Second day of real college (I say "real college" cause I attended JCCC for a while but that was for dual credits and it felt like more of a purgatory between high school and college than an actual university experience). The number of activities they have us running to and fro between should be considered freshman abuse.

I'm making myself take some pictures, cause even though right now I don't have any friends here and I don't feel like a part of things, I know (at least I hope) that I will eventually and I'll probably want to remember my first week.

I'm sure every other freshman is feeling this way: I can't see myself really being part of this community. It's hard to imagine, when there are no familiar faces; no go-to group where I have a place and a character part. It's hard to imagine that it will ever be that way. It never got that way at JCCC, but I didn't live there (though I practically did) and that school was huge and not Christ-focused like MNU. So I'm hoping that living at a smallish school that centers around something close to my heart will make for a good place for me; a setting in which I belong.

I haven't had that feeling anywhere (except home) for a long time, probably since Faithwalkers week in December of '05. An essential part of an essential group, full of life and passion, making innocent trouble and eating tea bags, just because they were there and we were hyper. Not worrying about anything. Not about looking good or looking bad or appearing immature or seeming like an "attention whore" (yes, I have been called that) or how many calories is in that. Just doing and being and no thinking past "is this morally ok".
People think it's hard to think about what's "right" and "wrong"...and it is, but think about how much simpler things would be if that's ALL we had to worry about.

There were times before that week that were like that too. Ugh, I miss those times more than anything.

So now I'm hoping and praying that times like those will come again with starting school here. If they never come again...I don't know what I'll do.

When the road finally gives me back, I don't think I'll unpack, cause I'm not sure that I live here anymore.

I'm moving to MNU tomorrow, and I haven't packed a thing yet. I'm about to get started though, as soon as I finish this post (and the next episode of "Arrested Development"). Just for kicks and giggles, I'd thought I'd share a few of the more random things on my packing list:

1. Singing black lab stuffed animal
2. Lion King collectable plates
3. Glow-in-the-dark hang-from-the-cieling thingies
4. Robotic parrot
5. Bottle of dirt from the Garden of Gethsemane
6. Cool menu from a Chinese restaurant
7. "Cricket in Times Square", "The Incredible Journey", and "Hank the Cowdog" audio books
8. Simone's (a deceased ferret) paw-print impression
9. The painting by an elephant I got on my 18th birthday
10. Fake vines
11. Pink teddy bear Dad got for me the day I was born
12. "Clothing Optional Beyond This Point" sign

And it goes without saying that I'm bringing my favorite stuffed animal, my tiger Peploava (I got her when I was four, and made up the spelling of her name when I was six, so don't ask me why it's spelled that way). And, I went to Toys 'R' Us the other day and got this awesome robotic lion cub that's crazy realistic (since they don't allow real pets in the dorms, I had to get something that was as close as possible to a real animal. Eventually I'll probably get a fish).
I think that's everything especially unique.

Steadier Footing

The sky has been gray for awhile now. A few days, anyway. I like it. And I'm looking forward to winter, when iron clouds will hang above me most of the time. I'm thinking of it as a trial run, because lately I've been thinking I'd like it in Portland.
I lived there when I was little. I don't remember much about it, but I like what memories I have. Blustery beaches and big waves, steel-tented cobalt with shredded white edges beating themselves against wet-blackened rocks to shake the salt spray from their roiling backs.
They were all around me once, and so was my brother and my dad and Otto and Gretchen, our two Dobermans. Their black fur was beaded with seamist and fine salt crusted their whiskers. They looked old and dignified, like Poseidon's hounds, in spite of the long pink tongues dangling from their mouths.
The tide had come in, and the five of us were stuck there, on that rock in the sea. I think the rock had a name, but I don't remember it now. And I think there were pictures from that day, but I've lost them.
I know I wasn't afraid. I don't remember how we got back to shore, but it wasn't frightening.
I was only four years old then. No, maybe I was three. I thought our house was called Portland. It made sense to me. Everyone said we lived in Portland, and everyone referred to houses as places in which a family lived, and so it follows quite logically in a child's mind that her house might be called Portland. No one else seems to understand the logic in that thought process, but I still do.
And I understand why, for a few years, I was sure I would grow up to be a pony. My parents would tell me, "You can be anything you want to be." And I wanted to be a pony. I imagined myself as a pony, yellow-gold with long, flowing, white mane and tail. In my vision, my eyes and hooves were blue, and I reared on my hind legs on the brown shag-like carpet of our living room, whinnying in celebration of what it was to be a pony.
Now I want to be a criminal profiler, or a dolphin trainer.
Or a pony. Those were simpler times.
I wouldn't have to go to college to be a pony. I wouldn't have to move away from home.
Everything is here. It seems like such a waste, to have built such a life here, only to leave it so soon. Why did I bother with painting my room green with jungle vines, or hanging pretty things from a tree by the creek, or carving secrets into it's trunk? Why did I bother to invest so much of myself here when it is only a place for me to wait out the first quarter of my life? Always knowing I would leave someday soon, why did I let this become home to me? Only to uproot. I know that's the way things are done, but maybe it shouldn't be that way. Maybe the focus of "home" should be directed more towards that ambiguous place where you'll end up. The place you move into, planning to stay forever. Even if you don't end up staying forever, it's better than tethering your heart to a place when you know for sure you'll leave it.
And how can I feel at peace in a bed where a dog has never been and will never be? It isn't right to sleep without a dog. It's lonely and cold and just...not right. All my life there has been a dog at the foot of my bed. Or at the head of the bed with me, fighting for my pillow. There's always been twitching paws in the dark, deep groans of contentment, a heavy warm body to guard me from the cold, and sharp-toothed protection from things that go bump in the night.
My loyal companion sleeping beside me now--a black mass of softness and friendship sprawled across the blankets--he has no idea that in three days his master will abandon him. That she'll leave him to occupy this king-sized bed by himself; won't be there throughout the day to offer a scratch or table scraps or a soothing voice.
He has no idea, and it will take him by surprise and he won't understand why. He'll be pitifully happy to see me every time I visit. Me, who chose a white-washed dorm room over him, my constant, loyal dog.
He'll be old when I graduate. Almost eleven. But then, wherever I go I'll take him. Maybe we'll go to Portland and find a rock and let the tide trap us there.
Because, frankly, I'd rather relive childhood than go on to whatever comes next. Nothing is as blissful as childhood; nothing as care-free as ignorance. Knowledge cannot be unlearned. Maturity can't be ungained.
The avalanche has begun and time won't stand still for me.
There is no steadier footing.

On Saturday I move to MNU. 30 minutes away from home, but hey, I'm not a fan of change of any kind so I'm still quite apprehensive.
I get a private room, so I am looking forward to having it all to myself. Decorating, playing music, etc. without having to allow for another person's taste.
I know that sounds pretty selfish, but with my health and energy levels, I really need my room to be a place where I can completely rest and relax, mentally and physically. It's hard to do that, sharing a room with someone. Believe it or not, it does take energy just to have someone else to worry about "will this or that bother them" (I am generally a people-pleaser so I will inevitably stress over this). And there is the risk of the roommate bothering ME, waking me up at night or even during the day when I'm napping, or having a bunch of people in the room making noise etc.
So yeah, God answered prayers when He granted me a private room.
I'm still worried though, especially about the first week when they'll have a bunch of activities for freshmen. I really don't know how I'm going to have the energy for it. I'm trusting God to provide me with extra strength and energy so that I can be a good student as well as have a social life. That is hard to comprehend, though, when I hardly have the energy for life right now (no school, quiet house, parents to help me with laundry and shopping and all the rest of the things I will have to do on my own once I move).
And, of course, I will be terribly homesick (yes, even though I'm only 30 minutes away from home). I'm very close to my family, and my pets too. I'll be hard to get used to not having a dog to sleep at the foot of my bed, a cat to curl on my lap while I watch a movie, ferrets to jump on my ankles, a mom to talk to at breakfast, and a dad to read Redwall with at night.
I'll survive though, just like every other freshman.
And I am a little excited. About my own dorm room, being up in town, and I'm really looking forward to my psych and criminology classes.
I guess this isn't an interesting post for anyone who happens to read it, but my college apprehensions have been building up for over a month now so I had to let some of the overflow out.

You can paint your nails lime green...

Today I got a pedicure for the first time today, and last night I painted my fingernails (yes, lime green). That's getting really, really girly for me. I think I've painted my fingernails five times ever (if you don't count coloring them black with a Sharpie during my punk phase), and I've never painted my toenails.
So while I was sitting in the massage chair with one foot in a hot tub and the other being painted red, I had lots of thoughts about the concept.
At first, I felt bad for being so "girly". The "tough girl" image has always been important to me (stupid, I know). But then I started thinking about how being girly sometimes makes every girl feel pretty (God made us that way; I'm afraid we can't help it), and when girls feel pretty they feel more confident, and sometimes I need that. For example, even though I prefer more casual clothes, if I need a confidence boost a pretty blouse will help in five seconds, whereas losing five or ten pounds will take two months and use up a lot of my limited energy.
And, God made girls the way we are because He liked it like that. There is no shame in femininity. Of course, like everything else, it can be taken too far, and when femeninity is taken too far it becomes vanity. Celebrating God-given femeninity is different than indulging in vanity.
That got me thinking about what can happen when femeninity turns into vanity. It can happen for lots of reasons in a variety of life circumstances, but no matter the reason, the results are never good. Irresponsible ammounts of money spent on clothes, spending hours in front of a mirror, even becoming obsessed and developing an eating disorder (eating disorders are developed as a result of psychological trauma, and the rammifications of that trauma manifest themselves in vanity-like qualities, egged on by society's glorification of vanity).
Why are girls and women prone to vanity? Sometimes it's pride, but I think that in most cases it is our lack of self-worth. It causes us to turn to trendy clothes, expensive jewelry, weight loss etc., because we think that if we're prettier we'll be worth more. Not that clothes and jewelry and healthy weight loss etc. are bad things; not at all. Like I said, they can be an effective confidence boost, and the former two are good tools for celebrating femeninity (weight loss can be a good tool for improving one's health, but not femeninity. One does not have to be any thinner than they are in order to be femenine). But it is sad when those things are used in exess because a girl/woman feels that she is not worth enough without them.
In a song called "White Shoes" by Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley band, there are lines that go "You can wear your new white shoes in the dirty afternoon; walking through the traffic fumes, a flower in your hair" and "You can paint your nails lime green, rent yourself a lemosine". To me, these lines can be interprited as speaking about the way some of us (girls/women) throw ourselves into fashion and nail polish and make up, but we are still unfulfilled.
Because we, as women, are supposed to find our worth by seeing our beauty through God's eyes. Every one of us were made exactly how we are because God thinks we are beautiful that way. We are tailored to His taste, not to that guy who made fun of our hair or that girl who made a catty remark about our pants size. We should wear pretty clothes and polish our nails and put on some make up in order to celebrate the beauty and femeninity that God has already given us, not to try to make ourselves "worth more" to small-minded humans.

That turned out way more rambling than I'd originally intended, but the points are: a) I'm getting a bit more girly than I used to be, and I'm ok with that, and b) I got my first pedicure today and it was a lot of fun and it felt really good!

At Every Occasion I'll be Ready for a Funeral

Funerals get a bad rap, I think. I think they're healthy; they provide closure.
The word "closure" gets a bad rap too, because of its association with pop-psychology, but it has validity as well.
But back to the funeral thing.
I have lots of private funerals. For animals, mostly. But I've also had funerals for people who haven't died. They just ceased to be part of my life. I think that kind of loss is underestimated.
Another kind of loss that I think is underestimated is the loss of a time in one's life, or the way one's life used to be.
If you find yourself constantly bogged down by the memory of "better times"--those times before that out-of-control pivotal point that changed everything forever--I think you should have a funeral for it. For the loss of the "before" days, I mean. Get some mementos, put them in a box, write a poem or something, and get rid of all of it. Even if the things you put in the box are hard to get rid of. The things that are the hardest to get rid of are usually the things that need most to be gotten rid of in order for one to let go.
Like a certain green guitar pick, but that's still pending.

"Life is a comedy for those who think. Life is a tragedy for those who feel."
True. But I think that, in general, life is richer for us "feely" types.

I haven’t seen the sea for a long time, but I try to make up for it by walking by the pond or watching the fish in my mom’s fish tank. I’ve named them all after artists or authors: Andy, Monet, Leo, Edgar, Vincent, Lewis…they’re sick, though; a flesh-eating fungus. It must hurt them, because they aren’t moving as much as they used to. I think Lewis is contemplating suicide. He swims by the filter, barely resisting its sucking grip; won’t even come away to eat fish flakes with the others.It makes me sad when fish and bugs are sick or hurt. They suffer as much as any other creature, I think, regardless of their significance. They suffer just the same, but there’s not much anyone can do about it besides put them out of their misery. Most of the time people don’t even care.I’ve read different things about whether or not fish and bugs can feel pain. From what I’ve read, I think they can. And even if there is no absolute scientific evidence, the best one can say is that we don’t know for sure. But, based on the fact that all the rest of God’s creatures are capable of feeling pain, it seems cruel to assume that fish and insects are not and thus squash them more freely. Even depriving them of the sympathy one would feel for a wounded mammal seems more callous than I would like to be.But I’m more than I’d like to be in a lot of ways. More selfish, more lazy, more prideful, more....me. So what difference would it make if one more flaw was added to the mix?I don’t know; I suppose there are some things that are good about me. But they don’t seem to be as relevant as the flaws, sometimes. I remember them, see them in myself or absent in other people; watch others excel as I stay the same.I used to have more talents to my name. I used to be better. Before I got sick I had the focus and energy to make myself into the person I wanted to be. I used to run six miles every day; I was fit. I used to practice singing every evening; I had potential. I used to play my guitar often; my fingers didn’t get sore so fast then. I used to ride Spirit over jumps every time I rode him; we could ride anywhere. I used to lose myself in complex literature; my brain functioned better in a healthy body. I was less inhibited; seven months of near-isolation during diagnosis built a maze in my mind that still confuses me four years later. I used to be a great friend; I had the strength and energy to be there for people to lean on. Now I can’t be there consistently. I’ve become unreliable, a part-time friend, and so people rely on others and it kills me not to be the one anymore.Often I want to announce to the world, “I used to be someone! I used to be exciting and fun and full of life! It isn’t my fault I stay at home now. It isn’t my fault my grades have slipped some. It isn’t my fault these dark circles under my eyes won’t go away; still show through my makeup. It isn’t my fault that I’m not the person I used to be. I used to be someone; don’t forget who I was. Remember me like that, please; not this crippled racer, struggling to keep up with everyone else."I know it will work into God’s plan; I know He works everything for His good. And because of that I wouldn’t change it. But I may still mourn every now and then, and I don’t think that’s wrong, is it? Even Christ sweated blood as He mourned His fate. So might I do the same for mine, on a smaller scale? Might everyone?And I don’t think it’s “punishment”. Maybe it’s not even about lessons, though I have learned a lot. I think it is bigger than that; bigger than me. Part of the grand Plan no one can see yet. That can make it both easier and harder to accept at the same time. Easier, because I know it is not purposeless. Harder, because I can’t see the purpose. All I see is a rough outline in my own little world. All I see is a height above me, one from which I’ve fallen.I suppose I can’t blame all regression on my illness. I can say that it weakens my resolve and makes progress slow; makes it hard to make myself do the things I’m still capable of. But, I should be able to rise above and, progress is not only slow; it’s nonexistent. It’s negative. As if I never was the person I used to be. Like she never existed. Maybe it would be better if she never had; then I wouldn’t have so much to let go of.I’ve let go of lots of things; everyone has. Even if they don’t mean to. Time just does that; pulls things from their grasp as their grip loosens, cause it matters less and less. A dream shatters and slowly you pick up all the pieces; sweep the tiny fragments up and throw them all away. As you move on with life, occasionally you might step on a piece you missed and get rid of it. Eventually they’re all gone. Right?I thought so, but I’ve been dreaming lately—dreams from nearly six years ago—about old wishes coming true. And dreaming makes me wish again, a little. Just a little. Does it mean anything? How much stock can one put in dreams, anyway? Sometimes they’re revealing a deep part of subconscious psyche. Sometimes they’re indications from God. Sometimes they’re just random. How can I tell the difference? How can I make them stop? I’m already in my head too much when I’m awake; I don’t want to hang out in there when I’m sleeping, too. Not that I sleep much, but when I do it just confuses me instead of being restful.And home is no more restful than a strange bed, I’ve found. Nor a strange bed more so than home. Dreams find me still; little films of hopes and dreads, past and present, playing out on the backs of my eyelids.So even in my sleep I’m reminded of how horrible I am at meeting new people. At finding ease in a crowd. Red campus or yellow, I still feel separate from it all. Watching but in a separate dimension. Thoughts go through my head…things I would say if I was who I had been. If I was still the girl who used to participate and even be the life of the party sometimes; or at least part of it. Giggles the Otter. Not anymore. Why can’t I be her again? I miss it. The words come to me, the words she would say, but I don’t say them. I know what she would do; I can see her doing those things as if her ghost was before me—my private phantom. But I can’t follow her. I should be able to. To order my tongue to speak, my lips to smile, my legs to take me where the life and action is. But somehow I can’t. I know I’ll never make my own life in the world if I don’t do these things, but I can’t.Maybe because my situation is not yet desperate. Maybe when I’ve hit the rock-bottom of loneliness-- when I am no longer content to be the hermit I am now—maybe then I’ll be able to push myself into the light where the others are. Where I used to be. My eyes have adjusted to these shadows, though, and the sunlight will inevitably hurt them.I know that, and even though I know it I still don’t want to shut my eyes. There is so much to see and I want to see it all, even the ugliness that is there, because in order for it to be judged ugly it must dwell amidst beauty.Just like now, though it’s late and tonight I feel like I might get real sleep for once, I don’t want to turn out the light. I don’t want to close my eyes. It’s been this way for the past few nights. By halting my pen or closing my book and lying down for the night, I feel as if I am ending some story prematurely. The close of the day no longer seems to fit where it comes. It seems too early; there’s too much left but I have to follow just hours behind the sun, though the moon illuminates the most inspiring things. I must sleep through them. Or dream in code. Or toss and turn in frustration—too weary to soak up the inspiration of the night, but too wakeful to indulge in its peaceful purpose of sleep.The other night, as sleep evaded me, I read some of Psalm. Lots of them are divided into two parts, you know. The first part is the cry to God; the crisis, the confusion. The second is the joy when God has provided some relief. A beginning of mourning, an ending of praise. Sometimes the line is blurred. There is praise in the suffering; a different kind of praise. A strange, but beautiful kind. As if the pain of the psalmist is in itself a demonstration of faith. Some are about war with others. Some about battling with one’s own humanity. If I were a psalmist, I think mine would be mostly about the latter. I know I’m never there for You, though You’re always there for me. I reached out and plucked the apple. The knowledge is too much for me; let my innocence return. I want to put You first. All these other lovers keep getting in the way; I’m weak and I can’t fight them. Why can’t I let go of things I never should have grasped? Even now they tempt me. Why is everything I do for such selfish reasons? I just want to love You. Such a simplistic request, and still I can’t hide my left hand from my right...Can’t? Or won’t? Can’t, because humans can do nothing good apart from God, or won’t, because of my selfish humanity? What is the balance between waiting on God and not doing my part?I’m tired of concepts; I need a course of action. If climbing Mt. Everest in shorts would change my heart, I’d to it. That seems easier to me than the intangible steering of thoughts and emotions that I have no idea how to control.I’d have a better idea if I could keep my focus long enough to figure anything out, really. There were things I wanted to write, just a second ago, but I stopped to hug my dog and now I’ve forgotten them. They seemed important, too. I thought them out, studying my reflection in the mirror as I waited for the water to warm up. I knew what I was going to say; could almost feel my fingers type. But I can’t remember now.Something about seeking knowledge, and how I’ve been trying to do that lately but it hasn’t satisfied the…something. The wise seek knowledge, Proverbs says, and I’ve been trying. I did well for awhile, too. But it’s like everything else: being “better” requires constant, consistent effort and I just can’t keep it up for long.I start up again eventually, at everything I try to do—eat really healthy, read complex books, read every news article I see, improve my concentration, improve my character—but when I do I’ve lost ground and have so much to recover. Always one step forward, two steps back and I don’t know what to do.The screen is glaring into my eyes but I’ve so much left to say and I wish someone would just answer all my questions.Primarily, am I the only one with so much confusion? I know I’m not; I suppose that’s not really what I’m trying to say. What I mean is, I don’t want to be tieless forever, and I don’t think I’ll ever “have it all together”. At least not for a very, very long time. But I don’t want to wait that long for some establishment. There are things I want in life, things that are within other people’s control; not mine. Will they give me those things when I ramble on and on like this? Or will I not deserve what they have to give until I figure things out? Am I being overly-emotional? Purple prose? Immature? Dramatic? Do I cross the line of acceptable melancholy indulgence? “A fool vents all his feelings, but a wise man holds them back.” (Proverbs 29:11) Am I being a fool, venting my feelings? I can’t tell. Maybe it doesn't matter. It's not like anyone actually reads these anyway. In fact, I don't know why I bother. Maybe it's just relieving to vent without having to be vulnerable face-to-face. Oops, there's that 'vent' word...Sometimes I think everyone has these kinds of raging mental storms. But maybe we aren’t supposed to talk about them. Maybe there’s a reason most journals—even edited ones—are kept secret. Maybe “stability” isn’t reached until one can roll all this up and swallow it, wash it down with a swig of reality and keep it from coming back up. Maybe I’ve said so many things that aren’t supposed to be said and so I won’t get what I’ve been hoping for. Won’t get it for a long long time. If ever.Do I have to be as close to perfection as humanly possible in order to receive fulfillment? Fulfillment. Maybe someone would tell me that my fulfillment should come from Christ. And it does, ultimately. He is my foundation. The durable canvass that upholds my life’s-work-in-progress; allows me to indulge in different colors and try techniques again and again and again because I know, no matter how much I smear the paint, He has reinforced this life-art I’m making.But I still have desires unfulfilled. And I think that’s ok; I think God gives us our desires, partly so that He can give them to us and we in turn will give more glory to Him, and partly to help us accomplish His will. I think He wants us to be happy, and that He won’t force us to go our entire earthly lives without that thing—or the concept of that thing—we want the very most. But I don’t know if I’m right. What do I know? Just because it makes sense to me doesn’t mean it’s so. My mind has a way of making connections that don’t exist in order to stop me when I’m on the verge of freaking out. A subconscious sanity-preservation mechanism; a security measure for complacency. So maybe I’m wrong. Maybe, before any of my earthly desires will be satisfied, I have to stop wanting them. Maybe I will never know how amazing it would feel to have a desire satisfied when the waves of wanting are most intense. Maybe, when I’ve ridden out the wracking storms of yearning, when I’ve ceased to really care whether or not I ever feel my heart swell with that kind of joyous disbelief…maybe my wishes won’t be granted until then. Maybe that’s the truth. And that terrifies me. But there are promises, right? There are scriptures about fountains of blessings and fulfillment. “May He grant you according to your heart’s desire, and fulfill all your purpose.” (Psalm 20:4). God even acknowledges that receiving desire is good for the soul: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when the desire comes, it is a tree of life.” (Proverbs 13:12). And He indicates that He will give us what we want: “I have it all planned out—plans to take care of you, not abandon you, plans to give you the future you hope for.” (Jeremiah 29:11). He says we’ll be so happy, we “shall go forth in the dances of those who rejoice.” (Jeremiah 31:4). I know, all of those verses could be referringto heaven, the ultimate fulfillment. But what about his one: “I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.” (Psalm 27:13).In the land of the living. Of course, I have seen much of His goodness already, here in the land of the living. But my hope is deferred and so my heart is sick, and its life support is the belief that He will give me my heart’s desire in the land of the living. So maybe the acknowledgement of the fact that He exists--maybe that's not enough for us and He knows it. Maybe He made it that way, so that we could have other deisres and He could give them to us or we could learn from them. Maybe...His existence doesn't fulfill all of our desires, but through His existence all of our desires are fulfilled.When He created everything, He said everything was good. Except for one thing: “It is not good for man to be alone.” (Genesis 2:18). Man had God, but he needed something else, too. Isn’t that an example indicating that we are designed for earthly fulfillment as well as Devine? That the two should work together?Am I reaching? Am I twisting scripture—making false connections—as a guard against hopelessness? Could it be that this wish will eat away, forever ungranted, at my soul until the day I die and it won’t stop gnawing until I get to heaven? I don’t think that He would do that to me; to anyone. I think, either the current wish will be fulfilled, or my heart will change to wish something new and then that wish will be satisfied. Either way, I think He will grant the desires of my heart. But maybe I’m wrong. I’m afraid that I’m wrong. And why shouldn’t I be wrong? I’m no scholar of scripture. Maybe I’m way off. Like I said: what do I know?

I think I missed my soul mate by nearly two hundred years. At least I found him, though, in the yellowed pages of leather-bound, ink-smelling books. No, that is a lie. I wish I had found him that way--in a thick, dusty, ragged book on the top shelf of some grand old library somewhere--but that’s not how we met. We met in the glossy pages of a sixth grade English textbook. The pages smelled like chemicals and I sat at a fake-wooden desk, praying for class to end. Beside the childish cartoon of a scruffy black bird, I read his name and didn’t like it. It was old-fashioned and silly. But I was made to read the poem, and I believe I fell in love with him then, though he would pursue me through paper for years after before finally keeping a grip on my heart. And even now, I have still far more to find out about him; still more of myself to give.For him I’ve been Lenore, and Helen; changed my name to Annabel Lee. I’ve dreamt of being Virginia—to have been his muse. To have been the inspiration for so many brilliant black roses, scrawling their dolorous vines across the parchment. To have been the reason for such deep throes…Fifteen years of life is enough, and two as his bride the best of them, I’m sure it would have been. Maybe his heart was not the purest, but neither is mine and in his verses and tales I can tell we would have connected deeply, if in a stygian way. He is known for darkness but knew so much of beauty and recognized it as no one else, the beauty that lay in the dark. “The pleasure which is at once the most pure,” He said to me, “the most elevating and the most intense, is derived, I maintain, from the contemplation of the beautiful.” He saw the mystery in a cat, the wisdom in the irrelevant, and the value of dreams by day. His mind penetrated the truth of man, and saw what we really are, not what we so blindly pretend to be. He would have understood me in my silence, I think. He would not try to fix the clog in my throat or my dislike of small talk. Upon meeting me, maybe we would have sat together in silence for a long while before uttering any sort of acknowledgement to each other. Then, when finally he spoke, he would dispel all apprehension, not by asking me how I’m doing, but by asking me if I, too, could feel the secret pleasure when my mind reveals it’s more masochistic capabilities. And I would tell him yes, but that I’m afraid to tell anyone. He would tell me not to be afraid. Or maybe he would tell me to be very afraid and to cultivate my fears of any kind and then when I can no longer stand the level of terror, to charge into their gaping mouths and let them consume me while my pen scratches desperately at scraps of paper, recording the chaos in my mind. He would tell me the chaos is beautiful, and no, don’t try to organize it, dear; don’t try to clean it. Let it out raw—bare your red, pulsing heart for others to see and hear. Listen as some of them run screaming from you, but take gently by the hand those who stay, and lead them from the light to show them the intricacy of what is beyond. Drown them in luscious, tenebrous depth.Yes, I believe Edgar and I would have understood each other. Well, he would understand me. I don’t presume to be able to even come close to understanding the wonderfully deep, aphotic labyrinth that was his mind. I would give very much to have been his pupil; for him to have guided me through his winding mental maze. What more could any wanna-be writer wish for? Finding a mentoring mind still living is as hard as anything else, though, and nothing is very easy anymore.No one told me life was going to be easy. Or that it was supposed to be. Or that it was supposed to be mostly easy or easy at all at any time. So why do I get upset when it’s hard? Why am I disappointed when it doesn’t go well? When I get hurt or when I hurt someone else or when I thought I’d found the answer but it was really just a thousand more questions in disguise, and I know that in an eternal quest for happiness no one’s ever really found it and that can make me feel so hopeless…But Amy Charmichael said “In acceptance lies peace”, and I suppose that makes sense. If pride and laziness will allow me to stop fighting—or start fighting; I’m not quite sure which I need to do at this point—maybe then I could move freely enough to escape most of the cramps. Because life is supposed to hurt, I think. I think we’re supposed to stub our toes on the uneven trail and we’re supposed to fall down and break and, no, we’re not supposed to heal completely. Keep the itch; keep the cramps. Then the end matters more. Heaven will be all the sweeter when we’ve lost everything we have to lose here. Besides, mistakes are the best of teachers.And yet, I still grasp so selfishly at tiny means of luxury…I wish self-improvement didn’t require such self-control.Because I have no self-control. It’s not very often one breaks one’s own heart, but I pulled it off with my lack of discipline. Because I’m like a rabbit or a deer or a bird or squirrel and I frighten so easily, dashing off before I can even see if I’m really in danger. I wasn’t, at least not so soon. And I dashed and I left something behind that I hadn’t realized had grown roots inside me, so now I have a hole in my gut where it used to be.I’m trying to fill it up, trying to stay busy. I’m writing, I’m writing; I’m exercising and playing my guitar, though I’m tired of all the songs I know. I’m running errands and running with my dog and running to outrun the sense of pointlessness and futility that’s always catching up. But I run slow cause I’m always tired; I haven’t been sleeping. So I’ve been taking pills to sleep, and they make me sleep late so I sleep a lot and I don’t have time to live the life I want to live between all the sleeping. And that’s getting old but there’s nothing I can do about it.But there are things I’ve realized in all my sleeping of late. I’ve realized how delicate, how thin and lace-like, my ideals were; like spider webs. I thought I had them for a reason, you know? I thought I’d been made especially with them inside me—my specific ideals that would guide me to where I am supposed to be and to whom I am supposed to be there with and what we are supposed to be doing. How fine is the line between faith and the naïve, book-fed fantasies of a shy romantic? Apparently it is thicker—no, thinner….it is something other than what I thought it was and I’ve been forced to take another step towards realism, because the world just can’t bear to let me hang on to the shreds of perfect dreams that I actually--foolishly--harbored some hope for. I’ve figured out I can’t have it all, not all in one place. I’ll have to choose. Prioritize. Settle. For awhile I wanted to scream, “Is it too much to ask?!” but now I’m feeling myself slide towards the point of resignation. Of resigning myself to what appears to be the fact: being easy is the only way to not be alone. Not “easy” as in “whore”, but easy as in, easy to get along with. Easy to understand. Easy to be with. Easy to read. Easy to interpret. Easy to catch. Easy, easy, easy. So suck it up and break. You’ve read too many books if you’re waiting for someone to gently chip their way to your core; if you think someone actually wants to get to know you--really know you--so much that they’ll put in the time and effort it takes to extract the elixir of your true essence. Society screams constantly for ease of personality; for the smooth-thinking, unflawed mind. Psychology may be the new religion, but outside the therapist’s office those subjects are taboo. Even inside that office, the object is to be “fixed”; to become simple, really. To avoid conflict. To embrace difficulties and ponder their meaning and reason and clarity—that’s not the goal anymore. Maybe it never was. Regardless, now it is a search for emotional anesthetic; a honey-coated reality check meant to numb and placate. Remove the cloying margins meant to accommodate spoiled fragility and all that remains to do is cash in:Afraid? Get over it. No one has the patience to coax you out over time.Complicated? Too bad. No one should have to work hard enough to unravel the mysteries of you; stop being so difficult.Confused? Get used to it. Everyone is too busy looking for their own answers to help you find yours.Shy? Deal with it. If you’re not going to easily offer up your deepest secrets and thoughts, no one’s going to bother to dig for them, no matter if you want them to or not. They're not mind-readers. That’s your problem; fix it.I too often make the naive mistake of assuming that everyone is willing to labor for intimacy at a soul level. I always thought it went without saying that if you cared for a person—in any way; platonic, romantic, or family—you would want to really know them. How they think, what they think about and why. I want to know these things, and more, about everyone I care about. I want to delve into their minds and know them as well as I know myself. Toss away social standards and propriety. I don’t want to ask where they went to school or what their major is. The brushing of souls—what I want in theory, but what I am too reticent to attempt to gain.I wish I had finished that Rubix cube. I wish I hadn’t given up on it. I wish my resolve hadn’t dissipated in the presence of more pressing life issues.Cause it’s those kinds of little things that can etch the word “failure” into your mind, sometimes even more deeply than the bigger things. Or it’s the pile up and that little thing—that unfinished Rubix cube—is what finally makes things push hard enough to make the engraving. The wrinkles in my brain…I wonder what they look like. I wonder if they might make pictures, like the dots on my ceiling, or if they’d make words like the swizzles in one of those kid puzzles on the back of the Cheerio’s box. I wonder if they’d say anything more meaningful.It’s been a long time. Since a lot of things. It’s been a long time since I learned a new song on my guitar; so long the calluses on my fingertips are fading. It’s been a long time since I held someone’s hand and it just seems like a dream now. But that’s ok; I meant to wake up.It’s been a long time since I’ve gone swimming. I know I’m not the only one who thinks swimming is as close as man can come to unaided flight. Someone else said it; someone important. I don’t remember who but it doesn’t matter. I just know that it’s been a long time since I felt like I was flying.Birds can fly because they have hollow bones. And special feathers, but the special feathers would be useless if their bones were not hollow. Maybe it’s only a matter of time before my bones can be hollowed out, too. I’m sure it would hurt for awhile, but then maybe I could fly, holding a plastic sled behind my back like I did when I was a kid. Only this time, maybe I wouldn’t fall.It’s been a long time since I was a kid. It’s been a long time since I was born. Six-thousand nine-hundred and forty-six days. It doesn’t seem that long written out like that. And it seems even shorter when I say nineteen years and eleven days. But it feels like a lifetime. And maybe it is; if I died today it would be. The only difference is that it keeps feeling longer because it’s getting longer. The time between the memories, I mean.But I’ve been making fresh new ones, freezing them while they are fresh, and they get sweeter with time like a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. They will be so rich and nectarous that I will save them until a night when I have nothing else palatable, and I will savor the bouquet before I sip their essence slowly. I will make them last until their sweetness washes every last acrid taste from me.It’s been a long time since I’ve been cleansed like that; since summer began. Now it’s half over. I haven’t done anything with it yet.I had a list of books to read—books and plays and poems. “A Tale of Two Cities”. “Of Mice and Men”. “Hamlet”. “The Scarlet Letter”. “Song of Myself”. Things I’ve always wished I’d read, or that I’ve read part of and never really finished. Closure is important with books too, you know. I thought I’d have them finished by now, but I’ve only just started one. And time slipped away without telling me so I don't think I will accomplish any of my summer goals now.Maybe I’ll make new ones for the fall. I’ll be living somewhere else then; not too far away but far enough that it isn’t home. It’s new. Or it will be. I haven’t lived in the city for so long, I’m not sure I’ll be able to sleep. Not that I sleep well now, anyway.Maybe my new goals will be about being independent; self-sufficient. That would be a good place to start. After all, it’s come to that. But maybe that won’t be so hard to achieve. I like to be alone most of the time. But the constant of home—of family and pets at home and friends at their own homes and everything remaining in its place so that I know exactly where to find things when I need them—it is something I have always had and therefore something I’m not sure I can do without.It doesn’t matter, though; I’ll have to. Do without, I mean. I’ll just keep some music playing while I get used to it. As long as the music doesn’t stop, I’ll be ok. Can someone be addicted to music? It’s nearly like self-medicating; an escape. A healthy one, as far as I know. A new form for emotion to take—to give you the power to cry without tears; maintain your dignity and feel your pain at the same time. Maintain control of ecstasy. What does that besides music?My own or someone else’s. It doesn't matter. As long as I can lend it my voice when I’m alone and pretend it’s mine, it is fix enough to get me through emotional extremes with sanity intact. Or almost intact, anyway. But would it be so bad if I was addicted to music? It makes sense, doesn’t it? It makes sense that if the music that has once kept a heart from breaking stops, the heart might crack a little.It’s irrelevant though, because I’m not addicted to music. In fact, I haven’t been playing it as much recently. My thoughts stumble over the notes blowing through my head and it didn’t used to bother me but these days I haven’t been thinking as clearly as I once did.I’ve been thinking more about California and the nights on the beach when I would go jogging. There were tall lamps, but they only provided a small circle of light every ten feet. And for those ten feet, those few moments as I ran in the dark, I felt the thrill not knowing. The light ahead made all around seem darker still and the deep, undulating hiss of the ocean filled my ears and blocked out other sounds. All before me a point of light and I must get there before something reaches out from behind or beside to pull me somewhere because I can’t hear or see and my feet crush crush crush slowed in the sand and I’m hindered. But then I would reach the light and with the return of clear vision my ears ceased to amplify the sea, and I looked and listened and knew I was safe; until I stepped out of the lamplight again. And I would step out again, and again and again, and even when the salt-breeze began to scrape my throat I still ran. My muscles worked and the lapping waves numbed the sand-blisters on my bare feet as they were rubbed further towards calluses and I could feel myself growing stronger—making myself stronger. The thrill of it all invigorated the appetite of my stride and so my legs ate six miles before climbing back to the shelter of the veranda. Now days though, my legs are only hungry for maybe two miles on landlocked gravel roads, and I run close to home, in the safety of sunlight. And I miss the night-blackened sea, though I know I’ve grown too cautious to run with it now, were some miracle to take me back there.

I wish it was the time of year for Lent. The time of year to give something up, for a reason bigger than just to do it. Just doing it is good enough, though, I suppose. You give something up—cigarettes, chocolate, alcohol, television, whatever—and all the sudden you want it more than you ever did. That sense of deprivation. It sets like a weight, doesn’t it? A quiet thrill is there, too, though. When you want that cigarette or truffle or glass of wine or sitcom and you crave it and it seems like you need it to survive the moment but you leave it alone, and then you grasp the control. The empowering control that causes you to take your fast by the throat and extend it longer than you planned and you start seeing good come of it and so you pull back more and more and more. And then they say it’s too much. Or not enough, or whatever. The coasters on my door, the drawings in my sketchbook, the books on my shelves, the clumsy chords on my guitar; they say it’s too much. The real-life planning, the practical decisions, the organized daily planners and calendars and routine and schedule; they say it’s not enough. Romanticism, too much; discipline, not enough; macabre, health food, scars, music; too much, not enough, too much, too much and not enough. So I have to gather myself a bit; you know, get some self-control. I want to give up speaking for awhile. I wonder what it would be like, to go a month, a week, or even just one entire day without an utterance. Would it be restful, or would it be painful? Would my throat have pangs from not speaking, similar to the stomach pangs of not eating? Would I slip and let a word tumble out, then be so angry angry angry at myself for failing? I think I could do it, and enjoy it, if it was allowed by practical social standards.I suppose social standards are relative, though. They would be different—possibly non-existent—depending on where I go. A strong statement of silence might be accepted or even admired in the underground of bohemian or beat cultures. Strong cravings for the new and unconventional would earn some respect from the hipsters. Deep spirituality would gain acceptance with the neo-hippies. A love for animals and nature might get me in with the activists. A bit of dark masochism could win over the goths and emos. A wild side, the punks. Strong moral standards, other Christians. A combination of all of the above...A chameleon coat to mix with all types? That would be nice. But the subcultures all seem to snub one another, if they are not even radically pitted against one or two. Unnecessary division. Too much focus on what is wrong with one another, and not enough joy drawn from other people as God made them to be. Love. Accept. Relate. Serve. Relay His Love. So simple in theory, but the sinful nature of man botches this perfect formula in practice, causing strife and judgment, where there is no need for strife and no right to judge. If only humans were better at mimicking Christ (the classic sigh of all Christians). He is the balm that cools our inflamed souls; that sooths the friction between people. In His absence, we are cracked and dry and bleeding, and therefore can give no comfort to others who are just as parched as ourselves. But who am I to say? Who am I to speak at all, about anything, regarding God or man? As if my insights are new; as if anything I've ever said is a revelation. Every day I want to bang bang bang my head against the wall to break my stupid human pride. My infectious, titanium pride. The prideful heart that is an abomination to God...that lurks in me.Thank God that, for every step I take in sin, He takes two in grace.

I think it is interesting that it takes alcohol for me to socialize like a normal person. For me to include myself in conversation, or work up the courage to introduce myself to someone new. Or even for me to relax. At all. I don't like its effects, though. My medication-induced low tolerance for alcohol doesn’t accommodate even moderate amounts very well. But at least I was able to carry on a casual conversation with my dad’s coworkers at the bar, and the barn people at Jalapeño’s. A glass of wine or two and I feel excited about life, and social, like I did before real life hit. Like I did when I was fifteen. Just normal, I think; like someone my age is supposed to be. I feel eighteen, instead of twenty-four. Why do I usually feel twenty-four instead of eighteen? Because I’m a worrier, if you haven’t already noticed. I worry worry worry about everything; stress is my Siamese twin. Most of the time anyway. But not after a bit of alcohol, caffeine, and sugar. Is that what it takes for me to feel as care-free as someone my age is supposed to be? It’s not worth it, I don’t think. Even in this state I can tell that I don’t like this dizzy feeling. I don’t like the way I can’t find my feet beneath me as well as usual. I don’t like this feeling of wanting to eat everything in sight yet not really tasting it. And I don’t like having to watch my tongue so closely. Reign it in so that I don’t say something I regret, whether that means giving away some dark secret or just saying something stupid. I do the latter often enough when I’m completely sober; I don’t need alcohol to make me look like even more of an idiot. At least my parents were with me all evening. I don’t drink if they’re not around. They keep me from doing and saying stupid things. Not that I’ve ever drank enough to do something really stupid. Just kind of stupid, like talk too much about stupid things. But to me, that’s a big deal. When I am completely sober, I can hardly bring myself to speak without being spoken to. So, tipsy-ish, at least I can enjoy the company of people whom I haven’t known for months and months. At least I can talk to relatively new acquaintances without twisting my fingers nervously in my lap, or my eyes darting back and forth, anywhere but into the eyes of whomever I am speaking to. Sad, you think? Yeah, maybe. But what’s so bad about being alone? What’s so bad about not needing people; about not being a social butterfly? I suppose God says it’s not good for man to be alone. But I’m not a hermit. Ok, relative to my friends I suppose I am. But I am not isolated. I can socialize. I won’t vomit or break out in hives or have a nervous breakdown. And when I’m around people I know well and care for, it doesn’t really feel like I’m with “someone else”. Because the people I’m comfortable around are the people I feel some sort of connection with, as if we embody the same type of soul. Or, in part our souls are the same. Or something. With kindred spirits it’s better than being alone, and though true kindred spirits are few, I've been blessed enough to meet some. There are the kindred spirits, and there are those who are still on trial. The ones on trial are still good to be with, because I want to find out more about them. About them and how I relate to them and how they relate to me and what that means for the way we will relate to each other in the days weeks months and years to come or if they are even interested in a real connection. Because a real soul-connection is what really matters, regardless of the nature of the relationship (romantic, platonic, blood). If the minds don't intrigue, if you don't want to hear what the other person has in them to say, then what's the point? If you don't really want to understand one another, then the true depth isn't there. There's more to true family than blood. There's more to true friendship than some laughs. There's more to true romance than holding hands (thank you, Beatles; no one could have said it better). The two people in any sort of relationship must care so much about one another, or be so intrigued by them, that they want to understand them--the way they think, what they feel about anything and everything, what they believe in and why. What else is there to a person than that, really? What else is there that is real than what resides in the soul? The body doesn't count; it's a shell, a tote-bag for the spirit. Take away the body and what is left? The soul. To really sustain a true, lasting relationship, both parties must care about the other's soul, and what resides therein. Who that person really is; what makes them who they are. What is their essence; what gives then that essence. If one doesn't care about those things...what is the point? What else is there to care about in a person than the dynamics of their soul? Only illusions that will drift away like smoke, carrying the fraudulent ghost of a connection with them.

I have to start sometime, and now is as good as anytime. I have to start somewhere, and here is as good as anywhere. I have what I need; it's up to me now.
Maybe I’ll let some others in, though; let them help. Some I’m close to. If they want to; they might not and that’s fine cause I don’t mind being alone. I’ll think about it though; it would relieve some of the pressure building inside.
Besides, it’s not even fair to them to hide so much, is it? And why do people even keep secrets? We are all human, and not a single one of us is completely unique in whatever secrets we may have that are considered “shameful”. If everyone spoke up, if everyone removed the masks and let their true faces show…yes, they might lose some people; people that weren’t meant to be with them anyway. People who weren’t really compatible. They might gain some people too, though, and the people they keep and the people they gain would be the ones who really understand their particular secrets, and so everyone—after a sift and exchange of friends--would end up being surrounded only by people who really care and really understand. It might be painful at first, but afterwards they’d be left with only the best of the best for them. Life and relationships at their fullest; undiluted.
And isn’t that what everyone really wants, anyway? To be understood? Or at least for those they care about to try to understand them? That’s what I want, anyway. Oh yes, there’s a part of me that wants to remain a mystery; that wants to stay sectioned off and private for me and God alone. I think everyone has that desire. But that’s the beauty of separate souls. We can have it both ways. Because, no matter how much you tell someone about yourself, they will never really know you, because they are not you. You can confide anything and everything to those you care about—those you really want to understand you—and they will understand you enough to be close, but not enough that you lose your sacred self--the depth of self that only you and God can know.
We can be close to others. Our souls can brush up against one another, sharing the warmth, but no matter how close together they press, our mysteries are still intact because no soul can be inside another.
So maybe I will tell it all. Pour it all out and see whom the flood drowns and who can keep their head above the torrent. Well, no. I know I’m not brave enough to do that. I’ll keep some of it back. But I think I’ll start a trickle—maybe even a steady little stream—and let the chips fall where they may. I think I’m ready for that. I think I’m ready to say, “Here’s me. Here are my strengths, here are my weaknesses. Here’s my beauty, here are my flaws. Here are my fears, here’s how I’m brave. Here are my wants, here’s what I don’t want. Here’s what I like about myself, here’s what I’d like to change. Here’s what is really strange about me, and here’s how I’m like everybody else. Here I am, for better or worse, for however God has worked it into His plan. Here I am, for you to take or leave.”
But, you know, maybe I’m giving this too much thought. What to say, what not to say, is my perspective skewed in comparison to everyone else’s…
My mom gave me this pen once, and on the side it said “Just Be”. That’s what I want to do. Forget all of these technicalities and Just Be. Because, if I acknowledge Him—not man—in all my ways, He will direct my paths. If I Just Be, with my eyes on Him, He will guide and take care of me. Painful things will still happen, of course. That’s life. But I honestly believe that He is such a strong presence in my life that I will not fall apart. Things will be ok, no matter what happens; time will pass and He will work them out and they will be ok. Better than ok.
Today, I believe that fully and I’m not afraid of pain. I know that I won’t always feel this way, that I will doubt and fear again sometime, but this—this trust and peace I feel right now—is the backbone of my soul, I think. It’s why I have never quite given up during anything that’s happened in my life. As desperate as I’ve been sometimes—and doubtless will be again at some point—I’ve always had this faith. It may have been buried deep, but it was there. Faith that “this, too, shall pass”, and eventually I will have the future I hope for.
I want to take a vow of silence. It would be so lovely, I think, not to have to scramble for words…not to have to support them with a steady stream of air, stiffening and relaxing the diaphragm. Talking takes a lot more energy than people think.
It’s not as if it isn’t worth it sometimes. It can be. It can be worth it when I’m talking to people who are close to me. People whom I want to know more, whom I want to want to know me more. Then I dig for words in my head with enthusiasm. The air and the muscles move easily and even when I start to get tired there’s still more I want to say; more I want to ask.
But a vow of silence still sounds beautiful to me, because talking isn’t really necessary, even with those people I want to talk to. No, words don’t always need to fill the air, fill the space between us. A gaze can do as much, or a touch, a smile or just the way they move. The way I move. The way we both move together. The places we go, what we look at, the clothes we choose when the sky is gray. All of that says more than a mouth ever could.
Most people don’t think of that. They think dialogue is everything; that dialogue is where most of the communication takes place. Consistent silence frightens them. Frightens or offends; attracts strange looks and whispers behind the silent one’s back. But if they stopped to think—if they really stopped and opened their minds—they would see how intricate silence can be. When you know that words don’t need to be said…there is such freedom in that. If words were replaced completely by actions and looks and movements, I think we would realize how much we overuse them. Words, I mean. We overuse them and they lose their meaning, but they are the majority of what we focus on anyway. If we set them aside, if we sanctified them again by putting them to rest for awhile, I think we would find more meaning in each other. In ourselves. In the rest of the world. Then, when we dusted the words off and began using them again—respectfully, sparingly—we would re-discover the meaning they were meant to have. Their potency would be refreshed and they would be pungent to our souls once more, and think of the new depth of feeling that would come after the calluses in our ears have become tender again.
It isn’t practical, though. For me to be silent, that is. It is socially unacceptable, and the rules of social skills have been so set into people’s minds that it would be just too much for them. Too much of a change. They’d tell me to speak; they’d make me speak. Life would have to stop, just because my words stopped.
It shouldn’t be that way. It doesn’t have to be that way. It doesn’t have to be so many ways, but it is and I can’t change it cause I’m just one person too young to be listened to and no one thinks the way I do so what’s the point anyway? Even I lose track of what I really think and how to say it, so I don’t have much hope of convincing others to see things my way.
I kind of do like feeling a bit isolated in my thought processes, though. It makes me feel unique, when I say something that requires an explanation that I can hardly give. Though sometimes I do wish there was someone who thought just like me. Someone to whom I could say, “the itch in my heart keeps me awake at night” and they would know exactly what I meant. Or at least someone who wants to understand me enough that they would try to understand if they didn't; someone who was intrigued by the way my mind works, as unconventional as it may be.
I can write it on paper, though, and that’s almost as good. That almost satisfies the need for understanding. But not quite, for a couple of reasons.
First of all, it’s just paper. White paper staring back at me from black pupils of ink. No deep chocolate brown surrounding the words; no gray-blue textured like moonlight on rippling waves. Just my red-and-green to gaze at what I’ve written; the words I’ve forced from my fingertips that I may escape their threat of inner chaos.
I don’t remember the other reason…it’s late and I’ve been tired and forgetting so many things. It’s hard to remember these things at night, when I actually have the time to write them. It’s hard to have to sleep through the night; to stop what I’m doing because my body needs rest. I miss the night. It used to be my time; my element. In old journals I wrote that I was nocturnal—a creature of the night. I didn’t seem to need sleep back then. I’d be awake all night reading books and books and books and I’d write pages and pages by flashlight on the porch or barefoot in the cool grass or play my guitar softly to the stars parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme… then in the morning I’d be ready to begin another day. It was as if I lived twice as much as others in the same amount of time. Or maybe they were awake. They probably were, but I liked feeling as if I sneaked another day in that was only mine. A day of ethereal darkness and stars and moonlight when romance seeped from the walls to fill my head with dreams…dreams untainted by having been lived.
But now the Sun is my hourglass, and immune imbalances chain me like a slave to the garish light of Day. I break from her every now and then, risking conflict to tryst with the Moon. I pay though, when Day returns. More heaviness in my limbs and shaking and stiff and she makes her light so harsh and my head is dizzy and aching…but usually it is worth it. I submit to the consequences of my non-compliance and accept them as what must be; the price I must pay for the inspiration of Night’s shadowy kiss.
I wish I could see myself clearly. See myself like other people see me. Or, that someone who was brave enough—or hated me enough—would tell me how I really am. How am I irritating? Am I arrogant? Am I self-centered? Everyone has those flaws that are invisible to them; I often wonder what mine are. I know the ones I can see—that I can be lazy and defensive and selfish. Then there are the ones I suspect but am unsure of—arrogance, shyness to the point of being rude, unrealistic expectations for my life. But what are the ones that I don’t notice at all? That make other people grind their teeth in irritation and frustration? I would like to know; I would like to fix them, if I can.
I don’t hold out much hope for flaw-fixing, though, even the flaws I know for sure are mine. I really should stop procrastinating and write that paper and study those lines and practice that song and stop stop stop wasting my time in daydreams. I know I should but it’s just so tempting, the retreat in my head that I drop by there too many times throughout the day.

I haven’t been sleeping well lately. My brain itches, and there’s something pokey in my heart that keeps me tossing and turning all night. I’ve been churning out poetry like some kind of verse-factory, trying to flush out whatever it is that’s bothering me. I can’t put my finger on it though, and none of the words that come out of me describe it well enough to let me get some rest. I try to talk about it out loud because sometimes I think maybe that would work and I don’t try talking often enough, but that doesn’t seem to fit either. I sat on my bed looking into the small black eyes of my oldest childhood friend and tried to say what I mean.
What I mean is, if things are supposed to happen, why don’t they just happen without tangling everyone up in so many complications?
What I mean is, I thought black was my favorite color but now maybe it’s white, and I’m not sure if that’s because white is all there is now or do I really have a choice?
What I mean is, is new light any brighter than old light and if I were right up next to a star, is it brighter because I’m closer to it, or because the light is fresh and hasn’t taken years and years and years to greet my eyes?
What I mean is, do I really need someone to balance me out or should it be someone who will enhance what I already have? Or at least appreciate it?
What I mean is, what words are empty and what ones should I really listen to? Are they just conceptual or should I act on them?
What I mean is, are my feelings dulled because I’m tired or do the inconsistencies mean that there’s really something not right and I don’t even know what I want, let alone if it’s right to ask for it?
What I mean still evades me, but Peploava listens just like she did when I was four and the zombies would come out at night to play their mean little games with me.
I can see the wear and age in the clumpy fur around her eyes and the seams showing through the orange fuzz under her paws and the disproportionately skinny ring around her neck from where a bracelet has served as a collar for over fourteen years. My stuffed tiger doesn’t answer; she never does, not until I’m sleeping. I can see she understands, though, and that’s the important part.
And besides, it’s ok with me if she doesn’t answer at all; if no one does. Because, like I’ve said before, all the mystery and romance and excitement would fade from life if I knew them.
I like to wonder, and to wander, and I’m finding too that I might like going out on a limb. There’s such a rush in taking risks. I’m a beginner; I haven’t done it very much. In fact today was the first time I took one willingly, without having to be made to do it. But I did it and I’m glad I did, and even though it’s kind of scary I’m looking forward to seeing where the chips fall. Because they haven’t fallen yet. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It could be really beautiful, maybe, and it could hurt too. But no matter what the outcome, it is exciting and mysterious and even if this turns out badly I don’t think I’ll regret trying.
See, I’ve had a glass of wine so now I feel braver; now I feel like being bold and making things change when I get tired or angry at the way they are. I think about what might happen,--the bad outcome--and if it happened right now I believe I would think, “Oh well, it wasn’t supposed to be, but there was nothing wrong with trying.” and I would shrug my shoulders and move on. But I’m tired and my head feels light and I know I don’t feel this way most of the time, so really I would react differently. But for now I’m strong and reasonable and I will enjoy the feeling, while it lasts.
Nothing lasts very long, though. Change blows like wind and whisks feelings away, good ones and bad ones, so all that’s really consistent is logic. Cold, hard, unmoving logic. Something to stand on, yes, but it sucks because the emotions are so much more intricate and beautiful. Like smoke. Ebbs and waves of misty white or silver, swirling in complex designs as it rolls and billows around me. It stings my eyes sometimes, but it is so entrancing to watch that I keep them open anyway. Especially when the smoke is writhing against a sunset and everything smells like cedar, and I have the taste of crème brulee coffee on my tongue. I tasted the same coffee again the other day, and I opened my mouth to tell my friend the memories and feelings the flavor stirred up in me, but I knew my words wouldn’t sound like I wanted them to so I wrote it clumsily in my journal instead.
Things are so much easier to put on paper, don’t you think? Words are sticky; they get caught in my throat. They’re cold, and hot too, though. They’re burning me and I want to get them out in the air to make the freezing flames stop but they get caught and I can’t make them leave. Drinking water doesn’t help to put them out; I’ve tried. I’ve tried a lot of things, and they work for awhile but some things just have to be said. They have to be said but I can’t say them and I don’t know what to do so I am restless…more restless than I’ve been in a long time. I am actually developing I twitch, I think. It’s just a matter of time before people notice this building pressure and run for their lives. And they should, for my sake and theirs, because when I get this way I say things I regret.
I’ve been saying too much lately; getting too specific. Confiding is not up to my standards of strength and so I have been very weak. But, I am planning to be weaker still. I am going to take a risk today; I am going to say something I have never said aloud before. I’m terrified. But I’m so tired of this…this treadmill I’m on. I’m running and running and going nowhere. Nowhere at all and I’m sick of it. No metaphor—no words at all really—can accurately describe my predicament. But I try. Every time there’s conflict in my head I try, which I suppose explains this seventeen page monologue I’ve written.
And here I am again, shaking and cold and food is ash on my tongue in this nervousness. I thought this was done. I thought my decision was made and it was settled. But apparently things are hardly ever settled and this time it’s up to me to settle them. I want to; I do. I’m just not good at it. I’ve tried before, and it didn’t turn out well.
The freezing-burning words left a stinging trail in my mouth as they surged out--too loud--into the air. The pain wasn’t done, though. No, the words spoken back to me burned burned burned so much worse. But I took it well; I took it numb. I nodded yes, yes I see; that makes sense. Silly me, ok I’m done now. I had been feeling lucky, so I reached for that gun but this time Dirty Harry had only fired five shots so he used the last one on me. I stopped the bleeding, though; held it in for four hours and was even able to make myself laugh without dripping on the seat of the car. That’s good. Don’t want to leave more of a mess than I already have. I hate being a burden on people in any way, so I bled the salt in my own car on the way home.
After such an burn, I sit in my dusty confessional again, my four-legged saint glad for the quiet after a satisfyingly hard ride. No feed bucket to sit on now; the shavings are fresh and soft and inviting. It is so cold outside but the stall is warm, and Spirit hovers over like he knows something in me has cracked a little.
When I forget Roy, my iPod, I play my own music in my head…and I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad…and I curl around myself; around the hole that appears in the absence of all the hopes that I lose. Cause I do lose them a lot. And as cliché as it sounds, that’s what it feels like—a hole, that is—and I know Spirit’s snuffling around my face is meant for comfort and it helps, but saline smears on his nose anyway.
All balled up, I lean my shoulder against the rough wooden wall and Spirit paws the floor next to me when I turn my face from him. I tell him everything; it’s hard not to. His ears are so big and they are always pointed toward me, eager for attention. His eyes are so deep and liquid and soulful, always watching me attentively. He’s huge and warm and soft and he can’t stand not to be touching me when we’re together, so we are constantly in happy contact. He loves me more than he does anyone else and he is my most consistent loyalty, so the words don’t burn me when I talk to him in this steel-and-wood cathedral.
This cathedral only makes it all the way to heaven in the summer, though; so soon the cold chases me back home, where a mug of hot chocolate and Bailey’s Irish Cream can help coax the blood back into my extremities. Then, after pizza, a scotch, and ninety minutes of “The Mummy”, I’m pretty much ok again but not quite, so I draw some pretty bedtime lines and then I can sleep.
And in my sleep, I plan things. Things for success next time. Those things never go as planned, even though I knew it was going to end up this way. I always know it somewhere in the back of my mind even though I convince myself otherwise for awhile. I wonder if my inkling of disbelief is what’s ruining things, and if I really believed completely things would work out. But that doesn’t seem flexible to God’s will. What is the balance? Can I try—can I even hope—for things without the risk of pitting my will against His? I’ve heard before that the easiest way to lose something is to want in too badly, and I am now convinced that is true. I’m always worrying so much about these checks and balances of life but all my worrying gets me nowhere because I can’t control every part of me, so those willful parts of my heart and mind just won’t line up where I know they should and then everything falls apart. And it can’t even be a clean break. I have reminders everywhere; stickers on surfaces that won’t come off and feathers on my wall that I can’t throw away and then of course there’s the brand on my brain and the mark will always be there even after it stops hurting.
And I can’t help wondering, what was the point? I asked God that, even though I know people say you’re not supposed to question Him, but it’s not like I’m mad at Him or anything. I just want to understand. I trust Him; I do. But that doesn’t scrub all the questions out of my mind. Maybe that means I’m not believing right or something; I don’t know. I know I love and trust Him and want His will…but I also want my will to match up with His and I think that ultimately it will because He has plans to give me the future I hope for (that’s what Jeremiah said, anyway). But I’m wondering when that’ll start lining up. When what He’s doing is what I want, too.
Things are changing, though; happening. and I just want to know for sure cause all the signs point different things sometimes, so my heart starts running 100mph and I’m really hoping that I don’t crash into any brick walls that are my dreams’ dead end.
It hasn’t crashed too horribly yet, though, so I’m hemming and bleaching staying to play, enjoying it while its relatively simple. Not perfect; never perfect. But much better. And new. So new and so many changes that make my nerves jump frighteningly but in a good way, too. Good for now. Great for now. I can’t let myself think about this sweet thing going sour--because it might--or else the happy swelling goes away.
It does go away sometimes, though, even when I try so hard to think of only good things. And when it's gone, I lose my resolve to defeat my vices. The kind that disturb things for everyone, but especially me. Not just bad things stir it up, though. Sometime just odd things, and then it all just gets more confusing cause it could be good or bad. It gets a bit choppy when I think of how my music plays like nothing to your ears. The brightest eyes, the iron, and the wine that nourishes me and keeps me alive; they hold no sustenance for you. So much I never thought--butter and cream you are now, and I don't know how you know, or if it's you or just your years. I blush; a tingling in my ears. When it's cold that coat smells like you, and every day I try to leave my scent. Do you breathe me in? I don't know where the silver went. I won't make you stand in the rain, but climb the ladders with me, please; sit with me above the graves. On our backs we'll lie like corpses, touching the earth that touches death, and we'll think on eternity and what used to be. Will you think these things with me?
I think of these things, a little impatient as my tapestry is being woven. Some threads are regrets and they interrupt the patterns I think are pretty. Maybe the ugly colors make a pattern too. Well, I know they do, but I can't see it yet. My mistakes will make a beautiful pattern; I know I'm just standing too close to tell how they fit in with the rest. It'll be awhile before I can take a few steps back, though. Before I can stand far enough away to see what the Artist had in mind. I know there's something, though, and believing that is sometimes the only thing that keeps me from burning the entire thing. Lately it's been prettier, though; something I like to hang on my wall and gaze at in the dim light of my ceiling sticker-stars as I go to sleep at night. Sometimes it's so beautiful it keeps me awake though, because I can't stand to put my eyelids between my eyes and the stunning weave.
But when I wake in the morning and leave my room to rejoin the mad rush of life, I start to feel overwhelmed. There’s just stuff, you know? I seem to have misplaced my self-discipline, and so I can’t keep up with what I should be. Mornings rushed and gray, lonely drive on cracked pavement; a childhood friend in the passenger seat, my one-sided conversation. One of the crowd, faceless; categorized at a glance. I mutter a bit of a prayer sometimes; “let me stand out”. I see them, some beautiful faces; no one feels my stare as they walk by. Maybe I’m a ghost, I think. So I play the game and blend in, a weed among the stems of wildflowers. No petals to grace me, no elegance in my form. But still I try to grow between them, the face of a noxious plant groping for sun. So often though, I am cut short. My growth is painfully slow; slowly painful. The race to the sun is so desperate; the wildflowers’ faces all turned up. They tower so far above me that I myself am not even sure I exist.
I'll start trying harder tomorrow, though. Start renewing my resolve. Mondays are good days to get a fresh start; stop eating junk food, stop procrastinating, stop writing in my journal when I should be writing science-fiction for class on Friday. It's hard, though. How do successful people keep their self-control? Mine keeps running away and so its gone and I have no motivation to chase after it.
I think I'm just stuck. Stuck in certain patterns of thinking. Or maybe it's just been cold outside for too long. The air is dry and stale and so I am dry and stale, and it's the time of year when things have been the same just long enough to drive me crazy, but not so long that a change is in sight. Well, I suppose a change would be in sight if I could look at the big picture, but I'm not so good at that. My memory of yesterday is foggy and I can't focus long enough to piece together a rough draft of the future, so I have the present to do with it what I can. When I see it put down on paper like that, before my eyes in black and white, it seems to me that that way of thinking should simplify things; make it easier to be constructive in the moment. But for whatever reason it doesn't, and so I suppose I'd better get started on figuring out why. Because I've realized that my usual method isn't working. Usually, I wait for things to change around me so that I have a mold to fit; some guidelines to follow. Someone or something to take the lead for me. But now I'm starting to see what a lame excuse that is. Things are getting out of hand and I need to change myself and figure out how on my own. Otherwise, I may get too comfortable here in my head with my worthless brain-toys. I'll get to comfortable and lose my desire for something more, and I don't want that to happen. Even if I never succeed in grasping more, I don't want to lose the discontent with the status-quo. I don't want to be satisfied. I want to be forever chasing after more. More meaning, more value, more depth, more horizons, more questions and the answers to those questions.

I spend a lot of time waiting. For little things, like my pizza in the microwave; and for big things, like the beginning of my real life. Cause I don’t think this is my real life. I’m treading water, waiting for a ship or a piece of driftwood or a giant sea turtle or anything to take me to dry land. I’m not settled yet; not ultimately established. It’s hard to feel at home when I know that someday soon I’ll go away and this will never be my home again. When I know that home will be somewhere different, but I can’t start to feel at home there either because I don’t know anything about it. I can’t get too comfortable where I am, but I can’t prepare for the future either and I’m constantly on my toes and afraid that any moment may be the one that will begin the upside-down-turning of my world. Because as restless as I get sometimes, the feeling is easily dispelled by the approach of possible change.
Though, I hadn’t noticed my dislike of change until someone told me about it. And now it is nearly debilitating and I’ve thought long and hard about why that may be and I have a theory. It is probably quite far off and any psych major may scold me for the suggestion, but it’s a thought for my bored brain to play with; another rubix cube in my mind, among the many that sit unfinished. I think that maybe with all the careful psychological studying and analysis and diagnosis, we are just talking ourselves deeper and deeper into our problems simply because they have been acknowledged and given a label.
I’ve heard it before; I’ve told someone something about me that I thought was just a random—if a bit odd—fact, and suddenly there was something wrong with me. Something broken in my brain. No longer an attribute of uniqueness; no longer originality. A diagnosed cognitive malfunction to be analyzed and fixed. The power of suggestion, the dignity of response; whatever it was, something I hardly ever thought about had then taken root in my gray matter, and suddenly those exercises and lists and things to work on were necessary. A horrible snowball of inner turmoil I thought would never, ever be in me. But years go by and damage is fixed, and hollow congratulations are in order because I’m exactly where I was three years ago.
Exactly where I was, because I’ve worked on things and buried some things. Some people. Well, I haven’t buried actual people. They are still alive and well. But I couldn’t put them to rest in my mind and I tossed and turned every night; lost so much sleep on their account. I’ve read that doing something physically can help to do what needs to be done mentally, so I decided a funeral was in order. Mourn the loss; cut off ties. Have some closure for myself, because there is no way I’d ever be able to actually talk about it in person. What would I say?
“I have planned your funeral; I will put you in a box. I will put into the ground all my pictures of you. Every piece of paper, and your music that I saved; all wrapped up in the clothes we wore, with that green and silver melody. I will bleed into the ground with the birthdays and the note cards, and the drawings with our phrases; the insects in our names. I wanted to wait till springtime, when the ground is soft, but you must go down deep now, and I must love myself. So I held a glass jar; I kissed its face, with yours beneath. I cracked it on the ice, to wait there till the summer’s heat. You drown in my backyard, where we swam in better days. And I hang in bottles, catching light in golden rays. Over your grave, there will be no headstone. You will lie unmarked when I’m through. Over your grave, there will be no mourning, because I’m the only one who ever knew. Over your grave there will be no flowers, except for this one, embalmed in red. Over your grave, there will be no sunlight, but what charity filters in.”
But I couldn’t tell them those things; those words that sound like the demented ravings of a melancholy serial killer. It’s all metaphorical, but they wouldn’t understand that and they wouldn’t understand why because I never said anything and it’s too late now. It’s too far in the past.
I spend too much time dwelling on the past. The good things and the bad. I’m working on letting go of bitterness, though. I had some things to say. They were true, and when I think too much about them they are still true, and I think, “So stay in your paperback heaven; I never asked anything of you. You gave it on your own, just a glimpse, and made it so I couldn’t live without. But like a heroin addict claims she’s not really hooked on the dope…as the withdraw wracks my body—red-rimmed eyes and insomnia—I’ll never admit that you were the cause of my pain. So stay and obey all of your laws; make sure you do everything right. Don’t take any risks. Don’t even feel, because someone might disapprove. Maybe you just don’t care. I’ll never know what you’re thinking. All I know is, much time has passed since you said that you’re glad I’m alive. I don’t know why you drew away; I can only assume I did something wrong, or just not enough things right. If you won’t tell me anymore what’s really in your head, then I’ll stop asking for your thoughts, and hide mine from you as well. Apparently you don’t want to hear. So I’ll turn my back and say ‘fine, then’, stubbornly refusing the crushing urge to look back and see if you miss me.” I know that’s bitter and sharp, but I’m slowly wearing the edge off. All by myself; cause I did look back…and I wasn’t missed.
Sometimes I wish I was catholic so I could confess to a priest behind a carved wooden wall; not having to make eye contact, and not feeling like I’m burdening him with my stupid problems like I do when I talk to friends or even family. Some people would probably suggest a therapist for that kind of thing, but I know that wouldn’t be the same. A therapist would nod and pretend to care and scribble things in her notebook and write that I’m “emotionally numb” just because I haven’t cried in awhile. I’ve heard psychobabble; I know that’s all I would get. And that’s not what I need. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me; my different ways of seeing things and feeling things are just personality quirks that make me who I am, as strange a person as that is. A therapist would tell me to fix things that aren’t even broken. A priest would call me “my child” and tell me I’m forgiven. Words so much more comforting, and he wouldn’t even charge me sixty-plus dollars a session or however much a psychologist costs.
But I’m not catholic and I don’t go to confession, so there’s a different wooden box I lock myself in when I get that feeling. It’s full of the raw smell of horses and the warm smell of hay and covered in a familiar coat of wood dust. Then I say everything I’d say to the priest, only I say it directly to God. I know He forgives and He understands, but sometimes I wish I could really hear the words; His voice in my ears calling me “my child” and saying “you’re forgiven”.
I listen sometimes, hoping to pick it up in the rustle of the sounds of the barn. I’ll sit on an upturned grain bucket in Spirit’s stall, next to the water bucket so he won’t step on me by accident. I muse in my journal, my pen occasionally slipping across the page when Spirit shoves his nose into my lap, always impatient when I pay attention to something other than him. My journal is pretty worn out and smeared in places with dirt and horse drool, and even some blood from when I snagged my hand on a loose nail. It’s ok with me, though. I’m glad. It’s further record of the essence of my life; the essence of me and what I find important.
Worn things like that are the things that speak the most, and so are the most significant. They hold time in them, it seems to me. They’ve soaked up the minutes and hours and days and the things that happened in them and it makes me wonder, if I was that old shed or that tree or whatever, what kinds of things would I have seen? What would I have heard and what things would I hold in my long, long memory? I like things that are older than me. Things that have been in the world longer and experienced it more than I have, and in a way that I never will.
That’s one of the reasons why I like rain. It’s always in a cycle, rain is, and so the raindrops are probably very very old. I don’t remember a lot about the science of it, but I know it’s continually recycled and I remember the basics of how it works, so that’s my theory. That the rain is old, I mean. Water being evaporated and then falling again and used by plants and people and animals that die and have the moisture sucked out of them and so the water ultimately returns to the air and falls again, so who knows how old the rain is? The droplets that splash on my upturned face might have fallen who knows when, who knows where, upon who knows who or what. If my thought process could in any way be correct, the rain sliding on my skin could once have slid on the skin of Christ. Maybe. Who knows. I don’t; not really. But I like to be connected like that and think of things like that, of all the places that rain has been and who and what it’s touched since the beginning of time when the first water was set into the cycle.
I feel cleaner after it rains. I heard that in a song once and decided that it’s true. Because I relate heavily to my surroundings. Maybe everyone does. I don’t know. But I do and when the world is fresh-washed and bright and pungent, I feel that way too. I go out into the woods and watch the swollen creek, so unfamiliar it turns the entire wood into strange terrain. Though I suppose it’s more like a river, after a storm. Its current is strong and it continually erodes the sides of the bank. Things have fallen down there; benches and piles of wood and fence posts that were set around the edge. They fell in as the bank collapsed, bit by bit, so we’ve stopped putting things there and are careful not to step too close. Sometimes I do, though, just for the rush when I think about how, at any moment, the ground could drop out from beneath me. And when the creek is swollen and rushing, I think about how it is eroding the banks more than usual and how the ground falls in and is carried away and I wonder if someday the bank will have crept up so close that in some violent rainstorm, the foundation of my house will be washed away and my home will crumble.
But that would be years and years from now, and by then this place might just be a fuzzy memory like my childhood homes are now. Because when I really “grow up” and start my “real life”, this place will probably seem like a childhood home, even though I guess I’m not a child. I think things are going to change more before I’m sure of that. It’s hard to want the changes though. Hard to anticipate them. I see them being acted out in the adults I know, but seeing isn’t knowing. I see love between people—real love, mature love—but that doesn’t help me any more to know what it is. And I don’t trust books, as much as I like to read them.
It’d be nice if love in real life was as good as love in books. I can’t fathom how it possibly could be, but maybe it is. Otherwise why would there be such a hype? But it’s so common. Love, that is. No, it can’t be as good. Maybe not even special. It happens to almost everyone, and it dulls out with time, from what I’ve observed. “The One”? Please. Chemicals, animals, instincts, God’s plan for populating the earth and giving people some pleasure of ultimately shallow connection while they’re at it. It’s just love. It can’t be that great. All the hype is probably just cause people are so broken and empty and pitiful that romance is the best thing we can experience on earth, and thus it is glorified. Falsely glorified. Love is the fanciest of our cheap jewelry; a rhinestone among the plastic. Still common and nearly worthless, but not quite as cheap as the plastic bangles of wealth, power, and fame. A fresh romance may be exciting, but even if it works out, the couple will grow old. Passion will fade to habitual attachment. Routine will set in, all exciting drama and happy chaos gone. All color gone. So what’s the point? Every real-life love story is the same. They have their differences, but they’re really all the same, from where I’m standing. Boy meets girl, hearts race for awhile, then they slow again. If one or both of them aren’t broken first. And many people just stay together cause they’re afraid of being alone and they still feel an echo of attachment. Chemicals, instincts. No, real-life love can’t be as good as book-love.
Of course, I am being overly-cynical, because I prefer not to get my hopes up. I don’t want to be disappointed. Because if I dreamed love up to be wonderful, I would be disappointed. I’d be disappointed if I never fell in love, or if I did and it turned out to be less than worth it. Being almost-in-love didn’t turn out to be worth it at all, so I suppose the risk to really being in love is that it may be even less worth the time and energy and heartache.
Not that I know. I’m just speculating; always speculating. Because there’s so very much that I don’t know, and quite frequently I need someone to beat some perspective into me. Luckily, I have a few people who are more than willing to do that. They’re stronger than me; strong enough to tell me the truth and not just what I want to hear. I usually tell people what they want to hear unless they insist on honesty, or I just don’t say anything at all. Because for as much as I like to argue, and for as many awkward silences as I have created by voicing my strong moral opinions, I hate conflict on a personal level. It’s ok, though, cause it’s not like it hurts anyone but me. Right? Avoiding conflict just affects me and I can deal with that a lot better than I can deal with the risk of hurting other people.

I’m still afraid of so many things. Maybe if I was put into a box and frozen for a few years, my heart would get frostbite, and when it thawed pieces would fall off and with any luck, they would take some things with them. Or a doctor could remove them carefully with sterile clamps and scalpels, all neat and orderly, and sew me back up with nice orderly stitches in a straight orderly line. That would be so much better than what I have to do. So much better to be orderly. So much better to be neat and clean. But instead I have to reach into myself and rip out the pieces. It hurts it hurts it hurts so much but if I leave them they will rot away there, and take the rest of my heart with them.
Maybe it will be less painful if I refuse to write it. If I never again see it before me as ink on paper, in my clumsy script. Maybe I will forget how to write those three letters in that order, and so forget a bit of it. Every prayer concerning it I’ve put into bottles and hung from my tree.
I have lots of things on my tree. Empty bottles of wine, fragile teacups, shiny silver trinkets, sparkling baubles and things that glitter in the sunlight. I have carved things into its wooden skin; words and phrases and pictures and symbols like pale scars in the rough, dark brown hide. A heart is there, with my initials on one side and a plus sign in the middle and a blank space on the other side. I’ll carve someone else’s there when I find them. Even if I have to come back from miles away. I’ll go back to where I spent the longest and went through the most and was innocent and romantic and dark and fallen. The place my life changed forever. Many times. Where I longed so much for things out of my reach. I’ll come back and say to my ghosts, “See? It all turned out alright.” I’ll carve his initials next to mine, and a symbol of closure on the tree. My ghosts will play here, whispering in the branches and swaying the memories of the pretty things that once hung there, catching the light. They will float upon the roof and watch for shooting stars; easy, lucky, free. They will be at peace, because I’ve come back to tell them I’ve found my place. Life won’t be perfect, but I’m no longer lost. My ghosts will know that and rest. My tree needs a name. Something as sparkling and romantic and magical as it is. In some foreign language; something silver and glass and transparent colors. I love my tree.
And I like boxes. I like to hide things in them—little things—and forget about them so when I find them again and open them it’s like finding old friends. Once a boy brought me two turtle eggs he’d found in the woods. I put them in a tin box with some warm, wet tissues and shoved the tin to the back of my dresser. I don’t know how long it was until I remembered the eggs. Actually, to be honest, I didn’t even remember them by myself. I was being forced by maternal powers to clean my room, and I happened to find the box. Even then, I couldn’t remember what I’d put in it. I opened the lid. There was a baby turtle inside, scrambling around on his slippery metal floor, all lost and confused and shocked by the sudden light. The first light he’d ever seen. And I was the first face he saw. Not that it matters much with turtles, I guess. His brother egg was dead, but that didn’t make this one’s survival any less miraculous to me. I’d hatched a healthy baby turtle, almost completely by accident. There in the damp dark, where I’d left him forgotten, God developed his transparent claws, his quarter-sized shell, his soft, baggy skin, his tiny tail, and his efficient little beak with which he tore through the rubbery eggshell. And so, there in a metal box amid wads of soggy Kleenex and a miscarried sibling, a little life began and lived for days—possibly a week or more. He shouldn’t have been able to breathe; the box lid was sealed and secure. He had no meal to supplement his tiny strength after birth. It was certainly with no help from me, his negligent foster mother, that he survived. His ever-watchful, ever-loving Father cared for him. I named him Rocky and fed him wet dog food in a ten-gallon terrarium. He liked to sleep under dirt and peat moss, and when he was lethargic I would put him outside in the sunshine for awhile. Winter passed and Rocky stayed in my warm room, bypassing the normal hibernation practiced by the rest of his species out in the cold. When summer came again, I took him back out to the woods, to the pile of rocks where his egg was found. I admit I was worried about him; worried that he wouldn’t know how to survive in “the wild”. But as I walked back to my house after setting Rocky free, I remembered how God took care of him in the dark places when no one could see; when no one even remembered or cared. God would take care of him now, out in the sunny woods. And, because “are you not more valuable than many sparrows?”, God will take care of me too, in the dark places and in the sunshine.
I’m not going to pretend I’m at all unique or original in my thoughts and feelings. I’m not going to say that I don’t give a crap about what other people think or that I don’t base many decisions off of what I think they’ll think. To be honest, I think that anyone who claims not to care is lying. Not only are they lying, but they’re trying even harder than those who admit the influence. They want to seem cool and nonchalant, instead of being honest and real.
I’m not honest and real very often. Sometimes I am, I guess. It’s easy to be honest and real when I’m feeling pretty. When I feel pretty and I’m alone with my dog under three warm blankets with classical nocturnes pulsing from my CD player. Then I can gain some perspective. Then I can think about what a hypocrite I am. Because I am one, in several ways. All the time I think about the inherently sinful nature of man and how we have sunk lower and lower as time passes. About how many awful things are accepted in society; awful things like lying and cheating to get ahead. Or so easily breaking promises when things get rough. Physical and emotional abuse; the shame of the victim preventing the capture of the criminal. People screaming at each other over frivolous lawsuits on the Judge Judy show while lying under oath and it’s all so stupid stupid stupid and humbling because I know that I am human too and I think, “this is what I’m trying to ‘fit in’ with?” and it is all so simple for a second. Just one second, though, and with no words to shake it up; no words to figure it out with. But I keep trying and I ask myself why I’m so afraid of these people. Why I worry what this corrupted, broken culture will think when I blurt out something stupid. I stopped wearing miss-matched socks to impress this twisted world view? This is why I tried to lose weight? This is why I’m embarrassed to admit that I want to foster exotic animals someday? This is why I bought that Rammstein album (don’t get me wrong; they have some great music. But still.)? And I shake my head at how pathetic I am, caring so much about what others think when I’ve always wanted so much to be independent. So then I try to remember not to care. To live fearlessly.
But somehow I remember that it’s Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or January or February or March and I’m only eighteen with so much ignorance of the world and a lot of work to do before life really begins…Somehow the futile monotony of the day-to-day dwarfs my eager resolve and I go back to how I was, just an hour—just a minute—before, and I despairingly wonder if I ever really can change for the better.
I know I’m dramatic. I’ve had two funerals for people who haven’t even died. So I indulge my despair for a bit, even though I know God will work things out. That He is good and will grant me the desires of my heart, and He will change me into whatever He wants me to be. I know that but it’s so hard to actually believe it all the time because I am so picky in my mind. I don’t want to get my hopes up, or to assume that things will go along with my plans.
Everything is such a fine line in my mind and I wish I could simplify it a bit, because such a deal of unnecessary stress would be relieved if I could. I know I over-complicate so many things, but I’m never sure of what I’m over-complicating and what is really complicated. I want answers. I want my work cut out for me; my decisions made for me. But it never is and they hardly ever are and so when it’s up to me I’m truly terrified because if I fail there is no one to blame but myself.
And often times, as soon as something I’ve always wanted seems to be within reach, I discover that it is exactly the thing I am most terrified of. For the one moment of awe, I think everything could maybe, possibly, finally be settled. Then I realize that it’s not; that my wish comes with a storm of uncertainties more violent than any I’ve experienced for quite awhile.
But when my stomach flips and I lose my appetite in the nervousness and my joints get sore in the stress and I’m so so tired but I can’t sleep, I try to remember that there are bigger things than this and ultimately it doesn’t matter and I’ll get through it and chalk it all up to experience; life lessons that couldn’t be learned any other way because I only learn through my own mistakes and maybe I’m a masochist and I just don’t know it. Or I’m afraid to admit it. But I’ll figure it out and hopefully do fewer and fewer stupid things as I get older, until I’m wise enough to live but old enough to die. Because that’s how it works.
And it’s ok with me, I guess. If others benefited from my life in some way, it’s ok that I’ll never really figure anything out. Even when I’m right in the element, when I’m in a little cemetery in an old churchyard, I still don’t quite get it. I lay down on a grave, my head at the tombstone and my face to the sky, and thought about the person beneath me, separated only by earth which we all become eventually and from which we were made. Dirt to flesh to dirt again and my flesh touched the dirt which touched the dirt-flesh of a departed soul who had once had a life and a personality and problems and dreams and maybe some of the answers that I am missing, and we’re connected. I read her name and the dates that summarized her life so incompletely into eight numbers and a dash, and repeated them in my mind as I lay there. But still my mind didn’t wrap around the magnitude of the concept. I stayed until I could feel the grass pressing intricate designs into my skin. I stayed to see the sun set from the corner of my eye. I stayed to let a chilly evening wind pull the blood from my fingers and toes and still I knew I didn’t understand.
Maybe it was my state of mind at the time, or the weather or the city-smell beyond or the spirits haunting the graveyard that clouded my thoughts. Whatever it was, I rose to my feet and returned to the sidewalk, wishing I’d had more time and hoping that someday something would click in my brain.
But maybe I’m not supposed to understand that kind of thing. That realization of eternity and who was and who will be, in myself or in others. Even those deceased. Because if I understood I would be satisfied and my quest would end. My walks in the woods and in graveyards, searching through the Psalms and Proverbs and reading Revelation over and over and over again, climbing out on the rooftop at night to try to see--really see—the depth of the stars and the sky and the infinity of the universe. The mystery and the romance would be gone and I would have nothing left to look for and then where would I be and what would I do?
And besides, answers don’t usually come from the sky, or from lying above a corpse. They often times come from other people; and by choice, my social scope is small.
But lately I’ve been feeling restless, like something will happen; like something needs to happen. So many times I feel myself tapping my foot and my attention span is growing shorter and shorter and shorter and there’s not much I can do to make any tides turn in my life.
So I’m branching out. I’m thinking about meeting new people. Thinking about it is a start. I’ll think about it in a crowded room and imagine many different scenarios, just in case. By the time I’ve gotten the fear under some form of control, it’s time for me to go home or to Algebra or to the barn and I don’t mind because facing my fears isn’t exactly my favorite thing to do.
I’ll get around to it someday, though. Because as much as I feel like vomiting when I meet new people, sometimes I need new people in my life. It isn’t like I don’t love the old ones. I do. But sometimes the undiscovered souls out there intrigue me and my curiosity starts poking holes in the bubble of fear clogging my throat. When it’s deflated enough and I go on the hunt for a kindred spirit, it’s like breathing cold, fresh air through a sore throat when you have a fever. It’s extremely uncomfortable to do, but once it’s done you feel refreshed and revived. Unless you inhale a dust bunny. Then you choke and hurt yourself. That’s what happens when you are getting to know new people and you say something stupid or rude by accident.
Even if the initial meeting does go well, though, there’s always a lot of risk involved in building relationships of any kind, of any depth. Sometimes it’s worth it. Sometimes it isn’t. I’m always afraid that it won’t be and then I decide that I’m happy here, surrounded by who I know and what I know and my routine and I can endure the occasional restless spell cause that’s not nearly as bad as stepping off the edge of a cliff without knowing what’s at the bottom.
I have dreams that I do, though. Wonderful dreams in which I’m full of courage and dive straight into danger and mystery like I’ve always wanted to be able to do in real life. He reached out his arm; where are we going? A cold grip pulled me from the light. Stabbing ivory, my angel’s kiss, the pain so much better than any pleasure I’d known. Beautiful, biting, burning it spread through blood and marrow and bone. My piercing nightmare, my sweet maze of black, intoxicating ebony liquor, customized for my addiction. So pleasing the dream, so lovely the sting, that living is no longer enough. So rise and burn and freeze, my love. No one else will do. Watch me close with hooded eyes, and I’ll pretend you’re real. That you are more than a spark in my brain; than the broken fragments of my sanity.
Even the melancholy dreams are sweet; a healing balm on my short-circuiting brain. Tranquil dreams, even though they may stir an enigmatic sadness in me. Listen; I whisper, wait for me. Wait for me, Beauty. Wait for me, Hope. Wispy things, melted with the dew of morning. Melt me, Sunshine. Drink me, Dry Earth; for my dreamy pixies have gone where I can’t follow. And Romance is sleeping, an eternal rest as ink on a page that will never be mine. They inspire me, these dreams. They make me want to be a scribe—to write beautiful things that stir others’ souls like mine has been stirred.
I don’t know what to write sometimes though, so I put my pen to the page and just let it move, sliding along the paper in shapes that please my fingertips to form as they guide the ball point. I like the way it feels, the subtle roll of the ball and the way it leaves black lines in its wake, my code down on paper forever. Usually I can feel the buildup of words in my hand; behind my fingers, waiting to flow out, but sometimes I don’t know what they are. They’re there; I know they are but I just can’t identify them and I want so badly to put them down on paper but I can’t, and I feel almost like an addict desperately in need of a fix. And there’s nothing I can do except wait.