realisationnss

So I've been spending the past few nights thinking about what honesty means and where it all comes from, and truth. Help, too hung up over what truth is. Can't sleep fast enough. The only problem with greater self-awareness and self-absorption is that it more or less makes it damn difficult to sleep, and I'd take my sleep back any day thank you very much.

Anyway, arts retreat was a whole lot of eye-opening realisations. It was goood, but every time I come here to type about my experience, something in me just says nahhh. So right, I'd just leave it at that.

Went to watch Coriolanus again with Deb and Court, and okay Tom Hiddleston is a marvellous actor, but I left the theatre feeling more pissed off with the common people. Like why are they all so hypocritical?? And that maybe the tragedy of Coriolanus was that even if his motives were that of revenge and a wounded ego, he was the only one who was honest about how he felt, and stuck to his guns while everyone else was plotting and machinating for their own gain, and being bloody fickle and two-faced about it. But then he had to go and die. Sigh.

As Hiddleston said, "there is a pure-hearted-ness to him", and I agree. At least he was honest in the fact that he believed that society should be ruled by only one class (the nobles) because the plebians were too stupid, and he never really tried to hide his disdain of them, from them.

As I lay in bed fuming over all the hypocrisy in the world, I realised that there was a period in life when I was racked by all kinds of guilt over the things I'd done and things I'd failed to do (okay I took that from the Confiteor/ 'I Confess' we say in mass, such a stunning prayer) and was confused and reaally reaaaally sad. That was the day when I went to the Blessed Sacrament and stopped trying to be anything. And such a revelation! I think that was the day when I was first truly honest with myself. 19 years and I was finally honest with myself and with God and I realised that shit, I hated myself, the person I'd become, and that I couldn't love myself, and I spent ages being (again) hung up over this idea that I wasn't becoming the person I was supposed to be become.

Like ugh, because I just wasn't good enough, I couldn't love hard enough or care enough or be smart enough. But God was all like "lol Nat, you don't have to be anything, you're enough." But being, me, I was all "awww", then I forgot and got broody and self-conscious, until confession and then Father Simon was like, "Henri Nouwen says that in this modern age, sometimes the greatest sin is the sin of self-rejection." Then he said, "you are lovable" and shook my hand. HAHA and I was both taken aback and touched by the simplicity of it all, and because it was so simple and unembellished, I knew it was truth.

But then things didn't really get better from there. I was more secure of God's love that's for sure. I remember how some time ago, St Mary's had this talk on the 5 stages towards Discipleship- trust, curiosity, openness, seeking and discipleship, and that if we wanted to follow Jesus, we'd usually go through these 5 stages. Proud me was full of it, and thought I'd already become a disciple cause I was working in the cat office and being in the midst of all the preparation for the talk, and I was excited. But I think I was only at curiosity because really, I joined the catechists on a whim, I told God, kay imma in your hands now, take care of me, thanks. But my goodness, what a ride I've been taken on! Tis been a good ride though, but kinda scary. Anyway (don't mind my digressions) I remember how they had adoration at night after every talk which was pretty cool, and okay I wasn't into it, I kept thinking about myself, and it made me uncomfortable because I kept feeling like I was talking at God and not to him, but there was a passage we reflected on and the thing that jumped out at me was this line "remain in me, as I remain in you."

I didn't understand what it meant, but there was this huge sense of infinity in that line. Like our sec 1 geog textbook cover had a picture of a girl holding the geog textbook in her hand and the picture of the geog textbook cover was another smaller picture of the same girl holding the same geog textbook in her hand. And I used to stare at it to see how far the picture could go and get smaller and I'd get a bit giddy with the possibility of so much infinity in that one picture.

And it feels like I've spent an eternity in hiding, but lately, I thank God that I've been able to hate myself and see all my flaws with unnerving detail, because it's made me want to be more honest, it's made me more honest with myself in fact, and I'm learning to deal with who I am and the mistakes I've made. The thing is that instead of despairing at what an unlovely person I am, I exult in me. It's super heady and liberating to understand that to love someone requires clarity and unabashed honesty about your emotions. And I'm learning to love who I am. If God can love me, why can't I? Surely the Almightly sees more clearly than I ever could. Sure, I cringe all the time at myself, but I feel like I can look at myself through God's eyes, that I can see the loveliness welling up within me, and just what a marvel the human body is, what an exercise in creation, and the thing that makes me stupendously happy is how sometimes, I go before the Blessed Sacrament and say "Oh my God, who am I?" and the answer comes clear and rises to the fore of my mind before I've even had the chance to ponder it more deeply, "You are mine."