Last time I saw this journal, I was a little more than halfway through a self-imposed year of celibacy inspired by Joshua Harris' book I Kissed Dating Goodbye. I started on August 30 2004, without really knowing why... I just had a feeling, sort of, so I did it. This diary at one point chronicled my struggles with it, but most of the entries were just me being wistful about people who wouldn't be good for me anyway.

Six months in, on March 1/05, I wrote:

so I have been single, or rather celibate, for six months.
for most people this is not a big achievement. plus attractive opportunities to screw up were (thankfully) rather scarce.
an interesting question... would I have ditched the whole thing if someone really really amazing had come along? or if some of my fuzzy feelings, harmless because they were so unrealistic, were actually reciprocated? what then?
but we are not tempted beyond what we can handle.
does that mean I wouldn't have been able to handle it?
we will see.

it doesn't bother me anymore. I've stopped searching men and women's faces looking for something beautiful, or scouring their souls for something I could love. if it's there, it's there. and there are so many lovely people in this world that I will not spend my life with, that are going to play a part in my life in other ways. I have stopped seeking. I have stopped forcing. I have stopped -- will stop -- lying to myself and to others, and worrying so much.

(I'm nineteen. it's not like my biological clock is ticking. or like all the single people in the world are dying of the disease of singleness and I had better find a partner RIGHT NOW or that's the end of Aly and next thing you know I'll be dead in a hole somewhere.)

on the weekend I realized that none of the little crushes I have had, recently or in the past, are worth breaking this for.
the only people that I might consider abandoning celibacy for, are the people I am 100% certain would not only wait another six months for me, but actually encourage me to finish it.

Then, the day after it was done, I wrote this...

Anyways... it is done. My year of celibacy, or no dating/sex/intimacy. I think part of me expected some crazy thing to happen today, like the person I'm supposed to marry materializing out of thin air, or a sudden crazy revelation, or a really cool natural disaster. But all that happened was that I hung out with some friends, went used-book shopping, got my OHIP card renewed got some mail, and had some internet drama. Hardly extraordinary. I suppose I am a superstitious person and now after all that crusading for singleness, I was at sort of a loss of what to do next.

Then I read Song of Songs 8:9... If she be a wall, we will build upon her a turret of silver; and if she be a door, we will enclose her with boards of cedar.

And I understand now why this sequestering was necessary. People speak of walls as a bad thing, but perhaps they're sometimes a good thing...

Compare with the New Living Translation's version of that same verse: If she is chaste, we will strengthen and encourage her. But if she is promiscuous, we will shut her off from men.

And everything falls into place. Thank God for the NLT. Even the cleverest of English majors can't be expected to understand that metaphor.
I realized that the whole year had been some sort of "sequestering", a readying, a weaning off the old addictions of touch and sex and approval from men, and a separation from "normal"/secular dating. I have so much more of an appreciation for God's plan for love, and a better understanding of what Christian relationships all about. I don't think I could have started a Christian relationship with all the remnants of the past still present in my heart, or if I did, I wouldn't be able to do it "right".

I've also realized that the Year kept me from entering wrong relationships with people who seemed good, but really weren't. I met a lot of them this year, and with the way everything turned out, I'm glad I stuck to my guns. Plus, if I had gotten into a relationship in Ottawa, it might have hindered my decision to leave the city and move back here, where I believe God truly wants me to be.

At the end of April, the evening before I moved home, I got a tattoo inspired by two D. H. Lawrence novellas, St. Mawr and The Man Who Died: the words NOLI ME TANGERE on my chest. The translation of the latin, according to D. H. Lawrence, is "touch me not". To me, it reminds me that God's children are not "of this world", and that we must take care not to let superficial worldly or material cares get in the way of our purpose. That, and it's sort of symbolic of the way I identified with Lawrence's two female characters: Lou Witt in St Mawr who gives up her wealth, social status and materialism to pursue what she feels is right... and the priestess in The Man Who Died (the man who died being the only man the priestess truly loved enough to give herself to - Jesus Christ.)

Reading of D. H. Lawrence's character of the priestess of Isis has inspired me. She feels the heat and the power of the men around her -- something D. H. Lawrence describes as "suns" -- and, instead of opening to it like a bud in bloom, shies away from it.
She later asks a wise man whether all woman are born to be given to men.