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.