Hey, what if I changed everything? What if I shook my life like a snow globe and just hung around to watch where things might settle? Though, knowing me, shaking up my life might turn out more like shaking up a soda can: an explosion triggered by the slightest hint of release. Instead of watching where things settle down, I might be watching to see them hit the ceiling; to see what the hissing spray will stain. And how very, very sticky it would make things.
It might be worth it, though, because this isn’t working for me. I don’t like who I am here. Everything I say and do just seems to be wrong. Not wrong in the moral sense. Wrong in the sense of being an inaccurate representation of my nature. I think it’s because most of my soul is made up of things that really can’t be demonstrated behaviorally. Things that have to be heard in the pauses between the words I speak—the quiet ones, when my gaze wanders and rides on invisible currents of warm air towards the ceiling.
Sometimes I wish people knew me only from my writing. Then they would know my true essence instead of this character they are forced to create for themselves by patching together a few random patterns. What I write is really much more accurate—my pulsing, writhing, bleeding, laughing, crying, skipping, sinning, loving, doubting, living, breathing soul—and here it is, represented in a truer way than could ever be expressed in person. I don’t speak or act in ways that express the truth that my written words do.
I think I need to hang out with some artsy, slightly emo hipsters. We’d listen to The Decemberists or the latest Paste sampler, draw weird things depicting words that end with “ism”, discuss the autobiographies of Augusten Burroughs, wear serious expressions and experiment with beat-poetry. There would be a guitar in there somewhere, too. I would probably even wear plaid and skinny jeans, to be honest. Or a black turtleneck. I can’t help it; I just like that stuff.
Is it possible that it could really be all about location, location, location? Lately I’ve been feeling like where I am doesn’t cultivate my natural self very well. Like something about my environment is keeping me from thriving in the ways God intended me to. Do I need to find a new habitat? Or simply alter my current one?
I don’t know; I’m so tired and just the thought of change is exhausting. But then, so is the thought of things staying the same.
I don’t have the energy for much more than damage control. Damage caused by my lack of energy and the presence of pain. Do you see the vicious cycle here? It makes me dizzy; makes my heart nauseous and I suppose this is the emotional vomit. Maybe I’m choking on it.
Sometimes I want to try to explain it all—every physical, emotional, psychological, relational thing that it significantly, negatively affected by lupus. But then I remember how, in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter. Being sick sucks, just like a lot of things that a lot of people go through in life. It sucks more than some things and less than others, just like everything else. I remember that a lot can be solved by following one or more of the instructions in the following sentence: Trust God, Grow Up, and Deal With It.
But gosh darn it, sometimes that can be hard to do.
I'd tell them, you know, if they wanted to know. I'd tell them all sorts of things.
