This is another of those very few entries I must preface with a plea for mercy, that I be allowed to vent without throwing a wrench in the Secret works. I am frustrated, tired, angry, and totally stumped. The very first thing I chose to use the Secret on, back in January, now ten months ago, was my skin. It quickly became clear that, like my perfect mate, clear skin was a desire I needed to build stamina for. I accepted that I needed more and various successes to build the faith required for these two, huge, long-held desires.
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So I waited, frequently testing out my faith on my skin with visualization, gratitude, etc. And each time finding myself unable to follow through. I have never had clear skin. Even on those rare occasions where there is, miraculously, no new blemishes, the scars would be there. I have never been free of the mask I must wear. It rules every social event, every outing, every choice I make that brings me into contact with people. I can’t even take a freaking nap without deciding whether or not the nap is worth removing my makeup and reapplying it. I have always been a slave to my skin’s needs and dire imperfections, and always longed to be free. It is therefore frustrating when part of the Secret, part of God’s faith, is visualization. How can I visualize what I’ve NEVER known? For more than half m y life, I have known my diseased skin and the despair that accompanies it. How can I make believe that my skin is creamy and radiant without makeup and feel all the attendant feelings of excitement, joy, relief, happiness, and confidence, when that has never, not once, been in my experience? Just consider that reality for a moment: since I was 13, more than half of my entire life span so far, I have NEVER had clear, unmarked skin.
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So I wasn’t surprised I needed time with the Secret to really tackle this first desire. But I feel as if I’ve been teased for ten months. Especially this summer/fall, when I discovered Mary Kay and began drinking lots of water, the latter of which was nothing short of a miracle as I have tried more than once to drink more water. And it started to work. For a while. How supremely frustrating to find it takes a month or more of drinking like a fish, 8 or 10 or 12 cups a day, to begin to see some change, and only a few days of falling off the wagon to have a full-blown breakout. How terribly disheartening to discover that freedom from food doesn’t include anything with a hint of sugar, which is no freedom at all. And how heartbreaking to realize that after all this time consciously, consistently using the Secret and years of aching for this freedom, I still don’t have what it takes to manifest this. And I really thought I had broken through. I was whispering every day in the mirror as I washed or make up my face, “Thank you for pure, white skin” and really trying to picture it. Trying my damnedest to imagine my husband seeing me with no make-up and not flinching. Because, you see, that is the rub, the greatest and really only true fear I have of marriage (which explains why I’ve tried so hard to use the Secret to rise above the fear and only concentrate on the picture I want): the horrific thought of evening coming on my wedding night, taking off my makeup because I can’t sleep in my makeup, and having to face my new husband with ravaged skin. The thought is so horrific, so disturbing and dreadful, it almost makes my gorge rise. It’s the worst picture I can imagine and it’s my worst fear, and I can’t seem to let it go, throw it away from me. What can I do? How can I use the Secret on it? It plagues me, even though I have been drawing up feelings of joy, relief, gratitude for my pure, white skin. And I’ve never been able to free myself of this depression when my skin is particularly bad by thinking, “Well, I’m alone and single and no one has to see me until after I’ve applied my makeup” because I ALWAYS look ahead to my marriage and know that I would HATE to be seen like this.
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I started crying last night as I watched the wedding scene in “Fiddler on the Roof” and clasped my hands so tightly my knuckles turned white and thought with my loudest voice, “Please, God, let that be your wedding gift to me. Let perfectly clear, unmarked skin be your only wedding gift to me. I don’t need anything else.” I just shudder, weep, cringe at the thought of my husband seeing me with this face. I want to be beautiful for my husband, not just because he is looking through the eyes of love. I don’t want him to have to find me beautiful and desirable in spite of my skin. Beautiful skin is such a necessary component of physical beauty; it begs to be touched, stroked, and kissed. I desperately don’t want my husband to reach out to me and see me cringe at the prospect of his hand caressing my bumpy, pockmarked, spotted face. I am sick with this.
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My parents say I should get on birth control and not worry about the someday when I have to get off of it, but I can’t not look ahead to that time when I’m off birth control. There will be someone who has to see me, all of me, all of my skin, no makeup, and I so want that skin to be good, not diseased. And what just sucks, and makes me so angry at the unfairness of it, is that after their suggestion this summer, and my reluctance at taking it, Mary Kay and water seemed to finally make the difference and I thought, oh, finally! And it’s so easy because I’m thirsty for the water. And then my hopes have been dashed – I can’t deny it any more. It makes me so angry. Others can eat junk and have great skin, while I eat healthy but God forbid I should have a cookie without immediately downing 14 cups of water to flush it out before it can get to my skin.
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I don’t know what else to do and I’m panicking because will I ever be free for good from the breakouts so the scars can heal which will take months and months? What will I do if my wedding day approaches and I can’t even feel the perfect joy I’ve waited for because I’m sobbing inside at the knowledge that I will have to come to my husband on our wedding night scarred and poxy?
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I desperately don’t want this journal entry and all the bad, bad, bad feelings and images that go along with it to bring about more of this horror to my life. Why is that even though the Secret teaches that a positive thought is many times more powerful than a negative one and that it takes many negative thoughts to manifest negative things in your life, I have instead so often found that one negative thought (even when you immediately replace it with a positive one) immediately manifests, while I can invest positive thoughts all day, every day, for months and it takes forever? Why is it that I can stave off this flu that’s been dogging me for days by focusing on health, but my skin absolutely erupts after I’ve thanked God for pure, white skin and held my head high for the skin I’m going to get? Why is it that my perfect mate hasn’t manifested yet either but I have so much more stable, consistent faith in that than in clear skin, even though I have an equal lack of experience in both? Why is it that the Secret has worded for so many things, big and small, for me, from a stoplight staying green to a gorgeous condo, but after all that I STILL don’t have enough faith to manifest clear skin? Will I NEVER have the faith for that? Oh, God, what a horrific thought. What a truly terrible, dreadful thought. What a horror I feel at that. Oh, please, please, don’t make me go into my marriage so grossly marked!
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This is another case of how the Secret can’t just be dependent solely on human will and strength. I don’t see how this will ever change because I am, each time I get my hopes up, revealed to have feet of clay. Obviously, I do not, never have had, and maybe will never have, enough faith for this mountain. I’ve thought that maybe once my perfect mate is sitting next to me, I’ll know as deep as I need to know that anything is possible and will finally then have the faith required to finally manifest this Loch Ness monster of desires. But all I know is that I don’t know and have never had the faith to manifest this. Surely, there is yet hope for me. Surely, it does not all rest in my own two hands, because those hands keep dropping the ball like the shaking, arthritic, feeble hands of the old. Where there is no way and no how, a way will be made. I don’t know how but it has to be possible. Possibilities must be possible or what is the purpose in the world? I have much to be grateful for. At least much of my skin is soft and pure and white. At least I don’t have a worse skin disease than acne. I know it can always get worse. But oh, God, does it make a dent in the firmament of heaven that I want this so much? Maybe I’m finally to the point of expressing these thoughts instead of overwriting their silence with words of faith and promise because I’m just tired. Tired of being cruelly disappointed once more. Tired of waiting for my perfect mate. Just tired. Maybe I’m just at the end of my strength with certain desires. But is there maybe this one gift left in your bag, God? Have they maybe not yet all been doled out and one small neatly wrapped box is left accidentally at the bottom of the bag, lost in shadow till you happen to find it? Maybe I won’t keep reaffirming this and bringing it onto myself. Maybe someday I’ll read this journal, maybe in another five years, and think, “Wow, I’ve had clear skin for so long I forgot how horrible it used to be.” Maybe this journal entry will serve a purpose in five or ten years that the journal entry five years ago served me a few weeks ago. I don’t know what the future holds. It has been shown already to hold great things for me, some I had long since forgotten to want. Maybe, maybe, maybe this great desire will actually, finally, truly come to me, and maybe I will be free for good.
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