didnt make it back.
will i try to escape in more extreme ways? drugs will kill me. will i kill me? i dont know.
i cant know until i go there. i cant live until i go there, either. cant love, cant trust, cant be.
and so i think i have to go, even if it kills me. its a place i have gone before, but i have still deeper to go.
i think i must go through it, all the way to the other side. i thought i did before -- did i not? i dont understand this thing.
but i know i have to go back. and if im to survive, i must rely on the One who has all power, who is Power and Life itself.
i know that's the only way. M thinks people rely on faith because its comforting. the truth is i have no choice. without faith, i will die
i have stories to tell and i want to tell them.
mostly i want to tell the ones that hurt me, but im afriad thats bad to do.
i dont remember why. i think its because i used to tell them and it only made me look crazy.
it made people want to stay away from me. i think they were afraid. i was too. it made closeness feel fragile and contingent.
it made life feel dramatic and heavy. it made my relationships feel shallow and pitiful.
when i begin to talk about my life, it feels irresponsible.
it feels like dangerous chemistry experiments in a friend's kitchen, and im not a chemist.
worse if its a lover. i feel evil, like a mad scientist.
i feel shameful.
sometimes i am so afraid my stories will hurt people that i think i should just lock myself away and never speak to anyone until i sort it out.
like i have a responsibility to get myself sorted before the reckless endangerment of others.
i think i feel that often, actually. and any evidence that being vulnerable has, in fact, hurt someone, makes me feel so much shame and regret that it feels like im dying.
it pushes me back inside. it makes me feel crazy. it makes me feel like a fraud.
G keeps reminding me that things in the present are triggering things in the past.
i havent been secretly crazy, im not a fraud, im not horribly unrecovered and lying all along.
but i am in transition. im peeling back a layer. ive just molted and my body is soft and fragile.
i need to rest a while. i need to wait a bit to dry properly.
one time my mantis fell while she was still soft. her limbs were mangled and curled for weeks.
even then, she molted again. came out good as new
when i lived in greece with ST, we snuck away from our monastic duties for trips to the caves.
we turned off our flashlights and the sisters sang hymns.
i was glad for the dark so that they could not see me cry while they sang.
their devotion to god broke my heart open. it still does.
i will never forget the way gerontissa looked at me, with the eyes of jesus christ.
i cant explain it
when ST and i were falling in love atop that mountain, she told me of her fear that i do not know my place.
she said that someday i will wander deep into the caves and say goodbye to no one. oblivious and naive.
she said this would be a selfish act, except for the fact that it would come from a place of total incomprehension that i am very loved, that the loss of me would be painfully felt.
another time she told me that when i am crying, god is crying with me.
i know this is true. jesus knows my aloneness better than anyone
and he cried like me. when i cry i know he is crying with me. i love him a lot for it.
thats all i ever really wanted from anyone
love, fear
the comforter, the spirit of truth, the presence everywhere that fills all things, the treasury of blessings, the giver of life, the cleanser of every stain, the savior of souls, the good one, my humbled bones
today i went to work and read r. crumb's america very boldly.
i did not get comments on it but i did get get a comment on the music which was: "this is a suicide playlist. or a breakup. good luck"
then he read me a poem and i pretended to drop something so i could pretend to pick it up so i could wipe away my tears.
the truth is i am sad.
after work M drove me home. we took the long scenic route and talked about our common predicament.
after an hour of this i stumbled inside and crashed on the couch. i woke up to depression and a blanket over me and a bowl of warm pasta.
when i write this down i feel really loved, but at the time i couldn't see anything but my own unutterable aloneness.
M left and i pretended to want to paint. really, i wanted to stop being alive. i painted instead and listened to G yell at a deer eating his pot plants.
the painting was timid and ugly but really i was just sad
G and i planted seeds and dug potatoes and ate archaic seabed chalk. i still couldnt see anything but my lowercase self, especially after G left to watch the olympics.
it feels good to cry even though it makes people scared of me. i am learning to cry alone
and i am thinking about bessie smith and about carving wood and about hopping trains and about a group of protestant hobos who brought me to nashville. i wanted to join but drifting was killing me. it still is
just now i closed my eyes and had a dream that i am an innovationist
how are you
You have no idea how hard I've looked for a gift to bring you. Nothing seemed right. What's the point of bringing gold to the gold mine, or water to the ocean. Everything I came up with was like taking spices to the Orient. It's no good giving my heart and my soul because you already have these. So I've brought you a mirror. Look at yourself and remember me.
things that are true: energy in my body is fuzzy. i am starting to feel tired
after two nights and three days of energy in my body more than fuzzy that
kept me awake for three days. it felt like ecstasy and xtc and approaching mania.
i am starting to feel tired and im scared that im coming down.
i didnt think i would be scared and i am . there is still energy in my body
and i cant keep my eyes closed but i need to obey tired body because i am sober
and god loves me and is going to take care of me and its ok to come back down.
its good to come back down to the ground and to eat something. oh i am scared
but its ok to be scared
things i learned and want to take with me: being really open with people is actually safe,
being honest and real about where i am is safe and easy and good, messy and bad is safe,
creating really on the spot and just going for it is ssafe, cold showers safe,
there are some people who really do love me genuinely want me to be well,
i intuitively know how to play the banjo.
also i have a hard time knowing the words for how i feel and that is ok and its ok to know what shape i am
living is repeated lessons in dying, which is losing, which is identification with some thing not being.
god said I am, I am am, I am that I am. if i am made in the image of I am am then I am am.
makes me sick.when i was four i said it to my mom. i said it hurts my brain to think of god.
she never told me that, only the nun who called her in my place, called to tell her im alive.
she said i always wanted god, said it in tears. she never told me that. she never cried to me.
my mom was afraid to be close to me. she left before meeting me its the same story. life is repeated lessons of the beginning.
work with what you were given. it was never fair, it was only god.
heres what happened: some time ago someone which is my ancestors which is me ate from the tree of knowledge,
learned good vs bad, subject vs object, me vs god, everything vs everything.
the original curse ancestral trauma.
heres what happened: life loved life so much that evolved to think about itself. it was all always in the words. i should have never learned to think.
i should have never learned. now i think i am i, not i am am. i think i am separate and it hurts to be separate. it hurts to separate.
im damned to want god which is love which is to unlearn everything vs everything.
damned since i was four, maybe since always says my mom.
------
something in my blood. life used to be like preschool i think all the way through.
stories and the rituals of playing pretend and the play of creation creating.
mamaw quilted with the other women in the holler. nanny sewed papaw into the bed sheets and beat him.
momma sang on the dulcimer till i fell asleep. god she was so beautiful like an angel.
i got addicted to drugs and drifted aimlessly. thats tradition too. folk music tells me. and my dad's mugshots.
i do not have to do that again. it didnt work try something else.
im so sick of being sick. ive decided that tomorrow i will be well.
thankfully the worst of my existentialism is over. some of it lingers.
mostly i just feel sad and alone and too weak to cook myself a meal.
last night my dear roommate S came home and made me banana bread.
he had no idea what it meant and it made me tear up.
so did a video i watched about a teenage boy getting adopted (actually i sobbed.)
i am trying not to take my emotions too seriously right now (and kind of failing most times).
convincing another to do the same will be harder.
im so sick of woe-is-me.
in more interesting news, my idea pile for the css of this site is so high that ive decided to stop having ideas.
next phase is diagraming and sketching and watching Peep Show (best british comedy ever. do you know a better one? please tell me)
thank you for reading. thank you worldwideweb for the space to be read. ok bye
another sick day, and this time cuddling little chupa did not change me.
if anything it made me feel even lonelier and more wanting of a human to cuddle with, or at least talk with, or even text.
ever since i got clean and sober, i am finding all kinds of little indicators that i'm a different person now.
here's one -- one i don't like so much: it turns out isolation is not for me.
and what am i doing about it? not much. im mostly just moping around, feeling sorry for myself and my past.
repeating like a mantra of self-harm that i am unutterably and existentially alone.
ah! what a dangerous and silly place to be! i havent been here in a while, but neither have i been this sick in a while.
i will try not to indulge in a byproduct of my sickness.
instead i'll tell you about the last time i was here. it was november of last year and i'd gotten covid for the first time.
of all places to get covid, i was living in a "monastery" in the states.
it was not, in fact, a monastery, but a cult headed by a deposed, power-hungry "priest" gone rabid and a brainwashed, drama-addicted "abbess".
i'd been stuck there for a couple months, without any outside support or resources to get me the hell out,
and at this point in my stay at the cult, the mere thought of prayer made me sick to my stomach.
getting a horrible case of covid was divine intervention, im sure.
spending all that time locked up in my room for days on end, i stumbled upon a tiny area that received internet.
here is where i dug up anything and everything i could about the place where i was living.
they'd somehow wiped the english web clean, but with the help of a vpn, google translate, and traumatized ex-members of the same cult,
i found articles, court records, and even documentaries about the very place i'd been living (and intended to live for the next 8 months.)
it was during covid when i realized that God hadn't left me (God's presence was evident, too, when I got my period the day of my would-be illegal baptism under a line of illegitimate priests!)
in these same weeks, i was sure i was dying. i distinctly remember a night of rolling on sweat-soaked sheets, pleading for my life.
i remember feeling small and afraid, embarrassed and amazed that i'd ever thought i was in charge.
it was humiliating. and it was good, too. i was a helpless child. my wellness, my death, was out of my control. it was not mine. my life, too.
it never was, was it?
suddenly, my insides opened up and my life was laid bare. someone in my community used to say "my life is none of my business".
I know exactly what he meant. i felt so much relief and gratitude that night.
i felt totally connected, despite living in a place built on the destruction of that connection.
some part of me wishes i were in that same agony now, desperate enough to plead for my Life.
St. Paul said something really funny and true about the gift of desperation. i'll look for it later.
for now, i'll listen to jean ritchie until i fall asleep
today im in bed with a 100 degree fever and its borrrrriinnngggg.
i asked my bf to rub vicks on the soles of my feet like a good hillbilly.
then i tried watching tv but escapism is honestly not very fun to me these days.
i guess i got healthy. i did, however eat two ice cream bars (to bring down my fever ofc) and get a little depressed for 30 minutes.
then i cuddled with little chupa, which changed me. and now? either stardew valley or dostoevsky.
this morning i awoke next to a boy i am in love with and i think that must be the best beginning, like waking up with the sun.
arriving. on the way to work, i arrived with a tiny deer mouse. almost stepped on him first. he was tired and worn like an old man.
(all animals are boys, just like left is blue-green and right is red-orange and the number eight is brown-purple)
i think he was ready to leave and arrive somewhere else. i offered my (clothed) hands and he accepted, climbed on and scratched his ear.
we walked awhile until i found the perfect garden for him.
i'm feeling close with death lately, in a way that does not entail visits to the psych unit or drinking a handle of taiwanese liquor every morning just to stop shaking(! stories for another day. today i dont have to live like that)
in a way that makes me want to kiss everyone i know, love everyone i see, say the wrong words and draw ugly pictures.
in a way that feels stable and real, like that perfect Circle. total Trust. it's really liberating. now im thinking about jesus :v)
yesterday was blueberry-picking and today is blueberry-chomping and concert-going with N, who is visiting all the way from philly.
N is a preschool teacher and i suspect it enlightens her (and the kids).
when im with her, i want to play dress up and run around in circles and make mud-soup.
she's an amazing artist, too, and so effortlessly that i wonder if she has any idea what a genius she is.
i asked how she does it, she answered "oh i don't know. i just don't think about it and that seems to work."
yeah. that, i already knew. but how to not think? probably total Trust.
bye for now, my dear fellows!
funny, vulnerable, sleepy, allergic to the cat, happy, peaceful, free, easy, chirp chirp chirp
today i visited my intaglio prints. i held them in my hands and my boyfriend asked how that felt.
it felt funny. i forgot that they were real.
it felt like reuniting with an old friend after only interacting with them through fb messenger video chat for a couple years (yes, that is my preferred method).
i forgot how many prints i pulled that didnt meet my standards of perfection.
hours and hours of labor, stacks and stacks of prints that i suppose i intended to neglect for the rest of my life.
today Julia Cameron asked me who i admire. i admire L. L is messy. she creates to play and plays to create.
her work is full of imperfections and she displays it with honor and love.
i thought of C, too. i thought of her imperfect character and all the on-the-spot fessing up she does.
sometimes i feel so much gratitude and love for my creator that i see the impossibility of honoring it.
Dave Bixby asks "how can we say we love You?"
maybe the closest i can come is showing all the parts of me, not hiding anything.
honoring my gifts and my faults, saying "this is how God made me."
that's real trust, i think -- being authentic and True, holding it all in the light.
there it is. i might not get it, i might have opinions about it, but there it all is, anyway.
i made this list of people i admire and all of them have this quality of honesty.
i'll be honest too.
honestly, i'm sad tonight about something i don't understand.
L would say "language" and "use your words" and "gentle gentle".
today i told her about T's death and she asked me how my brain makes sense of it.
thats all it is. the words dont have to be right, i think. phew.
i don't know how my brain makes sense of whatever this is, but its something to do with love.
and that, i think, is enough said.
i sat outside for a bit and the night chirps comforted me.
it was orchestral, a symphony, magical and intense and right now.
it is tragic that i look for Love yet i'm surrounded by it.
the insects certainly aren't looking. they're in it. they're creating it.
and me?
lonely, love, admiration, awe, humility, sad, soft, sleepy, sleepy, sleepy, 1am?? no wonder im so emo
this eve i'm scarfing down a plate of curried vegetables and thinking about the Bubba George String Band set at Grassroots yesterday.
i was a hillbilly kickin up dirt, feet black from all the stomping and clogging they apparently knew how to do. it certainly was not a product of thought.
once again im reminded how much i get in my way when i think, get in God's way for me. God loves when my body remembers where its from.
when i think about thoughtlessness, i think about how empty my mind was when i finally gave up and got sober. man, what relief!
i spent my whole life thinking thinking thinking, then thinking thinking would get me to stop thinking (ie some perverse jnana yoga...)
when i finally gave up my mind, it was so empty for the first time in at least a decade.
thoughtlessness was the first thing i thanked God for every day. suddenly i had more energy and more peace.
i stopped fighting everyone and everything, stopped obsessing about understanding reality, stopped looking for holes to point out, stopped seeing in black vs white, good vs bad.
i dont notice my thoughtlessness much anymore, and part of me wonders if thats because im more angsty or prideful now than i was then.
maybe im slowly taking my will back, less and less trusting of God. it certainly feels that way sometimes.
but then i remember for moment what my life used to be like. it's beyond my imagination in the same way the life i live now wouldve been to that version of me.
i could definitely do with some more praying, though. i could make some art and go on more walks and be more honest and kick up some more dirt and love more people.
because it feels really great to be with God and without thought, to get into the flow of Life. feels like the most intimate thing there ever was
blah blah blah. sentimentality always made me ill. and yet im so sentimental!!!
writing online reminds me of the blog i shared with A, reminds me of A.
what a sweet, special thing that was, and so easy to be vulnerable and annoying with a best friend by my side being as annoyingly vulnerable as me.
i'll pray for holy company. a sacred circle.
today i am feeling the loss of a piece of my circle, T. her disease took her life.
i have the same one. am i afraid? i don't know. i am mostly heartbroken and humbled.
i am small and powerless to this disease, to life. "there, but for the grace of God, go i."
i really see that these days. it's awesome and incomprehensible and beautiful and terrifying and gracious all at once.
memorial gathering this evening. we ate some food and heard a poem and pet a dog and passed the talking stick.
her parents were there. they knew my name. they said she really loved me. fuck, man...
feeling was mutual. she was so easy to love. she really was.
