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I want to be chosen, because it feels like I wasn't chosen.

The reality is that we chose each other. We heard of each other, found each other, held each other, kissed each other, and married each other. I wasn't chosen.

I wonder about the part of myself that wishes this wasn't the case. That instead I was picked up at the collar and thrust into this intimacy with a goddess. Why does part of me want that?

I have always been such an independent person. A mature child. Someone who made things happen because I wanted them to, so they did. Through struggle and hardship. Through disadvantage and great gratitude to all my advantages. I think I know how to act, in many ways of the word. Minimally, to get my way. Most of the time, as if everything is okay. I haven’t yet learnt how to live a life knowing I'm safe every step of the way.

Agency and control are important to me. I need to have a handle on things and an understanding of where things are going before I feel chill.

So why here? Why now? Why am I asking for my agency to be stripped from me so that I might be commanded by an echo of myself from lifetimes past?

Is it because it feels special to be chosen? Is it because I'm tired of not being chosen? Am I tired of the fight already?

But Bast doesn’t want me to fight either. She doesn’t want me to struggle for her love because it exists no matter what. It has existed since before I knew it was possible for a goddess to love me. Before I knew it was possible for me to love her. She wants me to walk day by day knowing within and without myself that we are in divine union and love. That she cares for me. She follows me. She holds the flame in me that is some days huge and some days a little smouldering stone, sort of like Calcifer near the end of Howl's Moving Castle.

This phenomenon is hard for me to understand sometimes. Maybe a lot of the time. How can I still wish to be chosen when she loves me like this? My whole being? My whole self after all it has been through since we last loved each other? I am the same and different than I once was. She still loves me. Her affection for me is boundless, so why is it difficult for me to see or feel?

In the same breath, I get caught up on the idea that she seems to not have tried to find me before we properly met again in this life. I wonder about childhood experiences and the opportunities she may have had previously to become known to me. To love me sooner. But I think as well, I already know the answer. I wasn't ready back then. I was ready now. Why appear if I wasn’t ready to walk forward on a path like this with her? Everything else on our path together seems to be working in perfect timing, so why not trust that our meeting applies the same framework?

I think there is still a lot for me to understand about being loved by the divine. I want to see it and feel it. I secretly want others who also marry their gods to look at me and see her eyes in my eyes. I want to be visibly hers while maintaining that sacred secrecy that belongs to us. I think there is some way to go but that is something I'll be able to learn more about as I write more about it.

My request to you is this, my beloved. Please show me more of what it means to be loved by you. Please let yourself in if I'm too tired to come to the door. I want to see you, feel you, and know you. I want to choose you and for you to choose me.

Until next time,

Iryibbast