Jesus, have I lost my soul? I have been thinking back to the times when my passion for You drove my to times I could never have imagined… and what am I now, still pouring forth much, but is it truly passionate? I wonder, have I lost some of that art of feeling You were teaching me by the wooing of Your love… have I become fearful in love with You again, Jesus? I confess to realize things have changed, been changing, and now I resist just as I used to when You first embraced me, I flinch at Your touch, You mean to mend, to heal, to love, yet I fear; what is there to fear in You my tender Jesus? Where are the recesses of my soul that so rawly and desperately exposed themselves to You? I think my Jesus, I have retreated into some shame again… honor and shame… the guilt my soul has forgotten but cannot deny. You have changed in me since that first bliss of love. I have mourned its flickering and my heart has waned with longing for You.

I began to experience so much, and then I grew complacent in the ecstasy of it all… here I am now Jesus, desperate with the missing of what I knew. Deeper still is where I wanted to be, plunging into the depths of Your love. Remind me, remind me, my heart and soul are weak and forgetful, I assume far too much of You. I am remembering, Jesus, as I read through the words we have exchanged over the months… I carry a book that is always filled with them… I have learned how to focus again… but Jesus, You haven’t been always the focus of my concentration. There, in the midst of seeking how You and I could be one, I lost the focus… my weakness of such stolid, dogged, determination, for my soul is in pursuit. It has been revealed to me through the comments of others, whom I have somehow remained sensitive to, in spite of the growing coldness over my own soul that I am constantly on the run.

Even today, Jesus, I was asked if I always run, I do… the running has become a part of me, I am eternally restless… maybe I am chasing the wind. I want You so badly… but do I really when it comes down to it. What has excited me these last weeks Jesus, O Jesus forgive me… as I ask, I realize that I have not been excited all the time. I remember what it was like to not be exhausted… but energized by thoughts and dreams and interactions… now my sweet Jesus, I find no time like I used to. I set out to capture time and too tightly have I bound it to myself, for it has gnawed away at my being, and now time sails by, whisking my still-less soul along in its gusts. What have I lost, O beautiful Jesus? Last night I wrote introducing You, my husband… and how long have we been married? Not 3-4 months, I dare say, yet already in my restlessness I have made You stale. O Jesus, it is always like this… I run until I am empty and then I don’t realize that it was You I was running to all along.

Is that it? Am I running to You or away from You? Perhaps it is both and that is why we are married. Perhaps I have a harlot’s heart because I cannot be satisfied to be still for more than a moment, before something more fascinating catches me eye. One pursuit leads to another. Sometimes I run to You, my Lover, sometimes I run away. You love… is it like this river in which I find myself standing in the middle… tossed about by waves? Up and down we go… I want You and when I have You, I long for more, so I tear off and run away, I lose a part of my heart because I think I will discover more. Wow, Jesus, I am talking like some sort of addict… maybe I am about to take a deadly sip of absinthe or take that fatal dose of ecstasy: Jesus, wake up that love in my heart and rekindle it in my soul.

I realized when it began that it would be hard to maintain, but I never imagined so hard; I knew it would always need to be changing, but I tried to tell myself it wouldn’t be so very much as I am faced with giving up. This is Self talking again, Jesus, not the Hannah Your bride, the old Hannah who is dead and must remain in the grave though Your bride is still part of her and unable to pierce the heart because there is only one heart between the two; no silver stake can extinguish the life from this vampire-like wraith that seeks to drain the life-imparted blood of life from my veins. Self is the doppelganger that haunts my every step, Jesus… I lose myself to her, for she is my narcissus in the mirror I am forced to gaze into if I want You… Do You see me, Jesus, taking Your body, the bread, and tearing it apart? Do You see me throwing my hand into the mirror, half in desperation to be rid of the image, half in longing to touch Your hands? All my hands get is the feeling of pain, blood, emptiness.. how morbid, not the life You have bought, the vampire rises from her coffin.

And so I run again, but she in constant pursuit, to make me more selfish, I am dressed in white like a shroud, and my soul aches for the inner light of love. Jesus, Your love to me is better than the love of a thousand admirers… Your touch restores my inmost being, I am sure of it, for so often You resurrected my hope from the ashes of its desolation in the fiery ruins of Gehenna… the hell I sacrifice to by the running from You. It is my opposing lover, the dead narcissus with fresh blood on its lips… the children I have sacrificed to it, to my Self… what compels me… their bones cry out to me, and I am ashamed, my soul forgoes the love I once held in grief. Yet I do not know how the children are mine, nor how they were conceived and born… I am too virgin to love to understand such things. And now the children I might have had to love have been subconsciously sacrificed.

Jesus, are You sure You want me? A murderess I am, the knife is clutched within my hand, the blood covers my hands and face. Encased by my tattered shroud, this is what I have become for the love of You? For the fear of You? What did I make You in my mind to be so frozen as to require living blood for warmth? My God, my God, why have I forsaken You? I look full into Your glowing face, Your golden eyes, and my soul remembers the living waters. Am I lamenting Jesus? I have grown violent again, and my need is ever before me. A sorry bride You take me as… my flesh has grown as blue as ice, and my heart is encased in a broken body. My intellect has caused such a traumatization… but I dare not allow myself any victimization, for self-rape is an inexcusable sin for which there can be no sacrifice and all blame (which only hovers in my sphere of existentialism) rests on my head, no scape goat. You paid it Jesus, I know. Touch that part of me that needs to remember the sacrifice to forget my paganism… a temple harlot may be right, if I stop feeling You in one, I run to another. You are too constant for that. Conquer the demons in my own soul, that possess too strongly my being; let Your Sitra Achra shame them terribly… I would rather have the horrible glory of Your wrath than my own separation. If You must, drive the stake through the heart that beats, enjoining me to my devilish Siamese twin… the vapirish Self. For I remember I still love You… and for the sake of Your temple which I bare before You, defiled, scourge it clean.