good grief

Anyone seen the episode Good Grief from Arrested Development? It's so friggin hilarious! I pray to the Lord Almighty that the song from Peanuts would always go on inside my head every time I get depressed. It cuts through my grief and tells me there's nothing so serious to kill myself over. Nothing at all, not even the worst suffering. Nothing nothing nothing!

accept and surrender

Another important message from above: accept and surrender. It's also repeated in all sorts of therapies including DBT which is to practice radical acceptance. Basically, life sometimes sucks so you have to just accept the bad times and not freak out and rail against what you can't accept. God is telling me to use this principle with myself and unexpected life situations. There's alot in me that I plain old just hate. But this self-condemnation doesn't get me anywhere but more down. Also, when I make plans and they don't turn out my way I tend to get overly stressed. I'm not a very flexible person though I'd like to think I am. So God is telling me to accept myself including the parts that bother me and accept reality even when it doesn't go my way. This all makes sense, I have to start somewhere to begin change which means acknowledging where I am now. But it's so hard for me to do. There's always the comparing and worrying if I measure up and doing the right thing so I'm accepted by others and always my mother's voice, haunting me from beyond the grave, always concluding that I'm not good enough for anything. And so, these are the things I must surrender and give up to God and let Christ carry the burden. If I don't, all that negativity will continue to crush me into the ground. But that's hard to do too, I feel like it's all branded into my mind and heart, an essential dark part of me. Which I guess brings me back to praying and spending time with God everyday so that I can more easily get into the habit of surrendering the negativity. I've been faltering a bit these days with keeping up the praying and meditating but I mustn't just give up, I've got to try try again to come to God. My life depends on it.

I'm off to New Brunswick tomorrow so I need to make sure I take at least 5 minutes everyday with God even at my relatives' house.

take it slow

This is from before but I just wanted to write it down; I had a wonderful message from the Lord that lifted some weight from my shoulders. He said I need to take things slow. In other words don't push myself too hard or put alot of pressure on myself to get going and accomplish things and be 'successful' in life. I have to be careful to not get down on myself for not having a job or going to school at the moment because my personality is such that I can't take sudden change/improvement well. I definitely don't want to stay in this position but I have to move forward at a slow and easy pace. I'm fragile and need to be treated as such, especially by myself which is the hardest thing but if the Creator of the universe tells me to slow it down and it's ok then it's gotta be ok and good to do. It's no matter if the voices in my head tell me life is zooming by and I've got nothing to show for it or that I don't have an established role in society yet. God has a place for me in His plans and I will get there slowly but surely. I guess this is what it means to trust God.

i look like a man

sure it's debatable. some people say i'm pretty, certainly my bfs did, but generally i look like a guy in the mirror. sometimes i wonder if i'm bi or something. again a symptom of bpd of course, but really i often look like a man to myself. a manly woman which is rather ugly to me. but what can i do? i wish i weren't so shallow but it does bother me a bit. especially when i'm in korea. over there i'm chubby (skinny over here in canada) and overall dumpy/ugly. nothing special. no double eyelid or big eyes or straight hair. oh great now i sound like i'm complaining. well i guess i get this way when i'm drinking. the truth comes out. i'm still a pained and unhappy person. i can only pray that God will heal my heart. these days i'm finding it harder to control the drinking. i think its' from stress from family visiting. they are the shallow kind who can only laugh at what they are afraid of. no discussion of any serious kind and very snoopy and Lord knows i have alot to hide. i'l be visiting them next week so i might not write for a while at that time. don't want them seeing this. stupid normal people.

impressions

so many visions and pretty and strange sights go through my mind all the time. Especially when I'm on something but that's not a prerequisite. Sometimes I wonder just how sane I am... But when I've lost control and I'm so excited it becomes very difficult to remember. Impressions of an amusement park, beautiful forests, strange landscapes that defy description, bright colours and moving music... I think the best part about art is that it transports you to another place, time and mind space. That's what I'll focus on for the paintings I finally started after a 2 year hiatus of hell. I'll post pictures soon as I get photoshop working again.

fun dream

I had such a neat dream the other night I figured I should write it down. I thank God that it wasn't tortuous or emotionally draining or a nightmare or anything like that. Anyways, I dreamt that me and my family and my dad's parents suddenly moved to a huge mansion that partly was like a medieval church with 30 foot ceilings in stone and beautiful stained glass windows and part of it looked like a normal mansion. We were looking around in awe and then we stepped out the front door and saw that even the door was made of heavy wood and shaped in an arch like an old church door. But instead of standing outside we were in a giant indoor courtyard to which other mansions were also connected. The courtyard walls and ceiling were also made of stone and was 60 feet high at least. There was a nice garden with some low stone walls and benches so we decided to explore and see the mansions of our neighbours. Each one looked unique with interesting colours and shapes and when I turned a corner inside the courtyard I came across another huge space with high ceilings and large chandelier-like lights and warm-coloured walls. It felt clean and cozy so I had to step inside. It looked like a public pool space but instead of a pool, it was like giant sinks, baths and pools were melded together into this massive waterpark-like basin. The weirdest part was that the water surface didn't stay flat, it was shaped like rolling hills and at the edge it came down to floor level so people could step right into it and the further back you got the deeper and higher the water was. Near the top was a lady in a bathrobe who was proud but still chatted to us in a friendly way about the place and invited us to look around. I ended up walking across a sort of bridge pathway over the basin, noticed I was wearing a private high school uniform and slipped into the basin where it was like a gentle but fast slide. I said sorry but wasn't really because it was a fun ride except when I got water in my mouth. One section had easter coloured bumps that felt like they were massaging my back and butt and at the end I splashed into the hilly water I saw in the beginning.
In a totally unrelated part of the dream I ended up in a painting class in a basement that was also part art store. The teacher wasn't paying any attention to me so I got so frustrated I started smashing my canvas with a wood stick. But the stick was cutting the canvas like a knife and slowly changed my canvas into a rubix cube-like object that could be opened to reveal words and sentences. The teacher finally noticed me and admired my ingenious and unique concept of making the object. I was surprised but still mildly annoyed.

importance of QT

So, I'm still doing my best to spend some quiet time with God everyday in the morning and boy what a difference it makes. When I do it I can feel God's presence, love and peace from His benevolence. My days are relatively clear on what I need to do and life seems to have purpose. When I forget or somehow just don't spend time with Him (especially a few days in a row) I get more depressed, feel like I'm doing nothing with my life and going nowhere, hate myself as stupid and spoiled and end up drinking and drugging more. And of course the more I do them the more the cycle of suffering spins with hangovers and withdrawals. Truly if I am to get through life it is only by God's grace and spending time with Him through Jesus. My pastor also told me and my brother to read passages like Isaiah 49:9- together and decree them over me to believe and declare that God will heal and free me from my issues and lead me to help others too. She keeps saying I'm beautiful and will be specially powerful in the Holy Spirit which is jarring for me to hear from a relative stranger and considering all my mental health problems. But I do believe God can heal anything and anyone. Even as I spend more time with Him I notice that my borderline personality tendencies go down. I just can't freak out about things as much. And then it's shocking how unstable my normal state is when I don't spend time with Him. On Friday I felt like there was no point to my life and living when we left late to go have supper before service with everyone. Sounds ridiculous but that's how far it goes when I get stressed since I'm hypersensitive. But when I have the peace that transcends all understanding I don't get that stressed in the first place over small things.

moving on from treatment centre

I've officially stopped treatment for addiction. I'm going to focus on spiritually healing to get sober. I prayed about it and of course I have my insecurities about leaving but I'm being reassured by God, by my pastor and my psychologist that they can't do more for me there. I told my therapist that I'm thankful I'm off weed and it's made the biggest difference. I was such a slave to it, I couldn't stop and it was making me just completely messed up in the head that I did so many horrible things to myself in the depths of weed-induced despair. I'm free from it now and I forgive her of triggering my sensitivities to judgment and criticism. I guess we just wish each other the best. And she said that if I need to I can always come back so that's reassuring as well. I ended up crying about leaving the place to my psychologist today which was confusing and he says it's the whole abandonment and loss of mother figure-ish person thing. It is anxiety inducing to leave the place but overall I also feel relief that I don't have to fight or feel guilty about using anymore. I really don't have it in me to resist anymore which also makes me sad but I know God won't let me stay like this forever. No matter what I want or can do. I should look on the bright side anyways, I'm mostly sober these days compared to never at all on weed!

trying again spiritually

It's beyond me to stop the small amounts of drinking/blow but it's not beyond me to try again to spend a little quality time with the Lord everyday and so that's what I did this morning and it was wonderful. I could feel the comfort coming from His love and it felt like pure water falling on and around me, enveloping me and it was very soothing. Finally some inner peace! And I asked for clear direction on whether to continue treatment at the centre. I had to make sure to focus on God and not the voices in my head arguing whether to continue or not. I admired His miracle-working, all-powerful nature and felt Him examining the state of my heart and taking it into account for His plans for me. Which is amazingly considerate of Him. And He told me not to continue because He will show me His power even when I don't want to quit. (It's also because I don't really want to quit that I would just be wasting my time at the addictions centre). Then He warned me that this is not some easy way out, I must continue spending time with Him and eventually I mustn't use everyday. So, I will keep putting aside quiet time for the Lord, go to MA, to church services and start painting and tabbing and writing music again.
In the tiny off chance that I just heard what I wanted to hear and my using gets worse and not better, I can always go back to out-patient treatment or in the worst-case scenario rehab. But I'm quite sure I heard from God Himself and I trust Him more than anyone else since He is beyond any human wisdom. My problems are microscopic compared to His might.
I'm also aware that I will get more attacked spiritually by the devil since I'm trying to spend more time with his enemy so I pray for a legion of angels to protect me in Christ's name.