Self-harm is so subjective. So personal.

I am praying for you, the girl that registered that day.

You had bite marks on your arm. Or so I thought.

Then you turned your arm over and I saw a man striking you, as you defended yourself. You try to hide in plain site. Your cuts easily deceive those who don't know what to look for.

But sometimes those who know how to hide hurt the worst.

Cuts don't move in circles, or half-circles. Bruises don't randomly show on the underside of an arm in that way. Someone is hurting you and you are hurting yourself too.

I pray for your self-love, for your self-confidence. Please accept my apology for those who have wronged you.

Something is going on.

I've been losing my voice a lot lately. Not to teaching. To screaming.

At people. At things. At situations.

Things I can't control.

Control. Such a loaded word.

When the word contraception and birth control became the common names for hormonal therapy, my faith became a lie. I lived for life, to fight as a Pro-Life advocate in a world where women are seen as baby-killers and lauded as the hypocrites of this generation.
Sex this. Fuck that. Live for this. Forget that.

Then I had a cyst. A ruptured one, in fact. The day I first started taking birth control, I cried. This medication that I was given, that was keeping me well, was against my own moral of being open to life. Everything I was taught since the time of my birth became the biggest lie my faith had ever taught me.

I'm not sure why God made me this way. I wanted to be open to life, open to love, and open to His will. Now.....I have to make peace with the fact that I can never allow God's will to allow life to grow inside me.

Because God made me this way.

My vision revealed me in the future, maybe a few years from now.

I was a part time teacher, married with no children. Mornings were felt like it was spent in leisure, packing labels, orders, and plastic.

I also owned a business or had some kind of freelance work that I finished up in the morning, to continue teaching in the afternoon.

I was drinking a cup of coffee, or rather holding a travel cup of coffee as I walked down the street.

No idea what it means yet.

Alice

While in college, I was intrigued by the thought of game personas. How virtual reality transforms a person into different adaptations of themselves.
The idea of creating yourself anew, without the physical change.

In college, we were taught that one of the reasons for game design is entertainment. People want to customize the things that they think are fun: movies, books, dramas, games. It makes life less hard to come by.
Then you learn somewhere along the line of how interactive games are. Why people play them. What purpose or need they serve to the people that interact with them.

Need. Purpose.

When I was in college, I was very interested in the idea behind Alice and the Looking Glass. Having not read the literature or studied the poetry extensively, I made my own interpretation of the story.

Then I began creating my online persona called Alice.

Alice, like the character that I wrote her to be, was an objectified person. Not because she wasn't real, but because everyone she met didn't think she or her logic was real.

A bit of truth inlaid with sarcasm and a healthy dose of feigned innocence. She didn't hide the truth, she just refused to face it.

I don't know if the Sacrament of Reconciliation is the cause of this, but I went to confession today.

I had a good confession. Where you start singing the the HSM song "Start of Something New" kind of confession.

With the sacrament came peace, and my first visit to the chapel in a state of grace that allowed me to have some spiritual alone time. Which is good.

Then the spiritual cloud started shifting at a rapidly descending pace.

About a month ago at my last confession, I ran into someone who was so wonderfully full of the Lord's love. She mentioned a book to me about Mother Theresa's spiritual drought.

Something that I should probably get a hold of for some spiritual nourishment.

But is this what true spiritual struggle feels like? My soul is (almost) pure. (Haven't quite finished my penance yet.) This feeling of emptiness, not to be confused with sadness.

Paralleled with this anxious ball of fire that bounces around in the house that is my body and soul.

I am not living my life to its fullness and I'm not sure why.

I don't know what to incorporate into my life to pursue this emptiness. A Novena? Daily mass? Holy hours with the Eucharist in Adoration?

Mama Mary, pray for us..

Doubt.

My life is just full of it.

I sit here, held back by an invisible force. Self-inflicted, naturally.

It's called doubt.

Doubt to succeed. Doubt to achieve. Doubt to do. Doubt to live.

Please pray for me.