I've been trying to compose a Last Blog Post in my head all day, with little luck. How do you conclude five and a half years of cyberbabble?
Eh. You accept that you can't.
I'm done here. Thank you for reading, especially if you've been reading all along.
I knew I should have developed a signature goodbye by now. Alas.
xoxo
[I fixed the video!]
***
Bum be bum bum bum di da da di da
I don't like my previous post much. "Oh, here's a whole eighteen paragraphs on a topic I claim I'm not worried about." And then, eh, I suppose I shouldn't gather that my processing something is the same as worrying about it. But still. And I was so hyperbolic. I am the most hyperbolic I've ever been.
hehe
I just ate a ginormous bowl of Kix and a vanilla Drumstick. And I'm soooo sleeeeepyyyyy and I use so many vowels when I'm sleeeeepy. Ys, sometimes.
(I do like that this blog accurately conveys changes in my depth of thought.... "What, pray tell, does the future hold?" shares a brain with "YES! My milk to cereal ratio was LEGIT!")
I've gone a few days without an anxiety episode. It's all or nothing, it seems. Balancing it is kind of fun. Choppy waters groom stronger sailors. And sometimes... it's no fun at all.
My email is broken. That's pretty rude!
I am going to talk to the Registrar on Thursday. Right after I pass my motorcycle licensing test. And just like that, numerous shows are getting on the road. My money show, however, has taken to what feels like a gravel path. While walking barefoot. But I've only ever been at the mercy of God's provision, and I continue to praise that I am. Lack of resources grooms...stronger resource sailors. Stewards, if you will. Stewards of the High Seas.
***
This song plays at work a lot. People don't like it. It's one of my very favorite songs of ever. I told a scoffing colleague that I put this on the first love mix I ever made. She asked if we were still together. Touche, darling. But Joni and I, we did the best we could, and between that relationship and this song, the better of the two survived.
And I felt myself searching for answers that typically satisfy. I said something about being either five years further into vertical growth in my current job, or roughly three years closer to a profession it might take me another two years to determine. They seemed satiated.
I thought about this the whole way home, talking out loud to myself and to God the way I do. Where do I see myself in five years?
How about where does God see me in five years? I mean honestly, in five years, I see myself thankful that I've lived for twenty-five years. Isn't the point that I don't see anything? Who am I to project myself that far into the future on my own strength?
I'm not negating hope. I understand goals and ambitions and dreams. I understand the basic, linear curiosity behind the question. And I don't resent the question. I'm quite pleased it was asked of me, considering it spurred this much thought. I would have thought about it less if not for the amount of recent thought I've put into going back to school. My first thought was, wow! Five years from now, I could be two years into exploring any field I choose. Here's the thing, though.
I know I sound like a hippie, an idealist, or perhaps just plain lazy, but I feel like I chose my field when I quit school. I don't want to learn the way university requires me to. I can't afford to get a degree and travel. Even if I could, I'd have to work around my school schedule. I can't work full-time and take classes. I'll cut my speed of progress in half. Yes, I will have done it for the sake of progress in something else... but what?
There's a giant blank there that I haven't filled. The longer I go without filling it, the more readily I grasp that I might not. I mean, I might. There's time. But I might not. Cause there's time. There's only so much time, and it's not much at all, and how will I wish I had spent it?
I have been attempting to master three things.
1) Separate what I can change from what I can't. Change what I can as I want to. Release what I can't.
2) Be a better friend.
3) Stop worrying.
alternate title:
3) Trust God.
I do wonder if/why I lack ambition. I don't think I would wonder this on my own. I think I anticipate that other people might wonder that for me. It doesn't make me feel very good. It makes me feel stagnant and shallow and loser-y. So, ambition. What do I want to do? Where do I see myself in five years?
By the grace of God, I will have come across someone who I live to love and support. I am realizing how often my happiness hides in others' happiness. I just... want everyone to be who they want to be. And I want to help them get there.
My dream is to help people reach their dreams. I don't care in what capacity. I would set aside every dream I have if it meant I could take some part in encouraging/praying/funding/moving/hard laboring/baking/brewing/writing/laughing people I love into the places they see themselves.
Where do I see myself in five years? Where do YOU see yourself in five years? How can I help you get there?
That's how I feel. That's the furthest I've gotten. And you know what, time and money are finite. God hasn't established a degree as the most worthy recipient of mine. That will always be all the peace I need about forgoing one.
The person who asked me this question concluded our discussion by telling me, "You know, I'll always watch out for you, but I'll never worry about you. You are going to be more than fine."
I could have cried. That sentiment is the most I could ever ask of anybody. I am the most content I've ever been. I am in the most awe of God's love and faithfulness to me than I've ever been. My heart is the most geographically settled it's ever been. Concern for me is laughable.
Where do I see myself in five years?
Still happy. Still prayerful. Near my family. In possession of long-awaited travel memories. In literary magazines? In love? Grateful.
Here's the truth.
I'm just not worried about it.
Hmmm
Thinking a lot about God's faithfulness and provision and my adventures in prayer.
About good friends and excessive laughter.
About ambition and intention and their marriages to action and execution.
About recognizing unproductive thought and minimizing it.
About squeezing peace from anxiety
joy from concern
reality from dreams
truth from wonder.
About abstract nouns and the insufficient depth of language.
Perhaps that's why eyes say so much.
she was terribly hungry.
and she wasn’t a pronoun
not a euphemism for that girl,
not an antecedent in hiding,
not a tally for feminism,
not a manifestation
of anything other than a place
to store waffles,
and she did.
fluorescent lighting harsh
like her eye contact,
a prayer for a dimmer switch basking
in the bottom of every bottomless cup
of coffee
--a euphemism indeed.
she was alone
often alone
shaking with laughter and unease
saying things like
“I’ve lost my style.”
they ask, “How is
everything?”
and she finds that
an impossible question to answer.
expressway blues echo.
later, a train will croon
and it settles into her like a knife
into soft wood
the idea that everywhere is somewhere
people traveling as hopes do:
at the mercy of delays and cancellations.
the only map she can see confirms that she is,
in fact,
here
ordering seconds
of time and of hashbrowns
her eyes alight like the pre-dawn sky.
the grey-blues soften as the sounds in her head do,
internal silence reaching equilibrium
with that of the world at this hour.
counting the number of syllables in the word
“longitudinally,”
she makes Olympic rings out of water circles
and peace with expectations.
she notes that she's only ever seen
one Heinz variety
and that this linoleum booth is no harder
than it is to say goodbye.
Me again. I always attempt a bit of a routine when I find myself buzzing at a frequency higher than I can control. Pray. Drive. Blog. Sleep.
Which is silly, cause there's nothing to say.
When I was in seventh grade, I qualified for a three-week academic summer camp at Davidson College. The course I chose was Mysteries of Human Consciousness. Man, if a degree existed by that exact title, I'd have it by now. Anyway. We watched this video that detailed two cases of abnormal neurological chemical levels, but I can't remember the chemicals. In one case, the patient could find no other explanation for his lack of emotional recognition of his parents than to claim that they'd been abducted by aliens. He was so devoid of love and affection for them that he had to wonder if they were them at all. Something to do with serotonin or dopamine, perhaps. His parents were distraught, unable to convince their son that they were exactly who they'd always been. In the second case, the patient could find no explanation for his overblown care and concern for every single living thing other than to claim that he was God. Heightened levels of the same chemicals caused him to imagine ownership and compassion for every single plant, animal, and person. He was exhausted.
Of all the things I learned during that program, which was the up-to-then best experience of my life, it's this video I recall most often. I have drawn upon it when I wonder what tangible things, if any, cause my crippling sense of hyperawareness. I tire of the mind. I believe in it as I do the soul, but it's like treating a high blood pressure patient for heartbreak. Similar catalysts may intersect to produce similar symptoms, but if what you're doing isn't working, it's time to consider other diagnoses.
I have a regular customer with Tourette's whom I see almost daily. His audible and visible compulsions make people uncomfortable. He tries to control them but is rarely successful. What most seem to see as poor self-judgment of his capacity to handle social situations, I see as courage. Sure, there's a point at which he should be mindful of his effect on other people, but I think that's exactly what he is. The internal plea he makes to himself to be normal is broadcast in the brief eye contact he musters in place of verbal responses to how-are-yous and have-a-good-days.
I've never been close to someone with Tourette's, so I have no explicit justification for my defense of this man outside of my attempt at compassion and kindness. But it unnerves me terribly to imagine how I would process visible manifestations of my mental grievances. Sometimes I wish I were forced to, if only to release a valve in what feels like a pressurized cocoon. Sometimes I feel closer to that man than I do to anyone else all day. Which is fine, considering that growing close to anyone feels like cocoon implosion.
Step 2 found me accelerating up a hill earlier tonight, and as I looked down to check my speed, the needle jumped almost imperceptibly from 45 to 50mph. Not gradually. Instantly. The discrepancy between what I felt in my constant acceleration and what I saw in the instant result... I can't explain it. Incongruencies send in-that-state me over the edge. My attempt to literally shake off the anxiety battled my ability to stay in my lane. The latter won, to be clear. Nothing to see here, folks.
Well. Looks like there was some to say, after all. Goodnight forreal. Step 4 beckons.
Merrhh. If that's what crankiness sounds like.
The pile of laundry on my bed is taller than I am wide. Or deep? Whatever my horizontal dimension. Don't worry. It's clean. It's like napping in a valley. Napping Valley! hahahahahah
sorry.
I love my ampersand! It's been long enough that I can look at it without reflecting on the decision itself. I see it now and think, "did I come with this?! who put it there! it's awesome!" Silly goose. You did. Cause you're cool.
The sunlight filters through dancing leaves and static blinds while I filter through thoughts that pass like highway exits. Attempts to repossess them float away in futility comparable to that of a wintertime firefly hunt.
My rising gas budget is a donation to the therapy that is driving curvy roads, windows down, Dylan Waters Morrison Townsend Mitchell Garfunkel wailing along with me. I do most of the wailing. Well, and Dylan. What a guy.
Spirits are high, I think. The family tackles trials together and only ever loves and enjoys each other more as a result. The job, no matter its sometimes (uh, often) overwhelming triviality, means what it means to me and gives me the opportunity to glorify God through maintained patience and humility and grace concerning colleagues and customers alike. I've settled into a general sense of belonging, but the recognition of such hasn't filled a desperate void. It's improved upon a standard. I'm never lost. I belong where I'm happy, where I'm loved, where I love. The rest is all gravy and buttercream icing. As separate condiments. Don't be gross.
I would like to conclude with the sound of a small smile. I typed all the crankiness right outta me.
Enjoy your evening. Encourage someone. Embrace silence.
xoxo,
Gossip Girl
"She did not want to think, but the sound of thought went on."
I resent affirmation that self-preservation is synonymous with good judgment.
I'm kinda ready to step out of the freezer, but I'm not strong enough to melt.
I'm kinda ready for someone to convince me to stop running.
This empty white box both soothes and terrifies me.
How did I become so guarded? Why doesn't Dagny Taggart's cynicism shock me more?
Why do I get butterflies when I listen to Explosions in the Sky? Why do I insist that people work so hard to see me transparently? Who taught me how to do that? Will I accidentally teach my children to do that?
How do I reconcile my love and contempt?
Where do I sign up to become a monk.
The nuns have too many chicks.
Sometimes I think I can't handle anything more than praising God in silence for the rest of my life, though it's in God that I could.
Sometimes I want to look at everything I love in one place, breathe deeply, close my eyes, and walk away from it forever.
and just walk. forever.
I am a horrid journaler. I always have been. I think up new, inventive ways to journal, in attempts to keep my attention and remind myself of the worth in recorded thought. No sooner have I conceived such ideas than I begin to accept the fruition they'll never see.
I record my thoughts to get them out of my head. All I want, really, is somebody who will take them from me. I don't need to write them down; it's all mercurial and transient and nothing sticks. It sticks to paper and nothing else. As I continue to mull over and evaluate McCandless's proposition that "happiness is only real when shared," I find myself oscillating between the all and nothing approaches. Nothing is real unless shared. Everything is real, even when un-shared. Entire philosophies have been built upon each.
I'm digressing.
I don't want to keep a journal. I want to think my thoughts and lose them as they leave, the same way I lose everything else. They will survive inside of me until I forget them, or inside of those I tell.
Too much of me looks over my shoulder, where I imagine the someone I'd love is waiting for me to turn around.
Why can't they just catch up?
***
I am a linear thinker, but not lately, and it's messing with me. Can you tell? Of course there's worth in recorded thought. To posit anything else meets immediate scrutiny. Something to do with its lack of basis.
What have I been doing here for five years? Recording thought. Its worth spans a vast spectrum, but everything that isn't nothing is something.
Blah blah blah.
This is all aftermath of my sudden suspicion that none of my bones are writer's bones.
True, they're no one's but mine.
But what are they for? If not writing, if not higher learning, if not befriending, if not traveling, if not loving...
Well. They're for some of those things. Must be, if I say so. I am their only judge.
They're for, perhaps, a little bit of everything.
In another life--the one in which my uncle makes clocks and I collect old, mismatched spoons, the one in which my favorite series is Anne of Green Gables and I pepper conversation with in-context passages of Thoreau's Walden, the one in which my brother's been gone for years and I never learned to whistle--in this life that's not my own, I grew up near a marina. I can tie seven reliable boat-docking knots, and I know how to scale a fish. Every local fisherman and fisherwoman knows my name like they do their boat's, and they cast their nets like I cast glances--with the careful precision expert risk-taking requires. I've never ventured from home. I've never had reason more pressing than the paradoxical desire of a dockbound gypsy. I embody the domestic adage "grown and groomed," and I don't resent it often.
***
The towels are in the dryer and the Saab's oil is fresh. Your mom called. Your dad won his match. Nancy said Dan is re-staining the deck next weekend, and would you be willing to help him? I didn't speak for you. I watered the mums on the windowsill, but I fear the tomatoes are past repair. I unsubscribed you from Men's Health and TIME. The library carries new issues within the week of release. I wonder if you're on your way. It's alright, Mr. Kim said they're catering an event tonight and so it would take a bit longer than normal. I called Paul back and told him we went a different way with the molding, and he said it was fine. Did you remember your brother's birthday? The card is next to the toaster. There's a special on tonight I thought we could watch. It's about that man who killed all those people in Minnesota. Something about the mind of a killer. Can you imagine? All those people. I can't imagine. There was a story in the news about a little boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, he killed his neighbor's cat. They say that's how it starts, those killers. I say it starts when someone didn't raise them properly. Too many parents working all the time. They've got to put food on the table for those killers of theirs. I ran into Martha at the store today and she said Mel is retiring as soon as they figure out which route to take from here to New England. On their boat! Can you imagine? I've never been to New England. I wonder if their winters are as bad as they say. I do hope you'll be home soon. I have so much to tell you.
Loving someone is an invincible feeling. Interesting, given the volatility of love. But for what it is and the purpose it provides, it accomplishes almost everything you'd want to, and it does it all at once. If you're me, travel with someone you love, and the "almost" fades away.
Sometimes I wish I hadn't loved anybody yet. Not because it's passed, but because the contrast between life in love and life without spans a length broad enough to sadden me. I suppose it's the lack of anything that pulls us to reclaim what's lacking, but a pull you have no control over begins to feel like a drag through the mud.
No one likes to perform as a shade of what they could be. Most commonly, that's coined as "selling yourself short," if you believe doing so is possible. That's why sudden unemployment is such a source of grief and depression for those struggling with it. Productivity and purpose as they knew it formerly disappear without saying goodbye. I consider living life between loves as living life between jobs. The latter is but a shadow in comparison, but when I think of performing as a shade of what I could be, I think of what I'm doing at any point that I'm not composing phrases of devotion in my head and conjuring ways to make one person smile. In fact, I do it anyway. But the person isn't real.
I don't think I so highly regarded knowing someone as well as they'll allow me--and even better than that--before I'd been in love. It's become my goal in any relationship I have. So much so that if I recognize the person in question has either given that part of them to someone else, or doesn't care for me to have it, I don't care much to have them. I think it's important that I've recognized this, because it's not terribly healthy. It doesn't render me a very good friend. Yet I can't shake the desire for the greatest opportunity of knowledge of any one person. I don't believe this is an original or even rare desire; it's a pride any soul well-versed in companionship would take. But it seems I prefer loneliness to anything less than the gold. Perhaps understandable, considering how precious the gold.
But isn't silver nice, too?
The answer is a dialogue between my head and my heart, and I'm not sure which says which.
"Yes."
"But you can have it."
Hey! So. I woke up this morning with a heavy feeling. If I hadn't worked today, it might have consumed me. It was more of the same; no need to verbalize the sensations. But I sorted through it. Or it sorted through me? Either way.
Anyway, so I'm thinking about ambition and goals and how you can spend all your time dreaming of who you'll be, but who were you while you dreamed?
I'm doing my laundry, washing my sheets. Drinking water. Cleaning my kitchen. Adult-esque things, yes? Maybe? Dusting off the ol' Ingrid mp3s. "I want to change the world; instead, I sleep." All we can do is keep breathing.
I'm looking forward to so much! An entire week at the beach with the family and friends. Friends visiting. Asheville with Becky! Motorcycle course. St. Louis. Chicago.
Man, I just.... just the prospect of travel calms me down. Knowing it will happen makes me want to shriek with glee. Into a pillow, so I don't frighten anyone.
I'm praying about L'Abri, Alaska, and Haiti. I'm praying about school, work, church, and love, and the absence of each, as they apply.
Like a certain favorite and recently very stressed-alternating-with-very excited roommate likes to remind me, you're only lonely if you consider yourself bad company. Or something like that? I don't want to be lonely anymore.
So I won't be.
Hi. I am on my lunch break at work. I am typing this on my tiny phone. I wanted to say that I'm a bit tired of being such a drag all the time. I couldn't sleep last night and realized with a start that I'd like to put all the time I smush into thinking into learning instead. I spend so much time in my head. Granted, I often feel trapped there, but who doesn't like a challenge? I don't want to be so stormy all the time. We all have enough of that. So from now on, I'll post more of the sunshine. I might try a music posting project my brother suggested. Or upload my instagram pictures. And surely, when I have no one to turn while I'm sifting through the dark, I'll turn to you, but I'll steer some clear skies this way, too. Something good this way comes. Anyway, it's time for me to go. Forgive any typos... this post is proofread-free. Good day to you! Good day to me.
I feel like an alarmist when I post such things in the public eye, but then I remember it's my portal that readers choose to partake in, not some platform upon which I assume responsibility to said readers.
that doesn't mean I don't love you.
:)
by "such things," I mean that I don't know where it came from and I can't explain its intermittence, but I believe I am fighting a depression and that I will do so in some degree for the rest of my life.
I've come across numerous postings lately, on tumblr, postsecret, assorted blogs, etc., where people relay their transition from thinking people who say they battle depression are dramatic, stagnant hypochondriacs to recognizing that they are overcome with a struggle they would rid themselves of as soon as shown how to. I tried never to subscribe to the first evaluation, but the second stands in new light.
Perhaps it's not a depression. I don't even really know what that means. In taking inventory of the trends this blog has taken, you know as well as I do that my grasp on my psyche is some balance of intricate and ignorant. I suppose I am just sad sometimes... some deep, overwhelming, weighty, isolating, paralyzing, exhausting form of sad. Maybe I'll grow out of it.
I wonder if I'll be waiting to grow out of it thirty years from now.
Knowing and living in the joy of the Lord does not translate to happiness. That's okay.
Sometimes I imagine that each of my woes is tied to a balloon or a bird that floats and flies away. I would like to take fewer things seriously and to be more fun and not to have a reason to express these feelings at all. But in my consideration that no time is wasted, I am left to gather that nothing that requires it is wasted, either. Whatever fills your life has filled your life. One of those philosophical mumbo jumbos that sounds overly simple but could spin your head like a carousel if you let it.
I'm just me, though, and this is part of it. I don't smile as often as people would like me to, and I laugh at myself more often than people understand. I don't intend to separate myself from humanity; while it's true that I rarely come across people I feel can process some of my wavelengths, I assume that most people feel the same way about themselves. I am no more than one more creation, living under and within the human condition, yelling a whisper about things everyone already knows. And at the same time, there has never been another with the same set of genes, experiences, and thoughts.
It's whatever.
Thanks for reading. I want to tell you that secretly, I'm pretty fun. That I know a few good jokes, and that I'm a good candidate for listening to you talk about anything that excites you. But then I'd be defending myself, and I don't want to do that here.
ttfn, little chickadees. and something dramatic and inspiring, like
Godspeed.
sometimes I catch myself trying to force thoughts into status-sized morsels, and then I remember that's what this is for.
I just want... so many experiences. adventures. destinations. the rearview mirror. I always want to go. to go and be gone.
and some day I may want roots, an anchor, lead feet, down payments...
and some days I want to love somebody, more than I want to be loved, though I refuse to invest the first without affirmation of the latter, and it strikes me today that I'd rather the gypsy adventure than the adventure in love. that one I've tried.
it strikes me today that I dread salesmanship for the same reason any stretch of time without a transition in sight makes my skin feel four sizes too small: fear of rejection.
no one leaves you if you leave first.
unoriginal and straightforward. nothing to dissect and nothing to wonder. but it's there, and it's true.
and the parallel causes me a bit of pain, somewhere southeast of my heart, as though my abdomen maps the country and Georgia throbs with the stagnance of overripe produce.
perhaps tattoos, for me, are a manifestation of this pain.
I hate to run, but I love to run away, and I crave the out-of-breath feeling--the one that arriving in a new place borrows from exercise, the addictive cocktail of discomfort and adrenaline--I crave it every moment it's gone.
And just like that, the converse swoops in and I am filled with peace. I can think of few things but warm sun and hot coffee, easy laughter and the reliable progression of a good book. I praise God for the times when such pleasantries cloud only my windshield; there are times when I feel they've retreated to my rearview. See: previous post. But like time passes, so do the moods, not only inside time but beside it, as comfortably and calmly. The transitions shake me like tropical winds, but from afar, I am sure I am nothing but a lone sailor on a tempestuous sea. The same clouds that rain create shade--I both curse and praise them.
I love God more clearly than I ever have. I love Him with the sort of gut-replacing, profession-requiring, woe-eclipsing, sun-brightening ferocity I've only ever known for... well, nothing. How can you love someone who loves you perfectly any less than completely?
I don't know if I'm doing it as ambitiously or efficiently or glamorously or memorably as possible, --in fact, I'm sure I'm not-- but this whole living life thing, I do recognize every day that I'm doing it as I'd wish I were. That I've taken steps to amass a set of circumstances I fall asleep thankful for. And by taken steps I mean remained mindful of what obedience to God can provide. He is good. And as a result, if you ask me, most evenings, I'd reply with the same.
The anxiety that is worsened by music and by words is a vague and disconcerting one. It won't slow down. My skin is crawling, and the sleep I don't want is the only escape. It's like a silent scream
Shall we write a bit from the stream of consciousness? The stream of sub-consciousness? I tilt through a drug-induced fog, filled with the nausea of too many contradictions. Spinning with the knowledge of both paradox and purity, strung up with so much to say and no effective way in which to say it. I sing weakly of smiles aimed at backs of heads, I laugh loudly and it means, "I love you." I dream of old loves and of new and I worry not when I wake which is which. I plan to elope and I imagine the view from atop an elephant and I am consumed by the absence of pain and the evanescence of mystery. I stare at pixels til they picture me flying; I comfort the elderly as they mourn the futility of comfort. Fingers run the curves of bodies and the curves of sidewalks, the bends in backs and roads, the heaving of breath and of traffic. Intimacy is stop and go, tornados swirl fast and slow, you mustn't assume that she won't go. Birds fly in patterns because the sky's demand it. I would draw for you what I see, but then you could see it too, and it is mine. Don't you see? Ah. The sea.
It is so late. Too late. The world is massive and it suffocates--there is more space than we know how to fill, and we've none of it left.
I wish I had a giant Lite-Brite of the universe, and I would prick each memory that makes me smile, and they would alight the sorrow-darkened skies, and the contrast between the two would create shapes you'd decipher as stars and worlds and galaxies and rockets and ships and monkeys and plums and we'd pick the ripe ones and press their wine, we'd take rockets to the worlds and ships to the stars, and we'd say, aren't we just the happiest monkeys.
And we would be. We'd be the happiest. Some will disagree, and we won't blame them. We are too busy whistling, too busy squeezing hands and lemonade, too busy tying headscarves and shoelaces, too busy smiling at backs of heads, at the stars, at each other.
brain thoughts:
I don't listen to instrumental music often enough.
the idea of a puppy kind of makes me want to find the place in which I'd like to stay put, already.
I have quite a bit of tattoo real estate left. this is good.
I'm in love with somebody I don't yet know.
I don't know where to go or what to do or who to see, but I trust God and his love for me and its evidence in His provision, and that knowledge is all that's worth searching for.
Road trips are the best escapes, and that's why I think the flexibility and freedom on a motorcycle will result in the stability I need to move ahead with work and education and friendships and just general peace, really.
I have so much I'd like to do, even the things I don't yet know I want, and it pains me more to imagine still wishing for them ten years from now with no means to do them than it does to imagine leaving as soon as I get comfortable again.
I have to leave. I'll be back.
I'd like to adopt a few of my children.
I don't know why I haven't been to a concert in ages, but it doesn't concern me much. I'm more intrigued by the break from habit than I am by the opportunity to continue it.
I'm not as moody as I was before and I don't know why. it's usually the lack of understanding that triggers it, and so I'm standing by. but for a long while now, I'm never without reason to smile.
God answers prayers.
I am traveling without traveling. I am on the cusp, the brink, the wind. I am a hermit and gypsy and nomad, I am Tinkerbell, I am the Little Prince, I am Fantastic Mr. Fox. I write and read this story, I take pictures I wish required a darkroom to develop. I love loving even more than the people I love sometimes, and I wish someone would climb trees with me. I want to go rock climbing and camping and hiking and skiing and I want to play poker and catch fireflies and hold my breath for as long as I can. I want to listen, laugh, and speak, in that order, and never before listened, laughed, or spoken to. I want to give and to receive, I want to float and to burn, I want to jump and to fly, I want to connect a string between two cans and call it a zipline.
I want to work on the knot within me for as long as it takes, and I want to find what oils it free.
I will turn the oil to flame. I'll use it to light my way home.
I have so much to say and I am so behind. I am getting started and I don't know that I'll ever finish. But the frequencies in my mind have been quieted and I cannot waste this time. When in newly awake silence you turn to God and ask, what now? and He says Maybe you should write.
well, you open your laptop and you get to work.
***
I'll name my first son Frank. Honest.
Other things:
Sometimes my brain spins so quickly that the heat from its rotations melts its will to continue.
Sometimes the girth of what I want to say and the weight of my inability to say it fuse as a scream within me, a scream that I save for the insides of refrigerators.
Yesterday I woke up to heart pain, its beat weak and sporadic. I knew a heart could hurt, but I didn't know a heart could hurt.
The so far unseen manifestation of my painful self-awareness is an electric tingle, sprawling head to toe.
People find my dark as evidence of wrong. My light is evidence of right, but so is my dark, and those whose brows that furrows can only grow so close to me.
How do I rid myself of the homegrown obligation to write what I'm thinking? I don't even know how to think what I'm thinking. Praying what I'm thinking is enough of a feat most days. All days. I feel behind and inadequate and mis-purposed and... tired.
I do not write because I am tired. Sometime I do not smile because I am tired.
Sometimes I use my last energy remembering that I need to rest. To be still and know.
I am still. I know what I know.
Still, what do I know?
I share angst here, but never peace. Shame on me.
I'm sitting on my sofa in my apartment alone, plate of fresh French toast in my hand, or it was before I started typing, with Rufus Wainwright's "Hallelujah" on Pandora, and I think, Hallelujah. Exactly.
God knows what day today would have been and replaced it with a new significance.
I forfeited an internal battle today. I let it win because the loss won't hurt me. Well, it might, but you'll know when that happens.
I found a new tumblr: beinlovewithyourlife.tumblr.com. I like what she posts. Surprisingly I find myself at odds with the weight some of those speakers put in the power of poetry, but I can appreciate many. Poetry is undermined so often by literary stigmas about its spectrum of worth and quality, but they blur the upper end as a result. I like when it comes back into focus. It helps me focus on writing for the upper end.
I had a very low point last night. I remember the thought, "I can't run away. I work on Monday." I remember the thought, "I don't care what You're teaching me anymore. I can't do this. Pull me out or I'll die here." I remember the thought, "I have nothing left." And then I put myself to sleep, because that's all there's to do at a time like that.
I woke up with a headache from the night's tears, and I considered mimicking Simon and hiding my face for thirty-seven consecutive hours. Then I got up and got dressed for my day. I saw my sister while she worked, reached my parents in time for their breakfast, and had coffee with a missed friend.
I turned two situations over and over and over again in my head, but then I remembered that they're not mine, so I let them go.
On the drive home, I felt God teaching me how to take a compliment.
***
All things work together for good for those who love God.
I've been keeping a journal of buzzwords and buzzthoughts I want to keep track of for writing fuel. Only I haven't been using them to write. I can draw parallels between the struggles I have with writing and the struggles I have with accepting affection or admiration. I suppose both stem from a fear of the unknown... a fear of what's to come. What if what I write is sub par? What if they only like me until they get to know me? What if what I write sets a new bar I'll never again meet? What if they love more about me than I could ever love about them?
How do I settle that score?
I feel like I'm comfortably walking a balance beam that stretches past my line of sight. I anticipate performing the same task forever and wonder what I'll encounter along the way. There's an audience of people around me; some want to know why I haven't learned more tricks--cartwheels, handsprings, flips and such--and pressure me to accomplish more. Some praise my consistent beam-walking prowess and encourage me to keep on.
I don't know which I'm performing for.
If I strip the performance away, I'm walking from point A to point B. Life to death.
On a more tangible, less morbid journey, point B is the end of this lease. What's the next step? I try not to think about it, but it's like not wondering goes against my nature. I have fully realized that I think for fun. I think for fun so often that it stops being fun.
I think about how I should have written more by now. Performed more poems. Started a portfolio. Earned a featured artist spot.
I think about how I should be reading more voraciously. Finish books before I open new ones.
I think about how I should encourage more friends. Write more letters. Make more calls.
I think about how I should travel more. Use my passport. Visit people I miss.
I think about how I should take more pictures. Get more sun. Save more money.
I think about how I should spend more time doing these things than I do thinking about them.
And then I go to sleep.
When I wake up, I haven't accomplished any of these things, but I've had more dreams. When I wake up, I don't consider the shoulds anymore. I open up a book or start a movie or text a friend or eat an apple and pat myself on the knee for doing any of these without underestimating what I've done.
And then I underestimate what I've done.
I am in New York City with my only brother, and the trees have blossomed, and the puddles are deeper here. I marvel at the notion that this city liberates from a distance but oppresses at arm's length, and I can feel both arms encircling the island the way they do a friend. New York is a friend to whom I give little, for she takes twice what I offer. I wander in the wrong direction and without direction and for lack of direction. I walk into the wind. Most bridges look the same and you'd sink the same no matter which you fell from.
Background tracks spring from subway station performers and taxi honks and peripheral strangers' headphones. The same strangers might make eye contact more than once; each time that's not the first suspends within it a silent "you again?" The line between native and visitor blurs like layered languages do. A bookshelf's contents determine its owner's character, and the rent exists to remind the owner that Owner is a misnomer.
I do not live here and I do not want to, at least for now, and that now is my only future.
I will worry about tomorrow
tomorrow.
God sat with me on a hill tonight. We picked dandelions apart and He said we could do it forever. That we're in no hurry. That He'd teach me everything I need to know about not being in a hurry.
I don't know where I'm gonna go after this, but I'm not going to search for it anymore.
I'm going to sit on this hill, pick the dandelions apart, and enjoy the company.
And my computer is going to die, so I'm going to watch another movie. Oh, but first, this rumination: Life is heavy. We search for someone to make it lighter, but it's easy to forget that life is ours to make lighter for them. Give them half of your load, but carry half of theirs. Don't worry; you're strong enough to carry a whole. Remember?
some facts about me, as I understand them?
I am wearing a secondhand baseball jersey. Grayson Buckeyes. red. Miller, #9.
I froze a bowl of clementine slices. they taste like tiny citrusy jewels; I am a genius.
I am living my last teenaged week, and I'm trying not to think about it.
I don't feel anxious at all, except when I wonder why I suddenly stopped feeling anxious
I miss sweater season already.
The new Blogger interface tells you all about your page views and readership, and I have readers in Alaska! HEY ALASKA:)!
I mean, that's pretty exciting. I love Alaska. back to the facts--I want to live in Alaska.
I look for dealbreakers like they're colorful, plastic, candy-filled eggs.
I am shockingly capable of keeping my room spotless.
I love little twinkly Christmas lights. I would light a whole house with them if I could.
I want to be a writer. I don't know how to do it.
I love how my room smells while my windows are open.
I am going to learn how to ride a motorcycle.
I hope I pet an elephant one day.
I've never thanked my commenters, but I need to. You're the only ones with the care and courage to respond to what I say, and really, I write for you.
Thank you.
:]
I will finish Didion tonight. Yesterday I purchased a copy of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned that I plan to start tomorrow while I start an Americano. Once more, I considered abandoning her grief and her--perhaps because it is my own grief I can not abandon by such choice--but decided once more to stick it out. I am glad that I have, as she is beginning to strike chords in me I don't yet know how to play.
To give is better than to receive, and that this is true of love more than all else is the one lesson I'd take from these nineteen years if forced to choose.
While longing to glean more independent years like the one I've begun to wrap my head around, I long also to chuck independence into a commercial-grade trash bag and stop its leaking into any welcome, newfound dependency. This conflict leaves me sitting on sofas in the dark, comparing shadows on the blinds to those from the night before.
The reason I stripped my green fleece blanket from my lap, folded the recliner back to its fully locked and upright position, and required Didion's patience of me while I type in the dark is this: all this free time and no one to spend it with. This struck me as particularly concerning because I am reading a widow's account of her lover's death, yes, but also because I like to wish my free time away. I like to sleep while the sun is up and watch episodes of television in which I have no emotional investment. I suppose there is no self-chiding to be done for this. At least not now. The future version of me I imagine scolding the past me for lounging around when the years within my marriage and children's lives--
No. The future me knows more, not less. Knowing now that I do my best with what I have is not knowledge I will lose while doing my best with what I have once I have it. But knowing that doesn't stop me from imagining wrinkles in time that allow for the reversal of sloth, the achieving of fulfillment, the establishment of personal improvement.
At least I think with a straight face. All this analyzing won't show in any wrinkles of my own. Those we save for smiles and laughter, anger and concern. Those we save for evidence that no time is wasted.
.JPG)
.JPG)
.JPG)
Alright. Let's recap.
I live in an apartment with a guy I've known for a while. I work at Starbucks. I read books sometimes, and I try to keep my bathroom clean.
I love living on my own, but I miss my family. I miss living effortlessly. Loving who I live with all the time. But I dread the idea of living alone, and so I don't.
I am entertaining the idea that I am manic depressive. If said hypothetical self-diagnosis proceeds, it will change how I view myself. Or maybe it won't. It doesn't really matter, cause I'll be whoever I am in whatever moment.
I love my job, and I love the people I work with. It's when I'm not working that I have no idea what I'm doing. "Doing with my life" is a bit dramatic, but it is my life, and I don't know what I'm doing, so that's an apt phrase.
I get this tight feeling in my center when I wonder if this year is a dead year, a filler between phases in which I know exactly what I'm fulfilling, and so I don't wonder about it. I know this year matters sheerly because it exists, but at the same time, I don't know that. I am looking forward to reading this post once the year has passed. Most years of my short life have held milestones I know will define them, but this year holds none I know of, and so I'm left to wonder what milestones will surprise me. I'm more scared of them than not, but maybe the glass isn't half empty--just too big.
I have no definition. I'm not working towards anything, I have no roots anywhere, I have no answer to the question, "What do you do when you're not working?"
I am moss, and the stone isn't rolling.
I hope this didn't sound too sad. I'm not too sad. I'm not too happy either, but it's that middle ground that I'm trying to become best acquainted with.
I am moss on the middle ground.
I am Pirsig when he remembers that he is Phaedrus.
I could have written the letter Virginia Woolf left her husband, or I will be able to, but I will not.
I have begun to chronicle this state in hopes that the productivity a case study spurs will distract me from
whatever it is, and I call this study "Monster"
and I wonder for how long I'll be able to distract myself.
Here it comes. There's nothing I can do about it. Make my bed, put some music on, read a book, eat a yogurt, and it builds and builds until I have nothing to say but everything, and that would take too long and there is no one here to hear it and if there were, I'd prefer listening to their everything.
And it will pass and my smiles will be smiles again and I will fall asleep and wake up stronger, ready to face the depletion of my strength.
It will pass
It will pass
Yes
I am listening to The Shins in a four poster bed under a big, white comforter in my favorite T-shirt. My blinds are open and I can see the rain changing its mind. I can see leaves surrendering, after all that. It's when spring peeks out that I feel like letting go, too.
I love The Shins. I love U2. Evaluating my admiration of people makes me nervous. People evaluating their admiration of me makes me nervous.
Maybe I'll teach lessons on love letter writing, after all. All that's missing from a scenario described to me in such a letter is its author. And that's just life, and so I'm not sad about it. We describe what we want as best as we can, and then we change, and what we wanted happens to someone else. And they sit on their four poster bed under a big, white comforter and wonder where their scenario is.
We're all too lonely not to be connected.
***
"You want to fight for this love
But honey you cannot wrestle a dove
So baby it's clear
You want to jump and dance
But you sat on your hands
And lost your only chance
Go back to your hometown
Get your feet on the ground
And stop floating around"
Oh hello there. How have you been? Yeah? That's really good to hear. Me too :)
Basic updates: moved out, switched job location, still not going to school, still happy about it... reading more, keeping my turtle alive, staying in touch with friends... keeping my room clean, writing on a desk calendar,
and other stuff, I guess. Other stuff that doesn't encapsulate the discrepancies between who I am now and who I used to be. I guess you really can grow up all at once. Well, no you can't. But big portions present themselves when allowed. I guess collective shock at my actual age doesn't determine that I'm as old as I should be.
One thing I've noticed is that the part of me that would challenge anybody and their mother to a Who Can Love Somebody the Best fight is fighting to get out. I miss being in love with the same ferocity that I use to keep people at a distance. If that isn't shooting yourself in the foot, I don't know what is.
I still get panic attacks. I still feel like I'm preemptively grieving something. I still don't talk to anybody face-to-face as much as I process on this screen. It's like I don't even care if you know; I just don't want to tell you. That must be the gap between considering myself transparent and being told I'm not.
I'm still not writing. I still talk to God. I'm still having a hard time answering the question "what do you want to do?" I'm still learning how to enjoy alone time.
Maybe I'm an X-men. X-man? X-woman if you're into that sort of anti-sexist crap. I don't know what my power is, but I feel internally conflicted on emotional and physical levels. Like something's fusing within me and will manifest as something that people talk about in either hushed tones or shameless exclamations.
I'm mad at myself for having every single part of a Happiness Equation and not being at peace. I'm mad at myself for "living in the moment" and recalling each moment as one devoted to wondering how to live in such a moment. I'm mad at myself for thinking myself into holes. I'm mad at myself for wondering if this blog is a detriment. Either it's the most honest portal I have, or I associate its posts with depression and angst and cannot post outside of either.
Hmmm
Who knows.
Don't worry, Murray. Each minute passes until there aren't any anymore, and that's a good thing.
***
I wrote that an hour ago. These are further thoughts:
-sure, sleep solves everything, but you can't sleep all day
-I try to care less about a lot of stuff. I really do. People who care less seem happier.
-It's quite possible that I refuse to let people love me. That's a really therapist-y thing to say, and maybe by my 21st birthday I won't come to therapist-y conclusions anymore, but the more likely fact is that I will.
-I need many, many more tattoos. I can't take them to heaven, and time is running out.
I told Skye yesterday that being an adult is expensive. But for the reasonable price of all of your income, stress, and a potential fraction of your mental health, you get to be one of those fine adults in return! notes: you don't have much of a choice in the matter, and "fine" is subjective like whoa.
But I'm likin' it. I feel rather productive. I went from never reading to reading at least ten or twenty pages a day. I bought a car. I drove it through its first oil change. It's insured. I discovered that knights can be un-knighted. I found an apartment. I sign a lease for one year in one week and start paying for rent, power, water, internet, and other assorted expenses like a normal person. I found out why the & is called an ampersand. I transferred my job to a more convenient location to save gas and time, cause time is money, and gas requires quite a bit of that. I worked on logistics for two additional jobs. You know, to cover those miscellaneous expenses. Like food. I filed my taxes. I tracked my return. And my turtle is still alive.
All that to say--life's trucking merrily along. It still comes with all the weird, melancholy stuff (I had two panicky-like-whatever-I-call-thems this week), but hey, melancholy is quite a beautiful word.
An update on my Facebook-less life: I forget that it is one. It's like before Facebook even existed, people still went on living. Kind of like the Amish do now. Poor Amish children. Never used a touch screen in their lives.
Au revoir, mon cheries!
...I took three years of Spanish, if that affords me any French mercy?
{no Facebook means more blogging, apparently? just try and keep up. I dare you. regarding post #9,634, I was reading my book, a very good book, and I had nothing to write on. except this bookmark, which is also a picture of my family. P.S. sharpie pens are delightful. read on:}
If you haven't seen-slash-heard this, you need to. It's pretty great. I like it a lot. And, if you're curious, the artist is pronounced Goat-yay. hehe. goats.
"Now and then I think of when we were together
Like when you said you felt so happy you could die
Told myself that you were right for me
But felt so lonely in your company
But that was love and it's an ache I still remember
You can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness
Like resignation to the end, always the end
So when we found that we could not make sense
Well you said that we would still be friends
But I'll admit that I was glad that it was over
But you didn't have to cut me off
Make out like it never happened and that we were nothing
And I don't even need your love
But you treat me like a stranger and that feels so rough
No you didn't have to stoop so low
Have your friends collect your records and then change your number
I guess that I don't need that though
Now you're just somebody that I used to know"
Veddy interesting. I disarm all the social media outlets in my life, and suddenly I'm thinking more clearly and sighing more often from contentment than from fedupness. (sometimes, you just gotta fill a bulletproof blank with what works best--whether Webster agrees with you or not.)
Spring is coming. Today can feel it. I just realized it will be my second spring, but it takes doing something 10,000 times before you're an expert at it, which means I'll never live to master how to enter a spring without feeling in love. Some distant spring(s) may conveniently pair that association with reality, but that's not what I want for this year.
and I hear an echo of "what do you want for this year?" and then it echoes and echoes some more because the question is clearer than any answer I can find.
I want clocks to tick silently
I want to find my typewriter
I want to figure out what terrifies me about starting to really write again
I want to remember my poem as easily as I do Buddy Wakefield's
I want to travel alone
I want my friends to forgive me for not wanting to be one
I want not to feel like life is heavy when it isn't
I want to respect church communities
I want to stop feeling the need to justify everything
I want to find myself in some place, anyplace, at any time and realize that the happiness I'm experiencing in that place is not mold-breaking, but the mold itself.
I want to look forward not because it's my only choice, but because it's the choice I've made
I want to lie stomach-down on a grassy hill and feel the earth move
I want to learn how to ice skate
I want to make mix CDs without a sense of nostalgia
I want to be able to address the break-up as a shift in my life without feeling the need to clarify the shift as triumphant or not
I want to understand why I'm not happy, despite my best efforts
I want to figure out if I'm unhappy because it's not happiness I'm looking for
I want to figure out what I'm looking for
this is what I feel like: {...............................}
Life might feel a whole lot less like one giant episode of My So-Called Life if I didn't suspect an anxiety disorder. I wonder if Claire Danes ever blamed her chemistry with Jordan Catalano on her brain chemistry. What an intense-yet-vague thing to blame. Pretty convenient. Less so when it's potentially true.
Those are pretty loaded (not to mention 21st century) words--"anxiety disorder." So are "weak" and "crazy," which is what the first two make me feel like.
I'm not really sure if anyone's taking me seriously about it. Which might be for the best, considering it balances out the seriousness I afford it, though it never feels best in the throes of an..."episode"? What do crazy people call bouts of crazy? Maybe I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I don't drink enough green tea. Maybe I breathe through my nose too infrequently. Maybe I lost myself in a pothole thirty-three lightyears ago and now blindly revert to....
I don't know. I can't find any words. I can't find much
***