Most of this journal is friends-only. If you'd like to be added, just comment here. At that point, I figure we have a contract for you not to be too offended at anything I say on really good or bad days, and for us to keep each other's confidences.

I like books, comic books, sugar, coffee, Jesus, and rock music (no, not radio-rock. The other kind). I'll probably also like you. I have all sorts of issues, and when I'm not getting exuberant over how good parts of my life are, I'm quite expressive over how agonizing the other bits are.

I tend a peace-lily, and I have a stylistic preference for the Oxford comma.

My last few days have been full of rage. I can blame it on hormones, on (admittedly petty in the grand scheme of things) circumstances (lack of transportation, impending job loss/transition, weird hours), or on fatigue, or on the wellspring of darkness and questions related to me trying to come to terms with faith and my sexuality, and all of those things are true, but also my rage has been allowed to grow because I've neglected two simple things:

1. Seeking my Creator.

2. Story.

--Because these are the vehicles to dream. Without dream, the mind runs to madness. Without the ability to aspire and hope, I become confused and full of anger and depression. I need to reach out towards, and delve into, something richer and deeper than myself.

These things that don't generate wealth or increase my productivity are what make me feel like more than a product with a shelf-life. They're the necessities underpinning the mundane.

So I'm reading Game of Thrones, and I finished Silently and Very Fast today. And I'm trying to remember to talk to God, since I know/believe/experience, over again and always, that God listens.

And I'm trying to ground my anger and my lack of answers in myth and in presence.

I love my president. This is one of the most redemptive things I've seen occur in my lifetime -- a self-professed Christian president, a black president, stood up for marriage equality. There is healing and hope and a future for my generation and my America.

If I sound gushy about it, I can't honestly gush enough. The most powerful person in the country just stood up for me, and for some of the most disenfranchised and mistreated people in the nation. And of course he's a politician and of course people are going to speculate about his timing and his intent, why now and why not sooner. That doesn't matter nearly as much as the president of hope speaking truth and love to a world full of division and vitriol.

I never thought I'd see something so politically good happen, in my time and in my country, that I'd cry.

This is the sort of loud, bright, tangible act that makes me lift up my head and believe God has not forsaken us.

President Obama, thank you. You've made history for me.

I spent about four days with wicked insomnia, thinking I was upset about K. Which I was, but it turned out I was more upset about my sexuality.

I came out as gay/bi in middle school. Kids were awful to me, my principal singled me out as a problem (I was also goth, but the gay made it worse, I think). My mom knew and disapproved, my dad suspected and blew up at me and tried to keep me from my friends. My girlfriend dumped me after a few months, and so I was alone and queer in my school. My depression was bad. My mom moved us four hours away, right before I would have started high school with more of my friends and more freedom, because she thought it would fix me. Fix the depression, keep me from dating girls.

Things got worse for me, in a lot of ways, and I dated girls and guys, more guys than girls. I chose really unhealthy relationships with guys. I was also so attracted to women it sometimes made me feel predatory and sick.

When I became a Christian, at 18, I took the Bible, which I barely understood, to mean I should not be with women. My friends confirmed it. I was told gay/queer people had demons working through them. Gay was the ultimate sin, in my church. So I stuffed it. . .stuffed sexuality entirely, didn't date for four years. My last three relationships have been with men, and in between and during every one, I've wanted to date women. And tried to kill that. And then my best guy friend came out and I had to find a better theology, study and pray and think and feel, because I love him and that changed everything.

And Wisconsin-boy dumped me and I moved here and I met K. and she was brilliant and intense and so gorgeous and I slept with her and it didn't leave me feeling awkward or weird or bad the way sleeping with men always has.

And that didn't work out and left me feeling really scared and alone. I'm 27, and feel like I should have this figured out, but all I have is . . .I think I'm mostly gay. How's that for an orientation?

I think I'm mostly gay, I'm a Christian, and I'm afraid no one will want me.

But I feel better about myself. Less lost. So I've been hanging out in my bedroom watching It Gets Better videos, because they weren't making those when I was a teenager. And thinking I might want to shell out for a counselor, for a bit. I've heard those are helpful.

Just experienced a paradigm shift. Realized, for the first time consciously, that I didn't fail out of the charismatic movement, and that the charismatic church, while doing important works, is really-o truly-o only embracing a part of the good news. As are most movements within Christianity, yeah? We're all, at are best, stained glass fractions.

--At the moment, anyway. I hate the division -- not the difference, but the lack of accord and the separatism that happens between denominations: I'm this, so therefore I don't want any part of that.

And maybe you put all those fractions together, you get a rose window, and a bigger light shines through. And maybe we're set into a larger building, and can't even see, yet, what's being put together by superhuman hands.

Yesterday morning, before I decided not to see K. anymore, I'd gone with her to put in a reservation for a second shipment of Alabaster: Wolves from Cosmic Cat, my local shop.

--Which meant I was able to pick it up and have it as a blanket this afternoon. Reading a story about a contest between a monster-hunter and a voracious wolf-girl is, turns out, very soothing while riding out the jarring unhappiness of an abrupt relational severing.

And it is the most fulfilling, re-readable story I've picked up in comic format since Neil Gaiman's mini-series run on/ reinvention of The Eternals.

That's right: werewolf comics for comfort. And before that, it was "Riding the White Bull." Well-told stories don't have to be happy. I thought for some time that they did, but I'm discovering that they can be deep and satisfying because they touch on something strange, something sad, something true.

This is making me a better writer. Especially since what I like to write about tends to touch on death, loss, and disconnection in the midst of reaching towards and/or running away from something.

K. is a very good writer. I don't know if what I read, write, or listen to makes much sense to her, but I respect what she does. Her life is rich with story, and she's skilled at communicating it.

This morning, I found the end of a story I've been working with -- no small thing, in this case. I'm that much closer, now, to knowing what happens in the middle, when the dead boy reaches the mountains. And tonight I worked a bit on my own werewolf story. These are actions that make me feel solid and whole.

All day, I've been meaning to write this post. It's a happy post. And I want to do it justice, but I'm sleepy. Short version:

" . . .My flesh also will rest in hope." (Psalm 16:9-ish, New King Jimmy).

I read something gorgeous and honest the other day, about how writers shouldn't efface themselves, their voices, to make their writing a clear window pane, but should put themselves into their work so much that the writing is a unique piece of stained glass that the reader can then view the world through. (Caitlin R. Kiernan, paraphrased, Two Worlds And In Between, Intro, Volume 1.)

At my best, and, fortunately, more often than that, God is the mediating window for me. Something horrible occurs and I look to him for help and understanding. Something beautiful . . .and I'm singing, when the house is empty, arms out and twirling, or kneeling, body, voice used to show I owe him this, somehow, the one who dresses lilies in their finery and mourns fallen sparrows. That there is kindness, that there is comfort, that there is hope . . .I owe thank yous. I want to give them.

I owe thank yous to and for the friend who tells me she wants to read more of my work and says I'm "weird and wonderful, like the fae." I owe thank yous to and for another friend I spent time with recently, who looks at me like I'm kind of magical, who is good at loving people and listens to my emotional ramblings even when it takes me hours, talking in spirals and in and out of blind alleys. He thinks I'm smart, and beautiful, and doesn't act like he needs to fix me, and he knows how strange I am, in a lot of ways, because I'm less afraid to let him see it, because he's strange too, and open with it.

I kept singing today, intermittently, without thinking about it. It's been a while since I've been peaceful enough for that to happen.

I don't feel scared, or sad, and my chest isn't tight and aching.

I feel brave enough to look a little bit farther into the future than next week.

I feel in place.

I wrote the first page of a new book tonight. The day, she is made.

Visited a new church this morning. Always a toss up. Decided I probably will not go again, because I was pummeled with Christianese, and the sermon was dull and vague, and I have time for Jesus, but I don't have time for that. They promised prizes (yes, you heard me right, prizes/party favors/what have you) if you signed their visitors' list.

First time visitors receive a water bottle with the church's name on it.

Second time visitors receive a Chik-Fil-A coupon.

I was there with a lesbian. Chik-Fil-A has donated substantial amounts of money to two organizations that the Southern Poverty Law Group considers anti-gay hate groups. I don't know if it bothered her, because I didn't ask.  . . .it was kind of a first date, and I didn't want to get political.

Did the music point me toward a loving Creator who wants good things to happen on the earth? --Yes. Were the people nominally friendly? --Yeppers. Did the sermon have a point? --In a meandering sort of way, yeah.

But if she wants to go to church with me again, she can come visit mine.

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I have found a partial remedy for brain-curdling Christianese on the blog How to Talk Evangelical, which politely and analytically breaks down overused sayings such as "on fire for God," and "born again," and questions the culture that supports these phrases. You can read one of the cross-posted articles from it here: http://www.defunctmag.com/Essays/Beliefs/Zierman_Born-Again.html, if you so desire.

My response to it is: yes.

Yes to reality that transcends a particular metaphor. Yes to the idea that when metaphor becomes a dead thing, passed stale from tongue to tongue, shrouding and discarding specifics and letting a longing for the intangible (not bad in itself) replace a life and a culture of intentionality, then you need new words.

Yes to people who push and strive and question and fold their arms with dissatisfaction sometimes, and rather than walk away from it all, choose to walk toward something better, and work to create change.