Cutting: I don't understand it?

Bassett,

That is one of the most beautiful and thoughtful messages that I’ve read here. I admit that my emotions have been out of control lately but when I read the first sentence of the second paragraph, my tears turned into guttural choking sobs and I had to stop reading and go in the bathroom to clean my reading glasses. I was okay when I came back, but at “beautiful masterpiece” to “build regret” I gave up and read and re-read without my glasses. There are so many things that I want to say and some assurances that I’d like to make.

I know that I’ve mentioned that I was a faithful Roman Catholic until recently. The overwhelming majority of my sins, though not mortal, were sexual sins. I didn’t feel the guilt until confession. I should really PM this, as it’s something that caused me a lot of shamed but I was diagnosed as being hypersexual in 1988. First disclosure here. Until recently I’ve not thought much about it but I’m having problems with it once again; not behavior but including the old behavior in my self-loathing and shame. I swear that I have a real point.

Christianity, even stripped of mystery, offers the finest philosophical and moral guidelines for living than any other religion or philosophy that I’ve studied. If I’d been able to live as I learned, my life would have been different. Better.

“I’m terrified for my wedding night.” Great heaping sobs when I remember mine. I had so sexually exhausted myself three nights prior to my wedding night – and not with my fiancé – that I was terrified, too. And I still had all of the Pre-Cana stuff in my mind causing feelings of shame and guilt. Pre-Cana is a mandatory RC course that instructs the engaged what to expect from marriage and how to live a Christian married life. It really differs from diocese to diocese and even parish to parish. Even the ‘teachers’ might vary from week to week but there is always at least one priest and a variety of couples over the months. Sex and NFP are always on the agenda but there’s a lot of nudge-nudge, wink-wink going on… most of the couples are living together, having pre-marital sex and using contraception but they teach what the Church teaches and I can admit now that some of the teachings, some of the descriptions, were heartbreaking.

My wife was born and raised Catholic but only attended mass for her mother and me. We had some problems with her lack of belief. No, I had problems with her lack of belief. My pile of regrets is blackening the sky, but had I married the girl that I should have married there would have been none of those arguments and I truly believe that we would, at the very least, achieved a closeness that more perfectly moved forward to that goal of two becoming one. In love, I’ve felt something like it and I hoped to feel it more intensely in marriage. It didn’t happen.

Oh. What I found heartbreaking. I’m having some problems with words to use to express emotions. The idea of refraining from sex until marriage. Or, Christ, even the idea of refraining from sex with your fiancé before marriage. There’s something there, something right about that, but I can’t really explain why. The idea goes back to the 12-year-old me and my 11-year-old girlfriend. The purity of curiosity, if that makes sense? I’ve never thought that sex was dirty but what I felt at 12? I can’t find another word but “pure.” To be able to return to that in marriage. To be able to return to that. In marriage. And NFP sounded, well, exciting. We had a joke with my in-laws; the “warm and sticky” test. Now I think of how much more I would have had to be attuned to my wife’s body to practice NFP. I’ll tell you one secret about sex and marriage. The best sex that you can have in marriage is when you’re open to producing a new life for the first time. Not planning, not taking temperatures, just being open. Another impossible to describe emotion. Like nervous giggles. When you think of what could happen, as a guy, it’s a Master of the Universe feeling. And when it happens? When you go into your husband at 5 in the morning and wake him up holding two positives? If you can see his face through your tears, watch his face as every possible facial feature combination passes within 10 minutes. That is indescribable; not going to attempt it. Before I leave the subject, though… he’ll want a boy. The “I don’t care. I’ll love them either way?” The first part is a lie, but the second part is true.

What your friends tell you about your scars. I’m sure that your friends mean well, but they’re so off base!

Just as we Catholic’s love the wounds of Christ as the portals of the blood of our salvation, your husband will, a bit differently!, love your scars because they will be the signs of your human suffering and the surety of your human salvation. He’ll share in both, becoming a part of your suffering and a part of your salvation. Think of it as inching closer to oneness in a mutual human salvation. The best explanation the I’ve heard – what I recognize as coming close to without ever achieving – is duality that can be imperfectly compared to the Trinity.

It’s just not as simple as hurting for you at the visible signs of suffering. I’ve only loved imperfectly in life, only perfectly in my heart, so I don’t believe that I’m capable of anything but an imperfect explanation. Do you understand how you first save yourself and then go onto be your love’s salvation? The things that your love, your lover, saves you from? Just as an example, he saves you from (the sin of) despair. You save one another. I don’t think that I can overemphasize that. This isn’t any kind of gross idealized version of love and no implication that you’ll never get furious enough to hit him, it’s the end of the day sharing the same bed reality.

I want to be understood but I’m unable. Okay, I have it. He won’t be kissing your scars because he hurts for you; like a mom kissing a toddler’s boo-boo, he does the same to take the hurt away. For good and to never return, he heals.

He heals.

Holy Mary, Mother of God.

I understand. I understand. My Jesus, I understand.

I'm in my third week, I think, of screaming daily. When I feel seconds away from ceasing to exist, I scream. It isn't relief that I feel, but release. That I've been released from madness for an hour or two.

Your name frightens me. Will you talk to me? Using the Private Message function. It would be creepy if I, at 57, sent a PM to a teenager, so if you"real willing to talk I'll let you message me.

I'm sure that you know why your name is disturbing. I'm so ignorant of what it's like to be young today and yet I feel guilt and empathy. Guilt because my younger days were happy. Empathy because I'm beginning to see how similar the emotions are, and how well expressed.

Sincerely. I really understand now. How simple and horrifying.