If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

I was reading a book for work and it referenced the above, without attributing it to anyone. The way the author wrote about it I knew the passage must be well-known and so I typed the words in Google and discovered they are from Jane Eyre, which I have never read.

These words jumped out at me with a vengeance because at the time I was reading them I was experiencing a huge amount of self-loathing and I have been going through this solitude lately that feels both good and bad. Good in that I cannot possibly make as many social faux pas (or worse) if I am not around others and bad because, well...after a while solitude can just feel so lonely and as the passage that follows so aptly puts it:

"No: I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen."

I feel like I cannot really write about these words more, or truly know them, without also knowing the full context and more about Jane Eyre. The words are so haunting me that I went into the Kindle store and just downloaded it for free.

I hope to get to it after I finish a book that I have been purposely taking my time with because it has so much to say and I think that it may really help me embrace solitude better without embracing the self-loathing. It really is a wonderful book:

 




 

This is such good advice. Sometimes, when we really want something to be a certain way, our heart can almost make us think it is that way but, in the end, that is neither practical nor very good nor fair to anyone involved. Things that cannot be changed just are the way they are and accepting that is crucial to a healthy well being and state of mind...easier said than done, but something I really, really want to work on in my life...

I wish more than anything this were possible. I have long wished this could be so and have always found this to be one of my favorite Proverbs. My mother, if she knew, would be so happy that I have been reading the Bible tonight. It is so weird how sometimes, because of things I have read and heard from strangers and from people in my own life, that I feel like I do not have the right to be both gay and Christian.

Wanting to guard my heart would be the same no matter whether I was gay or not. I have been struggling in my feelings now for a few years on and then things recently grew more complicated when I started getting attached, in a different way, to a different person while also still feeling how I do about the first person.

There are so many ways to care about someone and still get hurt because you got too attached and they did not. It can be romantic or platonic, familial or work-related, no matter what the context, letting your heart open up to friendship or love is still risking getting hurt very painfully and I do not think you have to be cynical to believe that.

But wishing you had better guarded your heart only after your heart got too attached is like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube after it has popped out or closing the barn door after the horse has already fled.

I do not know why, exactly, but I find it kind of sad-funny that the very book that has been used to vilify and hate gay people is the very book that is comforting me right now.



 New International Version
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
New Living Translation
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
English Standard Version
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
New American Standard Bible
Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.
King James Bible
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Holman Christian Standard Bible
Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.
International Standard Version
Above everything else guard your heart, because from it flow the springs of life.
NET Bible
Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it are the sources of life.
Aramaic Bible in Plain English
Keep your heart with all caution because from it is the outgoing of life.
GOD'S WORD® Translation
Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.
JPS Tanakh 1917
Above all that thou guardest keep thy heart; For out of it are the issues of life.
New American Standard 1977
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
            For from it flow the springs of life.

For many reasons, I have not dated in a long, long time but when I used to and certain topics would come up in conversation, the other person would often be bewildered (or worse, horrified) that I felt waiting was important. So when I read this article, so, so much of it speaking to me, the relief was almost intensely overwhelming...and even though I no longer date nor plan to, I still feel this immense relief and less freakish and alone for having some of the views I have as a single and celibate lesbian:

 
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/gay-waiting-for-marriage/414984/


After I read this article I did some online searching and I discovered that there are more women than I thought that feel this way...and the advent and legalization of gay marriage in our country has made this even more apparent and an actual reality. There would have been a time (there was a time) when people (including other gay people) would have looked at someone sideways and with great skepticism over wanting to wait for marriage.

Articles like the one above and others I found are nice for me because they comfort me that I am not only the 'old-fashioned' lesbian out there, something a friend of mine once told me was an oxymoron. Because of certain circumstances in my life I have just always known that I would most likely end up single for all of my life.

Even so, just knowing that there are other people out there like me, people who value love above all other aspects of being gay or lesbian, well, that just makes me somehow feel a lot less alone...even if I really do never met the woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life.

https://www.yahoo.com/health/some-gay-couples-putting-off-sex-until-after-205248087.html

I am not a big fan of Madonna herself, though I really like a lot of her music. I do think her quote below is so very true and something to hold on tightly when you are struggling.

When it comes to worrying someone has stopped liking you, there is insecurity and then there is instinct. Maybe your anxiety and worries are false and simply just feeding your concern that someone no longer wants to be in a friendship or maybe there are subtle but still very real signs that just about break your heart. I do not think even the most quiet shifts in tone and how someone once communicated with you and no longer quite does the same way are to be ignored. You hope so, so, so very much that you are wrong and yet you worry. A friendship that has come to mean so much to you is not something you want to lose nor that you want to even think about losing :(

I always, always silently tell myself that I will not get attached to someone and yet I do, anyway. I think The Wizard of Oz was so right when he told the Tin Man he did not know how lucky he was not to have a heart...