dreamingwithfairies

[imaginary crowd boos] Alright, alright, settle down folks! I know you're all very happy to see me back. And I'm glad to BE back. As expected, by popular demand, I'm gonna talk about a subject that I continuously return to - spirituality. Ugh, right?

On a more serious note, a couple of weeks back, The Book of Answers told me (in answer to my question) that I should write down what spirituality means to be if I wish to connect with the, uh, psychic & supernatural realm. Re-connect more like, because it is something that has surprisingly waned over the years. That's what happens when you're an adult distracted by responsibilities like work, study, money, materialism and world/politic problems. But then I do remember that I made the conscious decision to step back. It's something that I've actually focused on TOO much, and lost touch with my external reality, as it were. I'm older now and (hopefully) more mature. I feel that I can handle both at the same time, the physical and spiritual.

Now - onto the Beyond Meat and potatoes.

Why do I want to infuse my life with the supernatural and the psychic? Is it the same as spirituality?

To answer the second question, I have to be honest, I am in no mood to explore spirituality. It's just too much woowoo, or it's depressing. However, I must reflect on the past, on my most psychically potent times, and ask myself how spiritual was I? How useful was it?
I am a believer, in a kind of vague sense. What I detest is organised religion. I mean following it. Regarding it, respecting it, understanding it etc. from a metaphysical and psychological point of view is interesting and enlightening but I cannot be a follower of anything... The same applies to New Age and some alternative left-hand path offshoots. However, belief and community provide a certain environment - a boost in psychic abilities. However, psychic abilities and experiencing supernatural phenomena are not influenced by the same things. After all, even hardcore atheists have experienced things that cannot be explained or are spooky, even if they find an explanation or theory for it.

Spirituality can provide a sense of purpose, and I've always been obsessed with the concept of a higher purpose or a calling. Since I was a child I believed I was born with an important mission, but I have no idea what it is. I was drawn to music but that never worked out and I don't intend to seriously pursue it anymore.

But spirituality has some serious downsides that I have struggled with. On one hand, increased supernatural/psychic phenomena is not always positive. There is a sense that you become a beacon to the Unseen, they flock to those who dabble in the occult. Some are kind and protective, others are merely curious, but there are those who are desperate for help or indeed wish to deceive and bully the novice. A spiritual belief may provide some tools of protection, whether it's certain plants, metals, incantations, sigils etc.
It's safer to never dabble at all. And yet, there is a fun side too. Especially synchronicities, or desires manifesting. Things somehow connect and make more sense than they do without the active intuition.

The other thing that bothers me about spirituality is whenever it makes me doubt the concept of free will. I like to believe that life is a balance of free will and fate. Somethings you cannot change no matter what you do, others you have a choice in. My past difficulty differentiating between the two - particularly in romantic matters - confounded me. Love was one of the main themes during my spiritual/occult practices, and it always really bothered me. I had mixed feelings about a fated soulmates. There was an air of an arranged marriage that I hated. Even if it might be the person of my dreams and I want no other, I at least want an option not to be with my soulmate. Even if I wouldn't choose that, the option matters.

It's surprisingly difficult for me to come up with reasons why spirituality is important to me and I almost get a sense that I am focusing on the wrong thing. That's not what makes life interesting, it's specifically the supernatural & psychic phenomena that make me so curious about how reality works, and what mysteries lie just beyond reach, within the fabric of existence and in the intricacies of consciousness. Yet, I've never met anyone who was "tuned in" yet irreligious and non-spiritual.
I don't want a belief - I want an experience.

I have this distinct feeling like something major is missing from life/reality. It doesn't seem full. And I don't mean my life isn't fulfilling - it's not - but there's this sense that there is more out there, and it's hiding in the things everybody misses. There's something very subtle overlaying our existence, like an unseen dimension. That's what I want to tune back into. But I don't want to be influenced by an established belief system. An interesting alternative might be to create my own spirituality for my own purposes and based on first-hand experience. That, I believe, would be the most powerful and authentic and unique way to experience reality as it was meant to be - my life through my own conscious experience.

Salvador Dali, one of my favourite people ever, encouraged the creation of a personal mythos in favour of what you've been told by external reality, society etc... Maybe that's what I'll do.

But I have to believe it.

"... rather be dead than cool."

Finally got around to watching a live performance of "Light My Fire" by The Doors and was kind of struck with awe at Jim Morrison, which of course, went on to remind me of Kurt Cobain, (Club 27), which lead me to re-watch MTV Unplugged "Where Did You Sleep Last Night" Lead Belly cover by Nirvana. And then a mere look at David Bowie's image.

When Kurt ended the last song of the evening, he went down to give his autographs to people. I could almost cry, after a performance like that, and the normalcy of human interaction, and marvel at the very idea that once upon a time, this person was real. He was living, breathing, and his mind was conscious. And I wasn't even born. Not so with David Bowie or Michael Jackson, and others, who have all shared the same world with me. Though the very phrase "shared the world with me" sounds absurd, considering that I feel this world is not mine to share. The phrase is meaningless. But I suppose what I am trying to say is that, greatness and great people seem to exist solely in my mind or in the mists of time, before my mind existed. So it is rather strange to become aware of these very rare, very exclusive times when the existence of one person happened to coincide with my own living, breathing consciousness around the same time, on the same planet.
It's a long-winded way of saying that it fills me with hope, yet also immeasurable sadness. Hope because I know that great souls at all exist, and aren't just in my imagination or the twisted projection of the public. Immeasurable sadness because - when I look at Cobain, or Bowie, or Morrison, or Jackson, and others - I can't help but be filled with this sense of doom, this sense as if the angels have left us, that the great ones are gone and they are never coming back. That this is it, this is the end. Only imitations and caricatures of greatness flood the culture now.
And I want to give in. I want to give in to this sense of doom, that our culture is dying. No, I shouldn't say "our" once again, because I am merely a casual observer of it. The culture. Do I mean western culture? I don't think so. I think global creative culture. I want to weep for this age.

I look at someone like Kurt Cobain and I try to imagine how he'd feel about the current age. I won't put words in his mouth, but, I think social media ruins authenticity and individuality. One must purge oneself from social media algorythmic influence if one wishes to rediscover their soul beneath all that garbage.
Authenticity, true individuality is fucking dead. Invention is dead. It's a cultural wasteland where "authenticity" is synonymous with "consumerism" or something. Youth culture is a pile of eggshells and it's disgusting.
I want to give up - I am ready to give up - because only in giving up can I achieve total liberation from the shackles of collective consciousness of this age. I've already come so far, actually, there's not much else left to go.

There is also a certain tinge of envy I feel for those icons of a bygone era - the artists and the poets and the philosophers. The envy is because part of what made them so great was how well they were able to capture and reflect the spirit of the age. Effortlessly and even unconsciously so. At least, that's how future critics and writers write about these people. They've become vessels, archetypes. Terence McKenna wrote something similar about it... I don't have the notes here with me right now, but he talked about how every now and then a person comes along and they transcend the pre-existing archetypes that most people fall into. They instead become, as if possessed, by an aeon. They seem to be totally in-tune with the collective consciousness, they reflect something back to the masses. Maybe he didn't say it exactly like that, but it was something about how that's what happened to Christ. How the individual identity becomes something mythological because of how society reacts to them.
I feel like there's nothing out there right now, no one to speak for the age. And I feel like it's detrimental for a culture to be able to make sense of itself, to prevent it from plunging into chaos, to have the art world reflect that image back to itself - back to the collective. I feel like social media is an artificial construction whereby multibillion dollar companies with shady groups try to "inject" a culture with their own messengers, their own reflectors "of the world we live in today" which is not at all how the spirit of the age is channeled and revealed at all. That's why nothing feels real, why everything is a soulless trend, why the youth is in a deep state of identity crisis. It's a conspiracy theory of mine that I just made up a minute ago.
What I am saying is that I wish this is something you could volunteer for.
Everyone who becomes a messenger ultimately lives a life of extremes. It's a sacrifice. Peace is traded for truth and liberty.
I want to channel the greats, I want to know what they'd do, if they were young and alive now. I can't help but imagine Kurt Cobain going totally off-grid because of the social media invasion. I think he'd live in a cabin somewhere and play guitar and probably own some rescued animals - and he'd make it as a matter of personal principle to be utterly clueless, to the point where if someone were to mention Twitter he'd say "you mean that sound the birds make? Sorry, I don't speak bird."
This hypothetical, projected image of a dead musician is how I'd like to see myself also, in an ideal scenario.
And like I said, I've come far, because my social media presence is almost subterranean. I use it even less than my grandmother. But it's not good enough, I'm not as ignorant as I wish I was.
What is it that made the greats great? Why were they unable to control themselves, to be lowkey, to pretend to be normal, why didn't they even try to fit in? The pressure to fit in now is more suffocating than it ever was, which is the ultimate irony, considering that everywhere you look people are preaching "inviduality" and "realness" and everywhere you look they're just clones of each other. Part of it has to do with the way the new internet is designed, it truly does limit people's expression. I remember about fifteen years ago when even your personal YouTube page could be customized like a blog, with colours and themes and pictures - anything you want.
Maybe I've got the wrong idea.
Maybe the idea isn't to channel or embody the spirit of the age, but rather wake it up. And the only way that I can see in which it can be waken up is by rebelling against it - going against the tide. That's how it's always been.
I sound so grandiose, don't I? I am swept up by these ideas of greatness, because that is all I ever wanted, all I ever dreamed of. But I've only been able to move backward, never forward. Yet I feel a calling. I feel these men and women of the past as kindred spirits. In fact, I feel all the dead as kindred spirits. I feel the dead speaking to me. Not in words or dreams or images. But in feelings, which move me like a leaf in the wind.
No great artist can be made without great suffering, complexity, intensity in their personal lives. It's almost a prerequisite to have an unorthodox family or unstable childhood or anything that makes you the outsider. All of those boxes are ticked in red for me. And yet I feel too old. The people I look up to, they followed their hearts at a young age. They rolled with it and became great. I didn't - I kept trying again and again to be normal, to do what's expected of me. I wasn't brave enough, I wasn't angry enough. I rejected who I was because the truth really scared me. Because when I confront myself about who I really am, I am hit with a powerful, overwhelming force of loneliness. Just writing this right now is very difficult for me, because loneliness is something I am able to keep locked away very, very deep within my psyche. It's the one thing I hide from myself, the one thing I fear. In any other case, about any other subject or aspect of myself or my life or my fears, I have no problem delving to the deepest depths. Analyzing myself, my thoughts, my feelings - like I am now - is therapy for me. It's a hobby. It's absolutely vital to my sanity to spend a lot of time making sense of myself.
And the one thing I can't talk to myself about is my loneliness.
Loneliness not in a sense that I haven't been able to connect to anyone I have ever met. Any connection I've made has always felt one-sided, in that I go out of my way to empathize, to feel the other person. To love them, to come into their world and spend some time there. But whenever other people have tried to connect to me, I was simply profoundly disturbed and felt even more alien and alone than when I am actually alone. Other people make me lonely - or rather, bring the pre-existing loneliness into my constant waking consciousness where I cannot ignore it and I cannot do anything about it and life becomes a waking nightmare. When I am alone (have no human contact) is the only time I am not alone. I feel comforted by nature, and deeply cherish the company of animals. But to people I have always felt deeply alien.
That all being said, it has never actually bothered me until social media took over the culture.
Before all that, I held the hope in my heart that I will meet "my people" and I recognized myself as a deep, imaginative soul - a creative person - and creative types are often picky about their company. The internet offers that opportunity and then dashes it, as I have experienced it. Now I feel like I will never, ever have meaningful relationships with anyone. Which in itself doesn't scare me. What scares me is that I'll always feel fundamentally alien.
Which is where Gnosticism comes in to rescue me.

I admire how the greats were able to transform their passion, obsession, pain, fascination etc. into art. Something personal turned into entertainment, projected into the objective world. A conjunction of other works into a unique singularity. I see it like an exorcism, except that you're not expelling something demonic, but something divine, from another world. I'm thinking about Alexander McQueen now.

Anyway, I want to follow this impulse - to do what makes me feel pure, free, far away from this time and place. I want to go oldschool. I'm making changes. I want my heavenly parents to be proud of me. I want to activate that psychic telepathic connection, light that beacon, send the signal, let them hear me and feel me. Let them come. The real ones. My spiritual brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and lovers and children. I can't be the only alien in this alien world. There must be someone from the same Kingdom as me. How do I call them? How do I hear them? Everyone I know is dead.

"The Alien from without comes to him who is alien in the world."

I feel like I've stepped over some kind of threshold.
The sun of wanting to be someone else is setting, and the moon of weird girl is rising.
I don't know where it started. The stars aligned, I suppose, sometime this week, but specifically the 28th and the 29th of October. It's the 30th today, and I just got another dose of realization, so I suppose it's still going on. It's around 6am, who knows what else the day will bring, but here's what happened so far:

I think it started with the Covid-19 vaccine (the first dose) I received on Thursday.

(And yes, I realise that I haven't written on here as much as in previous weeks, but I suppose I was genuinely busy, but also because I use this specific journal/diary for mostly "deeper" topics, thoughts that I can't get out of my head any other way. I refrain from talking about things I'm content with or things I'm working on, they occupy a quieter part of my brain, I guess.)

The vaccine was kind of a big deal. I avoided thinking about Covid-19 since the pandemic started. I didn't want to get into conspiracy theories. I dabbled a little bit, and it just confused me. I waited and I watched the situation. My family (or what there is of one) are all antivaxers. I can't quite explain how I decided to get the jab eventually, but it's mostly based on my personal observation, filtering out conspiracy theories and opinions in the family, I judged based on what I saw and experienced first-hand. I determined that Covid-19 is a real danger, and the vaccine is a good thing. Where I live in Ireland, vaccination is largely not imposed, merely encouraged, and no one judges you for it. Yet my country has the highest vaccination rate in Europe, if not the world. Aside from that, it was also my gut instinct, my intuition. I felt it was time to decide, and that my decision should be pro-vaccine. I have great respect for medicine, modern as well as traditional. Anything that saves lives, cures and protects people is a force of good in my opinion. I determined that in every scientific field, as in religious orders, there will be dissidents, even in the highest ranks. I remember when I was younger (like 14 lol) I used to be a climate sceptic. I wanted to research the other side of the man-induced global warming, and I found experts in the field supporting and also denying this. The vaccine/coronavirus debate reminded me of the same thing. Just because they're experts doesn't mean they're right, no matter which side of the argument they're on. People use facts as tools to support their own views and beliefs. I had to make up my own mind, and the only way to do that is through objective observation...
Anyways, the vaccination center I was sent to was pretty much in the middle of nowhere, in the countryside of County Wexford, which I have never been to. The rain had cleared just before I drove there, and then it was nice and mild for the rest of the day. It was beautiful. Like a second spring - spring with autumn colours. I saw beautiful views I've never seen before. I was inspired. The vaccination itself was very quick. The nurse's name was Christine. There weren't many people there. When I got home, I went for a long walk...
I could get into more detail, about how I started using a neat app called Noom, which I unintentionally found, but which is starting to change the way that I think about food. It's a health & fitness app based on individualised psychology, like a pocket fitness coach & dietitian & psychologist in one. So far it's too good to be true. I aim to lose about 20kg by April/May of 2022. I want to learn martial arts, to be fit enough to fight and protect myself. That's my Ultimate Motivation.

There were a couple of other things.
At one point the other day I was struggling with a dilemma for hours long into the night. I was listening to music and I felt disturbed. Something within my being wasn't right. I pondered on it. I slept. I awoke and pondered some more. Couldn't begin to describe what I was thinking about, but two albums I listened to liberated me, in a way. The first was "The Beauty of Sadness" by this German drone/dark ambient band called Maeror Tri. Then it was "Wings of Joy" by Cranes, which essentially changed me as a person and solved my whole dilemma.

The dilemma, as mentioned at the start, was something I discussed previously, to do with identity. It was actually an old dilemma of mine, several years old, if not longer (if we're counting unconscious years as well). I started thinking about what want to be - lowkey or edgy? What's my energetic signature? Even before then I have felt hopelessly tangled between the angel and the vampire. I knew I was some kind of hybrid. I looked outward for something to connect to. I found two or three individuals that stood out to me. I allowed myself to absorb them, to try out parts of themselves on myself. I can't really explain it, but eventually I arrived here.
I decided that it's time for me to embrace my weirdness. All the way.
I am using music as a tool to explore & express that self, for my taste to speak for itself, to speak for me in the most raw way. When it comes to art and writing, I still have a measure of self-control, but that's how I want it to be. There is something that needs to be said, some message I wish to relay. This may change over time.
To be weird is to be free.

Inevitably, this sort of thing is also connected to the spiritual side of me.
The dilemmas I've had there are in many ways similar to the ones I have/had when it comes to self-identity, which brings me to my final point (what is this, an essay? lol).



Sometimes I wonder if social media and the entertainment industry is run by actual vampires. It would explain a lot about the change in social attitudes towards demons and the like. Those who would destroy your mind and soul want you to love it when they enslave you, romanticise your dehumanisation. Children worshipping demons deluded into thinking it's free of consequences. The consequences are already obvious.

Nevertheless, I’m genuinely surprised there isn’t a major technopagan movement going on today. There’s all sorts of religious and spiritual revivals and reinterpretations, but the fact that more people aren’t unironically embracing technology and modern household items as magical in their own right kind of boggles my mind. We live in the age of smart technology, how has no one suggested these things have magical energy? The internet and the computer has played a key role in the growth of witchcraft and the occult, the enlightening of minds from ignorance, by releasing hundreds of thousands of documents and books which used to belong only to initiates and scholars of the obscure.

What if that's my calling? The spiritual one? I am cautious about smart technology, but honestly, I think I'm equally connected to technology as I am to organic nature, if not more.
There is surprisingly little information about technopaganism, though many modern witches and occultists use technology. Even myself and my friends have used MP3 players to divine fortunes, though it's not just that. Technology and nature CAN coexist, in my opinion, just as tradition and progress can. Japan is an excellent example of that. But I dream of a future where high tech societies harmoniously exist with wild nature. A spirituality, whether it's occult or pagan or monotheistic, which favours only the natural side is incomplete in my opinion. We live in an age where spiritual leaders misinterpret science, and where science has no soul. It would be a grand thing to bring the two together. I also can't help but think of Serial Experiments Lain, as well as one of my favourite films "Pulse" (Kairo).

"Notice that the internet and the computers that it serves are actually made of the materials of the Earth. They're largely made of metals, silicon, glass, copper, gold, and silver - these are the products of demonic artirface. These are the things that the Alchemists dreamed of. They transform space and time, they allow us to speak at distances oh, and they allow us to wander through libraries thousands of miles distant. They make it so that no fact is too obscure and no person so hidden that you can't reach them." - Terence McKenna

To end this entry, I want to share the most striking example of technology as a spiritual entity.



PS Even if the transhumanism conspiracy theory is legit, that doesn't mean we can't use it as a force for spiritual enlightenment. It's all about reclaiming power, and knowing how to use it...

No matter how hard I try, I'll never fit in. I can relate to small parts of people's experiences or agree with them on a surface level, but I will never belong to the human race, civilized or wild. There's something fundamental about me that makes me an outsider, I've felt it my entire life, and strange things have happened to me that reinforced this feeling. Like I'm from another world or from a different time. I struggle to understand people my age and that's why I have no real friends, I have moral values often at odds with the world I live in, values that come from within, not from parents or peers or celebrities or any kind of dogmatic institution or school of thought. I look much younger than my age, and feel much older than I look (I hate the term "old soul" though, like I'm not allowed to be a silly dumbass or feel enthusiastic about life or something). I am an outsider looking in, trying to understand what it means to be human. I have tried so hard to rationalize my feelings and experiences, I tried to deny myself this truth, but to no avail. I wonder if my father felt the same, which is why his life became so messed up, because my mother doesn’t have this issue. He did say something about feeling like an outsider, but that was in the context of marriage and his in-laws, whom he admitted he didn’t feel worthy of.

I only feel like myself when I am utterly alone. In 2019 I spent months alone, not talking to anyone and cutting off internet, and I felt reborn, I haven't been so happy since childhood. Solitude is absolutely vital to my sanity; I enjoy feeling like an abandoned church, it's bliss, almost an ideal fantasy of mine, to be absolutely free of earthly attachments, though I do wish to know pure love at least once. Maybe I am from another world, and in time I will embrace it and learn to live my truth, and something good will happen.

I wonder what will happen when/if I actually start being my authentic self in front of people instead of trying desperately and awkwardly to blend in. I hate attention directed towards my person. I hate eyes looking at me, and people thinking about me in any way. Pretending to be a shadow of myself makes me feel safe, safe from judgement and criticism, which I have no courage to handle. I don’t have enough anger to argue, or to make light of it. Every time I try to be myself I am always misunderstood and I don’t have the energy to explain myself. Family, friends, strangers, everyone is like “why do you want that?” “why did you decide that?” “why didn’t you do that earlier/why don’t you wait?” and I just want to be left alone in peace. And yet I want to be myself so bad. The difference between my inner self and outer self is starting to bother me. I feel like I’m a bad and immoral person if I lie or choose excessive privacy. Even my mom asking me where I am feels like an accusation, an attack on my person (though it’s not ofc). I wish I could be myself and gracefully dodge these questions, judgements and incursions on my privacy.

I envy those who have "normal" lives, who at least swim in that ocean of human consciousness, that are the fish in the sea of humanity, who share similar experiences, who act predictably in psychological experiments, who seem "wired" to be human. Even those with mental illnesses, which have been studied and diagnosed, who are still human, if only a little different. I envy the delusional ones who believe they're "starseeds" (incarnations of aliens from outer space), or "shards" of angels, and I envy those who cling to labels like "indigo child", or even those who are unironically Otherkin. I truly envy those people. They found something. They have something. Something with a name, even with a community. There are articles and posts about these people, written by themselves sometimes. They're still human, in my eyes. Sensitive beings and idealists who struggle with society, and their family histories clearly explain why they are the way they are, at least in the people I know. They all have family problems. I had them too, but I somehow I avoided trauma which anyone else in my case would have had. As though I was born detached, with an awareness than anything that happened to me was trivial in the grand scheme of things. I looked at all of my experiences from a spiritual point of view, I knew about karma and reincarnation since before I even understood the concept of time. I was that young. I remember everything I felt... But overtime I felt embarrassed by these things I felt. And when I got older, past my teens, that embarrassment turned to fear. Fear of being mentally ill/delusional and fear of my experiences and hunches being true. Both were mortifying. I looked into Autism and Asperger's, and it's possible I'm on the spectrum, but I'm a woman in my mid-20s and to get a test in my country for someone like me is impossible - I asked. Impossible and costly. I also feel like it wouldn't change anything anyway. The very nature of Asperger's is still being explored, and there's not enough research on what it even is. Plus, I hold the belief that society is itself sick, which makes me have a different understanding on what sanity is, I suppose.
There is no word for what I am. I've tried everything, to be sure, but nothing fit. Someone like me isn't supposed to exist, but does. I feel intimately connected to the universe, to the fabric of reality, in a way I can't explain. Almost like I can talk to it, like it can hear me. It could be God, but this presence, this spiritual connection, is why I never feel alone or even lonely. I always feel like someone is there in the dark, listening. Someone is with me. Maybe an angel... My dreams are so vivid, they're part of my life memories and experiences. Like I remember dreams I had since childhood. And I remember one where I used to have a recurring dream of Baphomet, or Krampus, coming to eat me before I'd wake up. And then I dreamed of an angel who made the monster disappear, and held me tightly in his arms, surrounded by soft white light, and he promised me he'd always be with me so... Maybe that's what it is, I don't know. Even in astrology, I don't relate at all to my birth chart. But when I look at the chart for my Christening, I was astounded to find that those planets, signs, houses... Were what I always felt, idealized. It shook me to my core, like seeing my true self for the first time. Why Christening? What has Christ got to do with it?
The closest I've ever gotten to feeling understood was reading Anne Rice's "Interview With the Vampire", which is my favourite book of all time, and how painfully I felt for the protagonist Louis. Not only do I empathize and relate to him to the core of my soul, but I also idealize him as a man, as a lover. I am not a vampire but I might as well be, because I have the same sense of "damnation" about the unnamed thing I am, but also a sensitivity about it, and a kind of pleasure at times, and this sense of being ancient but detached from the flow of time, as well as the fear that if humans REALLY knew they would come after me or hate me. And longing to find answers, but also terribly afraid of them. I've had many dreams about being a vampire, though I never cared about vampires until this book. I loved Twilight as a teenager, but I only liked the romance part, not the vampire part - I didn't care for that. I always saw vampires for what they are - evil. I can't be a vampire - I'd much rather be a vampire slayer, like Buffy or Van Helsing. I like vampires, but I admire the slayers so much more. I wish they were romanticized and glorified, instead of demonic entities who look glamorous and hypnotize their audience into a kind of stupor. But anyway... I must play along, while finding a way to accept first my fundamental differentiation. Then I might move on...

I used to believe in conspiracy theories.
I read David Icke's books, I watched countless videos and documentaries by various people about different topics from politics, to spirituality, to ancient history. I couldn't tell you exactly at what point I stopped believing in all of it, though I could tell you why. I also know exactly how and why I got into it in the first place, though I haven't had the chance to really delve deep and psychoanalyze what it was that attracted me to all of that, what made me believe.
It's relevant to me now because I have gone the other way completely - I resist, reject and deny. Yes, I admit corruption exists, and some things are shady and gotten out of hand, but I believe myself to be a realist. I've never really done deep research when I did believe in that stuff, I mainly just believed what I read and heard from these fringe people, despite the fact that they constantly encourage their audiences to do their research, I didn't.
There were a number of things I believed.
I believed that famous people, especially musicians, were under trauma-based mind control.
I believed the moon is hollow.
I believed we were coming to the end of an old age and the beginning of a new one.
I believed in false flags, and that the Illuminati card game is a legitimate guide.
I believed in mass mind control.
I believed in subliminal messages in the media.
I believed that global warming was a hoax.
I believed in Atlantis, The Flood, advanced civilizations in ancient times.
And just about anything negative about politicians and rulers, Agenda 21, Satanic cults, the whole lot.
Since I'm not American, I didn't really care about American conspiracy theories.
I suppose my justification for not believing in ANY of it anymore has to do with how disconnected I feel from it all. Part of me doesn't care. The other part doesn't want to care. It didn't feel healthy, like it was fear-driven. I found a lot more nonsense than sense, like their bizarre fear of technology and transhumanism, and the Judeo-Christian bent.
And yet I have to revisit this topic once again, to figure out where I stand once and for all, instead of being apathetic and indifferent. I know that cults ARE real, and that there are people who genuinely believe in witchcraft and the occult and practice these things, and occult symbolism and witchcraft is more and more prevalent. It's practically out in the open now. I know also that mind control is a real thing. That the entire nation of Germany had been brainwashed by Nazism, and that the top Nazis themselves were well-versed in occult symbolism, that ritual and symbol was most important to put millions of people in a trance, with Adolf Hitler at the center of it all. I know about the Schadenmaske, horrific masks which were used as punishment in the middle ages to regulate social behavior... My own uncle is in a New Age cult.
There are countless books detailing cults, mind control experiments, and systems of control organized by various governments around the world.
I guess another part of me is afraid, especially at such a delicate time as the Covid-19 crisis. My grandmother is an antivaxxer and is begging me not to vaccinate. I've already listened to experts discussing the whole mess. I'm not an antivaxxer, but I'm not confident either.
I guess what I want to do now is to actually DO my own research. Come to my own conclusions, get opinions from everywhere, not just a fringe community. There is something going on with humanity. There is this sense that we could be so much more than we are, that each individual is held back somehow, like there's a thorn in the psyche of humanity that needs to be pulled out, some kind of Leviathan in the ocean of the collective unconscious. If I might learn why things are the way they are, perhaps I could do something to build a better world.

Recovering from depression is a funny thing, and you never hear anyone talking about it. At least, I never have. Everyone's different, I guess. But the way people talk about depression in society is as if it's a mental disability, something you have to struggle with for the rest of your life. Sure, there are different types of depression, and some do go away. But I think I just had the typical one, which began in my teens. I didn't use any medication. I went to counseling once or twice, I tried different things. But I never took medication.
I think I started to get better in January of 2016, but when you have depression, time is blurred, so I can't be sure, but I remember it as the time of year David Bowie died. It was a year or two before we moved to a new town.
I saw my father, whom I haven't seen since I was little. It was rough but it helped immensely. Over the past few years I guess my journey has been mostly to do with accepting and letting go of things.
I still get depressed, of course, but I am in a state of mind now where it's less than before. It's a gradual thing, like healing a wound or a broken bone (I've never broken a bone). It's about learning from mistakes but more than that it's about doing things differently, which sounds kind of vague, but a large part of my depression had to do with stagnation, going in circles, boredom, situations repeating over and over... I suppose for most of my life I felt like something big was going to happen in 2020 (and it did) and generally I always felt like I'm preparing for something. Going to a palm reader also had something to do with it. I had this warped idealization of my future, like I was there already, but none of my decisions made sense or made me happy, and I felt like I was chasing after an impossible dream. Everything always felt wrong, and that disappointment and that fantasy also played a part in my depression.
I'm in my mid-20s but I am only now starting to feel like an adult, making decisions I've never done before. Today I pierced my ears, beyond the standard first piercing. Most teens have multiple piercings in their ears, and I wanted to as well, but I waited. I used to have bad hygiene as a result. I was forgetful. I knew I wouldn't be able to take care of such a basic thing as a piercing. There are other things too. Finishing what I started is a massive thing to me. I recently got an Adobe Professional certificate which I studied for a few months. I still don't have a driver's license, so that's my next goal. I am also happy about the town I live in. There are no negative memories here. By the time I moved here, my path to recovery had already started. None of the people I knew over the years are here. It's further from the city, something about it feels rather secluded. Tourists come here to check out the historic jail, the castle ruins, the ancient abbey. It's peaceful enough here. People leave their doors unlocked. It was strange when I went to Dublin two weeks ago for the first time since the pandemic. I used to love the city. My entire life I loved the city and considered myself a city person, because that's where I was born and spent my childhood. But it had no emotional hold on me anymore. When I came home to my little town, I felt relief. The relief of familiarity... It was an entirely new experience for me. Only once have I felt at home anywhere, and that was in childhood days... Now I know that whatever happens, wherever I may go one day (this is a temporary stay) I will see this town in my dreams, just as the places from childhood. Novelty is healing. This town was new to me and facilitated my healing. To live so near the sea is a blessing. I will always want to be near it, but I dream of the Atlantic Ocean more than the Irish Sea. I would like to take a year sometime in the near future, once I have my driver's license, and drive around the west coast of Ireland. I've been to Kerry before, as well as to Sligo, Galway and Mayo. I feel like that's where my heart is. That's where I want to be. Something about the west coast feels so much more wild, more mystical, more... Irish. Celtic. I remember the way it felt. I went by car and also by train. With the train, you could see ancient stone circles dotting the hills in the countryside... I went to a place called Delphi, pretty much just before my depression started, with my class when I was about 15 or 16. It left a deep impression on me, and it remains the most beautiful place I've ever been to... In fact, it's so secluded that there's no phone reception. Maybe there is now - this was ten years ago. But if you wanted to make a phone call via cell, you'd have to stand on a specific rock outside the hotel... There's so much more I could say. Just look it up on Google Street View. It's in Connemara. I believe it's near a Gaeltacht area - one of the few pockets in Ireland where the FIRST language is Irish. Irish students have to travel there with their classes in order to learn Irish better, because some people there don't speak English (or have poor English) it's fascinating, but I've never been to one of these areas myself...
I'm also starting to take my fashion more seriously.
I've spent the last year or so gathering images of everything, from clothes, to hair, to make up. There are so many BASIC female things I don't know how to do (never asked my mum, plus we're very different people).
It's amazing how much my life has totally stopped because of depression. Everything has stunted. Even my appearance - I often have people tell me I look much younger than 26, even with make up. I mean they're shocked. I've even had 19 year olds gasp. I must've not aged since I was 16, haha. I don't care about it, but it's funny nevertheless.
So many things that the majority of people have done in their teens and early twenties, I'm only getting to do now. But I'm not sad about it. I believe that I made the right thing by putting everything on hold the way I did, and showing the caution I did. It means I hurt a lot less people than I would have, and I have a lot less regrets. It's not to late either. I'm back in classes now. I have a chance to prove myself... If I can get distinctions in all of my classes, I can get into the college I always wanted to go. Trinity College was my first choice when I made my applications way back when. But I already had my depression by then, and while I did well enough in my exams, it wasn't enough for Trinity (most students in Ireland on this side of the island prefer UCD to Trinity, though Trinity is considered superior, like an Irish Oxford, it is also considered pretentious and intimidating, like rich smart people go there or something, it's a popular tourist attraction as well... UCD meanwhile is very modern and multicultural. They are rival colleges, and the rivalry goes back a long time. That's where I went to and dropped out from, and it might be my second choice still - just to finish the course I dropped). Anyways. Now that I am on the lighter side of things, or at least a more neutral one, I have no one and nothing to blame anymore for what happens from now on. I can't say it's depression anymore, it's all up to me. That kind thing is also new to me. When I should have gone independent, I was held back by a mental illness.
I recently thought about getting in touch with a counselor, because I can afford it, and I do have this fear that things only seem good now because they always seem good at the start, at least for me. I am aware that I may dip again. I may become overwhelmed. Although I am surrounded by supportive people now, it's not emotional support I need. I need practical solutions and an objective opinion on what's going on. I prefer to appear strong in front of people who actually know me, and only show vulnerability when it helps them to see it (like relating to people etc.). I have a very deep and complex mind and I feel like I can only talk to someone who knows psychology, so that they could understand what my needs actually are. My grandmother likes to talk about it, but she doesn't understand what it means to be an introvert, and beyond that, what a strong preference for solitude means. She thinks people MUST have human communication. Most people do, it's true, but I am much happier and healthier without it... The year that I spent totally alone and isolated in 2019 were the happiest times of my life, and I did some major healing in those months. I talked only a few times to assure family I was fine. I felt like I was truly myself for the first time in my life... To be totally alone, to be left alone, is vital to my sanity. It's more important than food - as I was starving by that time. I went for over a month surviving only on water and sugar. I didn't even have internet for those months - I cut it off, and used the library if I really needed to. And I was so happy and excited and alive... This is the kind of person I am. If I were to live by myself anywhere, it would have to be at a secluded spot. Not a town or a city or even a village. Maybe an island. Though that's a bit dangerous... I don't want to be so far away that I couldn't get a fire brigade or electricity (I can do without lamps and the computer and such, but I don't like the thought of having to wash my clothes by hand or dealing with the cold). I don't know if I should see the counsellor, it is quite expensive. I already wrote an email message a couple of weeks ago, but she either didn't see it or the email was changed, because I got no reply... I don't want to waste more money just talking about stuff. But I've had nobody to talk to since the depths of my depression. It's been several years. I use this journal as more or less a substitute. I am my own psychologist and counsellor. But I think there are limits to how much I can help myself... Do I need help? Not right now but I can't help but feel I will need it soon. Mainly because of what I just said. About people, being around them every day for hours. Not just that but... Making friends. Relationships. I couldn't even know where to begin. I'm not afraid of approaching people and I am quite confident and good at communication, but I'm afraid I might not be a good judge of character. My desire for friendship clouds my judgement. Not only that but I have high standards. And I just. Don't know. The biggest mistakes I've made during my depression are almost all of them related to friendships. My deepest pains and fuel for the depression have been an inability to relate to my peers or young people in general. I've met some intelligent people but I just can't relate to them. And I tried so goddamn hard, I really did... I don't even know if I WANT friends. I don't even know if I understand what that means. I guess I'm talking about close friends, not just any friends. But beyond that an even deeper issue is romance and sexuality. I think I need help with these. Maybe.
Pets are so much better than human friends.
I think I'll get two fish for my birthday instead of a rabbit. I still don't trust myself with a rabbit, and I still haven't gotten over the death of my favourite cat in the world. All the pets I ever had died before their time, so I don't even know what it means to have a pet who dies of old age. I'll get some fish and take care of them. Maybe that will help me believe that friendship can last and also that friendships need constant care and gentleness and that things take time...

I rescued a fruit-fly from drowning in the sink today. Lifted it out of the water with my finger and gently placed it on a napkin. For some reason, I felt incredibly strange. Good. But strange. Like anyone else I would have normally ignored it completely, as I have done many times. But this time I noticed and I, without thinking, reached out to help. It's such a small thing. Worthless, even. And that's the strange part, that it feels important, somehow. For the fruit-fly, of course. But any action taken in accordance to one's beliefs, no matter how small, is important in solidifying integrity and purity of heart.
The fruit-fly continued to fly and go about its fruit-fly business.
Maybe something good will happen one day.

Tonight's entry will discuss and explore the topic of ghosting, and why I've done it (more than once).

I am currently examining and healing a particular part of my being mainly dealing with love. Not just general love (for humanity, for nature, for the world, etc.) but also love for individuals and anything I consider personal to me.
I am dealing with the fear of hurting people I am close to, the fear of getting too close to people, the fear of getting bored with people, and the fear of ghosting.
Although ghosting is more common online, I guess it can happen in real life too. In fact, I think I have actually done it. All the friends I had from school, some of which were good friends with whom I shared a lot of happy memories, I have stopped talking to, moved to another town, changed my contact details, and more than once erased and remade online accounts.
Furthermore, I have fantasized about ghosting my own family. That as soon as I move out to live on my own, I will never speak to them again.
Not because they hurt me or anything. It's just a strong urge I get whenever someone knows too much about me (my fault) or simply due to an emotional attachment.
But beneath that is pain.
The more I am known, the less known I feel.
It's like the exact opposite thing occurs.
I feel lonelier with other people than when I am alone.
I want relationships as much as anyone else, but when I am in one, I feel this suffocating claustrophobia of some kind. I have negative thoughts which I cannot express. I want to kill the people I would die for.
I have never known romantic love.
Not for a man, anyway (I am bisexual).
I do not know how I would behave in a romantic scenario.
Though I have had feelings for men (that I have never met or spoken to) some of which have lasted for years. I am saying this because when it comes down to it, I want a person, one single person, who could be my lover, and inspire feelings which are also familial and platonic. The kind of person who makes anyone else unnecessary. Someone as good as solitude.

I leave because it hurts too much.
It hurts to be unable to relieve someone's pain.
It hurts to feel them as part of your own self, while they are unable or unwilling to go that deep for you. They take energy without giving back.
It hurts to feel worthless or useless in comparison.
It hurts to be unable to ignore your friend's selfishness, stupidity, apathy, cruelty, immorality - all the impurities that chip away this image of them which once inspired so much love.
I leave out of envy.
I leave because I feel unseen.
I leave because I want attention. Because I want a love as deep as I give. I want love like the one I give. No one can give that to me. I want my own love. I love myself only when I am alone, all alone...
I want to help my friends become better people, stronger, more independent, more compassionate, self-critical and intelligent. But I don't know how, without feeling like I want to change people. I want to change people to be like I want them to be. I want people to surpass me in these things, so I could look up to them. I fall in love with people who I perceive to be too good for me, people out of reach, people I look up to and am inspired by. I want them. I want them to love me and I want to feel unworthy so that they would love me harder.
I leave because I am wrong, always about everything. Being an influence on other human beings is too much responsibility. I have myself to deal with, that alone is almost too much. I leave because I am afraid of emotional responsibility. I don't understand commitment or loyalty because I've never met anyone I loved enough to stay with them. No one is good enough for me. The world is teeming with unoriginal, emotionally and mentally stunted, cynical, escapist, delusional misanthropes. I've had enough of people who hate the world and humanity and mental illness. I want the hopeful ones, the dreamers, the idealists, the heroes and the angels, who desire to build a better world than to tear down an old one. The peaceful builders, not the angry anarchists. I want the people who act like they're already dead and buried, and are as they are described by people who loved them. Visitors of this world. The kind of people who die early because they're too good for this world. Like characters in stories which I love... The risk-takers. They set my heart on fire. I want them so bad. I will never leave the one I can believe in. I need their light, I want their warmth. I wanna be that person...
I leave those I cannot believe in anymore. People who take no action to become something more. I despise complainers. I adore the grateful, and those who struggle to see the good, no matter how hard it might be sometimes. Those who have no idea how good they are. Simple.

I am unworthy of your love, but please, love me anyway.
Consume me.

Note to self: if you’re an adult making personal decisions, you’re not obligated to tell your parents/elders about it, if it doesn’t affect them.

Some decisions I've made I have no way to explain in any way that could make sense. The question of "why did you decide this?" stumps me, in fact.
There's a lot of things my mother didn't tell her mother, but a lot more I don't tell mine. A lot of personal failures I hide. Though she's also the type of mother who doesn't really care to ask. She knows how to give me my own space.

Still, I hate having to explain personal decisions.
"Why do you want to change your name?"
Coming from a woman who has hated her name her entire life, and keeps her ex-husband's (whom she hates) surname because it's more convenient that way.

It's a big deal to me.
I've dreamed about it for over ten years, I've tested countless different names on myself. I myself can't believe I'm finally going through with it.

I guess the question also stumps me because the reasons behind my personal decisions are always quite deep and profound, I guess that's why I can't explain them.

I can't explain how my own name, Gabrielle, never felt mine. How it disgusts me, despite being a pretty name. How hard I tried to get used to it. How people I meet even struggle with its correct pronunciation, spelling. How I hate to be called Gabs or Gabby.
Diving deeper, there's more to dislike.
Namely, the culture, whereby your parents give you a name, and that's it for the rest of your life. Though many traditions in many cultures in many ages throughout the world had various names, titles, naming ceremonies, and so on. My parents were young and foolish, my father even more so. Changing my name is about ownership. It's like a statement, that now my life is in my own hands. I name myself. I give birth to myself, I decide who I want to be, how I want to be. If my father doesn't care about me anymore, why should I honor the name he gave me? Why should I identify myself with it? To name yourself is to reclaim your own power. That's how I feel. Your life shouldn't be determined by forces beyond you. In any situation where you can alter that design, you should do so. But for me, it's not about being CALLED a different name... It's about making it LEGAL, OFFICIAL. I use the law to emphasize my awakened state. As above, so below. If I answer to a different name within, I must also be called by that from without.
Looking at it that way, it is quite esoteric.
This is also why I am very strict about revealing the name before its time.
I do not think I will even tell anyone who has known me up to this point (who is still in my life) of this new name. They shall know me by the old one. Once it's legal, after that point, I will begin to actually use that name.
And it's not just the first name.
It's the surname also.
The surname is really the reason why this has to be done, for practical reasons.
The first name was uncertain for a long time. I have gone by many first names. All my friends knew I didn't like my real name, and went along with calling me whatever I wanted to be called. No name I ever tried fit.
The surname I had figured out maybe four or five years ago.
It's taken from a literary character, a male one. One of my favourite books. I just love the surname, perhaps even more than the character. He has an unusual name as well (for the time - it's a Victorian novel), it's not until last week that I realized a most uncanny synchronicity or coincidence... And I couldn't help but see it as a sign. A sign that this is the right time. That it's time to do it.

But wait! There's more.

Nationality.

I was born in a country where the laws dictate that I may not have any other citizenship beside It. By taking on a foreign citizenship, I cannot have this one. I will not say what this birth country is, as it disgusts me even more than my name.

It's interesting, isn't it? It's an uncommon thing to change your name AND nationality at the same time. Although maybe it's not that uncommon.

My mom and her boyfriend are the only ones who know I'm gonna do it, but they don't know what name I will have, or anything. I'm only in the "gather all the information" stage right now, so I do not yet know when or how I will get all of this done. But I will be changing my name first, and then the nationality.

Anyways, it's just what my mom said, that kinda sounds cool.
"I thought it was only a dream you had."
And that's just it.
I tried to explain my new thinking, now about halfway through my 26th year.
I'm done wishing and dreaming.
So many of my dreams and wishes ARE weird or unusual, and may require a lot of explaining, or just don't sound logical or practical.
You know, I believed these dreams of mine would stay dreams and that they would fade away as I got older and "matured" but I waited and waited and I realized they're still there, these innermost dreams and desires. I tried to love my birth country, I even hoped to go back there, but last year a major event totally changed my mind, and showed me the truth...

Anyways, it makes me think.
Two years ago I wrote a long autobiography, which took me a couple of months.
I even printed it out.
I threw it out later, but I remember it.
I remember the dreams. I remember dreaming about taking dreams to extremes, even.
I wonder if I will become a self-fulfilling prophecy?
I wonder how different my dreams will be from reality? Will they be worse or better? Or will nothing change?

The number 27 has been haunting me for a couple of years. I have recurring dreams. The other week I watched "Groundhog Day" and I realized he is me. I also have always had deja vus.
What if I've lived this life before?
What if it was more than once?
What if that's what reincarnation actually is?
What if reincarnation is not about being reborn in the future, after death, as in a linear time flow?
What if you can go back and forth?
What if you can repeat lives you've had, and make different decisions, to get the result you want?
What if THAT happens to be the spiritual law?
In which case, I have been me for many years.
The deja vus would explain a lot.
It's just an idea.
So I wonder if changing my name is something new, something I've never done (continuing on the fantasy scenario).

27 is a reference to Club 27. Maybe next year I will die.
It is also related to Saturn return, which is next year for me (although I think I kind of already had a taste for it - Saturn was recently retrograde in my sign). In astrology, Saturn return signifies something important. It's like actual growing up. It's almost a kind of death-rebirth thing. It's an intense time. Which is why so many people have died at this age, you might argue.
27 haunts me. To me, it's a reference to "you've been here before, you've done this before, it will happen again" it's exactly that.
Maybe I was wrong about where I was before.
I thought I was stagnant - me, my life, everything.
When I was probably just going in circles, or a spiral, whatever.
Some kind of glitch...

I need to see a counsellor.

I'm starting to think again about friendship, and whether I even want them, and how I want them, how I might make them.
Recently I've been looking for friendship in the last place I found it, but I worry this is not good enough, because I already know how it ended.
Is it even a valid question?
None of the friendships I've ever had in my life - with the exception of animal companions - has ever been fulfilling or meaningful. And the ones that did have a potential, I succumbed to a feeling of worthlessness in myself, and simply left the scene, or never even engaged in it, believing the other person to deserve better... I seem to approach friendships with this seriousness, this heaviness. I approach it in almost the same way as one does love. I believed in soulmates, I don't know if I still do, because of how messed up the whole situation became.
Are friendships something to be pursued? Or something to be found? Or something fated?
I had only just found a way to accept the concept of fate and the unknown.
I have discussed here at length about things like finding meaning in my life, but I found a way around it. I only wonder if friendships can be like that too, part of destiny, something that just happens. People that just belong together, that just click.
Still, I am nervous. What if I am not meant to have close friendships? Everyone just kept at a reasonable distance, not knowing my true self. I like to believe I am interesting, but maybe I come across as pretentious, intimidating or intense. I would undoubtedly have to change that if I want to make new friends. But what if I already know who I would like to be friends with? What then? I don't believe I ever pursued friendships in that way. One reason being the fear that I will get bored of them once they're my friend, and I will find things to dislike about them. Sometimes I hated my friends, the friends that I used to say "I love you" too.
Why does it have to be so complicated?
I shouldn't feel obligated to have friends.
I am quite friendly and good with people I am casual with, without getting close.
But sometimes I want to be wanted, I want to be seen.
But when I do, I recoil, feeling exposed, feeling the need to change myself because now I am no longer abstract. Or if I am recognized as abstract, I need to become definite. I need to become the opposite of what I am, once I am known...
But maybe that's just it.
Maybe casual friendships is all I can do. And that's okay. Maybe I don't need my friendships to be deep. Maybe I should just let things happen, and keep it light on my end.
To be a comforting, protective, guiding presence. Someone who will listen to you without judgement, help you find a way out of a hopeless situation. Someone kind and generous and thoughtful. Someone who sees your soul, like the moon does. That's the kind of person - friend - I want to be. Regardless of your age, your gender, your beliefs, your ethnicity, regardless of language barriers, social status, etc.
To get close to you, without you getting close to me...