20081206

Dear darlingest Annelies Marie,

My Anne, I'm just going to come out with it:

Right now, I must be the most miserable person in the world. I am just so overcome by my addiction at the moment - this and all the sins it brings in its train.

Things I know are detestable in your sight, in Mama Mary's sight, in our Lord's sight and verily, in the sight of all we hold dear in God but things nonetheless that I seem to do over and over, in vicious cycles that I just can't seem to escape from. I feel so wretched right now and I know I only have myself to blame.

Louis of Granada in his book, "Sinner's Guide", said that the battle against lust is one of the most severest warfare that a Christian has to wage - against the self first and then, once the self has been brought under the yoke of Christ, against its agents in the world or out of it. This statement is true and there's no overemphasizing the fact that the integrity of a person's soul which is the purity of both the heart and the mind that is manifest in corporal chastity is a grace that once offended is fled forever.

Saint Francis de Sales said in his book, "An Introduction to the Devout Life", that only true devotion can restore to the soul, the grace of chastity.

I have found myself so many times in this dismal pit which did not really bother me in those times before, when I should have been the wiser. It bothers me now because I have come to a knowledge and understanding of true things I did not know then. And I'm not blaming the past, my darlingest, I accept that the arrangement of things in a persons life is intended in such a way by Divine Providence as to culminate into the present which is always sufficient in its day with regards to the particular evil that individual souls as well as those human communities, secular and religious, that exist to safeguard and foster them.

Should there be evil in our day, even if the past had a large part to play in its appearance in our present time, I believe that it is here not so that we may conveniently dwell on the darkness of past things. Where evil is allowed to endure into the present reality of souls and communities of souls, it is so that we may learn in our own lives how to effectively close the doors of past things. For I believe that evil endures not to defeat the human being but to allow him or her the opportunity to recreate in every present moment in God and with each other, the beginnings of better, brighter and nobler things.

The question of evil leads one towards an understanding of the nature of human suffering - for the bearing of good things in our world require that we learn to recognize and love those things apart from the darkness of evil days. I understand that there is suffering in our world and that suffering being a universal human experience is a common reality to all human beings in this poor world. In our world, both good and evil things are established in suffering. There is no place in time or dimensional space within the reality of the human experience that allow for anything that is neither good nor evil in substance because not only will this make meaningless the reality of all human suffering, it also makes void any reason for the human being to attain the purpose of time itself which is to bring him or her towards a destiny appointed by the one timeless LORD of all time.

Lukewarm complacency with regard to the one whole sphere of all human undertaking is a betrayal of all the things that make us completely human. The one whole entirety of the human endeavor is all about our liberation from inhuman things and ever like the difference between hot or cold, lukewarmness especially among the knowing souls who are awake to this reality is a crime.

My understanding of human suffering recognizes that because evil has entered from faded Eden and has spread into our one whole habitation, as human beings, we experience the effects of this corruption as suffering - more to the point, we experience suffering because in our souls is an absence of a reality that we all need to address. And indeed, mankind through the ages has had different ways of dealing with this peculiar sense of brokenness.

As our souls only respond to the reality of good things, evil being naturally incomprehensible to the human soul who is not by its own collaboration completely taken by it, we suffer both because of the presence of evil in our poor world and because of the absence of meaningfulness in our souls.

As the entrance of evil into our reality is the cause of all human suffering, the restoration of the good is the reason by which all of this evil is allowed to endure. All things in this world, both good and evil, are established in suffering, it is how we chose to suffer that makes distinct the force of our own convictions. For evil things cause suffering as consequence and this consequence is a descendant gravity that pulls the soul into the darkness of itself. On the other hand, good things require suffering as sacrifice - sacrifice being the one path chosen by and revealed by the one Source of all good things, Love Itself.

Having said all of that, my darlingest, my conundrum is that the temptation that causes me to do drugs is a moment that during those times when I do fall, has completely over run my will often times without my notice - there is no deliberation often times as to the matter, I only awaken to the consequence it leaves behind. And when the drugs have had its effect on me, the more impaired my senses become as regards to those evil things that exist within its particularity as I experience it - mainly in those things of lust that I mentioned to you, my darlingest.

Its not that I admit to its evil, for I know it is evil, my darlingest, its just that the course of my own hope as regards to this may not yet have found its way back to God and that I still have much to learn in this regard. Oh yes, my darlingest, I do have hope in this regard - a lot, I hope to one day be completely drug-free.

You know, my darlingest, there is certain strength to be found in a community - I know I have your support as well as the support of others who by the grace of God has been provided for me, for my own sake - but a community that is in the world has its own unique merits, particularly in the way that it can create through abiding friendships, new paths leading out of seemingly insurmountable problems.

I have mainly been isolated and alone - and not that I feel isolated and alone, my darlingest, for I am never really alone, its just that I've been so nomadic in my life that I have never been able to plant any roots in any community - not even here. I do not know a lot of the people here in my own community who are not my own relatives or their close friends. My dad often asks me, do you know him or do you know her, that guy from here or that gal from there, and the answer oftentimes is no. I have never been outgoing in my youth to know that many people and I tend to stick to only a few friends who I consider to be real.

Notwithstanding all of this, my darlingest, my hope for peace remain, for as regards this, I do not need to know many people to keep this hope true, I only need to know that there are yet people who are true to their own sense of shared humanity.

The battles I fight from within my own soul are my own, and though it could do with many things and lots of help, in the course of my own hope, I must accept the things I have been given to endure the siege of sin until God with His saving grace relieves me. But indeed, the battles that must be fought in the field of our common human hopes rely first on our being able to attain to the hope of victory within ourselves - these things, though seemingly different, form the one reality that as a whole is the particular reality of our human experience. One can not deal with the things of our human world without first learning to deal with the things of our human heart.

For time itself issues forth from the soul of every man, its purpose being carried out into the reality of our world by the contents of every human heart - how then can one change the contents of our world without first making that same change within the self?

I continue on my darlingest, if there are yet many things I yet have to learn and understand, this I know for sure, I shall have to make a firm commitment to go to confession and restore myself to the communion of Holy Mother Church - that is always the first step to closing the door to this wickedness.

My darlingest, it is only to you that I can confide these things as most other people will only be inclined to either stigmatize or misconstrue the whole thing as if it were either below them or not at all important - and I don't blame them, so many bad things have been done because of drugs that the perception of many are inclined to believe that all addicts are the same. But I know that not all addicts are the same, there are a number who are just trapped and need help and one day, if God permits me, I might be able to work on that also. But I must first get out of this addiction. I am afraid of the consequences that this thing brings especially the financial outcomes which are always against my favor - I have obligations that I have to face and I would that I keep them. Something to remind me for next time.

I love you and thank you for always bearing with me.

Always to always,

Pusing

Time once lost can never be regained, my darlingest. After today, I shall attmept again to begin anew to live my hope of becoming drug-free - to be in permanent recovery.

Here are some reminders I have drawn for myself:

Confession. Prayers. Penance. Communion.

1. Call on my Lord when evil thoughts arises.

2. Flee from any thought about drugs.

3. There is greater promise in recovery - this is self-evident.

4. Get interested in other things - work, family, friends and Mother Church.

5. Learn to love those ordinary days, when things seem plain and routine, these are the days to appreciate blessings received (as opposed to those bad days).

6. Temperance in all things - food, drink and entertainment.

7. Make sacrifice for love of God and all good things, the sins that need shedding - specifically at this time - drug abuse, to make more room in the soul for the grace of better things.