Well....here is my first post. I am a lot of things... gay, a sex addict with multiple fetishes and paraphilias, a person who wishes he could be faithful to his church and lives in an insane psycho/spiritual crossfire that will either end in death or institutionalization, a person suffering from bipolar disorder and borderline disorder, the full-time caretaker of my beloved elderly father, the bane of my two evil older sisters, disabled, disenfranchised, an outcast, a best friend, a good son and just generally a maniac. This blog, believe it or not, is part of my penance from my last confession.
I went to confession last night...my sex addiction has grown over a fifteen year period to gargantuan proportions and I am in constant spiritual agony. I used to go to confession as if it were a forgiveness machine. I could keep acting out every week, keep confessing every week, keep receiving communion every week and somehow operate under the delusion that I was really, basically, at the core of my being, a good person. It is only recently that I have truly come to recognize that in fact I have never, in the fifteen years that I have been under the yoke of this addiction, really wanted to change by putting forth some effort. I wasn't willing to do any work and I really wasn't a good person. I really came to see my glaring flaws and came to understand that I couldn't just wait for Jesus to wipe all my problems away. (Actually I was hoping the B.V.M was going to wipe them away as I can deal with the whole Mother/son relationship thing better that I can deal with a male/male relationship thing, even when dealing with the divine.)
Where was I? OK...so I go to confession and unload my sins. I am not so much looking for forgiveness. I know that if I am truly contrite, that if out of love for God I regret my behavior and if I really try to change that I am forgiven. Without these things confession is just an empty act. What I want from the experience is insight, healing, real advice and counseling from this very wise Hungarian priest cum spiritual director who fought communists is his native land. This is a man who has heard confession for many hours in a row, many days in a row and has amassed great wisdom in the process. He is like my own personal Padre Pio or John Vianney.
My sins are scarlet and numerous. They are the daughters of lust. I am in a state of real despair from which there seems to be no escape. I am plagued by a lukewarmness...a spiritual acedia...I am empty inside. So Pater listens, gives me absolution and assigns a penance. First I have to read the work of a mystic. We discussed St. John of the Cross but I simply do not have a keen enough intellect to handle the Carmelite mystics and I don't think I can focus to get thru his works. Next we discuss Augustine. Seems unsurmountable for me at the moment. Finally I realized what I need...Julian of Nowich, her Revelations of Divine Love.
Dear sweet Lord I need to hear about God's love. I need to hear about how all will be well....not may be well but will be well. I am having such trouble believing God loves me (yes, I haven't been really too loving toward Him lately) and cannot see how anything in my life will turn out well.
OK....Part two of my penance. I am to write. I am to write at least one paragraph every day. Originally I considered carrying on a correspondence with another soul for input but as you will see the inside of my head is such an exotic place they would flee before I could start. My dearest friend of a lifetime told me once, she said "Seamus. Out of every person I have known in my entire life (she knows some really bizarre people I might add) you have said the strangest things I have ever heard."
So....I think I have hit my one paragraph quota for the day...and you still know nothing about me. Sometimes I wonder if I know anything about me.
well..Pax et Bonum
Seamus
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