Take it or leave it

Hey!

I'm back after a long while.

I'll be honest from the get go. I was immersed in my addictions these past weeks.

It hit me yesterday that I am hurting myself and others. It's not like I hadn't realize it before.
But something happened yesterday that kinda changed my perspective a bit.
I burned a pot of boiling chicken.

Last night I decided to get an early start for the week and have some pieces of chicken ready to cook. So what did I do? Well, I turned on the stove and placed a pot of water with floating chicken tenders in there. It was all good and completely inoffensive. That was until I left and went into my room. What happened next has happened so many times I think it's a given you would know what that was. I logged into my computer and went to town.

Time went by and I completely forgot about the floating chicken, in the pot, on the stove, boiling, burning, scorching, smoking, stinking the place until it reached my room, at the very end of the hallway. At first I thought it was happening in my room, a wire or something. But no, it suddenly hit me that there was a chicken quality to the smell and I left my room running towards the kitchen. It was too late. A crust of black crap was sedimented to the bottom of the pot and had smoked everywhere. I opened the windows, the doors, sprayed the place and went back to my room as if nothing had happened. With that, I continued my descent into shame and indifference. I could have burned the place, I have ruined the smell in my whole apartment affecting my roommates as well, and I didn't care a bit. Until later the next morning, when I snapped out of it somehow and said to myself, 'What the fuck just happened? Who in hell am I?'

I'm messed up people, I'm telling you. Messed Up, capital M, capital U.

Today, I decided to talk to God. It was somehow apologetic, remorseful, but far from repentful. I told God that. I also said that I was destroying my life and it needed to stop. I am making some changes to my daily routine but I think the biggest thing was that I talked to God about something apparently silly like burning the chicken. It wasn't the act, but it was what caused the whole stinky episode. The others acts that consumed me and distracted me to the point of forgetting about reality; what was happening in the next room.

Watching porn, masturbating, degrading myself in one way or another, all of that have a price and I am running short in soul cash. I'm losing all of it and sooner than later I'll be in a place where God will only be a memory. Something I've been thinking about is, that even though I'm trying to figure out where I stand before God in terms of my sexual ambiguity, homosexuality, bisexuality, or whatever, I FEEL I need to refrain from objectifying people, using them for my own pleasure, immersed in my own fantasy world and caring less about people's feelings, lives, eternity. It just feels wrong. I don't need to hear it from a god to know that what I'm doing is wrong. It comforts me that my God says that to me, that I need to love them as Jesus loved me, dying to Himself so that I could live, denying Himself. I obviously don't live that way and I think that's the hardest thing for me to understand about the gay lifestyle. It seems to me that it revolves all around me, putting myself first, caring about my own feelings, inclinations, orientation and little about family, moral values, biology, friends, roommates, and God. I fit everybody else in my world, force them in, push them in, use them to affirm myself and leave them the leftovers of my care and love. At least that's me. I am sorry if I am generalizing, but the little I've come in contact with the gay lifestyle has led me to believe this is what goes on. Not necessarily because I've seen in it in other people (although I have) but because it just flows naturally out of my own heart, these dark currents of self-centeredness, self-idolization, selfishness. I can be nice and whatever, but I can see that whenever I embrace this nature of mine, all of these 'self-' traits get magnified and that it's just not normal to me. I can't stand myself acting this way. It's as if I see myself in an out-of-the-body experience and just shake my head saying, 'who are you? you aren't like that! you don't treat people like condoms and throw them away! you don't seek people's approval by getting naked in front of them, who does that? you don't admire other people for doing so either! what about their own selves? the story behind the physical aspects? the struggle, the identity crisis?'

The truth is I just care too much about our spiritual side to live my entire life immersed in the physical realm of things, in the carnal side of relationships. I've tasted true peace, true joy, and I know where to find it. This struggle to figure out if I want to embrace the gay lifestyle has always been settled in mind. It's a big no. I can't just unplug my soul, also I can't just unplug my penis either. And that's when the whole conflict flares up again. It's happened over and over again. However, I don't want to be owned by my addictions. And that has nothing to do with my penis, but with self-control. A self- word I do appreciate. These days I've felt so out of control, so careless, so addicted to what brings me sexual pleasure that everything else seems to have vanished in the margins and has suffered. I'm a true addict. And so ... having said that, I will also say, I'm trying to regain some control. One of the things I told God is ... I knew I was praying because I was afraid of this whole lack of self-restraint ... I knew I was looking for a break, and that maybe after a week or two I'd be back to it again, reasoning I had had enough of a break ... but, I prayed, I would let Him take a crack at my hardened heart once again, that that was all I could do for now. That I wasn't going to pretend I was repentful, cause I wasn't. I felt bad about the whole situation, and guilty, scared, but I couldn't force myself to repent, that stuff is deeper and He could only do it. But here I was, standing before Him, giving it another shot and He would have to take me as I was, all broken and rebellious. One thing I promised though, I would talk to Him. That I would let Him know what was going on in my head. And that's all I can do right now. And all I'm doing right here. Take it or leave it.

Pluck out your eyes

I made a decision two days ago.

For the past month I gave myself to self-indulgence. I didn't care about my relationship with God. Well, maybe I did, but I chose to do whatever pleased me over what I considered stupid moral concerns at the time. That kind of attitude took me to a dark place spiritually. God's voice seemed fainter. My hardened heart grew more calloused. I'd pray prayers of repentance that later became cries for help. I questioned God about everything while I pretended to wash off a stained soul. Warm water didn't work, and the steam fogged the bathroom mirror. God's image in me was as blurry as it had ever been. Quite sad, quite scary.

I think everything stemmed from learning that my life won't be as I pictured it. I thought to myself, why should I give a fuck. Apparently God doesn't, then why should I. And my perspective narrowed and darkened as a door closing in the face of the Savior. My mother died of this condition, the condition I have been diagnosed with for about 2 1/2 months now. My brother has it as well. And now me, the last child in what's left of a family of so-called men. So much for perpetuating the family name. For somebody who has studied science, this is Darwin's hardest slap in the face. Some days I wake up bitter, with a lot of resentment, angry almost, other days I wake up hopeful, cheerful, a fighter ... most of the days I go to bed praying for a miracle. I stopped believing in miracles at age 15, when my mother passed away. I can see miracles happening in other people's lives, and I will encourage you to pray for those. In my life, not so much ... I've seen them happen though. But I've come to believe that these miracles are more a result of God's will prevailing rather that God answering my prayer for one. He does what He pleases. He is God. To a certain point I think God sees us as puppets. I realize this might be a terrible thing to say but I want to voice these thoughts, because they are part of my journey. Some times I feel I am part of the cast for God's play, and He is the main character. We can be killed off, replaced, whatever. In any case, how is it consistent of me to pray for miracles when I don't believe they can happen as a response to my prayers? Simply because I hope to be wrong, and I want God to prove me wrong. I want to believe in the God I believed when I was kid, when I was not the cynical bastard I am now, jaded and suspicious of everything. In spite of all that happened to me when I was kid, I still believed in a God who loved me, who was willing to give it all for me, to protect me, to care for me. Unfortunately, as I grew up and realized how screwed up my childhood was, how people messed me up, I harbored resentment towards a God who had allowed all of this happen to a kid. And to top it all, let's take away the only person who made him feel safe, his mother. That will teach him how to fend for himself ... and you know what? it did. I took over her role. I became her in many ways. I took care of my life and my ill brother's, and my dad. And I excelled at it. I aged the day she entered the hospital and the day she was buried I knew how to take control of my emotions and tuck them as far inside my chest as I could. So yes, I have issues with God. Deep inside I know He is good, I can accept there are things I will never know that take precedence over my desires, and I know His wisdom is higher than mine and that there's people in this world in worse conditions than me. I know all of that, in some level or another, all of that it's in the back of my mind, always present, apeacing my rage, my superego. And this is the place where I voice my thoughts, if for anything, to have them expressed, and to, while typing them, realize what I am saying and then come to God with a greater honesty. I'm tired of pretending, even in front of Him. I love God. I do. I wouldn't be trying to work it out with Him if I didn't care. And I see my life and it's a mess, and I just want to understand what do I do with this pile of sadness and conflict. I know something will come out of this conversation. Catharsis is indicated in my case as well, hahaha.

I'm sure you have heard things like, 'there's a reason for everything', or some variant of this saying. Well, while I try to figure out my spiritual life, and my life in general, integrating all the pieces, and allowing God to mend stuff, two days ago I decided to step away from the whole world of porn. It's been tough to say the least. I have established habits, and things that I do to unwind when I get back home, and things of that sort. Just old habits. One thing I've adopted is not to wear my contacts when I'm at the gym, for obvious reasons. I have the worst wandering eyes, and I can't help but keep my eyes open to move around. Well, I have a fairly bad case of nearsightedness ... basically, I see shapes but no edges, but I can still differentiate things and move around without a problem. It's been two days in a row since I started practicing this little game of not wearing them and seeing how it affects the way I behave when I get back home. It's actually been pretty good. I have less desire or reason to indulge in pornography. And so ... in a way, I have plucked out my eyes. Growing up I hated wearing glasses, and just having to carry them around for everything. Contacts were a dream come true, but still, somehow impractical. Today I can see the usefulness in being temporarily legally blind. There's a reason for everything.

A broken place

Hello Blogger world ... again,

I am back.

I wish I could say I am back wiser, and more mature, but the truth is, I am not. If anything, I am back more confused and lost than ever.

The past month has been the most uneventful month, and the worst I've experienced so far this year. I fell into this routine of self-indulgence and self-centeredness. Quite sad.

Here's a little bit about me. I'm a grad student living in the east coast. I was born in a Latin American country, and came to the States for college and I am now in grad school. I'm close to reaching 30 years of life in this planet and there are lots of things I haven't figured out yet about myself partly because I chose to ignore a lot of my past and its issues, and also because of the things I used to belief about God and myself. Growing up in the kind of family and society I lived in contributed to it all, and having moved to the States has given me the 'freedom' to express, mostly in secrecy, dark sides of my persona. I've lived in conflict with myself all of my life. In any case, I've have gone through a lot of phases in my spiritual life. I grew up in the Christian church, and I've gone from being an incredibly religious fundamentalist, to agnostic, atheist, spiritualist, non-denominationalist, etc. Right now I remain a Christian at the core of who I am, but even that has gotten old. All this time it's just been labels even though I have had my moments of true devotion, and more than moments I should call them periods where I've found myself at the peak of my faith just to find myself crashing down with an unstoppable speed against the ground.

I have many weaknesses. I am a broken man in all the sense of the word. I was sexually abused by a family member when I was kid. I can't remember much of it, just fleeting images in my mind, the luring games, some specific instances. I have even confronted the abuser, I happened to live with him most of my life, and he admitted it all. The abuse stopped when I entered middle school and I guess that's why I forced myself to forget it until I hit puberty and found out my sexual life had been completely messed up. I am attracted to guys. I remember a time, as a kid, when I was attracted to girls alone. I remember my mom would have to separate me from one of my female cousins because I wouldn't stop kissing her or holding her hand. I also remember telling my mom I would marry this friend of mine from church, a cute girl I hanged out all Sunday after Sunday school. We would play mom and dad games. I even fell in love with one of my friend's cousins, a cute girl I met at her party. I cherish those days of pseudonormalcy, but it was sometime then and now that something happened to me. I don't know if it was the fact that I found a stack of gay porn hidden in my own home, or the previous abuse, or the curiosity and longing for what had been awoken prematurely at age six. Once I opened that magazine I was hooked on porn, mostly gay, and it has been my addiction along with every other activity related to it such as masturbation, webcams, etc. The only thing that still remains mine is my virginity, although only physical. Yes, at the age of late 20's I am a virgin. And I wish I wasn't. There's such a mismatch between what my mind knows, has witnessed, watched, dreamed, that my body can't tolerate it and compulsively reminds me of this fact everyday. I've heard it's good that I haven't had the physical contact because otherwise I would find myself in a deeper abyss filled with self-hatred and solace. Guess what? I find myself there right now. I detest who I have become. Somebody who has no control over himself anymore. Addicted.

Not everything is bad. I've been blessed. Abundantly. I'm a smart guy. Made it through schooling pretty nicely. I'm on my way to become a physician. I am not incredibly ugly. I have a father who in his late years adores me, although he always did but never knew how to show it. Now he does, and my stepmom loves me to pieces as well. I have learned how to forgive my abuser, because he is my brother, who is gay as well. I am away from a home that reminds of pain and suffering, in a place of my own, sheltered, protected, cared for. I lack nothing. Instead I have too much. I have friends who love me and I don't love enough. I have brothers and sisters in Christ who love me as well, even though they know little of my true self. I could just go on with my life and not ask stupid questions about who I am. But when you are about to reach 30 you gotta ask. The crisis should hit you. And it's hitting me square in the face.

So far I've decided some things in my head. I used to believe I'd get married, have a family, live a normal life. I've given that up. I used to believe I'd live a long productive life. I've given that up as well. I have a genetic condition that will claim my life early, not in two years, not in 10, not in 20, but sometime in the future. What is true is that my life-span is shortened. Although, if you think about it, I could be run over by a car tomorrow, and this genetic condition would matter little to the whole spectrum of my life. I used to believe this 'gay' thing was beatable. I have given that up. I used to believe I was bisexual, after all I am attracted to girls still. And that is an honest statement. My sexual instincts don't work accordingly most of the time but I've fallen in love with girls. However, I have given up that way of labeling and thinking as well. I am an incurable romantic guy, almost an idealist. I'm learning to give that up as well. And you know why am enumerating all of the things I'm letting go? Well, it's because all of that is foolishness. It is foolish to have these amazing things in my mind alongside the darkest nightmare, and to open my eyes and see that darkest nightmare looking back at me on the mirror. I am broken people. And all I have is God's, all that I will achieve is God's, and I am learning there are things I won't achieve and it is useless to spend hour after hour dreaming about it, when the reality is looking 'straight' at me. I rather spend my time, dealing with reality. Embracing the fact that I am gay, or sexually confused, or whatever. And coming before God and telling Him, this is who I am. Take me as I am. I can't fix it, I can't force it out of me, I'm as broken as they come, a mess and I can't figure out what to do with myself. I can't figure out how to live this life you call me to live. I can't continue fighting for a 'normal' life, with the wife, and the kids, and job, and tithing, and the missions, and the smiling. Because that would be a lie. I'd be covering it all up. I would be hurting the wife, the kids, the job, the tithing, the missions, and the smiling wouldn't be there. So, this is who I am, a messed up man. Broken in all the sense of the word. With no idea what to do, other than knowing that there's a God otherwise none of this makes sense. And it would have been better to jump into the abyss like that one day at the beach, when the suicidal me wanted to play a game of daring. I've lived enough years on this earth to have realized there are no coincidences. I've studied enough science to get the picture of the improbable probabilities of us standing where we stand and attributing it all to fate and randomness. I've felt enough love in the presence of absolute despair, enough hatred within me boiling up, and witnessed too many a miracle to believe I am purposeless. My life has been stained, ruined, and left on the side of the road, and I can't fix it. I have to hope, in order to continue living, that there's something else out there claiming me as His own, because nobody else will. I know that. And that's why, in the light of it all, I choose to rid myself of my lofty dreams and goals, because this story is obviously not mine to tell. And I choose to be okay with that, to be the secondary character, or a stone, or a tree in the play. Even though all in my revolts, and rejects, and shakes. There has to be something else beyond this confusing world, which we see, day by day, screaming for hope. And if there's not, then I would have been wrong, but I would have lived a life consistent with what I believe, with character and with self-control. Something I am not doing right now, and that is why I am writing this blog. To find my way out of living a life riddled with inconsistencies, lies, cover-ups, masks. I won't try to come to God having fixed my life already, because I will never come to Him then. So, He will have to take me as I am. I'm an absolute mess, and these are my thoughts. Thoughts from a broken place.