Sunday, March 2, 2008, 08:40 PM - Random Thoughts
I found a cool psych survey. I'm a sucker for things psychological and/or spiritual. I was happy to learn that my profile is "Benevolent Thinker" Yay!!!!
See the Survey Resut
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( 3 / 1099 )Sunday, March 2, 2008, 06:07 PM - Church Stuff
We have this new associate rector at church that seems like one of the nicest priests I've met in many yeaars. He's also a vegetarian. He's pretty young and has a groovy gotee beard. He goes by "Nick" instead of "Reverend Szobota". He seems like he really is satisfied with his calling too.
The great thing about being a changeling is that we can know souls, and I had a very positive read from him the very first time I met him face-to-face (which was a few weeks ago).
So today I got to hear him preach. He really is gifted by God with the ability to use words for healing. It was the most life-affirming, loving ten minutes of preaching I've ever heard uttered in Saint John's Church. The sermon spoke of how mankind hold some people in contempt for their percieved deficiencies (like the blind beggar in the Gospels). But in truth, God loves those that man does not or will not. God loves people who are different, damaged, and wounded. God loves those that man judges to be unwhole or incomplete. And God loves those who He has created, and that love never stops -- ever.
I wish I could write here the exact words he used, for my retelling does not do it justice. Nick is blessed in a way that few people who claim to lead in Christ actually are.
The impact that the sermon had on me was pretty profound. It reaffrimed that fact the God loves me even though I'm gay. His words reaffirmed that I'm a whole and loved creature even though I'm a changeling and not human; God made me to be what I am and thus I am loved as I am. Even when society may judge me as damaged and treat me as unwanted or defective, God loves me a complete, whole, competent, lovingly created entity. And God loves Thistle, Ashen, Willow, and even Halo, for none of use would exist without God having made us.
It really gave me hope that not all who lead in Christ are cold-hearted fundamentalists, but that the Holy Spirit still acts in the lives of those who want to forgive and love and heal.
Blessed Be.
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( 2.9 / 1396 )Saturday, March 1, 2008, 04:01 PM - Cool Stuff
Well... when perfect days come around, I'm never one to waste them. Doug and I both had the same day off, so that was a real treat. My day started off really peacefully. I had the experience where my mind sort of woke up and my body was still asleep. I tend to call this "standby mode". It's very relaxing and time seems to pass incredibly slowly. It feels regenerative and healing. Over the course of an hour, my body slowly woke up and I felt really refreshed and balanced.
Doug and I went to First Watch for breakfast. It's our favorite Saturday morning thing. They have totally awesome pancakes and french toast. I used to get their ultra-crunchy bacon before I became a veggy, but their scrambled eggs are pretty good. And their bottomless coffee was pretty good.
The wounds that Halo inflicted on our shared body are healing pretty well. There's no infection and we didn't need stitches. The injuries are definately going to scar, but that's okay. There's plenty of scars on the shared body already, so a few more won't make a difference. Halo was aware for a few minutes (deeply, far away). I didn't waste this opportunity. Thistle and I told him as well as we could that we aren't mad at him and we do love him, and that soon things will get better and he'll be safe.
Since the weather was just about perfect (sunny, windy, not too cold), I did a 2.5 mile walk outdoors. Thistle flew and he was able to recover from losing all of his energy in the battle with Halo on Wednesday night. I wish I could relate in words how wonderful it is when Thistle flies. He shines in the sunlight and he seemed to be able to fly really high today. It was just so wonderful! :) He was happy and I felt incandescent. Angels need sunlight, humans need food, changelings need a bit of both. So we are both fulfilled and my changeling spirit rejoices. Thistle was thinking of a friend who has been kind to us and willed some excess sunlight her way. :)
So... after goofing off on Second Life for a while, I went to the gym and did my Saturday super-workout. If I include the outdoor walk, I did a total of 8.6 miles and 1,200 calories. It's great having an obediant body. Nice!!!
I did my Wiccan visualization/drawing/grounding exercises before the sun set. Yay! It's good to feel groounded and re-centered.
Next stop was dinner at Mango Grove. It's a totally awesome all-vegetatian Indian food restaraunt that's not too expensive either. I ordered my dinner "as hot as you can make it", which is a dangerous thing to do in an Indian restaraunt, heh heh. But I love spicy food and I flet like I could exhale fire by the time dinner was done, hee hee hee! This is day 18 of being a vegetarian. the body grumbles here and there, but my changeling spirit is happy for the change. Yay! Fun fun fun!
Days like this are sacred. I didn't waste it. Blessed Be. :)
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( 3 / 1308 )Saturday, March 1, 2008, 08:51 AM - Dumb Happenings
So... one of the reasons why I don't have much respect for fundamentalist Christians is that they basically talk a strong talk, but they're painfully deficient when it comes to backing up their ethos with actual deeds.
As you all probably can guess, there are times when I am more well and times when I am less well. This is a period when I am simply less well. But I'm doing something about it.
I have a fundamentalist friend who told me last night that he doesn't want to talk to me anymore until I'm in the "more well" status again. It didn't hurt as badly as I thought it would, since he has done this to me before in the past. I expected him to be weak when I needed him to be strong, and so his action last night did not surprise me. It's basically typical fundamentalism in action.I guess I'll give him a call after I've been in therapy for 3-4 months so he knows it's "safe" for him to be my friend again, ha ha ha. After all, isn't mental illness contageous? ::sigh::
Actually, I'm not nearly as unwell as the dark period of 1996. It was then that I learned the hard way just how shallow fundamentalism is. I got told I was possessed, that God was "judging" me for being gay, that God was "testing" me to see if my faith was genuine, that I just wasn't praying enough or reading scripture enough. Whatever. The long and short of it was that every fundamentalist frind I knew back then had a ready and Bible-tested excuse for slamming the door in my face during a really bad period when I needed companionship, love, and compassion while i was in the beginning stages of therapy.They refused and they shut me out of their lives.
And one wonders why I'm not a fundamentalist, ha ha.
I will forgive my friend for his unkind words last night. Besiees, to really be hurt by someone, you have to be vulnerable to that person, and this is a friend that I never really lowered my sheilds against. See, I wasn't really depending on him, since I knew this would happen. I just wish his christian walk was as good as he seems to believe it is. Personally, I just don't see it.
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( 3.1 / 1326 )Thursday, February 28, 2008, 06:58 PM
Today was better than yesterday. The odd thing about cutting is the huge sense of emotional release we feel in its aftermath. It's not healthy, but it is what it is. My hope is that when we start therapy, Halo can learn other ways to deal with the terrible things that have happened to him. And Thistle said he would love Halo as much as he loves me, and tha he would try to project some light into Halo's lonely domain.
I am not strong enough to look into that terrible place in which he is trapped, but maybe the right therapist can. That's the plan anyway!
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Update: 2/29/08
I filed my EAP paperwork through my employer so that I'll be able to use some of my huge stockpile of medical leave for therapy once my referral comes through, which should be midweek next week. Basically, activating EAP means I can't be penalized for leave used for mental health treatment. So... things are moving forward.
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( 3 / 1262 )Wednesday, February 27, 2008, 05:12 PM - Dissociation & Switching
I've come to the conclusion that it's probably time to ask for a referral for a therapist the next time I get my psych meds refilled (which is next Thursday). I'm pretty sure my doctor can recommend a decent one what will work with my insurance. I guess all the stress of work (yeah, law enforcement... so placcid, heh heh) and the fact that my partner's been dealing with his sister having an extended life-threatening illness has sort of worn me down. He's also never really come to pece about his father's suicide ten years ago (how does one come to terms with something so horrible?)
I don't want to be at risk for cutting. There has got to be a way for Halo to have some measure of healing and peace so that he isn't driven to hurt this shared body. He wanted to today -- and I nearly gave in. But I didn't. The Indigo-Thistle pairing is stronger than Indigo all by myself. But the experience today really wore me down. It's just so taxing to cling to the foreground by my fingernails for 7 hours straight. But I did it. And I am tired.
It's time to get some help. I can't do it alone anymore.
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At the 12th hour of this siege, I ran out of energy. Thistle draws energy from sunlight and that's something that can't be had at 8:00pm. So Halo surfaced and did what he does. He didn't hurt the body too badly this time. But he was able to cry afterwards, which is a new ability for him. Maybe that's why he didn't cut too much or too deeply. I will get help for this. I will get better. Halo is not evil, but no human could survive the kind of pain and shame he has had to absorb -- for all of us. And that's why most of us aren't really human anymore. If I had to bear Halo's pain, I couldn't be a functioning person. And yet he has endured that tiny pocket of hell all of these decades. And he's older than me or Thistle, of that I am sure. He's probably almost as old as the physical body.
If I can somehow get Halo healed, we'll be a pretty functional system.
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( 3 / 1570 )Wednesday, February 27, 2008, 07:53 AM - Church Stuff
Y'know... choir just isn't that much fun this close to a major Christian holiday. We have more music to practice and the Choir Master gets really stressed out. Unfortunately, changelings tend to internalize the emotions of others, so we got stressed out too. That made us make more mistakes than we would ordinarily make. And that made the Choir Master more stressed out because we kept having to repeat sections of music that should have been easy. It ended up being a self-sustaining cycle that resulted in me being pretty much useless for last night's choir practice. Palm Sunday and Easter are next month and once it's done, things will go back to normal at choir... until Christmas, that is. I just hate the feeling of having let my friends down, but I couldn't do anything about it.
Doug and I went to the second of four Lenten Dinners at church before choir last night, and that was nice. They actually served all-vegetarian food, which means I could actually eat the food! Yay!!! And I got to meet with the recruiter for the Education for Ministry program. I might be able to take the EFM class this fall if I can scrape up the tuition money. This isn't a seminary course, but it is a pretty detailed bit of study on historical Christianity (as opposed to the diseased modern-day variant it has become -- ie. prior to Christianity being secunded to the Republican party). So I think I might like that course.
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( 3 / 1199 )Monday, February 25, 2008, 06:35 PM
I was feeling really happy for the past three weeks ever since the Indigo-Halo pairing changed to Indigo-Thistle. I had been happy. I'd been having new exploration into my spirituality. I've become vegetarian. I've had more energy. I lost the last three pounds I wanted to lose.
I was happy until tonight.
That's when Doug told me that he thinks I'm strange now. He doesn't accept my vegatarianism, or my studies in meditation and visualization/grounding. He knows that I'm a dissociative. So when I told him that I've basically lost contact with my dark side and that Thistle basically filled in the resultant power vacuum, Doug looked at me in genuine fear.
That broke my heart.
And it made Halo wake up. I'm feeling the urge to hurt this body, to make blood pay for sins. I know that Halo is awake again now. I don't want to cut my wrists. But maybe that will make things better again. Maybe Doug won't be afraid of me if I go back to being a shadow. But I have so loved being real.
I will wait until Doug goes to sleep before I let Halo do as he must. Blood pays for sins and I have failed my beloved and so I must pay.
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Update:
I resisted Halo long enough for him to go back to sleep. ::whew:: Doug and I had a long talk and he has a better idea of what happened when my internal balance of power shifted. Well... I AM a changeling... sometimes I change. I think things will be okay. I don;t want to ever go back to how things were (ie. depression, guilt, cutting, etc.)
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( 3 / 1443 )Sunday, February 24, 2008, 08:26 PM - Church Stuff
I think this was our last Evensong service for the Lent season. It was really nice. We trundled off to Fairhaven Church over in Sykesvile to do the service there. The church serves a retirement community and the people there were really happy to see us! It was really nice being able to make so many people happy at once. :) And doing so made me happy too. Isn't life great? :)
The weather was perfect too. It was sunny, breezy, and not too cold. Thistle got to fly for about ten minutes before we had to go inside for the church service. He was able to recapture all of the energy we lost from having three overcast days and one day of no sleep (which was Friday night). It is wonderful when Thistle flies. One of my friends in choir can sense his presence, which is nice. She likes Thistle and isn't afraid of him. I think she noticed that he was flying this morning. Neat!
So... the service went great. Our singing was really good. And there was a reception afterward that featured cheese and wine (I didn't drink any booze, since we had to drive.)
All in all, it was a great day. You can't beat being able to spend time with friends while making other people happy at the same time.
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( 3 / 1242 )Sunday, February 24, 2008, 07:39 AM
Saturday was pretty much a blah kind of day. It was cold, damp, cloudy, and drizzly. I had insomnia the Friday night because that religious fundamentalist (mentioned in the prior post) gave me a case of racing thoughts. So... I was tired yesterday.
When the weather is like it was yesterday, Thistle can't fly, and thus we can't get energy. It's been overcast for three days straight, which means we haven't had an influx of energy for three days. Fortunately, I know I have to go a lot longer time than that before I start getting into trouble. But three days of grey does leave me feeling a bit drained -- especially after not getting sleep either.
One cool thing did happen yesterday, however. I did get to participate in a prayer circle on Second Life last night. The great thing about this community is that it brings people together who could have otherwise never could have met. So my friend Agla told me that one of his friends was feeling suicidal and if I could join Agla's prayer circle to pray on his friend's behalf. That's a no brainer. So at least something good happened yesterday -- someone sad and isolated was able to know that people do care about him and that God does love him.
So the day wasn't ALL bad :)
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