Explosion 2: Brace yourself.

For the record, I do believe it has been a month since Paul and I started dating and I thought a shout-out would be appropriate. YAY US! <3

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The Life of Mandii Explodes All Over the Internet, Part Two!
Uhhh. This was more honesty than I was really aiming for. Brace yourselves.

First off... thanks to everyone who commented my last insanely long post. Your words make me happy like you have no idea. Unfortunately, the prospect of writing these next couple of posts makes me a lot less happy. Everything that went down this fall is still a little too recent for me to detach from it, not to mention I am concerned that some people who were involved will take offense if they read about it. But according to Mr. Ralph Keyes, who wrote this book I'm reading called "The Courage to Write," every writer fears the same exact thing. It's true that I've felt this same fear with my books, which started out more or less true to life but quickly became fictionalized. As a result, some characters grew into very different people from their real-life counterparts, and good grief, I stressed myself out about what said real-life counterparts would think of me for months before Season hit the shelves. Suffice to say that this post is a documentation. It's not fictionalized. Sorry if that's an issue for anyone.

As I've said many a time, it was a great season for concerts. I was fortunate enough to befriend another spontaneous concert enthusiast whose taste in music was a lot like mine, and we went to a bunch of stuff on a whim. Then, as we spent more time together, I realized he was getting a bit more attached than "just friends" normally do. I was conflicted: though I wasn't interested at first, he continually proved to me that he had the biggest heart of anyone I'd ever met; not to mention I was starving for affection, as it had been over a year since my last relationship and even that had been sadly schneckle-free. But I wasn't ready to jump into anything. I am very rarely ready to jump into anything, relationally or otherwise.

Halloween rolled around. Even though I wanted to go see Anberlin at the Palladium, I'd made an amazing Princess Mononoke costume and didn't want it to go to waste, plus my friends were having a party at their apartment and there was going to be a bonfire out at Gull Pond, so I decided to stay on campus this time. The party was delicious, there was a mediocre haunted house out at Rider, and me and the Spontaneous Concert Enthusiast got our kicks scaring the bajeebers out of some kids walking back through the woods after the bonfire. Somewhere in the midst of it all, the Spontaneous Concert Enthusiast and I wound up holding hands. After a bit, that developed into snuggling. And after a bit, that developed into considerably more than snuggling, and considerably more than I'd ever shared with anyone before. That's it, then: the big confession, the big secret behind me going totally emo for a couple weeks there. Relax, we didn't like, do it or anything. We kept our clothes on. Mostly. It probably wouldn't have been a big deal to most people, but I'm not most people. This was utterly out of character for me, and utterly outside of the idealistic plan I had mapped out for my life.

Even in the moment, I knew I was playing with matches in a straw house. I gathered what dignity I had left and went back to Ferrin to sleep, as by then it was around four thirty in the morning. But sleep did not take pity on me; I just kept re-living it all and berating myself for being foolish and trying to keep my stomach from turning. Why couldn’t I have just gone to Worcester and moshed my brains out like a good little scene kid? I listened to some screamo, which, counter-intuitively, helps me fall asleep sometimes when I'm distraught. But I was too disgusted with myself and finally decided to take a shower - a really, really long, hot shower. But you can't wash away things like that, and even after the shower I couldn't sleep, so I got in my car and drove. Then I stopped at Denny's for some nice, fattening, comforting pancakes and a long perusal of my Bible. I found these things to be both convicting and greatly comforting:

Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died — more than that, who was raised to life — is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
"For your sake we face death all day long;
we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered."
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
~Romans 8:28-39~

What shall we conclude then? Are we any better? Not at all! We have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under sin. As it is written:
"There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one."
"Their throats are open graves;
their tongues practice deceit."
"The poison of vipers is on their lips."
"Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness."
"Their feet are swift to shed blood;
ruin and misery mark their ways,
and the way of peace they do not know."
"There is no fear of God before their eyes."

Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by observing the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of sin.
But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement, through faith in his blood.
~Romans 3:9-25a~

"Everything is permissible for me"—but not everything is beneficial. "Everything is permissible for me"—but I will not be mastered by anything. "Food for the stomach and the stomach for food"—but God will destroy them both. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, "The two will become one flesh."But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
~1 Corinthians 6:12-20~

For a long time, I begged God to give me space to do things wrong. Maybe I knew in my head that the fire was hot, but I wanted to stick my hand in it and get burnt before I believed it. If I'd been in God's shoes, I would've been like, well, this is the fuck up you were begging for. It's not as much fun as you thought, is it? But those beautiful verses about grace chilled me out a little bit. I left Denny's and drove to Rockport to watch the sun come up and beg God for forgiveness instead of space. Suffice to say that it was the most marvelous sunrise I'd seen to date. Even so, I knew I was not comforted enough to actually fall asleep, and no way in heck was I going back to school to lay in bed and torment myself some more. So I bought tylenol PM and finally fell into a peaceful, dreamless sleep around nine or ten. But I'm not a druggie. That would only be true if I made a habit of this. Okay? Okay.

I think it goes without saying that I was a bit of a drama queen about the whole situation. Spontaneous Concert Enthusiast, I know you know who you are. If you happen to be reading this, I meant what I said when I told you I didn't blame you any more than I blamed myself. I accept responsibility. Not all of it, understand. It WAS your idea; I just got caught in the current. But I sure didn't try very hard to swim against that current. I apologize that I had to be a cold-hearted bitch and shut you down after the fact. I couldn't justify what happened, which would have made it impossible for anything more than friendship to develop. The only way I knew how to handle the problem was to hide from it. I know we've talked this through, but this is more honesty than I can achieve in conversation, and I want you to know that I'm grateful we're still friends. You make me smile.