This is the first time I have ever really told the Truth in my whole life (Admission)

The reason that I'm writing you tonight is to tell you something very important. It's something I've known for quite a long time but have been afraid to share with you. I believe in god. And magic. And spirits and energies, not as elegant metaphors, but as manifest realities. I believe in these things because I have experienced them firsthand. I never told you because I was afraid of you juding me and not holding my beliefs to be legitimate or sane. I projected this fear onto you because you are the lens through which I experience the world when not looking through my own eyes -- yours is the second opinion I seek. For a long time I was ambivalent about the validity or even the reality of these beliefs, and so I used my fear of being judged by you as an excuse to not fully admit them to myself. However, tonight on the way home from your house I finally was thinking about it clearly and I realized for the first time that you want me to be happy, and that the source of that happiness is immaterial to you so long as it exists. This was very huge for me. I'm sorry it took me so long -- I don't want you to feel offended. It's not you. After realizing that I had been raped (and most likely throughout the entire time leading up to that realization), my ability to trust anything was severely retarded and our development as intimate friends was undoubtedly delayed. Coincidentally, it was during one of these times (most seriously, when we weren't speaking) that my passion for mysticism and spirituality really bloomed. That made it easy for me to hide it from you.

But yes; ever since I went to Burning Man, and even before that, I have felt as though I have been on a spiritual journey of sorts, to reconnect to myself and to the Mother earth, the entire bountiful Universe, that I came from. It is very hard for me to write these words, perhaps because they portray a sentiment of vulnerability that I am most afraid of betraying. To say that one believes that the Universe is founded on love, harmony, and symmetry, as I do, is to not only open oneself up very wide in general, but to open oneself specifically to ridicule; when viewed at surface value the world hardly seems to reflect that, so believing in and devoting oneself to accessing all-present love definitely seems more than a little crazy. But I really do believe, and when I open up the shell that surrounds my heart, I feel it.

I hope that you can respect this. It is a very integral part of who I am and has been for years now. I deeply apologize for not telling you sooner. I have wanted to, and have been trying to for a long time, but unfortunately I only felt able to today, and we are no longer together for me to say it to your face. I'm going to leave out details because I do think we should talk about this -- after all, we have both got to both equally see through the mask, and this is the side of myself that I have been hiding from you. To succinctly define what I mean, I will leave it at this:

over the years, I have discovered that I am a reverential person, and am most happy when in the act of worshiping something. You probably know this from the way I used to worship you. However after a lot of thought and processing I realized that I cannot worship people in any form, but rather that all I feel comfortable revering is nature and the great, unknowable, cosmic/psychic/spiritual/

physical forces that form and govern every aspect of our Universe. Pretty much, I love science, and especially quantum physics and geology (fuck it, I love em all, they're all inseparable) and am overwhelmed by the symmetry and organization I see present between and without all aspects of physical reality. What takes this home for me is the way that I feel these forces relating to me emotional being. I believe that all bodies are supersensible resonance chambers capable of being affected on the quantum level. Thus, we are all connected and every shift in motion of the breeze, earth, galaxy, and Universe can be felt within us if we pay close enough attention.

And that's what I'm trying to do with my life, among other things -- to pay attention to the cosmic rhythm and use what I feel to help others do the same, because it feels so good. So I worship the sky, love the clouds, kiss the trunks of the trees and embrace the hot earth that lies beneath everything. I do this alone, but it is truly this sentiment coming out when I call things beautiful. That's why it hurt me so much when you used to tease me for that -- it felt like you were catching me at prayer.

I hope that this does not make you feel different about me. If it does, consider this: all od these feeling and habits have been a very real and manifest part of me for years, and I know that you have still loved me. I don't doubt that love enough to think that this admission would be enough to drive it away; I don't doubt it at all actually, and that is why I am finally telling you this. I really want you to know me for all I am, for what I am most proud of, as you said. To close, I think that Joanna Newsom has a pretty good way with words, so I'll let her sum up how I feel about life:

"Squint skyward and listen, loving him, we move within his borders, just asterisms in the stars' set order. We could stand for a century, staring with our heads cocked in the broad daylight at this thing: Joy. Landlocked, in bodies that don't keep, dumbstruck with the sweetness of being, 'til we don't be."

So yeah. That's all. That's my side of the mask. Thank you for showing me yours.

Love,
Stella