The only title I can come up with is sushi

I told my host today that I am interested in going through the process to become a convinced Quaker. In Quaker weddings (and if you are a Quaker I don’t think you *have* to have a Quaker wedding, especially if you aren’t marrying a Quaker) the couple marries themselves! I just learned that. I had no idea about it but I like it; it is strange when I think about it to get married by someone you don’t even know at all who may have a secret life in crime! It is nice to know the person who is marrying you, especially if that person is yourselves.

He says he has not done it yet because of certain differences with the majority of Quakers, such as not being in any way a theist. But he says that unlike Quakers he does not believe in the light, he experiences it as an observable reality. It is a little hard for me to comprehend that considering he does not believe in an afterlife. I do not know how to have faith in the light without faith in afterlife. The idea of death is so scary for me that, if we just disappear when we die, the light feels like an illusion or a trick, and I am struggling with that. He does believe that parts of us carry on, as through our DNA and in other ways.

I happened to mention that my grandfather’s father’s family came from Bradford, Yorkshire, which is sort of where George Fox started the Quaker movement. That is a fact that I keep forgetting and I don’t think I had any idea of that until recently, but who knows, maybe that is part of why I am drawn to Quakers, like something that happened back then is still part of me now. It is in any case an interesting thought!

You know, actually, before I even go to Japan, which I am hoping to do sometime next year, maybe I will take my first trip to England. More and more I am interested in going there and I really don’t know why or anything. I love classical English literature and British humour but honestly I have no idea what England would be like and it almost scares me a little bit. I have only been in the Heathrow and Manchester airports. I was quietly intrigued just to be in that country. Part of me does not like admitting I may be an anglophile. You would think if I were I would have gone a long time ago. For some reason when I travel it never occurs to me to think of England. That doesn’t mean I am not intrigued.

Maybe that tells me there is something there for me to find out. I have never been to a place where my ancestors came from and… I think I would like to explore Yorkshire. I want to learn English history. It is a place I think I would like to understand better. The only caveat is that I am going to have to learn English.

My nervous system is kind of a mess today and I am scared of who knows what. Oh, I keep anticipating rejection, and last night I was sure that it happened, and I felt quite horrible, but this morning I got an email that I had just joined an impromptu meeting accidentally. It was not a… I know you are bad and ai don’t like you kind of rejection, , thankfully. I had this fear that the whole world hates me and I think I have always had this fear but after all I have been through, if I am accepted by others, I think I can relax and trust that more now. The last couple months I have had several occasions where I have feared the worst: someone seemed nervous when talking to me so I read all sorts of things into it. It keeps turning out that these people seem to have nothing against me at all and it was all my thoughts propagating in papancha. Still I am scared of not being liked for reasons I don’t know or understand or are not fair or they might be fair but… yeah, I have always been so scared I guess of what would happen if I said or did the wrong thing and everybody found out about it and I think I have tested the waters because if my belonging is really precarious it doesn’t feel like belonging.

I can just be myself and let myself be liked or not, whatever. I posted a couple things to my old Facebook account recently. I think most of the folks on there couldn’t care less about me and that is especially apparent when your post gets flagged as inappropriate for mentioning the simple, honest truth that I have trouble remembering the difference between the words ‘daring’ and ‘naughty’ in Spanish. I asked them to review it because I cannot imagine that breaking any rules. The only thing is they didn’t tell me which post was flagged, but it *must* have been that one. Someone is remaining on my Facebook who knows why but having something like that reported means someone clearly does not like me. Whatever though.

I am confronting my insecurities. A lot of my insecurities came from things I had no need to hold onto for so long, things that were not my fault, things I had no reason to be ashamed of… and somehow, suddenly, I realise I am innocent. Of that, anyway. I was expecting others to tell me that. Now I feel guilty for other things, ways I acted more recently probably because I felt so horrible about what happened way back then, and dismissed myself as a horrible person anyway, but after I got it out of me and felt guilty for that, I realised what happened back then… was not my fault. Why did I assume that if it was not my fault and I didn’t do anything wrong someone would tell me? It hurt so much but it’s over now. It was something I had to learn for myself. Now there are new things to feel bad about but the thing that had sich an effect on my life for so long, somehow that pain may finally be healing…

Food delivery has been a constant hassle lately. Always some kind of escándalo. The owner of the local pizza place came himself one day and two orders got delivered because the first one got delivered to a door that is never used and nobody can follow instructions or whatever. There is always some issue. Last time the tip was put on the card and the delivery person did not see it and would not leave until he saw he had a tip. Eventually he found it on a receipt. It is always something, except the time I ordered some delicious Chinese food. Tonight I ordered sushi and the order said delivered but it never arrived. So I tried again. We’ll see. I almost ordered my first vegan salmon sushi but it did not have avocado so I ordered a veggie.