Relationships

Being a jar.

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

Well, it’s been one of those days…weeks…months…

I am still feeling very sick, I’ve barely eaten since Friday, and I am sore from my chiropractic appointment that was supposed to help, but has made my entire body feel inflamed (I got worked all over, like bread dough).

I don’t know where my miracle is, it’s starting to feel ludicrous to even expect one.

Of course, I don’t want to write a post just to gripe, or I’d review a movie or show I don’t like 😉

But I’m being honest, that is my theme, right?

Drybonestruth.

You know it was 4 years ago when I started this modest blog and picked that name out, at the time I was interested a lot in the Ezekiel 37 story, some of you who read my homepage probably know that already.

I was as arrogant as most young authors when I started writing this, I thought I’d write these profound posts and people would comment on them, and be like “wow, that’s so deep.”

I planned to write mostly ideas, observations, theology, etc.

But pretty much no one who blogs can avoid the self-reflective posts forever, if they can, I’m amazed at their self control, or else I pity them because they must fear being exposed.

When I did write about myself, I only presented my best parts, even up till this year. I didn’t lie, or anything, or try intentionally to put on a facade, I just saw no value in telling people about my problems and struggles, who wants to read that?

But I started doing it as a way to stay accountable, and then I began reading other people’s blogs where they shared their issues, and I found it encouraging myself.

I never intended for this to become a Recovery Blog, and while it still isn’t only about that, it strikes me as interesting.

I got to thinking about why I named my blog drybonestruth again partly because one of my pastors preached a sermon on Sunday about our dry bones needing to be brought to life. And it resonated with me because with these physical struggles, I’ve literally told my mom “I feel like I’m dying.”

That’s how the emotional struggles felt too, like a part of me was just dead. I didn’t think Christians could or should feel that way, we’re reborn after all.

But I was thinking this week, Paul actually wrote that we are perishing daily

“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. 8 We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9 persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— 10 always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. 11 For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. 12 So then death is working in us, but life in you.

13 And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak…

16 Therefore we do not lose heart. Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. 17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, 18 while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:7-18)

And upon rereading Ezekiel 37, I noticed something else

” Then He said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They indeed say, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, and we ourselves are cut off!’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Behold, O My people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up from your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel. 13 Then you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have opened your graves, O My people, and brought you up from your graves. 14 I will put My Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I will place you in your own land. Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it,” says the Lord.’ ” (11-14)

If both these passages are any indication, feeling more dead than alive is not that unusual for a believer. God can raise the dead, but it’s more usual to see Him use that as an example, instead of just healing and freedom, which is what caught my attention.

Why the name drybonestruth still applies is that, honestly, if I can’t tell the truth about myself, how can I tell it about anything else. It’s always hardest to be honest about yourself.

And I don’t just mean griping about my problems, many people do that, it’s no more honest than anything else, often they just blame everyone but themselves.

Me? I tend to blame others because I expect them to blame me, people usually do. I look for an accusation before I even hear one.

I’ve blamed myself for the crappy way I’ve been feeling, but some of it I was born with, some of it was injuries, some of it is likely genetic, and some of it is beyond my ability to really trace the root cause of. I can blame everybody and everything, I can blame me, but it won’t heal me any faster.

My sister pointed out to me, that as bad as this is, it’s good that it happened when I wasn’t working, or needing to provide for myself financially to pay for all this, or when I had kids, or tried to have kids.

And she’s right, I have 3 or 4 people taking care of me, plus doctors and a very nice chiropracter hwo goes half an hour overtime and doesn’t charge for it.

I feel like an ungrateful (insert curse word I can’t say) when I still want to whine and throw a tantrum about how it’s all not enough. There’s plenty of people who go through stuff like this alone.

And I wonder if people are right when they say bloggers are narcissistic.

I think, I didn’t use to be this way, I used to be able to think of other people.

But, if I was honest, I’d admit that’s not true. I’ve always focused on myself, my inner turmoil, angst, happiness, etc.

It’s not necessarily that I am unusually selfish, it’s kind of how I’m built, to be reflective, I can be selfish because of it, but I can also be hard on myself for not being kinder.

And I do write about things other than me, surprisingly, people tend to like personal blogs better. They like getting a peek into someone else’s life.

I started following Umai Yomu’s blog a while back, because I liked reading about their experiences in Japan, I don’t read the reviews (because I don’t watch any of the anime and couldn’t follow the points) much, but I like the personal stuff (Link here: .https://umaiyomu.wordpress.com)

I don’t know if God is trying to change that I’m reflective, but He may be trying to change how I handle being ill.

While I complain too much, I don’t complain as often as I used to. I don’t get down as often, though I get down plenty. I am more proactive than I used to be.

And if that’s not enough…then I just need to accept that I don’t have to do everything. God is the one who heals.

The longer I study anything related to health, the more I think that’s true from anything to scrapes and cuts, to cancer. Any little injury can be bad, even a bump on the head, and cancer can be cured. Who lives, who dies, it’s really got to be in the hands of some Divine Judge, medicine really can’t explain it.

I don’t believe I am going to die. I don’t know when I’ll feel better. Could be today, tomorrow, or next week. I am exhausted, that’s no lie.

This morning, after feeling bad, I just started playing worship music, because I had nothing else to do, there was nothing else to do.

When everything is a mess, all you can do is worship. Because, to start lashing out at God would cut off my last shred of comfort.

It may not seem that comforting, when I don’t feel any better, but at least I have a hope, a promise that I will, eventually, recover. This can’t last forever.

I miss eating. But the bible says “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that precedes from the mouth of God.”

Despite not eating more than maybe one decent sized meal a day for at least 5 days, and not as much as usual before that, I have not fainted, or been unable to focus on schoolwork. While that’s not a whole lot of comfort, at least it’s a good sign.

Whether I eat, whether I don’t, I know God can sustain me.

Which, is not me trying to say I will just not eat. I’m still trying to do that, I’m not going to be anorexic on purpose… it’s just me accepting not everything is in my control, including my stomach.

My chiropractor did something called “body sculpting” on me, which means he’s literally changing the shape of my body to be aligned right. It was all wrong.

I have a beautiful, strong body in many ways, it just doesn’t work like it should.

I would not recommend body sculpting to the faint of heart, it hurts, it’s tiring, and you’re really sore the day afterward.

I understan the verse about “The potter and the clay” in a whole new way now.

Like Paul wrote, we’re earthen vessels, just clay, easily broken, but with many uses. Holding everything from refuse to precious perfumes and spices.

And I feel how fragile I am right now. I’ve been so angry with myself, and my body, but I am starting to blame it less. It can’t help it, after all.

I feel sad, frustrated, scared… but I’m less angry.

I want God to heal me, but I can’t make God heal me. Like Job, I can only get an answer when God chooses to give it, I pray that like Job, my health will be doubly restored, for I wasn’t as well off before as I’d like to be in the future.

Recovery itself can cause pain, sickness, and other discomfort. So, who’s to say, maybe feeling terrible today is a good thing… sort of.

And no, I’m not a saint. I don’t feel like this most of the time, this is me trying to raise myself up to think differently. Half the battle is in the mind, right?

Right.

And with that, I think I’ll close this post. I hope something in this made sense and was encouraging to you, I’m sure I’ll write something less depressing soon, I have some ideas.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

As Good as it Gets (Aligning or Misalignment)

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Well, I’ve had another eye opening week.

I didn’t mention this last time I posted, because I didn’t want to talk about it, but I was dealing with some contracted, tight and sore muscles in some hard to understand areas of my body.

Finally, after about 2 weeks of it, I was fed up, ready to give up, and I decided to get up and go to the Chiropractor. My first time ever, but my parents both went to him and liked him, so I went.

And boy was I sorry I didn’t go sooner.

Turns out I had a crooked tailbone, back, shoulders, and neck. My whole body was at a tilt, pushing my back bones up at an angle. Causing the lower back pain, leg pain, and rib pain I’ve had for years.

For extra fun my brain was getting constricted by the nerves, muscles, and bones at the base of my skull getting knocked off balance by walking for years with uneven legs and shoulders. A condition that can affect mood and the spinal cord…

Yeah, and I couldn’t point my feet out, but I’ve never been able to do that.

Since I was born I moved strangely, a lot of babies get spine injuries while being born. I never crawled right, and I used to walk crooked and bent over. I now stand straighter, but I couldn’t make my feet go straight. Made ballet class real fun. I never liked it.

I’ve never liked working out, and I never could run very far, or stand for very long without my back and legs starting to hurt a lot, and my feet.

People have blamed me for this in the past. My singing instructor thought I should stand still, but it was too physically uncomfortable. I was told I needed more stamina. But even when I was the most fit, it was never the same. When I ran I’d get a stitch must faster than most people usually do.

And I always leaned to one side. Turns out one of my legs was like an inch shorter than the other, just from muscles and bones being out of place.

I get frequent headaches and neck aches, that sometimes seem to cause gagging, and stress me out.

For ages I assumed all this was because I don’t take care of myself, or I’m not fit, or I have weak eyes…or I was just born that way ad couldn’t change it.

But turns out all of it is fixable, over a short period of time. After just two sessions, I can stand and walk in a straight line, I’ve never done that in my memory!

There are some drawbacks. Relieving the pressure and realigning my body has left me with soreness all over, and I got a headache from having my skull adjusted but my neck not enough. I feel better after the second visit, but it may take a few more to finish fixing it, and until then I am likely to still have pain and difficulty adjusting.

But it’s better to hurt because you are healing then because everything is staying the same.

I’m young enough to recover from all this before it created problems like bone loss, according to my chiropractor, but had I waited longer, these problems could have affected my ability to have sex and give birth. Maybe not fatally, but it would have increased the pain and difficulty. Perhaps even given me trouble getting pregnant.

It was scary to hear how narrow an escape I had from far worse consequences. But a blessing to have found a way to heal, far more than I ever thought I would.

I learned a lot from these visits. I am an inquisitive person so I ask questions, my doctors usually love me, an intelligent, informed patient is much easier to work with because they are trying to get better.

I freely admit though, I was terrified to go. I was afraid it wouldn’t work, and I’d just be in more pain and frustration.

And since your pain can linger a while till you’re finished adjusting, I still have to choose to trust the process, to trust my chiropractor, and to believe God guided me to the next step. The idea to go came to me after I prayed to unlock a door to healing.

I know many people are like me, afraid of doctors, I know what it feels like to be afraid to even find out what’s wrong with you, and afraid to hear that they don’t know. (By the way, Urgent Care is crap for anything not a basic, common condition, they’ve helped me with infections, but anything else remotely complicated I’ve had to get other help, so don’t take their word for it if they don’t have a solution.)

I have a phobia about doctors. But I am working on overcoming it.

I was kind of upset that God would not just heal me, miraculously, and with a few lifestyle changes. Specialists are expensive.

But I think I see why God chose to do it this way. There are some people it doesn’t bother to seek help, and they get frustrated, and God heals them to show he is higher than Medicine.

But for me, the problem is not wanting to put enough value on my health to spend money and time on it, something that runs in my family. My father has all kinds of problems that he found got better with a few changes. My grandfather died of a myriad of conditions that could all probably have been prevented if 30 years prior he’d sought out help, he had the money for it.

I also have a grandmother who is a bit of a hypochondriac, and I’ve had that too, it’s much better now.

The point is, I had some very destructive attitudes about my body and health. I inherited the DNA to have the same problems as my family, but most of them could be fixed with a little effort.

And paying $100 a visit for 5-6 visits is still way better than a $30,000+ operation that I might need if I wait. Do the math. I don’t have health insurance, for me this is as good as it gets for pricing.

Let’s talk about that, actually. I watched the Jack Nicholson movie “As Good as it Gets” yesterday (also known as the only Jack Nicholson movie I will probably ever like him in, we’ll see.)

30 Minutes on: "As Good As it Gets" | MZS | Roger Ebert

About halfway through that movie, Melvin, the MC, asks a question that kind of sums up what the film is about “What if this is as good as it gets?”

He has obsessive compulsive disorder. He says and does things with little self control and offends everyone around him.

Also featured in the movie are two character who represent the other aspects of that questions.

Carol, a waitress with a sick son who she can’t afford to take to a specialist, and his constant emergency room visits and fever episodes are for her “as good as it gets.”

And then there’s… I think his name is Sean. Melvin’s neighbor, who’s art career is just not taking off, his parents are estranged form him, and he gets beaten up, robbed, and left in a cast by some addicts needing their fix. For him, it starts to look like his miserable life of failure is “as good as it gets.”

The movie’s solution to this question is to basically say your problems will not go away, but you can take steps to make them better, and in the end still be happy, because happiness doesn’t depend on having no problems, but on surmounting the ones you do have.

One later scene, Melvin bitterly says that it doesn’t bother you that you had it bad, but that other people had it good, and the other two disagree, basically saying it does bother them that they had it bad.

In the end, Melvin starts taking medication and trying to change because he learns he wants to be happier, Carol is able to move on from taking care of her son to letting someone take care of her, and Sean gains confidence that he can rely on friends and his life will eventually get back on track.

The answer being “as good as it gets” may mean “as good as you choose to aim for is what you will get.”

There are some people with chronic conditions that can’t do anything about it, though it’s rarely ever hopeless, and usually there are solutions we just can’t afford…

But the majority of us just give up. We do what my dad once said of his problem “you can just live with the pain.”

I’ve said that to myself. I’ve bargained with it, saying “if the pain could just decrease to this amount, I could live with it.”

But that’s never enough, what I really want is to be better. To be normal.

but the funny thing is about this and my emotional issues I sought help for, is that my normal was never normal.

Just like my body has been misaligned my whole life, my thoughts and feelings also were. It’s quite poetic… of course I believe our spiritual and mental reality affects our body. There’s too many coincidences for it not too.

For me, it’s a new normal, of being normal for the first time. I may finally be able to walk and run without being in pain, to bend my feet out, to crane my neck, for crying out loud.

Ironically, I’ve been told I have good movement in my body despite these problems, but I was never as flexible as my sisters, and I moved more stiffly. I walked more like my dad, who always had aches and soreness.

Just like I may become the happy, strong person I hope to be, and maybe deep down, I already am, but I got jacked up by having a messed up parent.

But in the future I may actually become flexible, it was just this problem holding me back.

The real challenge is not to accept that is has to be the way it is. And if anyone tells you it does, don’t listen to that person.

Really, the Bible itself would suggest we are our own biggest obstacle to healing, those who ask and seek receive.

Even if the woman with the issue of blood had it for 10 years, she got up out of her house and went looking for Jesus, and she got healed. She didn’t say to herself “I’ll just live with it…until I die.”

Commercials always say “Don’t wait for it to become a serious problem, get checked out now” and while it is to sell products, I admit it’s sound advice.

It may not be feasible to do that in every area of life, not all at once, but over time. The person keeping you from having an abundant life may really be you.

I know that many of us have other people who crate obstacles for us, and I acknowledge it’s more of a challenge, but I don’t believe it’s impossible, you can get out of that situation.

Anyone who can read this post and has internet access can reach out for help, where there’s a will there’s a way.

I think I’ll wrap this up now, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Fruits Basket: So far

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Sorry, it’s been a while, I tried to write, didn’t end up finishing anything.

But today the final episode of Fruits Basket season 2 aired for non premium users, so I assume I can now talk about this show with no fear of spoiling it for anyone who was invested enough to care, and for anyone who’s not into anime, but reads my posts anyway out of curiousity, welcome.

I won’t bother with a full review of all the good and bad elements of the show, writing, and art. I do really like the art style, and I will commend it for how well they do facial expressions, particularity the eyes, since it contributes to how one reads the show, but other than that I don’t want to get into all those logistics.

We’re all here for the in depth hot take right?

Well, I probably couldn’t’ make any observations about the depth that hundreds of other people haven’t made and microscoped far more than I have time or energy to do, plus I think the show speaks for itself character wise, and doesn’t need a lot of dissecting.

But I want to talk about the themes of the show, that’s what makes it most interesting for me, though I do love the MC Kyo (best boi), Momiji, Haru, and the two best friends of Tohru, (the main main character,) Arisa and Hana

So if you don’t know, here’s my short synoposis of the important stuff:

Tohru Honda is an orphan, homeless girl who lives in the woods because she’s got a complex about being a burden to people and her granddad wasn’t ready to take her in yet, she gets found by one of he classmates, Yuki Sohma, and his cousin (sort of) Shigure, turns out she’s on their property. After her tent gets buried in a landslide, they insist she stays with them until her granddad can take her in.

Just as you think you see what kind of anime this is going to be, andother family member, Kyo, crashes in the window, and accidentally Torhu bumps into his chest, he turns into an orange cat, then the other two try to help and turn into a rat and a dog.

First Impressions - Fruits Basket (2019) - Lost in Anime

Turns out the Sohma family is cursed, 12 members of their family are possesses by the spirits of the Zodiac, 13, as it turns out later there is also a god character.

Tohru is surprisingly okay with this, like any true Disney Princess type would be, and agrees to keep the secret. A lot of hi-jinks ensue, she meets all the other zodiac members, including the psychotic Akito, and the… strange but lovable Ayame, Haru, Rin, Kisa, and all the others I can’t remember the names of, plus Kagura who is kind of likable at times and not at other times.

With time we learn more about the backstories of all the Sohmas, most o them are tragic, a few had happier lives but were burdened with knowing how bad it was for the tohers, and knowing that evenutally Akito would want all of them to come live with her. This same Akito who tries to flat out murder one of them, and beats up and mentally and verbally abuses the others.

Akito is strangely isolated, depsite supposedly being in charge. I hated her at first, and then I started to pity her over time. At this point, the only thing I really couldn’t get past was the attmepted murder, it feels too unreal…or too real, not sure.

I didn’t know when I started the show that it was written to be an in depth metaphor for abuse and family sins, I saw an ad for it, but no one I knew had watched it so I went in pretty blind.

Something that still boggles my mind about it is that the week my sisters and I watched it, was the week my dad was gone ballistic and we were trying to come up with a plan to get him out of the house, and then he did move out. Needless to say, Fruits Basket could be triggering for me, for both of us, but it was also a bit cathartic to see it enacted out and see other characters mirror our own feelings.

And yeah, I’ll get this out of the way now. Yes, Akito does remind me of my dad. The temper tantrums, the mood swings, the long speeches telling people how much they suck, the manipulation, the promise of love that everyone, even the recipient knows is bullcrap.

I don’t know that I really see myself in the other characters too much, because the striking difference is that most of them don’t talk about it being “wrong” for Akito to act the way she does. They are still in the cycle where you just can’t question it, it’s just normal, but they imply it. Most of them are more apt to blame their parents or themselves for being monsters.

Akito uses the word “monster” a lot too. It’s notable because that’s what victims of abuse often feel like they are made into, a monster. I felt that way. My father felt that way. Turns out when you are not loved properly, or worse, when out of love you are told that these terrible things are true about you.

But the way the Sohma family curse is handled is perhaps the most spectacular aspect of the show and manga.

My expectations kept getting subverted, in a good way, watching. AS a Christian, I know a lot about curse, especially family ones, what most people call inherited traits, if they have a name for it, addictions being the most easily recognizable one medically speaking (that’s self inflicted) I don’t know that the name really matters much, but I find Curse the most appropriate term.

Like FB states, the curse is a bond. Shown by the woven cords anime likes to use to symbolize an eternal connection. A bond that Yuki (I think) tells Tohru was initially meant to be a good thing, but somehow overtime it became a loss of freedom and choice for the cursed members, and became toxic for the whole family. We later find out that when the animals meet Akito, they cry and feel both an attraction and a revulsion, “beloved” “Hated” they think, “Come closer” “get away.” Etc…

Very much true to real life, with abuse. There’s a sickening sort of attraction. I still sometimes feel it thinking of my dad. I got to where I loathed the sight, sound, smell, feel of him and anything that reminded me of him, but I would still be drawn to be around him and want his approval. Over time apart my revulsion has died down more, but if I try to picture being around him it often comes back, I am still healing.

Interestingly, I was told I cried whenever my dad held me as a baby, somehow I picked up on the unrest in my house hold, babies can sense stress even in the womb, it’s proven. But I yearned for closeness with him as I got older. Drawn, and repulsed, as long as I can remember it was like that. He was always very rough, he’d hug a little too tight, too long, something I found out was symptom of BPD, who knew?

It was strange, the hug thing, like it was purposefully too tight, like the intention was to cause pain, even while gratifying himself, I know because I used to do it to, on purpose, I’ve become gentler, I wasn’t always that way, I think I picked up the habit from him.

“I still taste you on my lips, lovely bitter water. Terrible fire and fuel to burn is honey on my tongue, and I know I shouldn’t love you, but I do”-The Oh Hellos

The Sohma family bond was forged to keep them from being alone,just like God created family in order so man wouldn’t be alone, but as man corrupted, so did family. We aren’t told why (so far) but clearly the same thing happened to the Sohmas.

It’s a truth that we humans are too messed up to stay bonded generation after generation and not corrupt, it’s why we have to leave our family, we have to explore. Ever wonder why evil empires almost always have a primary family in charge? It’s not that family is evil, it’s that when you inbreed, and try to keep a family the same, not letting the members forge new families like God said “to leave father and mother and cleave” to your husband or wife, then the same sins become out of control.

Staying connected, but not staying so close you can’t breathe, that’s the key.

So, FB is quite accurate. But it goes even further. Characters struggle with love, being able to love freely, or love at all, and we learn more about the curse.

The Curse primarily affects love, there seem to be physical effects also, some member get sick easily, some get abused by their parents just because they are cursed, both in some cases. And of course, animals follow them around…some of them. Let’s hope a tiger doesn’t show up some time around Kisa… though that might solve her bullying problem (also apparently int he Japanese Zodiac a tiger is different from a cat, even though they’re the same type of animal…? I guess they both get picked on a lot.)

But all the Cursed members either can’t love properly, or they fall in love and it goes wrong. Usually because of Akito, but it seems to go wrong even without her help too, there’s often something too desperate about it, as you would expect.

Being emotionally unbalanced is a part of the curse too. It also seems to effect only some people, Haru goes dark and destructive, Kagura had moods swings and destroys stuff, the monkey, whatever his name was, is way, way too insecure… I mean sheesh.

In Season 2, Tohru decides she wants to break the curse, but no one knows how. She decides to join forces with Rin, who is also desperate to break the curse, but neither of them have a clue, they are just trying not to despair.

Tohru has of course, fallen for Kyo, the cat, and gotten close to Yuki (rat) in a more platonic way, as well as the other younger members, and Hatori, the doctor/seahorse.

It’s basically Beauty and the Beast with abuse instead of pride as the big shadow over the family.

Then in the final episode today, we find out that one member has already been freed of his curse, but not told anyone till Shigure called him on it. Kureno, the former Rooster.

Kureno is not my favorite, I don’t get him, and I’m puzzled by his role in the story, plus he’s shipped with a 17-18 year old and he’s like 27. Age gaps don’t bug m too much, but the guy is weird and he’s Akito’s sex toy, so I’m not sure how to feel about that. He needs therapy.

But his role in the curse is interesting. He got freed one day of being an animal, but he doesn’t know why or how, he remembers nothing significant about it it would seem, but Akito flipped out and got so hysterical he promised never to leave her anyway… which as Tohru points out, is basically just the curse without the animal side effect, but that’s family soul ties for you.

Kureno feels guilty for being freed while the others are not, so he keeps it to himself. Contributing to the cycle. roving he is not in fact free.

I was puzzled at first, I got this spoiled for me when I looked up info about the show, but I didn’t know exactly when or how it would happen, so I forgot about it. I thought the curse would be broken with love, but Kureno seems not to need love to break it.

But then I thought, maybe this twist is good. I’m not going to be that girl who justifies everything just to keep liking the show, but there is a way this could be better.

Since we’re not clear on what the curse is, we can assume it affects everyone differently, perhaps if just needing to love someone else truly was the answer, it would have been discovered long ago, after all, all the Sohmas have fallen in love, right? Or most of them have.

The only hint from Kureno’s story is that is might be some kind of revelation. Whether that comes form love, or from some other source, who knows.

In real life, though, sometimes the moment when you are freed from your family really is hard to pinpoint. I’ve had times of relief, where a cloud just lifted off my mind, but I know that I built up to it over time with prayer and consideration and better choices. I know people who’ve not had that moment yet. I haven’t had the ultimate one where I realize I’m over the damage.

I understand Kureno’s survivor’s guilt. I get it too. While his life isn’t easy, he feels it could be easier for him to leave, to be free. But the very knowledge keeps him bound up.

It proves the curse is in their minds just as much as their bodies. In a way, his freedom made him more bound than ever. Which, I can attest to, without God, freedom is just another form of bondage because you have no skills to be free, most freed people just end up slaves again in another relationship.

Why the curse is accurate in another way is that death doesn’t stop it, it reincarnates. While I mostly think that’s a stupid idea, it works excellently to show generational sins. Death cannot be he answer for the Sohmas, but life seems not worth living for them, most of them sink into a kind of resignation.

Which is quite dangerous. It’s giving up. It may not make you into a psycho, (though it usually does eventually), but it makes you like a robot.

Kureno was the most resigned of all because he chose to remain chained when he could have been free, recognizing Akito’s hold on him didn’t just have to be the curse, it could be through pity also.

But Akito really hates all the people she loves, she knows she will never have complete security, she fears the breaking of the curse because it would leave her alone, and her mind is the most wrapped up in it. It makes sense, all the others are just bound to her, but she is bond to all of them, making her even more stretched between two worlds, two feelings, two desires. Freedom is something she seemed to give up on a long time ago.

I won’t ever justify abuse, but I do understand it. I understand it because I see the same profane love in myself as in an abuser. I don’t believe there’s a single human who never hast hat temptation. My favorite book is “Till We Have Faces” which is C. S. Lewis fictional exploration of Profane love vs Holy love. Most of us call it Unconditional.

Parents say they love unconditionally, and bless them, some of them really do. I love those parents.

Some, however, mean that it don’t matter how bad you screw up they will love you…as long as you don’t leave them, don’t stop loving them.

True love is love even when there is no love in return, it’s giving whether or not you get anything, but it’s not the desire to not get loved in return, it’s the constant hope that you will be, and even if you aren’t, you recognize love is the Right State of Being, and you will not come out of it for anything so petty as demands.

But a True Lover can receive love better than anyone else also, because they know it’s worth, they will not scorn it, because they know it can’t be bought, they will not worry about deserving it. That’s why to understand True Love is to be emotionally healthy in every way, and none of us are,

But the closer I get to Real Love, the closer I get to being whole. I at least now know what not to want.

FB does not present this kind of love as a whole through the main characters, it presents parts of it. We see it the strongest in Tohru’s mom, her best friends, and in Momiji, (the rabbit and also one of the best people on the show).

That's a Secret | Fruits Basket Wiki | Fandom

People who both give and receive love much more freely than even Tohru. Tohru is loving, but she sucks at receiving it. What’s great about Momiji is he’s so open. He hugs Tohru even if it changes him into a rabbit because what does he care? Hugs are more important than curses, right?

Breaking the curse would be simple enough if it was just the animal things. A Christian could do it in two minutes.

But breaking abuse just isn’t done in minutes, or days, or weeks. As long as the curse is tied tot hat, it will be a process. Even if the beast part goes away, they will have to heal.

I think that is the real point of the show: Healing is a process, and if you don’t give up hope, if you stay open to love and face your demons, you can get there. And those who give up, draw back, and embrace their darkness will become worse than they were before.

I look forward to Season 3, I will probably refer back to this show again when I write more about abuse and recovery and anime, but for now this seems like a good place to stop.

If you watch it, what did you think of the ending? What do you think will happen (no SPOILERS) and who do you relate to the most?

Until next time–Natasha.

An existential crisis and other things.

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 I might like Evanescence…who knew?

Well, I got a job at last. Yay!

My performance anxiety is still kicking in over whether I can maintain this one, it’s pretty hard to mess it up, the first day went mostly smoothly, but I lost my last job because I dusted a bookcase wrong, so I realized anew how temperamental people can be. That’s unusually picky, but still…

Especially in childcare, it’s hard.

Oh yeah, so I am working as a Nanny. I prefer that word to babysitter, since technically, the parents are still at home (mostly the case right now) but a lot of people need extra help.

It’s funny to me because I was homeschooled by a stay-at-home Mom, and we rarely got a babysitter. My dad never taught us, and rarely was home with us alone, so My mom didn’t get a break very often, somehow she stayed sane and manged to cook us dinner.

Now, some things got let slide, I can’t say we were very neat kids, and we’d go through phases of fighting a lot. There’s three of us girls.

But even so, it wasn’t bad. We were always well behaved kids, usually, in public. Of course, our parents believed in spanking.

Now, it’s weird for me to go to work for other families, and no one spanks, many people have only one child, and don’t leave their kids alone ever. My mom used to let us play for hours outside or in our room unsupervised, she knew we wouldn’t try to do anything stupid.

Now even if parents are in the house, they want someone to watch their kids while they work. I guess I can understand that, my mom didn’t work, and now she works out of home, not the same thing. Though she did lots of volunteer stuff with us there, and she never found us distracting. Heck, she taught me to help out the adults and she didn’t mind if other people were watching us more than her. I never supposed that was unusual until I got older and found out it’s rare. Rare in my culture anyway, in some parts of the country that might be fairly standard.

I admit in the American West, it’s seen as good parenting to be constantly around your child, involved, attentive to their emotions, etc. In the Midwest or East, it can be more about the child becoming independent and sensible early on, not needing to be carried through life.

There’s something to be said for both, I’ve heard that in cultures where kids are coddled and held more, stress levels are lower later in life; but what comes with that is also a lack of independence from other people, free thinking, or willingness to break from your community even when it’s going the wrong way.

America’s emphasis on independence drove its citizens to become stronger on their own, if the community is less strong than in other countries, we always felt it was wroth it to be free and preserve our Moral Integrity. That’s going away, but it’s not bringing unity. We now have a belief in independence without the reasons independence was ever important.

In the end, the American Dream was originally that if you had to leave your family to follow your beliefs, you could, and the early Pilgrims recognized that Religion has to come over all else, if it’s going to be real. It’s part of Christian Doctrine not to love anything more than God.

I won’t say that’s a less stressful life, but God has never promised us a less stressful life, and stress is not always bad. It can be, but the right kind of pressure makes us into better people, more than anything else can.

I was thinking today how lately it’s hard for me to know what to say when someone asks me “How are you?”

How can I put “I think I’m good, but I don’t really know how I am one day to another, and I’m confused, and I’m up and down, and I’m great, and I’ve never been so strange to myself” into a glib response that someone will accept? 

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I feel like I’m having an existential crisis… and yet I’m not.

It’s funny, I’ve been questioning what does make my life worth it. I guess when you have intrusive thoughts about suicide, and you choose not to follow them, to reject that as being what you are, then the next logical step is to wonder why. What’s driving you? What’s making you different from thousands of people worldwide? What do you have that they don’t? Is it arrogant to think you can conquer a problem so many people fail to beat?

I know I can’t be the only one who feels that way. I remember when I read “Soul Surfer” Bethany Hamilton described wondering why it was her, but not in an angry way, just like she wanted to know the grander purpose of what happened to her. And it was weird to many people that she wasn’t more devastated.

What if your feelings just don’t make any sense?

Even my therapist can’t figure me out every time.

I remember one of the recent episodes of Fruits Basket (I will probably review that show once season 2 ends) had a moment where two characters met each other, and the curse of their family took hold. They felt “Beloved, Hated, Drawn, Repulsed” at the same time.

That’s so accurate to the life of a victim of abuse. Both toward your abuser and to the rest of life, you feel drawn and repelled at the same time. You love them, you hate them. You want more, you want nothing.

Abuse is perhaps the most contradictory kind of brokenness in the human experience, because the nature of it is to be contradictory, to combine love and hate in an unholy way that never should exist.

I love my Dad still, a lot, and don’t want him to suffer, yet I want him to feel the weight of what he did to me, even if it hurts him, and I don’t want to see him, or talk to him. What do you make of those feelings?

I want to live, but I don’t want to live the same way I always have. I do many things, but I don’t know why I’m really doing them anymore, I don’t know if I believe they matter to anyone in the long run. 

“Vanity, vanity, all is vanity” Ecclesiastes says.

I am a student, I am a blogger. I have a YouTube channel. I read, I write on average 10 pages a day by hand, I knit, I watch kids, I go to Church. I dance. I sing.

I have goals and dreams and things I want to do, and I wonder why I want to do them. Won’t the end be I’ll feel the same as I did before? Are they just escapes? Isn’t everyday life the only real experience I will ever have.

One of my favorite things about the Bible is how much it lacks false sentimentality. You won’t read the fairytale , wishful thinking mindset in the Bible. None of this “escape” stuff.

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When the Bible has heights, it claims those as fully real, as normal as the lows. When things are dull, the Bible records them as faithfully as when things are exciting. We have whole books of Laws, Numbers, and History. We have books of Spiritual Revelation. We have a book about sex that beats any porn crap, both pure and passionate. (Did you know the Bible had a book about sex? A lot of people don’t know that.)

The Bible sees everything as important, it treats life as a journey, I picked up that attitude and I’ve always been less discouraged in my life because of that.

I guess right now, I’ve just had doubts about whether the Bible is right. Is my life a journey? Or it is dull. Don’t thousands lives never go anywhere? (At least in our eyes).

You have to really learn that you can’t know everything, if you want to make it through life sane.

I recently reread Ecclesiastes all the way through, I noticed that what that book is about is how the World’s pleasures, and man’s own pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, do not satisfy us. They don’t make us happy. Indeed, the end sum of wisdom is realizing everything is empty. That’s why Eastern religions have their goal as to be removed from the world and other people, they have reached the pinnacle of man’s wisdom.

Yet it’s strange that the Preacher in Ecclesiastes says to still do our work, because it is what God has given us to do, even if there is no point in it, because good things happen to both the good and the wicked person, and so do bad things, and we can take nothing with us.

It wasn’t until Jesus, the only man wiser than Solomon, that we got the answer s to why God would have us still spend time on earthly things. Jesus told us that we could lay up treasure in heaven for ourselves by our faith and works here.

The Bible does not teach that we are saved by works, but that we are rewarded for them. We can be saved even if our works are empty, but it shows our faithfulness to God is they were of value. 

And of course, human beings are not earthly things, strictly speaking, and we need to be concerned about each other.

Still, there are times I feel I am failing even at that, that I’ve hit a dry place in my life where I have nothing to give, and no one would appreciate anything I have to say. Like I’m just using other people for life support, but am myself a vegetable, emotionally or spiritually speaking.

I don’t know how true that is, but I suppose even if it was, everyone has seasons like that.

What I think God wants of me is to decide that even if I see no point in anything I’m doing, I will trust him, because I know He does have a plan. And that’s all I need to know, I don’t need to know what it is.

And even if I am not doing any other thing worth doing, if I Love God, and He Loves Me, then life is still worthwhile. Like the end of “Groundhog Day” when every day is the same, he realizes, the only thing with lasting meaning is Love. Love isn’t bound by time, or repetition, or memory.This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is groundhog_day.jpg

Like with Mary of Bethany, it is better to sit at God’s feet and worship, then to be busy doing everything for Him, but nothing with Him.

It’s easy to write that, easy to tell people to do that, it is not easy at all to do it.

It is amazing how it can take the most strength to be still.

Again, all the most true things are the ones we’ve heard so many times and just never understood the meaning of.

Maybe it was good for me to realize all this now. Rather than chase these things for decades of my life only to understand at the very end why they didn’t matter without God’s purpose.

Until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Lost in The Fire.

/ toseealife / 1 Comment

Well, the Oh Hellos released a new EP, and my Dad’s house burned down, so it’s been interesting since I last posted.

My dad wasn’t in it, thankfully. But he was pretty shook, as we say now.

Right now, it’s the third day of me waking up and seeing a yellow sky out my bedroom window. It’s so weird, like a post-apocalyptic teen movie. I guess there’s a strange beauty in it, and for a wonder, it’s been much cooler. I find it ironic that a fire burning had made it cooler, but one man’s loss is another man’s gain.

Fire does make rain too, so maybe in a few weeks we’ll reap some much needed benefits from this, but for now, no one is seeing it as a good thing.

People always say living on the West Coast is scary because of earthquakes, but the wildfires and arson every year are actually the biggest problem for us, way more than earthquakes.

Strange, my dad’s house was in danger a couple weeks back, but we prayed, and the wind actually changed direction just like we asked. So this time around, I didn’t even think about him being in danger of losing it.

When the ash starts falling down here in the valley, we know the fire is too close for comfort, even if we’re out of reach of it.

Falling Ash – Sam's Online Journal

I can’t explain why my dad’s house got spared once only to burn down two weeks later. Anymore than I can explain why Anne Frank made it to the allies winning the war, but still died in a Nazi prison camp.

In the fan fiction I write, I actually just had a fire happen in the story, literally af ew days before this, and was having the characters deal wtih the aftermath, asking some of the same questions that we’re aasking in real life now.

Why?

And what is the point?

When we get one miracle, sometimes it almost feels like mockery, especially if later we still lose the thing. Why get it longer at all? Why raise false hopes?

The Bible has examples of that too, the Israelites win one battle, lose the next. Get saved from their enemies, and years later, get taken captive. God warns them, but they probably were still confused, since when did they ever listen to the prophets, after all.

It could be that our idea that because we were saved once, we automatically will be saved the next time is actually foolish and not one God tells us to have.

God promises to always protect us, but not that it will look the way we want it to. Not that we will never lose anything.

Indeed, most of the Psalms is the author praying for emotional protection and protection from sinning, as well as physical protection.

There’s pretty much zero chance my dad will read this blog, (or listen to me, after all,) but I wonder if he’s thinking that all this just means he can’t win. He can’t be happy.

To be getting close to peace, and to have it wrenched away. Why does God allow this?

And me, personally, it’s a reminder that I may not be as far out of the woods as I think, in my own life.

Of course, safety is an illusion outside of God’s will. We never really know what will happen. We could walk out the door and get killed, or we could have an accident in our house. The only risk free thing to do it sit real still and never move…and then you die of starvation or lack of exercise.

God just doesn’t mean for us to do nothing dangerous our whole lives. Danger makes it worthwhile.

See, being better off from one minute to the next is something completely in our own heads, unless we measure it by how much we are trusting God. I am no safer this minute than I am on a mountain top in a lightning storm, it is just to me that it seems different.

It’s not wrong to think things are going well in our lives, or going poorly. The Bible certainly never tells us to throw out that standard, how else can we understand God’s goodness? But it cautions us to keep in mind that it is all a gift, not what we are owed.

I believe God does want each of us to be happy, in the right time and right context for happiness. But not a isngle one of us ahs a correct idea of happiness when we first walk with God.

My ideal of happiness as a new Christian was not to have trouble, not to have relationship problems, and to have a good career, husband, children, and be able to do what I loved doing.

To be honest, I still prefer all those things.

But I’ve had a series of rude awakenings that none of that gurantees happiness. To my amazement, I can be sad even if nothing is going wrong in my life at the moment, and I can be happy even if everything is going wrong.

Stasi Eldredge recently wrote a book titled “Defiant Joy” and I think that’s appropiate, the deepest Joy is usually defying the circumstances.

Suffering has a way of making us understand better whyt his world just cannot satisfy us, and our Joy is clearer when we see it depends on heavenly things, not earthly things.

I don’t just meant hat as a cliche, I mean that the ability to think about how heaven is, how God is over all, how we will live forever in that Reality, is the key to feeling true Joy.

You know, if I could give a pieve of advice to any new Christain, or curious seeker reading this, I’d tell them “Pay attaention to the cliches, the cliches are true.”

There’s hardly one Christian saying or teaching, which people usually roll their eyes at, that I have not found to be ultimately a profound truth.

“Just have Faith”

“You have to trust God”

“Don’t focus too much on earhtly things”

“God is in control”

We like to say that those just aren’t comforitng, that they make us feel liek no one is listening to our pain.

But I’ve come to see those sayings came form genrations of Christians going through trials, and finding that those really were the simple turhts they had to hold on to, in the end the simplest things are the most Comforitng. Like

“You’re not alone”

“God is in this.”

We say it because it’s true. Cliche or not.

I still think that God will “give me the desires of my heart” as the Word says, but I now know better that those desires will sometiems feel like a chore too.

I’m not married yet, but I do realzie once I am, there will be tiems my husband seems like more of an annoyance than a blessing. Same with children. Even if I live out my dream of adopting, I’ll certainly be tired of it at times.

I love teaching, but I don’t love it when I have a headache or didn’t sleep the night before.

Nothing mortal is always fun. Even worshipping God can be a struggle at times.

But, even so, it doesn’t make those things not worthwhile.

And losing them doesn’t mean you give up.

If I gave up every time I was disappointed, I’d not have anything left, that’s the honest truth.

I mean on everything, too. Deliverance from my personal problems, getting a job, getting a boyfriend, writing a successful book, getting a car, teaching.

All of it I got let down on a lot of times before I got any of those things, and I still am waiting on some.

I’ve learned the hard way that if you get knocked down, you really do have to get back up. Even if it’s not fair, even if it’s tragic, even if it’s tearing your heart out to keep going, you have to, or you’ll shrivel into nothing.

I think the Karate Kid remake actually summed that up in a beautiful way. (I liked the new one better than the old simply because I thought it had some deeper themes than just overcoming a bully problem, not that that’s bad, but of overcoming loss itself.)

The Bible says “For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again, but the wicked stumble when calamity strikes.” {Proverbs 24:16}

I guess you know you’re the righteous by seeing if you got up again. It doesn’t take much to defeat someone who has no character.

They say the best way to heal from losing a pet is to get a new one soon. I think that is true. It’s easier to dare to love again if you don’t let the memory of your love fade away, along with the pain, by not loving anything else again.

Rebounding is not always healthy, but it can be far worse to close off forever. No, it is far worse.

All this to say, whatever you lose, you need to rebound. Wisely, but do it. It’s the only way to heal.

I believe that is why at the end of Job, God gives him all he had, doubled, save for his children, since God seems to count the ones who died as still being part of the number, a note of respect most people miss reading that story (I got it pointed out by someone else).

God’s message is not that the loss didn’t matter, but that Job, having lost everything, had to start again if he would be restored. That is the only way to heal.

Job is one of the only Old Testament men mentioned to have given his daughters an inheritance, treating them as equals to his sons. We aren’t told why he did this, but perhaps he realized that in life, you should bless people as much as you can while you can, because you really have nothing certain, and gender and age just don’t matter as much as we think.

Job loved harder after losing everything, and that is how I want to be. I want my loss to mean that in the future, I’ll give more to people I wouldn’t have before.

Well, that is all for now, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.

Where I’m at.

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What a month last month was for me. Crazy.

It’s not usually a good idea to list the bad things that happen to you, but sometimes you have to in order to just appreciate that you got through it.

So, in the course of a month, I:

  1. Got rejected from at least 3 job applications after an interview.
  2. Got a mouth infection (not fun) and had to be on antibiotics that made me feel nauseous.
  3. Had a huge attack of intrusive thoughts.
  4. Had a huge attack of anxiety about all of the above
  5. Then got what we think was mild food poisoning, along with my sister, and had a 2nd period in one month, a weird phenomenon that happens sometimes and made me feel even sicker.

Still recovering from that last one, but I am feeling better. Still I felt so sick I barely ate anything for 3 days and just managed to eat a little better yesterday. Don’t know if it was hormones, allergies, bad food, or some unholy combination of all three.

Somehow, even after all that, I still have felt closer to God than before.

I don’t think God gave me all those problems directly, and with prayer, thankfully, some of them are going away, but God didn’t just lift them off immediately either.

It’s ironic that a lot of my problems are self-inflicted after the intial issue that wasn’t in my control.

I eat less when I’m stressed, so the more worried I get about feeling unwell, the less I want to eat, and the worse I feel as I get hungrier.

I worry so much about making it worse by eating, I forget that not eating makes it far worse.

My sister asked me why it bothers me so much to think of throwing up, and I didn’t really have an answer. It just always has. Even if arguably that’s not the worst thing ever ( I hate it), what I hate most is how ill I feel before and afterwards. It gets to where I’m more afraid of the idea than of the reality.

It goes back to when I was a kid and felt sick a lot because of anxiety. I would try to figure out what kind of sick I felt, and obsess over it, but I’d think “as long as I don’t throw up it’s not the worst.” I’d pray, begging for that. When I’d feel better a few hours later, it was relief.

The thing is, it’d ruin my time, whatever I was doing. All I wanted was to be at home, curled up with a book, or by the toilet, even if I knew nothing was going to happen.

I guess I never questioned if I could be any different. After I got older and my faith got stronger, this problem went away for the most part, but it rears up every now and then with my allergies, or stress, or PMS. I rarely ever actually get sick, even colds, but I freak out any time I think I might be.

So, getting sick twice in one month has me tripping, you can imagine.

At least, it would, if I let it.

But in another way, God used both these experiences to show me how deeply I worry about health. And let it steal my peace and joy any time I have a glimmer of sickness, real or false.

When I get worried, it’s hard for my body to heal anyway, or to even want to. I almost don’t want to try, for fear it won’t work, because then…then what? I guess I feel I couldn’t handle it.

The reality is that’s not true. As with most things, this fear is mostly just shadowy illusions, not based in what’s likely.

I can’t even say if having physical symptoms is worse than emotional. Some of you who have mental illnesses probably think you’d trade for a physical one in a heartbeat, or it might be the other way around. Every problem seems easier to deal with then our own.

Well, our struggles are tailor made for us, I think, in more ways than one. I inherited this struggle with my health from my Grandparents, like with so many other fun things I deal with. I had two who were obsessed with their health constantly.

My dad also constantly felt bad, and just lived with it, never feeling he deserved any better.

Now, me, I’m trying to kick all this. Not that I beleive I will never get sick, but that the same constnat problems I’ve had my whole life can go away.

I know that not every problem goes away, but so many of mine are stress related, and being stressed isn’t a state of mind I want to stay in.

I doubt most people think of me as a stressed person, who know me. I don’t come off that way, because external things rarely upset me as much as other people, my battle is always inward with my own issues. It’s hard to explain that to people.

God showed me how much I think of this stuff. And I am getting a glimmer too of how often I pity myself.

My dad always pitied himself, but he wasn’t compassionate to himself, and I can act the same way. I will feel sorry for myself for going through all this, and beg sympathy of people, but I will be hard on myself at the same time, with a frustration toward my body for not cooperating with what I want and not letting me do what I want.

As if what I want is always best. It seems better than doing what I used to and embracing it as an excuse to hide, but perhaps the pride of thinking I know best is not really better, just different.

Yet, after the first day of feeling really sick, to the point where I dry heaved and gagged, but nothing came up, my sisters and I prayed, and then I got up and danced around my living room, feeling better, but not completely, and I did manage to eat a little after that.

I didn’t get that bad the other days.

But I thought, I would have never done that in the past. Somehow, I felt fine, even though I didn’t feel fine. How is that possible?

God is weird sometimes.

I don’t know how all this will end, I’m learning as I go. I don’t even know how applicable it is for anyone but me, the reasons people struggle are so different.

But my thought it, maybe all this is happening now so I don’t spend decades of my life with the same problems as my dad had. Always thinking I couldn’t do anything about them.

Maybe it’s necessary to learn this now, to prepare for my calling. Certainly it’s interesting how much God can teach you just from living everyday life. Some of us go on big soul searching journerys, some of us stay home and live ordinary lives for 20 years till one day God tells us to move, like Abraham.

Whichever it is, I guess I’m learning, like Paul, to be content with where I am at, to believe it’s where I need to be, and God is growing me through this. Even if it seems painfully small at times.

Though, G. K. Chesterton thought that the ordinary things in life were the most enchanted.

I guess I’ll end with that thought, until next time, stay honest–Natasha.