Knife No More

I don't know if I have ever posted this or not, but I'm a cutter. Right now I really, really need to cut because my heart hurts and the only way to release the pain from my body is by letting it bleed out. I've only cut three times in the last 54 weeks (which is AMAZING for me) and I am not cutting tonight, I am writing (and crying of course).

I am at a loss for words to type, my thoughts incoherent blankets blinding my vision. I want to be with my best friend and I want to take away his pain without causing him more pain by wanting to take away his pain. I think I need to grow as an individual and find myself. I am unspeakably petrified that if I become a healthy and "whole" person I won't be able to sacrifice myself for my best friend anymore. I am terrified that I won't want to marry him anymore. Isn't it right to want to sacrifice everything for someone you love? Should marriage be your biggest sacrifice or should it not be a sacrifice at all? Maybe it is just so unhealthy that I want to marry him when he doesn't love or appreciate me back. Tonight he told me that I need to reach inside myself and uncover the reasons I joined the Church in the first place. My thought: those feelings are locked behind a wall of repression, protection, and justification and I don't know if I can dig them out. Perhaps they have disintegrated. Maybe I want them to have disintegrated. I don't want to believe that salvation and exaltation only come through misery. If we are here so that we can have joy, why the hell can't gay people have love???

1. Repentance- even if the Gospel is as it has so far been revealed we can all repent of EVERYTHING we have done, regardless of how bad our actions have been.
   

   
    

2. Thoughts from a convo with a great dad at the MoHo party- there is a gray, gay, middle ground. I left the party tonight thinking that salvation and homosexual partnerships (marriages?) are not at odds. We know that we have little knowledge of the Gospel because there is so much that has not been revealed. We are commanded above all to love G-d, ourselves, and our neighbors and gay partnership can easily be based on following all three of these commandments. There really is little in the quad scriptures that condemns homosexuality, much of it is from modern revelation. The men who lead the Church are human, and as with blacks and the Priesthood and Joseph Smith and the plates, have been known to make human judgments. What if the strong denunciation of homosexual activity is from human thought and not Devine instruction? Then my best friend asked if a "what if" is worth jeopardizing your salvation for.
   

   
    

3. The first- the Gospel is true and there is a narrow path to salvation. This is the typical notion (and is it typical because it is common or typical because it is true?) in which we are told to follow the Gospel so far as it has been revealed, which means we cannot act on homosexuality. Here we sacrifice everything for Christ and trust that our surrender of this world will be made up for in the next life. This is living today based on tomorrow, boxed into solitude or marriage with someone of a sex they are not attracted to. Isolation for my best friend because the one girl he is in love with won't consider him because he is gay, or blind faith that someone else will come, or that the Church offers more than natural love and pleasure ever can?
   
   

I don't want my best friend to be in agony because he has denied himself in order to follow the Gospel word for word. I don't want him to go to hell if he chooses to have earthly love. I don't want to look at my testimony because I'm afraid I will find something I don't want to believe.

Maybe it is about future generations, about an ideal that we all strive for but few achieve of a loving and in love husband and wife healthfully raising their own children. I looked at the amazing and beyond incredible children at tonight's party, they are perfect, maybe the sacrifices are for them. If the parents had not striven to live the Gospel as it is currently presented none of those beautiful children would exist. One wife told me she worried that her husband would leave one day to seek the life he is missing, but as I watched this family I only saw the amazing wife and children he currently has, I have to think he would be giving up more than he could ever find. Another husband had his arms around his gorgeous wife and his hands in her pockets, love.

But how could someone like Cog be going to hell? It doesn't make sense- it isn't right. How is it fair that so many gay people are never given the "truth" so they don't have to choose sacrifice based on revelation received by Man or choose to gamble their salvation based on something that seems fair, sensible, and natural? Why is one tenth, a tithe, of the population expected to give up who they naturally are, to sacrifice physical love and the connections that come through this love?

I wish no one had to wait "unit the time comes" (The Classic Crime) when waiting is just suffering. Are we happier sacrificing in the Gospel and hoping for change or living logic and nature?

G-d Damned

"It's been a bad day You've been looking back And all you can see is everything you wish you could take back All your mistakes A world of regrets All of those moments you would rather forget I know it's hard to believe let me refresh your memory Yesterday is history And history is miles away So leave it all behind you But let it always remind you of the day The day that love made history" (Mathew West, History)

I don't know why some ssa people are born into non religious or atheist families and raised so acting on their natural attractions requires little sacrifice and little back-turning (I mean giving up cultural norms is no big deal right?) :P

Others are born here, into this apparent truth, given a strict path to celestial glory so that for them to engage in homosexual relationships is stepping away from their hearts, souls, G-d, and truths, right? I don't know. I just don't know anymore.

So much of me holds on to my testimony of the Savior, which pulls me to the Priesthood under whose blessing I received my testimony of Christ, to the Book of Mormon and the strength and peace I've found reading it. Can I turn my back on this? Do I have to?

I KNOW not to judge and I know that everyone has their own path and testimony. I will NEVER assess, hate, condemn, or think less of those (LDS or not) who choose other lifestyles; drinking, gambling, drugs, promiscuity. But can I believe that among all of G-d's commandments there is one that is a mistake, one commandment that will somehow change with future revelation?

Christ loves endlessly and I will too (although I do struggle to embrace those closed minded, terrified, bigots). Love. Don't measure the worthiness of others. That is easy. But do I believe in the Church? I can't go in for a Temple recommend if I don't support the Church leaders. If I believe in the Gospel I can't turn my back on one apparently eternal law just because it doesn't make sense and it isn't just. I can't sit on the fence. I can't say that despite everything this one piece of the Gospel is going to change. That there are loop holes in the Family Proclamation. That despite thousands of years of G-d's words He will change what He has said about homosexual activity.

G-d made people gay. It is not a choice. It is not bad, wrong, or imperfect. But His whole Gospel is built on sacrifices- is this just one more monstrous sacrifice He expects from His children? I don't know what will happen after this world. Often I don't even think there's anything else, sometimes I hope there is nothing else.

If there is something more, if this is true, I will not go to a Heaven that rejects those who have had sex with someone of the same gender, I won't live with a G-d like that. But is it just repentance and restoration for sin, not disqualification? I have to figure out if I can accept homosexual action as a sin. This doesn't mean I will be against Prop 8 or denouncing gay relationships, I'm not for reinstating Prohibition and I don't think less of my friends who drink, but if I can't believe it is a sin can I believe in the Gospel? How can I reject one commandment, one piece of G-d's plan?

There isn't a middle ground. Love and acceptance are on both sides, but G-d and Christ as I've believed in them, their church, and their Temples, are only on one side. If the Gospel is true, then we have to follow His path as far as it has been revealed. There are always upside-downs, falls, sins, mistakes, disobedience, that is why we have the Atonement, but there is also right, truth, goals to be striven for. I'm not saying there is only one happiness, one choice, but if the Church is true there is one path, one truth, one goal, and one set of rules to get there.

But I don't know if I want that to be true. It means pain for all of us because we sin and it means repentance and suffering now or in the next life. It means that it is hard and unfair here. It means that nothing makes sense because there is no equality and no justice now.

So do we give up everything for some uncertain future? Do I ignore the faint pulsing of my testimony in Christ because it is easier and because it means an end to pain and injustice? Is religion an eternal truth or is it the 4,000 year old result of an advanced species creating rules, boundaries, and order out of chaos?

"There is no guilt here There is no shame No pointing fingers There is no blame What happened yesterday has disappeared The dirt has washed away And now it's clear There's only grace There's only love There's only mercy And believe me it's enough Your sins are gone Without a trace There's nothing left now There's only grace" (Mathew West, Only Grace)

Perfection

My friend told me that we are all perfect in Heavenly Father's eyes and that life is about us realizing our own perfection through trial and error. I believe my friend's words in the sense that we are perfect to our Father, all child should be perfect to their parents, but we are also human and tempted and living in a world that is as much under the control of Satan, if not more, than it is influenced by G-d. It's the opening to A Tale of Two Cities or Jekyll and Hyde. We are an opposition in ourselves. According to this Plan, which my faith still wobbles around, we are Divine spirits sent to live in earthly bodies. There it is. The opposition is in the core of our existence. We have brilliant powers to save and equally strong powers to destroy, both ourselves and others, but our ability to create is far greater than our power to demolish (which means if I put forth half the effort into healing myself as I put into obliterating myself I would be an amazing force of light). But it is the steps we take that matter. My thoughts are full of self doubt and hatred, but I am moving to a better place, I am applying for jobs, I am getting help. Who we really are is found in our actions, not in our thoughts. We are scared of "what is lurking right behind the facade" (Jekyll and Hyde: The Musical), but it should be our choices, our actions, that frighten us, not our contemplations.

I still come back to the Savior, the rock (and perhaps only part left) of my testimony. He loves us, even in this imperfect climb we ascend to our perfection. He was perfect, but He felt all of our temptations, struggles, deaths. He suffered the torment of killing six million Jews, one million of whom were children. He has felt the remorse of the most violent and vile of sins. He knows all of our thoughts and desires and He LOVES us. Even when we choose wrong, even when we follow our earthly selves or Satan, He LOVES us- EACH OF US. I'm still internalizing His love for me, but I strongly testify of His love for all others and, at least in some small measure, I know He loves me too.

We are complex. We build up walls starting as children, shields that protect us from the pain we encounter in this hell. These walls separate us from others, from their feelings and needs, so while preventing our own pain we can more easily cause wounds in others. When we hurt we want others to suffer too and our high walls shelter us from feeling what we inflict on others. It is so plain to me that if we hate ourselves we will hate others, that if we are miserable we will impose that on others, so it should be easy for me to see how loving ourselves is the greatest love of all. When we love ourselves we acknowledge our maker and our Savior, and we give to Them when we love others. I think love is possible, even in the most difficult, trying, and unexpected places. If you have love, you can have peace. If you are content and honest with yourself and embark on a difficult journey love can blossom and grow. Even when it seems as though love always fails, I know that can't be true- no matter how unattainable it seems love would not be part of the plan if it wasn't good, beautiful, and achievable.

I know it's not supposed to be easy, but it is so frustratingly complicated, this life we are in, these bodies we are in, these choices we have to make, the eternal truths we need to accept or reject. This is from another girl's journal:

"It's twice as hard for us young ones to hold our ground, and maintain our opinions, in a time when all ideals are being shattered and destroyed, when people are showing their worst side, and do not know whether to believe in truth and right and in G-d."

"Finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be and what I could be, if...there weren't any other people living in the world."

"That's the difficulty in these times, ideals, dreams, and cherished hopes rise within us, only to meet the horrible truth and be shattered. It's really a wonder that I haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to carry out. Yet I keep them, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart.

I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery, and death, I see the world gradually being turned into a wilderness, I hear the ever approaching thunder, which will destroy us too, I can feel the sufferings of millions and yet, if I look up to into the heavens, I think that it will all come right, that this cruelty too will end, and that peace and tranquility will return again."

~Anne Frank

Honesty

I guess I shouldn't be selectively honest on this blog and although I wanted to just sweep my worry under the rug, I'm going to explore my most recent concern. I'm happy (ish) again. My best friend called, told me he was moving, said I needed a change, and told me to buy a plane ticket and move to the same state. I understand that I need to leave home because I am dying under my mom's oppressive verbal abuse and dependency. And I am alone here- really alone as it's just my mom and I on forty acres, a mile down a dirt road, and fifteen minutes from the nearest small town. At the same time though, how can I be like this? Can my mood change because suddenly my best friend acknowledged our friendship enough to encourage me to move to the area he will be living in? How unhealthy is it to pack up and leave because the one I am unpromisingly in love with asks me to? And am I just back-paddling? I am terrified to move because I will be going to a place where I can get a job (hopefully), possibly have dating options, be in close proximity to many of my dear friends, and have the opportunity to get more counseling. Am I doing something good for myself and finding a way to counteract that before I slice my skin to relieve the burden of joy? I know I am too dependent on my best friend and I want to change that before I become my mother. My dependency is mood based, not material based, my mom's is both. I am controlled by my best friend's mood and I shouldn't be. If he's happy, I'm happy, if he's not, I'm not. I hate that my mood so drastically influences my mother's mood, how can I leech onto someone in that same destructive way? But am I using all of this as an excuse so that my decision to move suddenly because a self-abusive one?

I am moving somewhere that can have a positive effect on my life, but I think I would have moved anywhere for him. That's wrong. I know it is wrong, but I don't know how to change it. Somewhere inside of me is a smile though, perhaps even a healthy one, because his suggestion shows that he does love me (I'm talking friendship here), that in some way he does want me around, and maybe even that he needs me, just a little. I hope so. It's nice to know that you mean something.

Six months ago I started a young adult book, Love, Stargirl, got distracted and only picked it up again the other night. This is the second page I read (randomly after this book sat in my room for half a year). Telling.

"And so I'm me again, Leo… I'm hoping you wouldn't wish it any other way... You occupied my space. But because you were not in my present, when I looked into my future I saw… nothing. Isn't that sad? And stupid?

Oh sure, I'll still be missing you as much as ever. I'll still smile at the memory of you. I'll still be—OK, I'll say it again—loving you, but I won't abandon myself for you. I cannot be faithful to you without being faithful to myself. I've reclaimed my future. If we are destined to be together again, be happy to know you'll be getting the real me, not some blubbering half me."

Jerry Spinelli, Love, Stargirl

Remove the noose before I kick out the chair

I've been hanging myself spiritually and emotionally and it's affected every part of life leaving me unable to accomplish anything. I guess when you're dead in all ways except the physical one you can't complete even the simple tasks. My body exists with nothing to coerce it to achieve.

One of my great friends sent me an email profound in its beauty, simplicity, and truth and I want to share it with everyone else that is struggling out there. He said:

More than anything else though, I testify to you with all the power of knowledge that I have, that your heavenly father loves you. He aches when you ache because he knows everything about your pain. He loves you. And his love is unconditional. Not only because he is perfect and loves everyone, but because you're his child and he sees YOU as perfect. He loves you the way you truly deserve to be loved and he loves you that way BECAUSE you deserve that love.    

It's one of the first times I've cried tears of comfort in months and it feels good. The Lord loves all of us because we DESERVE it. Here I sit finding it impossible to love myself enough to do anything more than rot on the couch and sleep, and I am deserving of the greatest love there is. I have blogged about how the Lord loves all of us, and I have struggled to accept that love in my life, but I never realized that He doesn't just love us because we are His, He loves us because WE DESERVE to be loved.

He bestows all His love upon us and I'm rejecting Him. Can I love the Lord while hating myself, His creation? It is easy for me to love other people, to want to help them, to want to do everything for them. Why is it so hard to love myself? How do I even begin to love myself? I guess the first step is to acknowledge that the Lord loves me because I deserve it- and then maybe I'll accept that I deserve my own love.

Dying

I'm still engulfed in depression and like Hidden (http://hiddenaporia.blogspot.com/2009/04/drowning-pool.html) I realize I'm in the same place I was a year ago, two years ago, ten years ago. It's difficult when you think you've come so far and then you realize you're not any farther than you were before. The issues may be a little different, but I feel lost, confused, frustrated, hopeless, and alone all over again. Choices seem difficult, depressing, and nonexistent. Faith seems impossible and I wonder if I ever really had any. Happiness seems an unmanageable task away.

Last night my cat was cuddling with me (she isn't happy in my lap she has to be on my face) and I gained a little more Insight (http://a-struggler.blogspot.com/2009/04/self-abuse.html). My cat has self-esteem. She comes up to me, without second guessing herself, and lays down crying for affection. She doesn't hate herself and she doesn't assume everyone hates her. I guess Satan doesn't have much pull on animals :P

My blog is becoming my self-loathing ground of scattered thoughts and I apologize for that. I don't know if I want help or attention, I think it's probably some of both that I'm craving. I know I wouldn't be trying to sort out my feelings if I didn't want to get better, but I also know I'm a lot further from "well" then I've tried to pretend for the past several months.

In love with my gay best friend

I feel sick to my stomach right now and I don't think it's because what I'm doing is wrong, I think it's because it's right. So here comes some of the 'verbal diarrhea' I occasionally fall victim to. My blog is now entirely honest- it is all of me. I need to be in therapy again but first I need to find a job so that I know where I'm going to be living before I start with a new therapist. For now my blog is going to be my therapy and Sz you sure as hell better be proud of me for that :P

I was talking to a friend last night and he asked me what I wanted. I gave him some random answers as I let the truth stay hidden in my soul- I want to be with my best friend and I want him to be in love with me. I've never been in love until now- I think I'm in love with my best friend who is gay and LDS (and he's a guy- if it was a girl who was gay who I'd fallen in love with it would be a whole different story- with other problems). In my heart I know that this isn't what G-d has in store, and I know that is right and good (us not being together in that way), but that doesn't mean I'm happy with it.

I knew he was gay from the moment I met him, I wasn't attracted to him, and never expected to fall in love with him. As time went on I realized how amazing he was, how much fun we had, how I loved being with him (even it was just on the phone), and how much I trusted him, and somewhere I became attracted to him. Yet, I think a large part of being in love with him is because I feel safe with him. I was molested when I was a child and I guess I have issues with males. My best friend is the first boy I've ever held hands with, the first boy who ever put his arm around me, and the first boy I've ever cuddled with. It's a strange dichotomy because while I am in love with him, being with him isn't really sexual. I love cuddling with him because it's safe- I feel safe in his arms in a way I've never felt secure and protected before. Sometimes, though, I definitely want to make out with him (generally I think making out is disgusting- not that I've done it- it just seems like it would be). Letting myself have sexual feelings is a new step for me, up until recently I felt like a devil child even if I thought a boy was cute. I believed I was one of the third who followed Satan, only someone made a mistake and I ended up with a body (that's how guilty I felt over what happened to me when I was little). But that was biology- and I was a child- I was innocent. I am clean. That's aside from the whole being in love with my best friend ordeal though. I think another large part of what I want more than anything right now (which is to be with my best friend, have him in love with me, and eventually marry him) is because I want to save him. I don't think that he will go to hell or anything if he is with boys or marries one, and I think if he wants to he will find a girl he's in love with to marry, but I don't want him to have to wait. If he was in love with me I feel as though it would take away his pain. I don't want him to suffer anymore and it's not because I feel sorry for him or indebted to him, it is because I love him; pure, simple, Christlike love. Now I might not be healthy enough to give love properly, but I do have love for people. I know it's not right, but it'd be so easy- I love him and I'm probably in love with him and if he were in love with me he could be happy. He'd have someone he loved who loved him back (who would work really hard to give him a good sex life). He could have a family and not be alone, he could have peace.

But I know he's not in love with me and I know I'm not healthy enough to give him the love he deserves, or receive the love I deserve. I know in my heart we're probably always and only going to be best friends. And for now that is right. I need to love myself before I can healthy give my love to someone- I can't save someone before saving myself and even though I love him so much I have to accept that I might not be the lifeboat he needs. Even if you are in love with someone it can't be healthy that you want them to be in love with you so that they can be happy, can it?

I am terrified to love myself. I'm terrified to be in love. I'm terrified to have a boyfriend. I want to be in my best friends arms because I am always scared, and in his arms I'm not.

I watched another Law & Order: SVU tonight and that is actually what spurred me to write this post. Season 8, episode "Sin," a son tells his father that he cannot change being gay and the formerly gay bashing preacher responds lovingly, "You're my son." It hit me with a thin current of warmth, that's how all of this is, He loves us because we are His children- He has birthed us, He has created us. When gay couples come before Him on the last day I believe He will be like the father in this episode. He will hug His child and say, "You're my son." I also believe, although I can't explain the seemingly injustice of it, that special blessing come through the Temple. I know that as angry as I am at the Church there must be truth to it or I would be able to walk away from it; after all it's only been in my life about eight years. Those who have testimonies and are fortunate enough to find loved ones to be in mixed orientation marriages with, those who sacrifice their earthly (and possibly eternal) attractions, receive amazing blessings. I know blessing and love also come to those who choose relationships based on their attractions- like with Cog and his family. I know there will be reconciliation in all things, but I don't know how that will work or what it will involve. I know anything and everything we sacrifice here will be made up for and I know the Lord will have mercy if our hearts have been filled with love, regardless of the type. He will hold us and tell us we are His children- we will feel safe and we will feel love.

And to my best friend: I hope that as I'm brutally honest and as I start doing things for myself that I'm still able to make you happy sometimes- because you are my best friend and it makes me happy when my friendship makes you happy.