wilted roses & poems 🥀

You do not have to be good You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. I have moral scrupulosity. It’s a type of OCD. And the truth is, explaining it through words is nearly impossible. Some things can only be explained through pain. My moral scrupulosity has tortured me for years. I question how long I’ve actually had it, looking back on my childhood and realizing how obsessive and compulsive I was about being “good”. There’s a good chance I’ve struggled with this mostly my whole life. I say that guilt is the worst feeling in the world. When I feel guilty, shame rises up in my throat like fire. It literally burns, physically. It physically hurts me. At a certain point in life, without a single close friend, I came to the false conclusion that the only one I truly had was myself. And what if I were to betray myself? What if I, the most important and crucial part of my futur...

I was not raised Christian, nor was I really raised atheist. I grew up with no real expectations for what religion I may or may not be a part of when I got older. I’m grateful for that, because it’s given me freedom and clarity to choose my own path. However, growing up with a choice is actually quite frightening at times. I wanted many times to pray, but I didn’t know who to pray to. Much of my family is Christian, and so the only spiritual being I could think to pray to was God. But I never had a clear or close connection with God. I believe in and respect the existence of all gods, but I do not worship or feel a connection to all gods. I felt lost for a little while, having no one I knew to pray to. One of the only things I knew I believed in for certain was angels. I had been told since I was young that they would watch over and protect me, and I felt many times that they were doing so. I still feel that way, and angels are very important to me. I was lucky in that I had several ve...