Silent in the Face of Panic and Heartbreak

I attended Unitarian Universalist service today for the first time. I rode in early with a choir member so she could attend rehearsal.

Sitting nervously in the corridor-side edge of a pew, unwilling to trap myself in the middle of one of the long benches, I curled quietly. In waves, I felt exposed. As the people gradually filtered in, the edge of panic at the potential for judgement and the eyes of strangers flickered up, threatening, and ebbing down, and rising up again. I tied part of a macrame bracelet, pinned to my backpack, set on my knee, and turned my eyes down and set my fingers working in their fidgeting work when the anxiety rose, as a way to curl in.

Fearing that others may try to ask me questions I felt I would not be able to answer, but only burst into tears at my own inability, I had the forethought to take my pocket notebook out shortly before service ended and write clearly: "I'M SORRY - I'M NOT FEELING ABLE TO TALK RIGHT NOW."

The one person I handed this notebook to as answer to their greeting questions about whether I had enjoyed the service nodded and took a half-step back immediately on comprehending the words. I did have a bit of trouble finding routes to move around people engaged in conversation, scattered here and there in aisles and in the party area downstairs.

Downstairs for tea and coffee, at the table for writing nametags, I wrote my chosen name, and stood for a long indecisive time with a marker of a second color in my hand, trying to find a way to express succinctly enough for a nametag what I wished be known. I settled for "MAY MIGHT NOT SPEAK", which seemed to serve well enough. Those people speaking to me caught sight of it if I just angled a bit, and then spoke without expecting me to answer in words. One kind lady for instance first asked if I was looking for something, and then upon seeing it, told me where the coffee and tea was. Coffee was, indeed, what I had been looking for, and I was at first looking at the wrong table.

I summoned my nerve to speak when the lady who had led most of the service stepped near. I thought I had already missed my opportunity, or perhaps ought to wait and see more of her manner on another visit first. But being brought so close by chance, I attracted her attention, speaking softly and shy, and asked, given her mentioning a love of collecting all sorts of Christmas music, whether she'd added the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society versions to her collection yet. It seems my recommendation was welcomed with some delight. It brings a smile to my face to remember in order to relate it.

Throughout the service, while panic flickered and was soothed in waves like a tide, as my developed instinct to be averse to ritualized group ceremonies (as they strengthen ties that often lead to groupthink) rose and railed as the people chanted their sacrament, rose and sat, sang, held hands to sway together, and made arches with arms for young ones to pass under. I might have wished to join in better, but the rhythm of the service was unfamiliar to me; still deeply associated with traditions that rankle my thoughts; some of the songs unknown; and as well, had I wished to sing, my voice, I feared, would have croaked and shrilled with sobbing.

I joined in singing "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" in a deep register and some softness, though tears streamed from my eyes. I stood to go and light two candles when the time was called to do so, although with a fear in me that this was something meant to be arranged beforehand or paid for. It seems it was not, though.

Sometimes, it was not really fear that insulated me from the warmth and welcome of the friendly people at the chapel, nor perhaps even my old accustomed sense of distance and barrier from people who are being happy, relaxed people together. It was heartbreak, still thick upon me like dust or fiberglass. Heartbreak, which renders its host profoundly alone although they may be in a crowd of recognized friends.

And so I lived for a time on the edge of panic and in the thickness of heartbreak, and sat crying. And I wished I could have told someone, through my silence, through my sense of isolation, and the intent of the assembled congregation, I know. I know and I need, for this time, to live on the edge of panic and in the thick of heartbreak, and to cry and endure and sit with my tears on my breast.

And so I have, and so I do. I will cry until my crying runs out and is not replenished by water and salt and sleep.

I have been struggling with the question of how much to let go.

Blood

If you're someone who's likely to be disturbed by blood, menstruation, sex or complicated questions about gender, it would probably be better not to read this one. Have a good day.

An aggravating feeling of helpless rage at the smugness of an authority that doesn't give a damn about anything I say and has power over me through the very nature of the systems of which our world is built, the only allies against it very far away and unable to intervene to help me in my present, and for all I know unable or too busy to intervene before I run out of time and die.

Seems familiar.

I have, for the last hour or so, been holding an internalized mental argument... with an anthropomorphic personification of human evolution. And feeling increasingly like a sulky, powerless teenager under its authority.

-----

I woke up this morning covered in blood, soaked through the sheet under me, into the mattress, all over my loins and thighs. Grumbled to my feet and wrapped in a towel and tried to get to the bathroom to clean off without leaving drops of blood on the hall carpet. I had made my regular preparations for my period, it's not like this came out of nowhere and I wasn't expecting anything. But what the hell? Usually those steps are enough.

Wash my legs, empty my cup, clean the little drops off the bathroom floor (at least that just wipes clean) and come back to my room to strip my bloody sheet off my bed in a cold room stinking richly of copper and rust. Laundry earlier than expected, then. I don't have any spares. Sad regret at not following through on my thought to buy another mattress protector when I started using the first one I bought as a blanket against the growing cold followed me to school. I can't expect the next unknown tenant to be willing to sleep on a bloodstained bed, so it's only fair after this to put some of my deposit towards replacing the mattress, which is a punch to my sensitive budget awareness. I know better than this, and the cost of buying the second mattress protector would be so much less. But I just hadn't gotten around to it. Too many other priorities too intensely felt. Too late now.

Well, at least I did put myself to bed early and got what should be a reasonable enough amount of sleep to function well at school. But in class, it took not only an energy drink but the engagement of an actual exercise to perform to keep me from repeatedly closing my eyes and realizing after a while that I hadn't opened them and was paying more attention to my desire for more sleep than the lecture. On the upside, I guess, it's familiar material that was covered by my Cost Accounting class at Fanshawe, and didn't require much mental presence to use as review rather than new learning.

And while I sat in class, warmth leaked into my underwear and jeans in little blossoms. I could feel it. What the hell, seriously? It's only a half hour walk, and only an hour of class. School bathroom, emptied my cup again and looked over the damage. Mhm. Stained the patches on my jeans. Well, that's fresh enough it might wash out if I deal with it before it dries. And if not, well, I was kind of planning on re-patching them anyway. Damn, though. I don't usually have heavy periods, and this is insanely fast. One of my old friends used to tell me about how heavy her periods usually are, and I was glad I didn't have to deal with it. This sounds like what she told me. I don't think it's a medical emergency, but it's really weird for me.

Feeling exhausted, scarcely better than on Monday when I hadn't slept at all, after a morning headache I attributed to dehydration from blood loss (and seemed to be validated, since drinking lots of water really helped). I felt and feel drained in a way that seems profoundly more literal than usual, and responded as I had on Monday by returning home to rest, frustrated intensely at the impact on my attendance in classes.

As I walked, I wondered why my body was investing so much into conception this month, such that it was leaving me deprived of strength for other things, like actually being restored by sleep and being awake in class. I reflected that all the masculinity and determination I pulled up yesterday and that wonderful feeling of swagger and confidence just couldn't seem to be supported on a body spending so much of its strength to wash out and replenish a womb, which was not made for battle. I felt I would like to be able to talk to the part of me that regulated that and ask it what the deal was, why the investment, and if I could have some kind of warning if this was going to happen again.

Well, I hadn't been expecting this to develop, but my imagination is vibrant and has a lot of material to draw from.

The personification looks back at me with patronizing eyes.

"You get all pumped up on passion and infatuation and don't expect to conceive. Just like you, Upstart Consciousness, thinking you run everything now, decide everything. I made those feelings, and getting you pregnant is what I made them for.

"You can co-opt the feelings, sure, like you've harnessed everything else. Do what you like, Upstart. I can't and won't stop you. But when you take the infrastructure I spent twenty years building into your very flesh, and millions in practicing, and you try to make something completely different out of it, don't come complaining to me that my lust, my affection and instincts of family-forming and the elation of compatibility that I gave you have side-effects that mess up pieces of whatever weird deviating program you're trying to build with them. De-bug your own mess.

"Silly Upstart. Always wanting the best of everything, without its costs.

"I specialized you to be a garden, rich and fertile. You don't want to plant anything there, fine. But this blood is not meant for you, Upstart Consciousness. It was meant for the children you refuse to have."

And I stare and sit and sulk, enraged at the determinism of my weave and my flesh to anything other than my will. An authority I have no greater established authority to appeal to for overturn. I wonder to myself whether this personification of the very manufacture of me gets its attitude of distant, smug and hateful authority from my mother (the flesh person from whom I directly descend, rather than the long process of descent which is no less my mother), or maybe the other way around. Was this always a part of it? Was this far more a part of my utter intolerance for her than I ever suspected, a hatred that I was built with a body made for childbearing when I wanted to fight and lead?

Confusion and despair and uncertainty. There are times, although as befits the bitter teenager feeling, I may resentfully resist admitting it at the moment, when that purpose flows through me red and alluring. I feel the heat of it and my body's response. Lust craves in me pointedly to be sewn and swollen with fertility, but I revolt and hold my ideals against the impulse, valuing quality of life over quantity and understanding them to be in conflict. I will side with quality, no matter what my biology has to say about it. But deep in my sex drive, I know it is there in all of my femaleness.

Do I hate that? Is that why all of sex seems like rape to me sometimes, in that vague and imprecise close-but-not-quite way? That the ways in which my body is designed to enjoy it seem like an imposition to me, a drug woven into my flesh, a manipulation I cannot escape and a tool to subvert me as an individual, as Upstart Consciousness which thinks that Consciousness ought to rule the world; like the systems of pleasure exist to demur me and not just me specifically, not just Serp, but "me", the concept of being an individual and having self-determination, demur "me" to submit my time and life energy to being part of the biological process, a cog in the machine of flesh and procreation. A stitch in the fabric of generations, to bond and spread its spoor and die and be eaten, digested by plants and returned to the newborns in their day as fruit.

I want more for myself, for all selves as my loves and inspirations remind me. Does this revolt then, this rebellion, seep in bitterness and conflict right down, down, through my muscles and organs and neurons, into a hatred of the very attraction of sex, the hunger and preoccupation and the pleasure it offers to reward me for doing obediently as my body says? Made disgusting by a rejection of blind obedience on principle, a hatred of all the flaws and all of the victims enabled by the processes of just taking your pay, or endorphins, or promotion, and not thinking about whether what you're being paid to do is good. Could that conviction, revulsion, really be at the core of my longstanding recoil against, shame about, not exactly sex, but the love of and desire for sex?

Maybe.

I hadn't considered it before, but at first appraisal, it seems to make a lot of sense. The distaste and shame are still there, after all, after every kind of mental exercise and argument I could think of against kink shaming and slut shaming, after rejecting and rejecting again repeatedly as not having any right to determine my feelings every mote I could find of religious shame, of mere fear-of-judgement, of anything else. But there was some root that none of it has shifted. Is this that root?

My plans for the day had more to do with study and less to do with uncovering dysphoria hidden deep in my psyche, but hey, I'll take it. I will almost never refuse an opportunity to understand myself better.

Dear Memory: Trying to Slow Down

I wrote myself a checklist for today which consisted of very little big or taxing, and included leisure as an entry. It has been exams, and I have been dizzy with love and busy with study and unable to get much sleep, as I stay up late and my roommates always wake me with their conversations in the morning.

So I have had a quiet day deliberately for once. I set away my laundry, I enjoyed my tea, I ate leftovers and a shawarma on my way back home from a walk. The snow glitters like tiny flashing stars everywhere. Across the ground and in the air, the world around me shining with pinpoint mirrors, facets on a tiny flake of ice. Craft glitter could never match this, for all that it might be designed as though to try.

I Googled up some podcasts to do with finance and bookkeeping and Irish experience or systems in particular, and listened to one first episode of a couple on my walk. In one of them, the voice of the speaker sounded so similar to my dear friend Coda that I giggled to myself about it. In the other, the accents brought me nodding recognition and a reminder of the lecturer who taught my marketing class in Athlone.

The man at the pizza shop (who made me a shawarma) was good-natured and complimentary, happily chatting to me about all the diverse ingredients that make up the flavour, and shared the basic ingredients in the garlic sauce when I confessed I didn't know how to make it.

Half way along the long stretch of Oxford St. which is bordered in great sports fields and open to the wind, I paused and stared in some wonder at the sky. Lights... Lights on the distant side of the field stretched straight up in gorgeous vertical beams, visible high into the sky, diffuse with gentle auras. Some lights more reddish, others more bluish, and a couple thicker and brighter and yellow. I suppose, the light must have reflected off the sparse falling snow, to show those magnificent beams like pillars or signal lights up into the sky. It was worth stopping to stare at for a while, and I could not help but wish I had you with me to see it and awe at it alongside.

My phone had died of podcast. Its battery is rubbish these days and I hadn't fully charged it before leaving anyway. Otherwise, I would have taken a picture. As it is, I describe it here and encourage anyone who might read this and who lives in a place where it snows to look for the beautiful sight on a night when it is only just snowing in tiny flakes, so you can see into the distance.

I certainly must have overexposed myself to those Elbow songs in the past couple of days. Now I can hardly get them to stop interrupting my thoughts, and I am a little irritated of the feeling, even though they are good songs.

I am trying, for the moment, to calm myself down and return some focus on the present and near future, as much as it is habitual and forever tempting to continue daydreaming of meeting you again. I do not want to overdo it and lose sight of the broader existence and variety, and the options in my life. I hope to continue to find ways to enjoy my time here in more than just waiting for it to be over. I see myself in a broad variety of lights, as a student, a traveler, a romantic, a strong creature going on adventures, a restless youth barely able to pull myself together for an hour or two to study and touch ground between flights of fancy and self-indulgence.

Yesterday I went over to the college for a while just to get out of the house, and wandered into the library. There I found on a rack of books to be returned to the shelves a volume called Celtic Mythology, and I picked it up and sat down and read a while, a description of what disperate and scattered records shed any light at all on the religions and folklore of old Irish and broader Gaul or Gael culture. Records in Greece, observations written by their foes, suggestions in the content and the labels of some various works of art; statues, a cauldron somewhere... I read a brief English summary of the stages in the Book of Invasions.

Although I felt restless and tired and was frequently tempted to return home, my mind was also hungry for this context of some of the scant few things I heard others say while I was visiting, and one bit in particular, a mention of one surviving boat of a migration, which carried fifty women and three men, prompted me to blink to myself in some astonishment. I had heard that story before. Only briefly mentioned in this book, but I had heard a much elaborated version in a book I had read while still living at my mother's house what must have been over ten years ago.

It put me in a keen interest to someday take some time to visit other sites around Ireland, any place which still has symbols or record of these old stories, or special relevance in them, and see what it might inspire me to wonder. I thought, perhaps I could become a scholar of these great old stories someday, perhaps write conjectures on them... That, though, is another big and bold idea. It must be enough for now to be fascinated and pleasantly distracted by them, and keep going about my business of learning business, putting forth however much effort performing well at that must demand of me.

And it must be enough, for now, to bring my writing to a close and wish you and myself a good and restful night.

Less Boring

You know...
Let's give this a second, shall we?

You know, yesterday, I saw a bible thumper's recruitment card, and a plastic coin with a bible quote on it, and a pamphlet, all tucked into street posts and such things on my way in to school, and I tore the card in half, and collected the coin and the the pamphlet and put them in the garbage and the recycling bin, respectively. I had read the first side of the card, and half of the second side, and both sides of the coin because the writing was so short it would be hard not to, and the first few pages of the pamphlet, just to give whoever had written it a chance. I don't think I need to say anything about what was written on them, because there was nothing the least bit surprising about any of it, if you have seen such items before.

And I found myself thinking, I admit rather bitterly, that maybe if for once they said something simple instead of trying to play really insultingly obvious manipulative games by trying to dangle mysterious wisdom at you, maybe if they just said, "At 123 Somewhere St, at 6-9 PM on May 29th, we are going to talk about God. All comers welcome, any faith or none." Maybe that would be intriguing. Maybe that would be a good way to actually start a conversation about something interesting and complex like God. It would have gotten MY attention.

I think even people who are not very analytical, in my generation, are dead sick of being patronized to by people who think they are older and wiser, or think they are representing something older and wiser.

I find it disappointing that so few people seem to reach the conclusion that in order to actually catch the interest of people in my generation, even the ones who aren't very analytical, the best strategy would be to look at your intended invitation, and try to see it through someone else's eyes, and try to identify anything that sounded the slightest bit like manipulation or patronizing, and remove it. To try to figure out what you actually wanted from people, and then try to figure out how to ask them for it so frankly and honestly that they would at least be surprised, which makes people THINK, and might even believe it was honest.

And then it occurred to me that while that probably was the best way to start a conversation about God or anything similarly divisive, if you used an honest hook to get people in the door, those people would probably only leave if you started trying to preach to them; if the meeting itself didn't match the frank honesty of the invitation. Then you would have only hurt the chances of the next person who tried to catch those same peoples' attention by being so frank and honest it might surprise them. Because then, they would have already seen that trick before.

So maybe it's for the best that people who don't know how not to patronize in predictable, annoying patterns don't know how not to patronize even for long enough to try to get your attention.

Someone on the internet got my attention today. They posted a chest-high text wall of complete and undisguised gobbledygook as a blog comment in a place that already inspired thought, and that was a surprising, interesting thing to do. It hadn't been removed by the owner of the blog, and that was also surprising and interesting. And the username that posted that comment had an embedded link to somewhere else, somewhere where another message was written, that wasn't gobbledygook, and wasn't obviously manipulative.

So I say to this unknown person: I don't trust you, but you have my attention. What would you like to do with it?

Beautiful Fog

It seems I'm quite conscious of my own desire not to let a full calendar month go by without coming back to post here. I kind of like that. Perseverance? Good habits? One way or another, it seems like a positive thing. I work tomorrow, and it is becoming very late. I will get less than six hours of sleep. But I'm okay with that. I'm not worried, even though my scheduled shift is longer than most. It took a while, but I've become quite comfortable with my work, and far less worried that I'm somehow not doing it well enough. My co-workers, by and large, seem to like me and consider me a good worker.

Tonight I went out walking, just to be walking, as I haven't for a while. Along the path just South of the river, a path that is fairly familiar to me, I wandered through banks of deep fog under a full moon, and felt as though I were wandering through myth, a marsh world of old Irish fairy tales. For a moment, a fallen leaf across my path looked like a giant slug. A skunk skittered across my path, and stopped, startled by the presence of this big creature, to look at me, and I think I heard it hiss, though perhaps it was the sound of it stomping against the pavement, before continuing on.

The fog was beautiful... And oddly, I felt no particular need for it to feel unnatural or magical. The whole matter was evocative but felt very down to earth. Happy, peaceful... My life has become like this. Though I am restless, and worry from time to time about when and whether I will end up doing more with my artistic and idealistic ambitions, I am content with my life right now. I work easy hours for low pay, doing something I enjoy with people I have developed a fond working familiarity with, for the most part. I can afford to live simply with a few luxuries, and my life has been such that I can very much appreciate what I have. Bunny boy and I are planning to move into a classy apartment together come this October, which will be no more expensive than our current separate living arrangements, but I have little doubt it will be much richer. He has said that he has a hard time imagining anything short of sudden, tragic death ending our new, flourishing relationship, despite the fact that it has had its own challenges and bumps. This is only one of many marks of the goodness of this match. Even my relations with Pup are not as stressful, if only because I feel I can accept how stressful they sometimes are, which puts me in a position of confidence and calm from which I am much better equipped to comfort him.

If I feel the urge to write again soon, you know I'll be in touch. Until then... Serenity.

My Personal Belief System

I am sometimes asked about my beliefs, in the context of the existence or nature of God. It's one of those questions that everyone's bound to face eventually. Someone recently asked me, "What is your personal belief system?" a question so dangerously broad and open ended that in my attempt to come up with a good answer, I ended up writing quite a lot. Since it is something I think about, and care about, and something that I will no doubt be asked about again in the future, I will leave my response here for anyone who is interested.

My personal belief system is... I'm not sure. There are lots of different things I could probably call it, and just don't want to. I might actually qualify as a Christian depending on how loose your definition is, but probably not. I certainly don't think of myself as one, and don't want to. I could call myself atheist, but that's not entirely true - I believe in spiritual entities and interaction between them, energy magic and things like that, and so I don't think my "belief system" quite counts as atheist.

Do I believe in God? ... Yes. Not as a person. When I think about it, when I am feeling spiritual and profess any belief, I believe in God in more or less this sense:

~~~

There is a force imbued in everything that exists, whether we believe in it or not - plants, animals, humans, dirt, stars, space, time, spirits, etc - with a certain element of unity, deeper than outward appearance, behavior and chemical differences, but that can and does affect these things in subtle ways, by its very nature. I don't know, and don't think it really matters, whether this force is actually what matter is MADE of, purely, or only part of it.

I as a human being, with an independent mind, act as a separate-entity most of the time, but I am always at least somewhat attuned to the part of me that is God, is spirit. Sometimes I am attuned to it more, sometimes less, depending on how much I am distracted by things like pain, desires, physical needs and other concerns that I have to address as a separate-entity in order to survive - I AM liable to suffer, for instance, were I unable to eat food for an extended period of time. The more I focus on things and react to things as a human being, a smart animal, a separate-entity, the less I am in communion with God. It can be very frustrating sometimes to attempt to let go of such things and return to a sense of unity, a state closer to God.

I personally think that I have at least in some parts of my life gotten quite good at keeping myself open to God. I have experienced times of enlightenment, when I felt guided - an inspired moment in which I suddenly felt or knew that I should do a particular thing, and so did, and it turned out to be exactly the right thing to do. Similarly, I have an uncanny knack for finding good, helpful things at extremely convenient times and noticing them enough to take advantage of them. Not that all of my needs are met, or anything like that. I will often suffer for a while for some reason or another, and face it and sometimes even get through it like a separate-entity human, a smart animal acting like a smart animal to get through a difficult situation. I find that I often cycle between periods of enlightenment/guidance and prolonged detachment from God.

I see God as... not exactly the source of magic, but something that makes it possible, the thing through which it works. A person, or, presumably, any other entity with Will, can project its needs and desires through that unified spirit, subconsciously. It generally works best, or, for large enough effects to be noticeable, only at all, when the person is inspired, in a mindset which is closer and more open to God. It requires action, a sort of determination, to come to fruition, probably because the spark of determination that occurs when a person acts to accomplish what they want or need to do is what turns idle desire into actual Will. Sometimes, that Will becomes manifest - subtle influences of entities acting on the amount of God's intuition they are attuned to, subconsciously or otherwise, will bring people who need to interact with each other together. If you've ever seen the first episode of the new show, Touch, it demonstrates some extreme examples of the way this might work quite well, but manifests the sign of people who need to interact in numbers coming up in their lives.

If God has a single grand 'Will', as many people seem to think, It is certainly not straightforward, and only hinges on single people and events inasmuch as the tiny parts of God within the people influenced by those events will them to happen or not. Even that much can be incredible and dramatic of course, but it is silly to think that all of reality is thinking about you, or your wedding, at any given moment.

If I were to guess what the "Will of God" really were, I would guess that it is more or less the deepest and most moving collective desires of the whole of existence, which must at once be extremely complex and subtle, and at the same time primal, deep, and surprisingly simple. For example, the thing many people say, that the Will of God (or God itself) is Love. It seems to me to fit - the experience of love is moving, primal, deep and although essentially simple, it is full of subtleties and confusion. And most importantly, although expressed in multitudes of ways, it is a drive that seems to be shared by almost everyone, more or less, depending on the person, and how much they are willing to step aboard and follow the right intuition to let life, or God, "bring them there".

~~~

Take or leave that as you wish. You asked about my belief system, and obviously, there is a lot more I could say about it, but hopefully this explains the base of it to you.

I wouldn't normally call the spirit force God. Too many people talk about God in (what seems to me to be) disgusting and stupid ways and I really just don't like the word. Never have. Sometimes I call it All, which seems, to me, appropriate, because it is, after all, everything. The Force, Goddess, Essence, or Aether would all work too, but as with God, each of those words also has, or at least has developed, other different meanings, with which is is important not to confuse the concept.