Now that I've "came out" as a Pagan, I guess I can be a little more open about my religious practices on this journal instead of making those entries private on principle.

One of my religious practices is divination. I haven't practiced any particular form of divination other than tarot readings, though I am planning on trying to learn a few more as soon as I take the time to construct for myself a rune set, or get my dream journal in order, or procure a scrying mirror. And I am also trying to expand on my experience with the practice of tarot, too. Currently, I'm reading the first book in Ann Moura's Green Witchcraft series, which contains a lot of information about divination.

As of right now, I only own one tarot deck, and it is a traditional Rider-Waite one. I've had it for three (?) years now, and primarily I've used the Celtic Cross spread because the instructions for that spread were included in a booklet that came with the deck. The Celtic Cross has been somewhat useful, and it has offered me some insight, but it hasn't been particularly life-changing for me.

**A note on how I use tarot for divination: I use it mainly for sorting out my thoughts, for showing me possibilities that I hadn't thought of before, for giving me peeks at the direction my future is moving toward. In my taking meaning from the cards, they are given meaning. Sometimes (often) I don't understand the results. Sometimes it tells me things that I already know. Sometimes it's no help at all.

Last night, I tried a new spread: the Tree of Life, and used almost the entire tarot deck. It was a very time-extensive activity, and I was exhausted by the end of it because I started it late at night. To my surprise, most of the results were quite clear to me, and the interpretations all interlocked together. I hadn't achieved this level of clarity in any reading before, so I think I prefer the Tree of Life to the Celtic Cross in terms of level of detail.

Now, I've been procrastinating a lot on college applications and scholarships. I know that I shouldn't, and it has really angered my parents, but of course I can't get myself to stop, and despite my parents' attempts to punish me, they can't get me to, either.

So I did a general tarot reading, and as it turns out...

The cards are quite firmly implying that I really need to get myself together and start working on things.

My mom made another attempt at punishing me for my inaction today, but little does she know, I've already decided that I need to stop procrastinating, largely because the cards were very clear about this.

So if anything, tarot has given me the resolve I need to force myself into much-needed action.

I've been on the verge of "coming out of the broom closet," as they say, for a few years now. I haven't done it yet for many reasons. Because legally, I can't truly practice my own religion in my parents' household if they don't allow it. Because I live in a Christian-dominated community, and Christianity is notorious for being very intolerant of Paganism. Because I haven't exactly figured out all of the particulars of my own beliefs yet.

Now is as good a time as any for "coming out" informally: I'm a Pagan.

Of course, "Pagan" is an umbrella term and an incredibly broad label at best. As far as I know, my own beliefs don't fit under any narrower label (excepting possibly the label of "Neopagan"). I've looked into Wicca, and while parts of the religion feature in my beliefs, the religion as a whole is not for me. I've also looked into Druidry, but again, it wasn't a precise fit. Neither is Heathenism. I think I've looked into most, if not all, of the main branches of Paganism, and I can't consider myself as falling under any of them. I might be able to consider myself a Witch, but I use that label tentatively at best.

But the fact that I am Pagan is something I know wholeheartedly and without a moment of doubt. I think, as is true for many Pagans, that I've been a Pagan for a very long time, since before I even knew what "Paganism" was.

Ever since I was in elementary school, I've been a very strong environmentalist. Bordering on environmental extremist. I picked up litter during recess, decided on my career choice (a writer) because I could use it to push an environmental message, wrote a letter to the president (Bush at the time) explaining the horrors of fossil fuel, had nightmares of environmental destruction, feared Global Climate Change above nearly everything else, got into political discussions with my friends because I feared that the Republicans would destroy the earth and even if I convinced one person, just one, that the world was in trouble, it'd be worth it. I have always had a strong interest in nature, and for the first few years of elementary school, I checked out nonfiction books on all sorts of animals and have never had a "least favorite" animal or even an animal that I disliked.

I also used to believe that I was a shape-shifting Native American spirit, existing for the sole purpose of protecting the environment, that, for some reason, retained the ability of speech in my human form and had forgotten how to shapeshift.

Then, in middle school, I wrote poetry that started to strongly feature the elements. I had always felt a very, very strong connection to Water, ever since I was quite young. In middle school, I developed a connection to Air as well. I wrote a poem about this, actually (which I think I need to post in a separate entry, because in hindsight, there are some very interesting aspects about it).

In seventh grade, my Social Studies class changed the way I viewed religion from then on.

We covered a basic overview of five major world religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism), and I was surprised to find them all very interesting. Out of the five, I thought that Hinduism and Buddhism sounded the most like my preferred beliefs. About then, I developed a belief in reincarnation.

Now, since elementary school, I'd been inventing a species of mythical creature I named "water serpents." They were very similar to dragons (I loved- and still love- dragons), and a definite connection to the element of Water (as well as, later, to Air: they had wings. Which, coincidentally, they could not use for actual flight). They also had complex biology, and a very complicated culture that I designed completely.

In seventh grade, I gave them a religion. I still have the paper on which I brainstormed their religion, and to my surprise, years later when I reread it, they were polytheistic. Not only that, I gave them two deities: God (which I presume was similar to the Abrahamic God), and Mother Nature, who were consorts. I specified that the God was mainly the humans' god, and that Mother Nature was the water serpents' main deity.

Keep in mind that the water serpent was my idea of the ideal creature (and that I disliked humans even then). I self-inserted (literally, in our many role-playing games) as a water serpent. And it felt natural to me for this creature to worship Nature, personified as female, as the main deity. I'll also point out the similarity between the water serpent deities and the main Wiccan deities, but that is less important.

At some point in (I'm fairly certain) middle school, I also preformed a funeral ceremony for my pet mouse. I had her funeral on a lunar eclipse, in the middle of the night (when the eclipse was actually occurring), and invoked each of the elements. This was before I discovered Paganism. But still, the whole ceremony felt powerful and right.

In high school, through the lovely Dragon Cave Forums, I finally discovered Paganism. It started when I read a book, The Mists of Avalon, which I thought of then as being more fantasy than I think of it now. I discovered on a thread on DC that people today practice religions like the one portrayed in that book. This was a startling, eye-opening revelation to me, and I instantly became consumed with interest in these religions. Excited, I brought it up to my parents, that there's this religion that's similar to The Mists of Avalon, that it's called Wicca and-

My dad instantly got angry. I don't remember exactly what he said in that tirade, but it was certainly enough to keep me from mentioning Wicca or Paganism to him again.

It was most certainly not enough to keep me from researching it fervently online.

Then I discovered that what I'd been searching for, what I'd been needing, what I'd really been all of my life, it had a name. Pagan.



I don't know how interesting it is to anyone reading this from facebook, or to anyone who knows me online, to read about my personal religious journey- it's probably not very- but this is a personal journal, and this post is important for me to make.

At this point in my life, I highly doubt that any of my religious beliefs would be particularly surprising to anyone who knows me. I've always been a Pagan, and it has always been something that's a part of who I am. I don't know what the Pagan equivalent is of "flaming homosexual," but it's probably a label I'd apply to myself. My entire belief structure, my view of the world, how I live my life (and how I'd like to live my life), my career and college choice, my political beliefs, all of them influence and are influenced by my religious beliefs. My religion permeates my entire being.

I have absolutely no doubt that my "Gods" exist. When I was a Christian, I did occasionally slip into periods of lessor belief or non-belief. More than that, I just... didn't particularly involve the Abrahamic God in my everyday life. He didn't seem very relevant or necessary. Now, while I'm identifying as a Pagan, I know and experience the Divine everywhere. It's the beauty of pantheism, of animism. The Divine is in every tree, in every raindrop, in every breeze and ray of moonlight. It's in every form of life. And I'm part of it.

Magic, too, is in everything. I've worded it before as something like "magic exists wherever you see it." This thought has been eye-opening to me ever since it occurred to me. It's fairly difficult to explain in terms that are more concrete than that, and I can see the disbelief in any non-Pagan eyes which happen to be reading this, but it is a fundamental part of my life and my Paganism. Yes, I believe in magic. But that's a silly way to word it, because belief doesn't really factor into it.

I used to search for fantasy in the fantastical. Then I would feel unsatisfied because I couldn't find it, not in any portal to a fantasy word in my wardrobe, not in any dragons flying in the flesh-and-blood overhead, not in glowing lights of magic and fire bursting from fingertips. Then I learned to search for fantasy in the mundane, and that's where I found it. The magic is in gardening, in growing things. It's in crafting things, in cooking, in art. It's in lighting a candle, or incense. It's in healing yourself with herbs. It's in drawing meaning from things that don't have it until you give it to them.

Reincarnation also exists, and of this I have no doubt. It already happens after things die and their atoms become new things. Matter and energy are never lost, only transformed, and they carry the Divine within them. When new things are born, they are formed of what was once the old, and that includes the soul.

It's hard, even, to categorize my beliefs under a label like "pantheism." This is because, strangely, my beliefs fall under just about all of the above. I'm a monotheist because I believe in a unified One. I'm a polytheist because I believe in many, many Gods, in every God that has ever existed in concept and in every God that will exist as a concept, all as aspects of the One. I'm a pantheist because I believe that the One is the universe (I'm a panentheist as well, but how I reconcile the two (pantheism and panentheism) is difficult to explain).


tl;dr

I'm a Pagan.

That's really the entire point if this over-long post.

Now, I, like absolutely everyone else, have self-esteem and body issues. They don't usually affect me all that much, and I don't dwell on them that often, so I'm very thankful that my own self-esteem issues aren't as pervasive as they could have been. Nonetheless, I still have them. I still look in the mirror on occasion and notice all of my body's imperfections. I still wish that I could be prettier than I am, and sometimes I examine my reflection and find nothing pretty at all.

My yoga and pilates class is changing that.

I really, really enjoy that class. I love how much my flexibility has increased, how I've developed more strength and balance, how even amidst the soreness, I've felt in general better. I even love the difficulty and discomfort that comes with many of the exercises. I love how yoga dances the line between religion and lifestyle.

But sometimes most of all, I love the way it's changed, subtly, how my body looks. Now, instead of areas of my stomach bulging with soft fat, the  bulges in my stomach feel harder and stronger, like muscles. My weight has more or less remained the same, but I've gained plenty of muscle, especially in the core area, which means I've lost fat. I don't know if, aesthetically, I look terribly much better, but I feel and look a lot healthier, and that's really what matters to me. I decided that my body at its healthiest will be my body at its prettiest, because since there's not much I can change about that, I'm just going to accept it as the best I can get.

Anyways, to anyone who's not me who could possibly be reading this, I highly recommend taking a yoga and/or pilates class. If you put the effort into it, you will definitely see and feel the results.

I've been posting a lot more regularly now.

There are so many complicated things in my mind that I need to sort out, and this journal offers a really good canvas for that.

It's personal in a fringe manner. Most of these things aren't anything I would bring up to my friends (my post on anti-intellectualism excepted), but they are thoughts that are important to who I am, and if my friends do care to seek them out, they are plainly stated here, and this journal is fairly accessible.

I have an upcoming post planned on identity and the strange way a mask that is shaped like your face and wielded by someone else can still end up becoming a part of you.

This is another thing that has been on my mind for a long time.

I've encountered this mentality as far back as elementary school, and it's followed me like an unpleasant aroma all throughout my academic life, even into college. My classmates just can't seem to be able to stop talking about how much they dislike attending school, how useless homework is, how much they hate the subject, and other unpleasant opinions about the institutions responsible for giving them their education.

To be honest, I've never fully understood it. I loved vacations from school, of course. As an extremely shy person and a strong introvert, school has always worn me out and has been a place of general unpleasantness. The way I phrased my opinion on the matter was "I like school, I just like vacations better." And that's exactly my thoughts. Later, it changed to "I like learning, I just don't like school." Which may be even more accurate.

Now, up throughout my high school years (which I consider over and done with even though I haven't graduated yet, because I don't attend classes at the high school anymore), I was a "higher-level math student." I took Pre-Calculus my sophomore year and Calculus I and II in my first couple quarters of college.

All my life, from both my peers, from younger children, and even from adults, I've heard the statement "I hate math."

It's such a widespread thing, it's completely acceptable to say it. Not only that, it's "cool" to say it. Students who hate math receive nods and statements of agreement, this is normal and people empathize with it. I don't know if I ever really got the chance to decide for myself whether I liked or disliked the subject all of the years I took it in school. I just kind of nodded along, or kept my exact opinion unclear, or said nothing. I certainly didn't try to like it. Some things in math interested me, of course, but things that provoked my particular interest were few and far between, so at most I merely tolerated the subject.

Now I love math.

I love asymptotes. I love the concept of infinity. I love the contradictions. I love the golden ratio. I love the simple truths about the most basic of geometric shapes, the power of drawing complex things with only my pencil and a compass, as people did thousands of years ago.

It's simple, it's clean, it's beautiful, it's precise, it's satisfying, it's mystical.

I wish I'd have thought of it that way all of those years in school, that I'd allowed myself to think of it that way. The magic in things is where we put it. If I'd allowed myself to see the magic, then I would have found it.

If I'd allowed myself.

At this point, I defend math when people express contempt for it. I'll connect it to philosophy, I'll describe the almost chilling beauty of the golden ratio, I'll explain how the asymptote is such an amazing metaphor for perfection, and the paradox of when finding the area under a curve by adding infinite rectangles, each with an area of 0, "you add nothing and get something."

Usually, people roll their eyes, smile politely, and ignore everything I say. No one cares about math. Math is boring, dry, mundane. People don't want to discuss it, they don't want to hear how it defined the teachings of Pythagoras and his followers, or any one of the strange little intricacies of the subject.

And it's not only math.


So I took a political science class last year called State and Local Government.

It was a required class, well, Running Start students had to take either it or Northwest History. This put it in the same position of math. No one wanted to take it, no one found the subject interesting, and it was "cool" to dislike it.

I sat down in that class for the first week, took my notes diligently, got frustrated when the lectures veered constantly off topic, and I read my textbook. I knew that this was knowledge that would undoubtedly prove useful to me, and that it was important that I take a class of that sort, so I was determined to learn the material and find something interesting about the subject and latch on to that thing. I decided that I would approach the class with critiquing the government of the United States the whole quarter.

Sure enough, this worked. I had enough interest in the material that I learned things. I started to find the textbook interesting, and I figured out why this was such an important subject to require students to take.

As it always happens, when I developed an interest in it, I started to talk about it to other people. And so I tried to discuss the material with a couple of my friends who were taking the class with me. I brought up something I found particularly interesting, described it to them excitedly, and waited to hear their opinions.

Which were lukewarm at most. They endured through my excited spiel, nodded, smiled politely, and the conversation died right there. No one cared. No one bothered to find it interesting, and I was left with a vague feeling of embarrassment.

I was ashamed to take intellectual interest in something. Because my peers deemed it socially unacceptable.


Of course, a few of my friends are not like this. I'll walk out of the classroom and immediately start a discussion on the subject matter, and they'll converse with me about it actively, and sometimes we'll get into fierce debates.

Inevitably, if I take an interest in something, I'll learn it better. Also, the more I learn about something, the more interest I take in it.

It's a very satisfying system. It improves my grades, leaves me a little wiser, and it helps the person I will become in the future.

I've become quite open-minded to new subjects at this point. I'm taking an economics class on a whim because I feel that I should have some basic knowledge on the subject, and a Pacific Northwest Geology class because if Sherlock Holmes can get something out of a practical knowledge of his local geology, then maybe I could, too.

In fact, I have so many interests that when asked what my major is, I have no idea what to say. I have at least a passing interest in nearly everything. And things that I don't have an interest in yet, I can quickly develop one as soon as I start learning more about the subject.


So why is American culture so stuck on this trend of anti-intellectualism?

Why is it cool to not like school?

Getting an education helps in so many ways. It lowers the rates of crime and of unemployment, decreases fertility rates, increases general health, and provides the entire country with a vast amount of benefits. I love it on principle for that alone.

I know from experience that it's so much easier to learn if you have an interest in something. But nowadays, people are discouraged to develop interests in many academic subjects, like math.

I find this attitude of anti-intellectualism very disheartening. If people attend school because of a personal motivation to learn and not because of grades, then you learn a lot more and enjoy it a lot more, too.

Why do people waste so much of their time hating something that's so much more beneficial to love?

I've had a post like this in mind for a while. I only managed to solidify all of the related thoughts into one idea when I watched, of all things, Kung Fu Panda 2.

Now, variations of the above quote (which is my own wording. I've read the idea before, worded differently, but I cannot seem to locate the exact original quote that put the idea into my head in the first place) have been something I've had in my head for a few years. The idea that wisdom is a combination of two things: knowledge (which comes with study) and experience (which comes with age). Knowledge is something that can be obtained at any age, assuming one seeks it out, whereas experience can only be gained with time. This set me up to ready myself for a lifetime of waiting for this elusive, highly desirable quality called "wisdom."

Now, I don't mind waiting for wisdom. Quite the opposite.

And I definitely know better than to consider myself "wise". I probably never will.


Which brings me to a second point that is somewhat contradictory to the first: I also identify strongly with The Fool.

By "The Fool" (capitalized), I mean the tarot card. Almost always, when I do tarot readings for myself, I choose The Fool as the signifier. Because I usually don't know what I'm doing. I feel like The Fool, starting off on some grand journey with what provisions I think I need, full of hope and expectations, not knowing that I'm about to stride right off of a cliff. Of course, I usually only consult the cards when there's something in my life that is huge and I'm not sure how it'll turn out, and this tends to unsurprisingly mean I feel like The Fool in the situation.

Someday, maybe I won't reach for The Fool automatically. I think that will be the true mark of my path to wisdom, honestly.


So how did this post come about because of Kung Fu Panda 2?

Well, I was watching the film when suddenly it occurred to me that of all of the characters, including the two female warriors, including Po, who is definitely "the fool" of the bunch, I latched onto the Soothsayer. I didn't see myself as her (I'm not wise enough for that yet!), but I did see her as who I'd like to be.

The Wise Old Crone is clever. She is wise. She is presented as asexual. She tends to be close to What Powers May Be and to nature. She stays out of the action, yet is still a part of the story. The characters often forget about her, because she seems insignificant and is content to remain at the fringes. She's often a hermit, but she is comfortable being alone.

And this is who I want to be. My "ideal self," if you may. When I think of the future that I want, I envision the Wise Old Crone.

I can't be her yet, though. I can, however, dedicate my life to striving for that ideal. I can try and obtain knowledge, I can try and go further in my religion, and I can keep breathing, because with every breath, I take in a little more of that quality they call "experience."


I'm not afraid to grow old. I'm not afraid of death, either (though I can't say the same about pain and discomfort). I've been told by many people that this will change as I age, that I will "wish I was younger." I don't think I will. There are some things that come with age, wisdom being one of them, that I really desire.

I don't consider myself pretty. I doubt anyone else considers me all that pretty. I'm not ugly, but I'm not pretty, either, and it's taken me some wrestling with myself to come to terms with that. There is the rare moment where I think I'm prettier than usual, but I could simply be overestimating my beauty in those moments (and I guess there is the possibility that I could be underestimating my beauty the rest of the time). It's a little easier to come to terms with being average-looking if you are an aromantic asexual, I've found, because one of the perks is that you receive less romantic and sexual attention.

One of the great things about being old is that people don't expect you to be beautiful. It's rather freeing, I'd think. Age has its own beauty. Not to mention grey hair, which is something I am really looking forward to, because I find it beautiful.

And maybe that's one of the reasons why I identify with the Wise Old Crone, too. Because the Wise Old Crone isn't beautiful. In Kung Fu Panda 2, the Soothsayer was considered (though not in so many words) as being ugly. She had a beard (though granted, she was a goat). But that was also not considered a character flaw.


I don't know how to bring this to a satisfying conclusion. It's a personal post, rambly, and not something I'd really discuss in person with anyone, but this livejournal is estranged just enough from real life that I can post it here. It's possible, if someone was determined enough, to find this journal by browsing through my older notes on my facebook account. A few people I know have already been here, at least they've been here quite awhile ago.

But I don't mind.

Maybe someday, when I'm doing a tarot reading for myself, I'll be able to use The High Priestess as my signifier. I interpret her as the Wise Old Crone.

More than that, to me, she is Wisdom personified.

This isn't something that I talk about much, and I don't think any of my friends know about it, or even my family. Obviously, I'm not exactly intentionally secretive about it, as this post is public and anyone who bothers to access my journal can read all about the tl;dr experiences of some girl with some weird fear.

It's just not really something that comes up that often in conversation. "Hey, my name is Denali and I have emetophobia." Maybe it would if it were something less unusual, like arachnophobia, claustrophobia, even agoraphobia.

To be honest, I didn't even consider my struggles with it as a phobia until recently, and even then, I'm reluctant to call it anything more than a "mild" phobia despite all of the discomfort and trouble it's caused me. Partially because of my emetophobia, I no longer play a musical instrument. Because of my emetophobia, there are some films that I would really like to watch, but that I feel a strong aversion to because I read the IMDB content advisory and saw something mentioned, or I read a certain thing about it on TVtropes. Because of my emetophobia, I've missed plenty of days of school in late elementary school and early middle school.

I'm not sure anyone who doesn't suffer from an unusual phobia can understand how irritating it is that the IMDB content advisory doesn't warn for some things. I would really appreciate it, actually. Though I do understand why they don't, it'd be impractical to list every single possibly triggering thing in a movie.

If my parents knew about my emetophobia, I probably wouldn't have watched Super 8 with them.


Now, where did it even come from? I'm hypothesizing that my own phobia came from classical conditioning at a fairly young age. I've always had some social phobic tendencies, or at least almost crippling shyness. There's a slew of other issues I've had with that, but that's beside the point. A lot of my possibly social phobic issues got all tangled up with emetophobia, however, and I'll get to that later.

So I was a shy child. In fourth grade, I played the violin. Now, every year my elementary school "Strings" class participated in a district-wide symphony. Because it was district-wide, that meant that at a few occasions, all of the Strings kids had to be packed onto a bus and taken to a different school where we could all practice together. This was highly stressful for me. I felt sick with nerves, and therein my problem lies. One of these performances, a girl got sick and vomited on the gym floor. I remember turning in my chair, following the whispers, and seeing her bent over in her chair.

Instantly, I became convinced that I was sick, too. I had such a difficult time coping with my nerves, I confronted an adult there and confessed that I felt ill and wished to go home. Then I called my mom, and she came and got me, and I went home, and of course I wasn't really sick.

I went home for another one of these practices, I think. My parents and teacher blamed it on performance anxiety, but by now, it'd become a bit more than that. I ended up only going to one performance each year (fourth and fifth grade) because my teacher gave me a special allowance to miss them.

I think that was when my emetophobia really began.

There's a major problem with being afraid of vomiting. It has too do with stress. A lot of the symptoms of stress can easily be confused with nausea, and in some cases, stress can directly result in vomiting. Now, when I have a phobic reaction to vomiting, or fear that I will have a phobic reaction to vomiting, I experience stress. The stress makes me feel ill, and then I get more stressed, and it's a terrible cycle that results in me feeling miserable.

It's not merely the thought of vomiting that I have a phobia of. A lot of it is the aftermath, and so if I'm in certain places, like a bathroom, then even if I was experiencing a phobic reaction, the stress is lessened by quite a bit because a bathroom is generally an acceptable place to vomit. If I lived alone, when I felt ill at night, I would probably end up sleeping on the floor a few feet away from the bathroom, because that would lessen the stress.

My emetophobia is considerably worse at night (as well as when I'm in public places, especially school). This is largely because a sizable percentage of the few times I can remember vomiting (and I can remember nearly every single occurrence for most of my life all the way back through elementary school), happened at night.

Now, unlike school, which can be skipped if I fear that I'm sick with something that will cause me to vomit, you can't "skip" night. I've had many, many nights of insomnia that are caused by the vicious stress/phobia cycle. And in the process, I've picked up a number of inexplicable superstitions. If I want to eat chocolate chip cookies, for example, then I'm "safe" and am not going to vomit. If I'm laying on my side and don't sit up, then I'm "safe." If I don't wake up at 4:00 AM for seemingly no reason, then I'm "safe" (and if I do, then I am going to vomit).

If in the morning I am feeling a little sick and possibly might vomit, then I better stay home from school in case I do. Because home is "safer" than school. Now, this was the cause of many self-created illnesses of mine back then. My parents just assumed that I was sickly. Eventually, as my symptoms were basically the same every time: "I feel weird" or "I feel like I'm going to throw up" (coupled with vomiting never actually ending up occurring), they became convinced that I was faking it to get out of school, which meant that I needed better excuses. So I took to lying a bit.

I continued to be a shy kid up through middle school. Except now, my parents were no longer buying my "sicknesses." Sometimes, I'd feel a little weird in school, and then the stress/phobia cycle would start and the feeling would escalate, and then I'd get convinced that I was going to vomit and my emetophobia would kick in. It was a strong enough phobia and caused a strong enough desperation in me that I overcame my shyness and asked to go to the nurse's office. At first, this worked, too, and my parents would come and pick me up from school.

I can only think of one day where I took such measures to go home without actually being "sick" (or even thinking that I was). That was the day we watched Supersize Me in my science class. I thought the movie was quite interesting until one of my classmates mentioned that it was really gross when the guy vomits. Suddenly, emetophobia. I dreaded that moment of the film so much, that I eventually couldn't handle it and asked my teacher if I can go to the nurse's office and ended up going home and skipping the first half of the film.


In my Psychology class, we learned of something called "taste aversion." Well, the rest of the class did. I just learned that it had a name. Taste aversion is essentially when you develop a dislike of a certain taste because you associate it with sickness and vomiting. It makes complete evolutionary sense. However, when you are constantly fearing vomiting, and are experiencing the aforementioned stress/phobia cycle, you don't want to develop an aversion to foods that you like, so you stop eating. That's what I did. I'd think that I'm feeling nauseous, so I wouldn't want to eat anything that I might end up disliking because of taste aversion. Well, the idea that not eating results in not vomiting was another one of my superstitions, so that also contributed.

Not only did I refuse to eat during the entire day of these "sicknesses," but I learned (or at least I feared) that my phobia could also cause me to develop an aversion to things that weren't food, too. I didn't want to do anything that I liked while I feared that I would vomit. I didn't want to watch any of my favorite movies, I didn't want to even think about things that I liked.


For a good part of my life, I could list every single novel I'd read that had a character vomit. Eventually, merely reading about it wasn't enough to trigger a phobic reaction, so I stopped remembering them. I could probably still name every movie with vomiting, however.

My least favorite episode of Glee is Blame it on the Alcohol. I watched the whole episode with dread, and at the end, when I knew because of spoilers what would happen, I looked away from the TV and managed to avoid most of the vomiting scene. Didn't stop me from seeing an edited GIF of the moment on tumblr, though. I don't like the "puke rainbows" meme because of my phobia, even though I like what it represents.

Speaking of alcohol, I feel fairly confident that I will never do drugs that have a possibility of resulting in vomiting. This means I don't plan on ever getting drunk, or ever going to a place where there are people who are drunk. If nothing else, my emetophobia stops me. Bulimia is also not something I'm in any danger of.

So maybe it isn't all bad, then. It certainly prevents me from being 100% fully functioning, but not in an especially significant way. Maybe someday I'll get past it entirely. I have been working towards that for years now, as my shyness, my preformance anxiety, and my emetophobia have gotten more moderate and controllable as I've been forced to adjust to a world that doesn't allow me them.


I can say it now, I guess.

My name is Denali and I have a phobia of vomiting.

Well, as always, when I have all of these stupid thoughts and far too many words cluttering up my mind, I come to either this journal or my gaiaonline one to dash them all out on the internet. I don't know what I'd do without the internet. I'd probably still be keeping a paper journal, which is far too accessible to prying eyes than I prefer. Many of these entires concerning my tentative experience with practicing my religion would be better suited to paper form, though. Then I could have them with me to refer to seeing as my computer, though portable, isn't the easiest thing to furtively carry with me outdoors into the garden or up into my room, where it generally isn't allowed.

This entry was really supposed to be about driving, because I have too many muddled thoughts and misgivings and hollow feelings in my stomach to fit into 180-character bits on twitter, so I guess I'll just roughly transition into that.

I hate driving. Hate may be a strong word, but I have a lot of feelings about driving and most of them are strong.

There's one line that is repeated frequently in the Cardcaptor Sakura manga that really stuck with me. It really became relevant in the manga's story when Clow (as Eriol) was testing Sakura. He previously assured her that although things may become harder for her, that "everything will surely be alright."

I don't know exactly what it is, maybe a mild concept of fate, but my life and all of its frivolous problems become so much easier to bear with the knowledge that everything will surely be alright, that however things play out, even if it's hard for me, personally, to bear at the moment, it's still the general will of the Divine. And I recall all of the many times I've dreaded some event in my life or another, forcing myself to remember that time is always passing and that the displeasures of my life at the moment will eventually pass with it, too, and that driving is just another one of those things. I won't have to deal with it forever. Probably not longer than a few months. And until then, I can get through it, even when it is the hardest thing and sometimes it feels as though my every being is rebelling against the concept. Because everything will surely be alright.

There are so many reasons why I hate driving. I don't like the feeling that I've resigned myself to conform to the system, allowing it to perpetuate. I wish that I was stronger to seek out alternatives, maybe even go as far to pick up bike riding.

I hate the irrationality of it. 1 in 125 people will lose xir life in an automobile-related accident. That's what happens when one places the general public in large metal containers that travel at fairly high speeds and in close proximity to each other. I don't trust most people, I don't even like most people, and I've seen how my drivers ed classmates behave and react and I don't want to be on the same road as these people. Driving works on the assumption that the other users of the road will follow the rules and will not make any errors. That assumption is incredibly false, and so therefore driving, as a system, does not work.

I don't mind trains so much. Trains, at the very least, always have the right-of-way. In the far majority of situations, trains never have to share the tracks, and they don't really have to stop, and the chance of them entering into collisions that actually damage the trains is quite low. And besides, I don't mind being a passenger in a car or train so much because I relish the excuse to do nothing. Or even the excuse to do something, like read or write or play video games. I enjoy conversing with my fellow travelers to a point. Driving isn't like that. Driving requires one to be very, very alert and focused at all times. It saps one's concentration like a leech. I don't feel safe conversing while driving, and I certainty can't just do nothing. It feels like such a waste, honestly. A waste of my time, a waste of my mental processes, and a waste of my life itself. I want to enjoy the journey as much as the destination. Driving leaves me no opportunity for enjoying the journey, and all it does is turn travel into a mechanized process, a chore.

I'll have to get off the internet to attend my drivers ed class in a few minutes, so I guess I'll wrap this up now.

It feels a bit better to have this jumble all laid out in coherent sentences. There are some things affecting my decisions and mood that I hadn't really thought about until now. Maybe I'll reflect further on them during my time in class. I might possibly type up a continuation of this post after my class, or I might not.

I just have to remind myself that everything will surely be alright.

My muse has gifted me with an interesting idea for a story.

Unfortunately, it's fanfiction.

Animal Crossing fanfiction. Called "Lunacy's Affair".

I now have a story in progress that I'm using as an experiment for a few different concepts.The plotline itself is very adult, which is ironic considering the fandom. It follows the life of a human girl, Luna, who takes up residence an Animal-Crossing-type town because she has no more money to travel further. It explores several concepts that I've yet to play with, namely the idea of lust-without-love, and an innocent girl manipulating her actions and the situations around her for the single purpose of seduction to fulfill her sexual desires and needs.

The town behaves at first just like the one in the game, with the utopia-esque setting and characters that seem flat and artificial, acting, of course, as if they were pre-programmed to operate with a simple AI that cannot deal with complex thought or situations. Luna seems to be the only "real" person in the entire town. But, slowly things start to change and a few of the townsfolk begin to become "real". They expand and grow beyond their AI into multi-dimensional characters. As this happens, Luna follows her sexual desires and enters into sexual affairs with two of the townsfolk. As soon as it happened, however, the transformation of the town begins to reverse and slowly the people take on their old AI stock personalities. Luna, of course, watches as her world loses its complexity and her lovers appear to have no recollection of their actions. Her mental instability starts to reveal itself until she threatens to commit suicide. She finally does end her life when she realizes that it has absolutely no value to her former friends and lovers.


There are a few interesting things about this story concept.

-The story starts with Luna in a position beyond her control. She eventually gains control, holds it for a while, then begins to lose it again until ultimately she is left at the exact position she was in at the beginning.

-Luna also gains her every desire, everything she wants or needs, then watches it all slip away.

-Luna represents the power of lust and desire, the frailty of innocence, and opportunity for her to follow her passion and let it lead her where she will. She is manipulation in its most delicate sense, where she is at her weakest yet in complete control of all that is going on around her.

-Luna also represents the most basic of human desires and the subtle subconscious messages that the body sends out and understands without the direct influence of the thinking mind.

-She has two sexual relationships simultaneously, one with a male, another with a female. There are subtle differences in both relationships and in how she perceives them.

-There are sexual relations between human and anthropomorphic animals. This is treated as completely normal and the society never has a problem with it. Similarly, the society does not in any way hinder Luna's options or ability to pursue these sexual relationships.


...What is wrong with me?

 I apologize for all of the private journal updates recently.

I know that someday I'll screw up and you'll all see one and then you'll know the kind of messed up mind that I have.

But, until then their content will remain private. This is the kind of personal turmoil that everyone else will find stupid, melodramatic, and typical teenage drama and wangst with a side dash of insanity.

I've been going through a few weird frames of mind these past few months. Actually, it's been going on for a long time. I wonder if thats how the madness inevitably linked with creativity shows its face within me. I will go through these odd phases of depression, then odd phases of inspiration, then some degree of normality, and then back to the negative phases, keeping the whole thing bottled up within me. Sometimes they are triggered by outside events, usually not. As an adolescent, and worse, a writer, I tend to make things out to be a far bigger deal then they truly are. Generally, I delude myself into believing the new version of events and thoughts and make the problem worse.

I am in no danger of suicide or self-injurious thoughts. The depression phases are most definitely not that severe or even close to that level.

Please forgive me.