I believe I'll never belong, be acceptable.
  Under that is the belief that I'm not ok.
    Under that is the death I carry,
      that I try to hide
        from myself and from everybody else.

This death I carry, has always made me the outsider, and guilt says it should be so, since I always draw death and disease down on those I'm with. This horrible death - I have encased it in stone, and I'm holding it tightly, refusing to open my hands and heart to let it out. If I open... if I let it out... then there'll be nothing, just emptiness inside, and the need, oh god let me not feel that aching need again. Yes, I know, the death is poison, like radiation and acid and I know it kills, but how can I open and be empty and vulnerable again? I cannot bear that need! The need is what drew this death to me in the first place! How can I go through that again? How do I know the death won't come back and hit me again? How do I know God loves me and will fill the empty place with loving light this time? I want some guarantee, dammit! I want to know for sure!! Don't ask me to take this step on faith!!!!

I remember....

I am in the heart of the Mother. I am very young. I am desire and longing and love. But I am also empty of something. My longing pictures a love for me, a lover who will need me as I need him. I dream lovely dreams of our togetherness, half formed images and hazy glowingness that I can't quite get a hold of. With each dream the longing and desire grow, my heart aches, everything aches, the desire is a burning. It finally ignites, and I scream my need into the darkness.

I am answered! I feel him coming toward me, but he is ... resisting, holding back, pulling against my pull. I call again, louder and stronger from my need, and then I can't wait and I go out into the darkness toward him, my arms open, my heart open, my longing naked and open. It's working, he is coming, but oh so bright, and oh too fast and

I am hit

Large parts of me tumble out into space, but I barely notice. I am burnt to the core, seared and blackened and bleeding. I look at my heart and feel the hate and the hate and the hate and the darkness there and for a time I am too stunned to move. What, why, he hates me, he says I must die, and with the pain and heartbreak I begin to die, and the terror spreads from me back into all the cells of the Mother. She pulls me in and our desire to survive kicks in and we duck and cover, holding ourselves still while the storm beats at us, pain in every cell. We are sent spinning out into space and - I am still holding this darkness, this hate, this death. I think, maybe now we will die. Maybe we should die, maybe the dark thing is right, we shouldn't live. I called it, I pulled it, my need did this. My desire did this, brought this to us.

After a time I am aware the spinning has stopped, there is someone there and he is talking to us. He is holding us, and I begin to feel stirrings of hope. Will he let me cry? Will he hold me and let me feel this pain and cry until it goes? I begin to sob of the hurt and the heartbreak and for a little while he listens, but then he grows impatient. Come out, he says. It's safe now. Why are you so afraid? he shouts at us. And I tremble and know, in that moment, he will not let me cry. He has no patience with me, he thinks I will forever be whining. I am now and will always be alone with this darkness inside me. In that moment, I embrace death, I try to die.

Splinters occur within us. I feel somebody angry and strong inside us and she wants to live and she pulls away from me. She begins to move and ... so many things happen but I am lost in my terror and only know an explosion of light and color and a throbbing that feels good to parts of me but doesn't reach into the darkness I hold.

I realize that we're out and still alive. At that moment several things happen, decisions that forever change me:

I know the darkness I hold is a part of HIM - he sent it and he secretly hates us. And I know that if I ever let him see that I know, he will absolutely and finally kill us.

I know that none of the other parts of us, the Mother, want to know of this darkness or my fear. They want to live. They want to believe in at least some of His love. I know that I must hide this darkness from them too. I must hide our secret shame and never let it be known that our lover wants us dead.

I know this death/darkness is poison. I feel it like a disease, rotting the flesh, it EATS life, RADIATES death. I know that if I let go of it, it will destroy all that is. Because it hates me first, I believe it is my job to protect the rest of life from it. I must try to hold it and hide it forever.

I know my desire and need is what drew this to us. I know that forever onward I must hold my desire and love in check. If I ever let it reach out again unchecked, we will surely die.

All of my existence is bent on holding these things in place, hiding and protecting. And curiously, I feel that, at least the emptiness is gone. It's filled now with something. And maybe this death/darkness is better than emptiness. At least it's clean and pure. It isn't a lie, or crazy-making. The pure hatred of it is actually easier to take than the lies HE tells.

Later, when Lucifer comes to us and pushes on us with guilt and whisperings, and we splinter again and again and grow smaller and smaller, we are ... susceptible to him ... in this secret place I hold that God has never been able to penetrate. Because Lucifer knows the darkness, it isn't hidden from him. He grins his evil grin and pokes around the edges of it and says THAT'S what we really are, even if nobody else knows it. The symbiosis is formed and I am forever secretly captive. Living becomes a moment by moment hellish torture, forever dancing on the edge of a knife.