Gentle.  Gentle, I tell myself in these wee hours of morning when I stand very precariously balanced between the sweet respite of slumber and the aching chasm of insomnia.  My little dog is peacefully sleeping beside my bed, stretched out trustingly- my orange cat is beside me, fast asleep on his back, the white fluff of his belly fur wafts gently in the wake of good old Lasko, my industrial window fan.  They almost mock me, these sweet creatures.

So I try to be gentle.  I try not to push my mind in any one direction.  I try to break out of the myriad of expectations that keep me walled here on this bed, lonesome, with slumber just out of reach.  I just cannot seem to free myself of it tonight.  I want to be a tattle tale.  I want to tell on myself- just get out the phone and run down my address book, calling everyone and confessing all that I have kept from them.  Once, just once, I want to be the one who ilicits the jealousy and not the one who feels it.  I don’t care how selfish that sounds, it’s true.  I want something enviable.  Or maybe I don’t.  Perhaps what I truly want, is sleep.

I’m feeling it rather hard today- jealousy knawing at me, fear knawing at me, the echo of handprints and bloody lips knawing at me- even after such a wonderful night- perhaps even moreso because I had a wonderful night- they creep in, try to take hold, and try to shake from my grasp any semblence of serenity.

Lavan is barking in her dreams, I’ve never heard her do that before.  Possibly it is God’s way of telling me to stop the panicking, stop the foolish self examination, and join her in sleep.  I think I shall try to take his advice, for my part.

I hope I can give you more, when next I give.

“I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety” (Psalm 4:8)

…that He might be my shepard.

Covet.  I love and hate the word.  It’s so full and moist and sexy.  It fills your mouth with a rush of sound at the beginning, but then rounds out with a ripe, round “v” and finishes off with the harsh and quick “t”, almost to scold you for lingering- cuh uh uh uhvvv eehhh t.  It fills your brain with the opulence of all the possibilities- what can you covet- bodies, bodies together, money, power, success, even the mundane; possessions, food, talent- anything that humans desire can be deliciously and longingly coveted.   Merriam- Webster puts it simply: to feel inordinate desire for what belongs to another.  Inordinate. Desire that exceeds reasonable limits.  It is such a cruel and beautiful idea that you could desire something to the point that it exceeds reasonable limits.
The bible has many tomes against the condition of covetousness- so much so that it is mentioned twice in the most basic and simple rules for salvation, the Ten Commandments.  It is also mentioned in 1 Timothy 6:6-10, Hebrews 13:5, Exodus 20:17, Ecclesiastes 5:10, Matthew 16:26, Proverbs 14:30, Colossians 3:5-6, Luke 12:15, and Hebrews 13:5-6.  It seems, that from the very dawn of human existence, covetous feelings have plagued us along with advice on how to avoid and overcome its steel grip.
There is no human emotion, no feeling, no state of intellectual discourse that I struggle more with than being covetous.  I openly and willingly admit that my desire for things exceed reasonable limits.  I want things so much sometimes, want something specific that someone else has, that I can actually feel the covet take over my body, possess me and make me into something that I am not.  I can see myself, as if from a distance, through a fog, doing and saying things that I know are foolish, pointless, and a waste of my time, and yet I cannot get a firm enough grip on my actions.  The want is so strong that it pre-rationalizes absolutely crazy behavior and even worse negative feelings about my quality as a person.  In trying to alleviate the feelings, even worse things tend to make their ugly presence known- sarcasm loves to step in and eradicate true communication by undermining its foundations.  Apathy tries to cover me so quickly and so deeply that I don’t know what hits me until I realize I have been shoveling myself out of a whole made only by myself with no good intentions for me in mind.  Nothing but instant gratification and momentary little pleasured are ever found when I get into that place.  I don’t want those feelings any more.  I want to get some feelings and emotions and stop censoring my own just so I can borrow someone else’s’ cleaner and more neatly packaged ones.  I want to be content with the flesh and the voice, the brain and the talents that were given to me by a loving and thoughtful God.  It is so hard though.  It is so much harder than I could ever imagine that it would be.

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife...

Ever Virgin.

I had a hard day today.  That’s not entirely true.  For the most part I had a wonderful day.  Sure, not everything went as planned, but it was certainly salvageable. And good company.   The hard part was standing by and staying silent when I wanted to speak.  I know it is right to allow other people to make their own decisions, even when you know they will impact you, but sometimes it is so hard.  I don’t know when it is right for me to stay silent, and when it is right for me to speak up- so I go with my default and stay quiet.  I am constantly surprised, though, by my capacity to absorb hurt and return tenderness.  I used to be even better at it, I’d never divulge an ounce of displeasure- and though I do speak up now, sometimes, and with some people, I am still, for the most part, as pliant as anyone might wish.  The truth is I would rather have love with someone I love than have anger, even if I am hurt or angry.  I am trying so hard, so much harder than I could even use words to describe because I know this is only going to get worse, but it isn’t easy.  It isn’t easy.  It’s ripping my brain apart and turning me against myself.  It’s hard to extract fear from reality.  It’s hard to see things change under your feet just as you’ve earned your footing.  It’s hard to know that things always change and for me, they are seldom for the better.  And it’s really hard to be in a sad mood so often these days, never able to say what I truly feel. I want to get back to the girl whose heart was always happy, she had emerged just recently, but so fleetingly I am afraid I won’t be able to find her again.

I don’t want to hear about it any more.  I love you, but I don’t want to hear about it any more.

Ever Virgin.

Possessive is the original word that I used to use to describe the chambers of my heart. I thought that by tying the sins of covet and envy into tight little balls and pushing them down deep inside of me, I could avoid feeling sinful and instead just feel possesive. It’s a good excuse to feel hurt, to create a delicious melodrama, to cry oneself to sleep- feeling possesed or possesive allows you this freedom of expression- this freedom to be wild- to cry too much or too often, to laugh like a hyenna, to say things that burn cold right into the part of someone’s heart that you know too well. It’s sort of the same thing people do when they get drunk- allow their inhibitions to come down to say the things they always wanted to say but were always afraid to. That’s how posession makes me feel. I loathe it and adore it. I used to think it was okay to put yourself in a position of loving someone a lot more than they love you. I used to want to just wrap myself around someone and take away the every burden of their heart, tend to them in every way and at every juncture- parts of me are like this still. I would happily trade the feel of one grateful hug for weeks of silent torment- but I am not sure I feel this way any more, honestly. It is so difficult, too difficult, to keep up the possesiveness and still function like a normal person. its hard because I don’t like to give up, not on anything let alone something as important as love. What they say about the cliche is true though- sometimes love just isn’t enough. Can you just stop loving someone though? Can you just turn it off? To one day say, ‘you’re my best friend and I love you’ and then turn around the next day and not love them anymore?

Parts of me are still wondering if she just doesn’t care. If she misses me at all, even a little bit. It doesn’t usually bother me- we all make choices, I’m so fond of saying, and then we have to live with those choices- but when love and regret and possession are all so close that they intertwine then how can anyone ever get anything done at all? It exhausts me, frightens and saddens me. Maybe its time to turn in. No use staying up waiting for someone who’s not going to be home any time soon, no use thinking about people in other states, no use of anything at all, really.

Ever Virgin.