Patriarchal Blessings and Me

I joined the church when I was 17.

I got my patriarchal blessing when, I think, I was 19. Maybe 18. At the time I was living by myself, working a crap job for crap pay.  In fact, I had to cancel the first appointment to get my patriarchal blessing because I couldn't afford the gas to drive out to his house.

When the next appointment came up, I got in my ratty little car and drove out to his house, where we chatted for a little bit before the momentous blessing took place.  He told me that if I lost my copy of the blessing, Salt Lake could give me another copy.  He also said that if something happened to the copy on file in Salt Lake, then I could get a recommend to get another blessing.  But he cautioned me not to be frivolous.  He told me about someone who didn't like her patriarchal blessing, and kept pestering and pestering until finally she got permission to get another blessing.  But when the patriarch put his hands on her head, he was quiet for a few minutes, and then said, "I'm sorry. There's nothing here."  Ooooh.  That meant if I were greedy then God would take away my blessings!!  (Much to my shame, I will admit that I believed this.)

He counseled me to keep in mind the things I most wanted to know.  Hey! I was a 19-year-old girl. Maybe 18. All I wanted to know was if I would get married.

So he gave me the blessing, and I blissfully drove home, thinking over what I could remember of it and eagerly anticipating receiving the transcribed copy in the mail. I was going to get married! In the temple! I was going to have children!

So the typewritten copy of my blessing duly arrived in the mail, and I committed large portions of it to memory.  Marriage would come in the temple to a priesthood holder who would hold my heart in his hands and keep it there warm and safe.  I was to be a teacher, a teacher of men and women throughout the universe.  The power of my teaching would come through my progeny.  Genealogy was one of the missions placed upon my head.  There would be callings and challenges, but if I were obedient, I would grow to meet them. Don't get angry and don't hold grudges. And Satan's very aware of my powers, so be careful not to mislead others off the path that is so difficult (the typist spelled it "diffucult," and I had great difficulty with that because I have a testimony of proper spelling).

Fast forward to a college psychology class. We were watching a film where students had been given a personalized horoscope.  They all read their horoscopes, and were impressed with how accurate their horoscopes were. Then they were instructed to pass their horoscope to the person in front of them (the person in the front taking their horoscopes to the person who was in the back of the row) and read them. Yep, you guessed it--the new horoscopes were just as accurate as the originals were.

No, it did not then occur to me to place patriarchal blessings in the same category. Because after all, the patriarch was ordained and called of God, and the priesthood power he exerted meant that my patriarchal blessing really was unique to me.

Now, some years later, and I'm actually using my brain without the warm glow cast by unwavering belief and faith in LDS, Inc.  And I look at my blessing, and say, yeah, right. 

1. I did not get married in the temple.  My husband and I did get sealed several years later.
2. I do not have children.
3. I am not a teacher.  And I rarely got the opportunity to teach even at church, because I was usually called to play piano instead.
4. I have done a little genealogy, but find it interesting to just learn about my ancestors. I'm not intensely interested in it, and I haven't felt guilty about it.
5. The advice not to hold grudges is good advice in general.

The only one that still gets me is the caution to be careful, and not mislead others off the path that is so diffucult [sic].  That little niggling voice that says, "What if you're wrong? What if all this really is the One True Church?"  I mean, I don't want to mislead anyone.

But I'm not here to mislead anyone. I'm expressing my thoughts and feelings in this blog because it's safe.  A few readers know who I am in real life.  I can't come out of the Apostate closet yet because I haven't told my mother and I don't know if I ever can.  She's more than a little batshit crazy, and she would be devastated at my leaving the church. She'd probably be able to handle it if I were attending some church, any church, but since I don't even know right now what I believe about God, I'm not ready to start going to church just yet.

So even if you don't know who I am, know that I'm a pretty decent person. I have a bizarre sense of humour. I'm relearning how to think critically. I love movies. I love books. I love dogs. I have a thing for shoes and handbags.  I'm dressing up as Bellatrix Lestrange for the last Harry Potter movie. I can cuss in several different languages. I'm a great cook. I love to teach, even if I'm not a teacher. I have an opinion on everything, but won't normally express said opinions unless I know you really well. I love the theatre, both as a [mediocre but enthusiastic] actor and as an audience member. I like to take long baths with Lush bath bombs or bubble bars, a glass of wine, and a good book. [If it's a book by a British author, I mentally read it with a British accent.  If it's one of the Harry Potter books, I mentally read it with different voices for the different characters. Yes, I'm aware that this makes me sad and pathetic. But hey! I have a good time!]   I frequently make terrible jokes that crack me up, even if no one else laughs.  I have been known to carry on an entire conversation where my lines all come from movies, books, plays, or song lyrics. I insist that "quote" is a verb; "quotation" is a noun; and I once wrote a very short story wherein I strangled two of my sisters for using the words incorrectly.

In other words, I'm a complete dork. And I'm not trying to lead you astray.

Water, Water Everywhere

A couple of weeks ago, I read Kent Ponder's "Jaredite Ship-Building Technology" on Richard Packham's website, and it really got me to thinking.

How did I ever become so convinced that the church was the One True Church that I threw common sense and critical thinking right out the door? 

• How much fresh water does it take to keep one person alive for 344 days?
• Did they have glass windows back in the day? Because I sure didn't think so. So of course there wouldn't be anything to be dashed to pieces by the waves.
• How many people were traveling in those air-tight barges?
• How many animals constituted the flocks and herds referred to in the book of Ether?
• How much food and fresh water, then, would be necessary to keep all of those people and animals alive for nearly a year?
• What about the puking?  Because me, I get incredibly motion sick, so I can imagine at least some of those people would have been seasick and vomiting.  There is reference made to their singing and praising God day and night.  How would that fit in with the vomiting? Enquiring minds want to know.  (And of course plenty of other bodily functions would have been going on, which would add to the frequent puking. I'm just sayin'.)
• Did they strap themselves and the animals in, so that when the barges flipped over in the ocean, the people and animals weren't being flung all over the place, breaking bones and, possibly, getting killed? Wouldn't it feel freaky to be strapped in and upside down? (More vomiting would be happening here.)  It sounds kind of like an amusement park ride that I would NOT be going on.
• What about if they opened up the wrong hole, and water started flooding in? Would they have been able to stopper it back up in time before the waters flooded in and drowned everyone?

But no, I somehow put all of my critical thinking skills aside and said, "Wow. The finger of God. Pretty dang cool, that."

Tune in next time when I talk about patriarchal blessings.

Sweet, Sweet Sin: The Wine Edition

Continuing this brief exploration into notable quotations about different sinful items, today we're going to see what the sages and pundits have to say about my new favourite Friday night beverage: wine.

Last weekend I tasted a couple of different wines at World Market. They were both very dry. One I liked rather well--it smelled divine, and as I let it rest on my tongue before swallowing it, I was able to sense a variety of notes. The other one didn't smell quite as good, and it tasted downright nasty. I've got some shiraz at home that I'm looking forward to tasting.  I know that I have a very uneducated palate, as the guy at World Market put it, but I'm open to learning!

And now, without further ado:

Wine is bottled poetry.  ~Robert Louis Stevenson

When the wine goes in, strange things come out.  ~Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, The Piccolomini, 1799
This is one of the disadvantages of wine:  it makes a man mistake words for thought.  ~Samuel Johnson

A man who was fond of wine was offered some grapes at dessert after dinner.  "Much obliged," said he, pushing the plate aside, "I am not accustomed to take my wine in pills."  ~Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

Champagne, if you are seeking the truth, is better than a lie detector.  It encourages a man to be expansive, even reckless, while lie detectors are only a challenge to tell lies successfully.  ~Graham Greene

Everybody should believe in something; I believe I'll have another drink.  ~Author Unknown

Wine gives a man nothing... it only puts in motion what had been locked up in frost.  ~Samuel Johnson

I don't think I've ever drunk champagne before breakfast before.  With breakfast on several occasions, but never before before.  ~From the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961, screenplay by George Axelrod, based on the novella by Truman Capote, spoken by the character Paul Varjak

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.  ~Galileo

If you wish to keep your affairs secret, drink no wine.  ~Author Unknown

Wine gives courage and makes men more apt for passion.  ~Ovid

[Grapes are] the most noble and challenging of fruits. ~Malcolm Dunn, Head Gardener to the 7th Viscount Powerscout, c 1867

Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well used.  ~William Shakespeare, Othello, II. iii. (315)

A man may surely be allowed to take a glass of wine by his own fireside. ~Richard Brinsley Sheridan, refreshing himself at the Piazza Coffee House as his Drury Lane theatre went up in flames on 24th February 1809.

Go fetch to me a pint o' wine,
An' fill it in a silver tassie. Robert Burns

And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,
'I don't care where the water goes if it doesn't get into the wine'. ~G.K. Chesterton

Bacchus we thank who gave us wine
Which warms the blood within our veins;
That nectar is itself divine.
The man who drinks not, yet attains
By godly grace to human rank
Would be an angel if he drank. ~Pierre Motin

The smell of wine, oh how much more delicate, cheerful, gratifying, celestial and delicious it is than that of oil. ~Rabelais

The king sits in Dunfermline town
Drinking the blude-red wine. ~Trad Ballad 'Sir Patrick Spens'

Wine gives great pleasure; and every pleasure is of itself a good.  It is a good, unless counterbalanced by evil. ~Samuel Johnson
If God forbade drinking, would He have made wine so good? ~Cardinal Richelieu

Wine is the drink of the gods, milk the drink of babies, tea the drink of women, and water the drink of beasts. ~John Stuart Blackie

There is not the hundredth part of the wine consumed in this kingdom that there ought to be. Our foggy climate wants help. ~Jane Austen

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter,
Sermons and soda-water the day after. ~Lord Byron

Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities. ~1 Timothy, 5:23

It is well to remember that there are five reasons for drinking: the arrival of a friend; one's present or future thirst; the excellence of the wine; or any other reason. ~Latin saying

Drink wine, and you will sleep well. Sleep, and you will not sin. Avoid sin, and you will be saved. Ergo, drink wine and be saved. ~Medieval German saying

Wine ... cheereth God and man. ~Judges, 9:13
 
A man cannot make him laugh - but that's no marvel; he drinks no wine. ~William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness -
And Wilderness is Paradise enow. ~The Rubiyaiyat of Omar Khayyam, tr. Edward Fitzgerald

In vino veritas ~Pliny
Good wine ruins the purse; bad wine ruins the stomach. ~Spanish saying
 
I love everything that's old: old friends, old times, old manners, old books, old wines. ~Oliver Goldsmith

He who loves not wine, women and song remains a fool his whole life long. ~Martin Luther

Wine rejoices the heart of man and joy is the mother of all virtues. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wine that maketh glad the heart of man. ~The Book of Psalms, 104:15

Like the best wine . . . that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak. ~The Song of Solomon, 7:9

The wine urges me on, the bewitching wine, which sets even a wise man to singing and to laughing gently and rouses him up to dance and brings forth words which were better unspoken. ~Homer
It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption. ~James Thurber 1894 - 1961 (Caption for cartoon in The New Yorker)

For when the wine is in, the wit is out. ~Thomas Becon

A man not old, but mellow, like good wine. ~Stephen Phillips

Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I am not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool--you would have counted on it--so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me. . . . ~Vizzini in The Princess Bride

Alcohol: The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems. ~Homer Simpson

For Ahab: Cocoa Quotations

I looked, Ahab, honest I did.  But since there is no sin in cocoa, there just aren't the pithy quotations as there are for coffee and tea. 

Cocoa? Cocoa! Damn miserable puny stuff, fit for kittens and unwashed boys. Did Shakespeare drink cocoa?  ~Shirley Jackson

The superiority of chocolate (hot chocolate) both for health and nourishment, will soon give it the same preference over tea and coffee in America which it has in Spain...   ~Thomas Jefferson

(On hot chocolate) It flatters you for a while, it warms you for an instant; then all of a sudden, it kindles a mortal fever in you.  ~Marie, Marquise de Sevigne

Answered Prayers

I've been spending a lot of time thinking about things I used to believe.  And it makes me laugh and cry at the same time. It's like if you told me there were no such word as gullible in the dictionary, so I would go look it up.

My husband loses his keys a LOT. And he gets paranoid and says that he left them in the door and someone stole them. Or he left them in the car and someone stole them. Or he left them (insert place) and someone stole them. So I would wearily say a prayer, and he'd find them.

Mmm hmmm.  My prayers were ALWAYS answered when it came to finding my husband's keys. Or his wallet. In fact, I was out of state several months ago and he lost his keys/wallet, and he called me to pray that he would find them. I did, he did, all was well.

Of course, he would have found them anyway. Because they were where they were. It's not like someone actually did steal them, and then when I prayed they were magically removed from that person's pocket and deposited on top of the washing machine. or the bathroom counter. or the hearth. or between the sofa cushions.

When I was in church and someone would comment about praying over all things, including what kind of tuna fish to buy, I'd snort silently. But I still believed that whenever I prayed about my husband's keys, he'd find them.

I just wish my other prayers were answered so immediately.  Going to do IVF? Pray and I'll magically have 8 eggs instead of just 3. Afraid I'm losing the babies? Pray, and they'll magically all regenerate and I'll give birth to triplets. Maybe even quadruplets, so that I could name them John, Paul, George and Ringo like I always wanted to do. Having trouble in the dumb-ass math class I needed to pass so I could graduate? Pray, and all the proper formulas will be right in my brain, ready to use when I need them.  Need to lose weight? Pray (and fast, heh-heh).  Need $10K? Pray and somehow, someway, the money will be magically deposited into my savings account.

Instead, of course, I lost the babies. I barely passed the dumb-ass math class thanks to my husband tutoring me. I'm losing weight not by praying, but by surgical intervention and hard work. I still need cash, but I'm slowly accumulating it by painstakingly making deposits every payday into my savings account.

Since leaving LDS., Inc., I have to stop myself sometimes. Not from praying in general, although my prayers right now tend to be along the lines of, "God, if you're there....", but from praying over stupid things, like my husband's keys.  I mean, there are earthquakes and tsunamis, and I'm going to bug God (if there is a God) about something as pathetically unimportant as keys? Nah.

And then with the storms the other night, and me huddled in the hall with a scared dog curled up next to me, I wanted to pray for safety. But then I thought of all the people who've been killed of late in tornados, and thinking they were all praying for safety, too. So I just meditated, tried to stay calm, focused on being in the moment, the funny (and painful) sensation as the tornado passed overhead and I felt the pressure on my sinuses increase to an almost unbearable level as the winds howled outside. And then it was gone, and our house was still there, and my dog kissed me, and it was good.

I still find some solace in meditation/prayer, even if I'm not sure to whom I'm praying. Maybe I'm just sending my thoughts out into the universe, and somewhere someone will bump into them, and send some positive vibrations back in my direction. But not about the keys. If the keys are lost, I'll go look for them.

Sweet, Sweet Sin: The Tea Edition

Diana, this one's for you! 

I grew up in the south, which means that as a kid and teenager, sweet tea flowed through my veins.  I think, when I joined the church, that I missed iced sweet tea even more than coffee.  Plus I was something of an anglophile, so I also missed hot tea with cream and sugar. Yeah, I made do with iced herbal teas, and hot chamomile tea, but it just wasn't the same.

I will hereby confess that when I was angry and rebellious, I would go get iced tea.  My sister found that hilarious. Such a silly little thing, but because of the word of wisdom, it was verboten.

I usually have a glass of iced tea every day. Sometimes I switch things up and get diet Snapple peach tea, which is nectar, trust me. But I still enjoy my plain old sweet tea, even if it's now sweetened with the stuff in the yellow packet.

So enjoy a cuppa, or a glassa, and savour the following quotations:

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.  ~Henry Fielding, "Love in Several Masques"

Tea is drunk to forget the din of the world.  ~T'ien Yiheng

There is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims

Strange how a teapot can represent at the same time the comforts of solitude and the pleasures of company.  ~Author Unknown

Each cup of tea represents an imaginary voyage.  ~Catherine Douzel

I always fear that creation will expire before teatime.  ~Sydney Smith

Drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary.  ~Chinese Proverb

There is no trouble so great or grave that cannot be much diminished by a nice cup of tea.  ~Bernard-Paul Heroux

Bread and water can so easily be toast and tea.  ~Author Unknown

If you are cold, tea will warm you.  If you are too heated, it will cool you.  If you are depressed, it will cheer you.  If you are excited, it will calm you.  ~Gladstone, 1865

We had a kettle; we let it leak:
Our not repairing made it worse.
We haven't had any tea for a week...
The bottom is out of the Universe.
~Rudyard Kipling

Is there no Latin word for Tea?  Upon my soul, if I had known that I would have let the vulgar stuff alone.  ~Hilaire Belloc

Tea is a cup of life.  ~Author Unknown

The mere chink of cups and saucers tunes the mind to happy repose.  ~George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft

Tea should be taken in solitude.  ~C.S. Lewis

If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.  ~Japanese Proverb

Tea is liquid wisdom.  ~Anonymous

Find yourself a cup of tea; the teapot is behind you.  Now tell me about hundreds of things.  ~Saki

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.  ~Thich Nat Hahn

Tea's proper use is to amuse the idle, and relax the studious, and dilute the full meals of those who cannot use exercise, and will not use abstinence.  ~Samuel Johnson

Iced tea may not have as much wisdom as hot tea, but in the summer better a cool and refreshed dullard than a steamy sweat-drenched sage - leave sagacity to the autumn!  ~Linda Solegato

Iced tea is too pure and natural a creation not to have been invented as soon as tea, ice, and hot weather crossed paths.  ~John Egerton

Tea...is a religion of the art of life.  ~Okakura

All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a little stronger with each year that passes.  ~George Orwell, "A Nice Cup of Tea"

Tea does our fancy aid,
Repress those vapours which the head invade
And keeps that palace of the soul serene.
~Edmund Waller, "Of Tea"

The first cup moistens my lips and throat.  The second cup breaks my loneliness.  The third cup searches my barren entrail but to find therein some thousand volumes of odd ideographs.  The fourth cup raises a slight perspiration - all the wrongs of life pass out through my pores.  At the fifth cup I am purified.  The sixth cup calls me to the realms of the immortals.  The seventh cup - ah, but I could take no more!  I only feel the breath of the cool wind that raises in my sleeves.  Where is Elysium?  Let me ride on this sweet breeze and waft away thither.  ~Lu Tung, "Tea-Drinking"

tea leaves
tea loves
loves tea
lives tea
leaves tea?
never.
~Uniek Swain

The best quality tea must have creases like the leathern boot of Tartar horsemen, curl like the dewlap of a mighty bullock, unfold like a mist rising out of a ravine, gleam like a lake touched by a zephyr, and be wet and soft like a fine earth newly swept by rain.  ~Lu Yu

Top off the tea... it lubricates the grey matter.  ~Good Neighbors, quoted from stashtea.com

Stands the Church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?
~Rupert Brooke, "The Old Vicarage, Grantchester," 1912

As the centerpiece of a cherished ritual, it's a talisman against the chill of winter, a respite from the ho-hum routine of the day.  ~Sarah Engler, "Tea Up," Real Simple magazine, February 2006

The perfect temperature for tea is two degrees hotter than just right.  ~Terri Guillemets

It is very strange, this domination of our intellect by our digestive organs.  We cannot work, we cannot think, unless our stomach wills so.  It dictates to us our emotions, our passions.  After eggs and bacon it says, "Work!"  After beefsteak and porter, it says, "Sleep!"  After a cup of tea (two spoonfuls for each cup, and don't let it stand for more than three minutes), it says to the brain, "Now rise, and show your strength.  Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature, and into life:  spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity!"  ~Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat

Remember the tea kettle - it is always up to its neck in hot water, yet it still sings!  ~Author Unknown

Tea, although an Oriental
Is a gentleman at least;
Cocoa is a cad and coward,
Cocoa is a vulgar beast.
~G.K. Chesterton, "The Song of Right and Wrong"

Tea is instant wisdom - just add water!  ~Astrid Alauda

When the news reporter said "Shopkeepers are opening their doors bringing out blankets and cups of tea" I just smiled.  It's like yes.  That's Britain for you.  Tea solves everything.  You're a bit cold?  Tea.  Your boyfriend has just left you?  Tea.  You've just been told you've got cancer?  Tea.  Coordinated terrorist attack on the transport network bringing the city to a grinding halt?  Tea dammit!  And if it's really serious, they may bring out the coffee.  The Americans have their alert raised to red, we break out the coffee.  That's for situations more serious than this of course.  Like another England penalty shoot-out.  ~Jslayeruk, as posted on Metaquotes Livejournal, in response to the July 2005 London subway bombings

The first sip of tea is the always the best... you cringe as it burns the back of your throat, knowing you just had the hottest carpe-diem portion.  ~Terri Guillemets

Harry found the [tea]... seemed to burn away a little of the fear fluttering in his chest.  ~J.K. Rowling

Tea! thou soft, thou sober, sage, and venerable liquid,... thou female tongue-running, smile-smoothing, heart-opening, wind-tippling cordial, to whose glorious insipidity I owe the happiest moment of my life, let me fall prostrate.  ~Colley Cibber, Lady's Last Stake

Never trust a man who, when left alone in a room with a tea cozy, doesn't try it on.  ~Billy Connolly

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.  ~C.S. Lewis

The More Things Change...

Okay, this is kind of weird. (by the way, do you know how I finally learned how to spell weird?  I got it from a creepy character Johnny Depp was playing in his character as an undercover cop on 21 Jump Street. Just remember "we" are "weird" and you'll never misspell it again.)

Anyway. Back to my point. My husband and I have been talking more deeply and more honestly than we ever have in nearly 20 years of marriage. I think we've both accepted that this will end up in divorce. However, he's asked me to continue living at the house, and he'll continue to help support me financially as long as I do. It makes sense. I'd be living there anyway when he travels for work, since I wouldn't take the dogs to an apartment. And I make enough money to support myself if I were to get an apartment by work--barely--but with the gas prices as they are, I cannot do it staying at the house.  So that works out just fine.  We've each picked a room to be our bedroom, and he has the room that was formerly a garage to be his music room.  The other rooms (kitchen, dining, living room, home office/library) are the common areas.

I asked how he'd feel about things once I were to start dating (assuming that were to happen). He said that he'd be ferociously protective of me, but would try to deal with it as best as he could.  And I'm working to deal with his issues (I don't feel comfortable sharing them because it's his private business, not mine).  Not coincidentally, I'm able to do so better since leaving TSCC.

Another thing that's going to require some diligence on both of our parts is privacy and respect.  I'm still a little steamed that he felt perfectly comfortable throwing out my wine several weeks ago. I said that if I'm to stay in the house, he's going to have to respect my privacy and my belongings, and, no matter how much he may disagree with them, he does not have the right to get rid of them. And when he starts to dictate to me, I'm having to remind him that he may not do so. It's going to take a while to change old habits, but I think they can be changed.

Last night we were having a long talk, and I was sitting there staring at the bookcase full of church books in my room. I've been wanting to get rid of them for a while now, so I asked him to pull out the ones he wants and I'd take the rest to Half Price Books. Unsurprisingly, he pulled them all out and put them in a bin and shoved them in his office. At least they're out of my room. 

He's still really struggling with his feelings about himself and the church and how everything's intertwined. He doesn't want to believe that it's true, because it's so negative and nasty and harsh, but is afraid that it is, and so is just wrapped up in guilt. And I'm still dealing with guilt myself and the nagging little thought in my head that says "what if it's real and you're wrong and you're leading people astray and you're really going to regret it."  I tell that thought to go away, but it's there all the time.

Anyway, this is the experiment. If it works, great. If it doesn't work, well, I'm saving up money in the meantime so that if I do need to go ahead and move out, I'll be in a better position to do so.