Existential Inquiry

A swirling bed of emotion. The light slips like a rug out from underneath me. My mind tumbles down a dark hallway towards that emptiness. The bitter sadness that bites the consciousness, searing hopes with accurate depictions of reality.
What human being can bear to endure the lifeless drudgery that encompasses my daily events?

The cross.
The cross.

My shame, my glory.
Where else can such sweet and sad emotions find harmony?

Do my perceptions make things worse or merely make things more bearable? Even the cynic finds pleasure in his negativity, or at least some control. May I shed myself of despair? May I destroy the fountain of fear that springs up inside me? Is it so naïve, so foolish to rid myself of concern for myself? Those who seem to care the least about themselves are often the most selfish.
Who will I be? An accuser or a Paraclete?

Am I alone?

No.

I have found that ancient life. That reverberating melody, rhythm and holy song that penetrates the fabric of the material and immaterial universe. Yet perceiving this holy song only make me more lonely, for no one else can hear it as I do. I want to sing it, to live it, to hold it, to be it. The song is alive, it is Love. Hope in it, laud it still.

Who can touch that sacred space in my heart but God? Here He calms me of my deepest fear and yet when I see Him leave the hole is bigger than before. That hole, oh that hole! It widens, it deepens until only He can fill it. I suppose that is His purpose in filling all holes in my life until those pits, spreading like cancer, forming into a singular chasm, where I am truly nothing and He alone can subsist in the space where I was.

Yet some how now I am with more substance than before.

I am afraid more now of what I want than what He does. For His desires can only lead to happiness.

Mine?

Emptiness... pain.

This is the mystery of His will, that in making me He has given me His desires in the form of my own. The task is then to distinguish between that which has been distorted by creatures and designed by the creator.

Can what I desire truly bring me deeper into Him?

The wisdom of old says to desire nothing aside from the All. Yet I have stunted, squashed and suppressed my desires from early in my youth. Some were good and some were bad. Through the colored lenses of fear and expectations it is hard to tell which was which and which was more. Unrestrained they only lead to internal tyranny and desolate seeking of pleasure. Ignored they lead to explosions of passion and subsequent confusion.

Who am I?
How can I answer this unless I know what I want?
Which are the desires rage in me from my diseased flesh or wounded memories?
How much are my desires dictated to me or am I dictating to my desires?

It seems to me the greater mystery in discerning God’s will is discerning my own. Desires arise from deep within me that I am told are the result of warped perceptions, hurts that haven’t been healed and yet they come back new, fresh and reshaped. Waves crushing the sandcastles of my self-understanding.

Is this a lengthy rant merely romanticizing my angst and immature, reckless desire for Love in general or are there legitimate yearnings that man has neglected through distraction?

I don’t know. But here I am.

Here I am.

"Let it be done unto me according to your word."

Sometimes the inflamed wound of my soul acts as the perfect sign to the goodness of God. At other times it is merely the intellectual recognition of the emptiness of all other loves that keeps me pushing forward in darkness, hoping for the True Love.

The temporal and eternal desires of life crisscross in a mesh captivating my attention in a futile attempt to see where each is coming from and where each is going. I believe all desires ultimately come from and lead to the All of love in God even if in their manifestation they have been mangled.

Yet that is impossible to grasp while I am still physical, while I am still an intensely finite amalgamation of material and immaterial. Is it in these temporal experiences that I am called to grasp those eternal ones? Am I to journey in the cloud of unknowing? Or is it in the light of human interactions that I am to be catapulted into His divine light?

Yet all which is most like Him to me is still less like Him to Him than that which is least like Him to me. Ergo darkness.

How can I want that which I cannot perceive and not want that which I do? Especially when it is my experience of Him, which is not actually Him, that leads me to seek that which is Him.

If I explore any alternative to the narrow gate of faith I only find wide road labyrinths and layers of lust leading to the twisted alleyways of the psyche saturated in the seven sins. Milemarkers of iniquity throughout history. Grimey walls painted in foundationless sin-justifying false logic. To whom shall I go?

I am called to be in the world, this I know without knowing how.

What then are these forbidden desires of my heart?

I long to be known. I long to be loved. My soul and body craves for the conjugal relationship with the mystery that is woman. I realize it cannot be woman that I want but a woman, a unique person. I feel that I must be captivated by her whole person in a genuine and homogeneous flow of beauty from spirit to body. A symphony of qualities that is harmonious to my own. More often than not, I am compelled to want the want. Devoid of the natural draw I am drawn to it because I am not drawn.

I cannot shake a desire for intimate masculine affection and companionship. As the inordinate lusts, possibly born of rejection begin to dissipate these desires do not. They cease in their compulsive nature but remain, nagging me constantly.
Is it the residue of sinful thought patterns? Is it a subtle seduction in the form of seemingly innocuous hopes? Am I deceiving myself? Am I being deceived? Do I want to consume? Do I want to receive an impossible confirmation of my masculinity through another? Do I futilely seek to reconcile past lies, hurts, false perceptions?

My fear is that this desire for an exclusive, intimate and affectionate relationship with another man is actually all these things in some combination and nothing more. I have always had issues with applying the label of “best friend” to anyone. I always seem to be different, not necessarily in person hood, but intention from all of those whom I have had companionship with upon which this label could fall.
Is this self-pity distorting my memories of current and past relationships? What if most of these fears are true on some level, does that mean my desire for this relationship is purely a construction of these illusions?

I want to know the truth.

I cannot speak to if this desire simply lays dormant in all men or in merely a few. I do know that it is strong in my own heart. Maybe the reason it is stronger at times than the more fundamental masculine draw to that of a woman is because it is augmented by all of those lies, wounds, sins and distortions. It is my suspicion that this is the case. Yet it's difficult to endorse such a formal cause when all the material causes seem absent and even the opposite.

Jonathon and David.
Paul and Timothy.
John and Jesus.

How do I know when it is right for me to have this relationship? How do I find it? Am I to find it? Is it before, beside or after the ordered romantic relationship? Does it come suddenly or grow slowly and organically? For I know from experience that even if it is not dangerous it is at least futile to seek it.

I want a man who can be free in affection, intimate in conversation, unashamed and unafraid of his body. A man who in body in soul is fully and magnificently masculine. Some one who wishes to be exclusive with me and is not indomitably tainted by the constructs of homosexuality, neither in expression or foundation. Someone who is not seeking to be fulfilled in me or excessively dependent on my affections and affirmations. A free exchange of fraternal love that is built on seeking a common good. A constructive relationship of giving and receiving that can be admired, even if initially viewed with suspicion.

If I were to find such a person, would they want this with me? Would I be able to overcome my fear?

Maybe this idealism is making it improbable for me to discover it where it already is.