It seems like the thoughts and feelings of the past twenty-two years of my existence are converging violently. My pride and shame, my drive and my sloth, my isolation and my dependency, they're all smashing into one another, demanding immediate reconcilaton. A lifetime of trying to become something, all different manner of something, is reaching its natural apex. It is now the time to become who I am; and who shall I be?
The process of growing up and becoming who you are is painful. It's much more painful than I ever could have imagined. In these last few weeks, I've held weeping loved ones, trying to reassure them that life is worth living. That we are here for a purpose, and that purpose is worth all of the suffering and trials that living implies. And I've been reduced to tears, trembling under the weight of those very same questions, and I've patiently endured a best friend's efforts to comfort me in my sorrow.
This life is sometimes miserable. I have often wished to rip out my desires by their roots. To live with them, and all the frustration of leaving them unsatiated, borders on the intolerable. I know that I will never have my heart's greatest desire, but still I sit hoping, waiting, watching, listening for any sign of hope. I could never live with myself if I took by force what I so violently desire, but neither can I simply convince myself to give up and settle for what I have been given already.
I know that there are better things for me in this life than those things I have merely preferred for my own future. The greatest blessings in my life I never would have thought to ask for, left to my own base and limited worldview. The greatest lessons I've learned, I would not have chosen to learn had I been given the option. They were too painful and sacrificial to have ever desired them. Though, looking back on my life, I would change little. I do not regret much. Only loving others less than I should have, and having been more trouble than I ought have been. I have been very fortunate in being too naturally timid to cause myself or others very much trouble. I have never been a great bother; not because of my saintliness, mind you, but because of my lack of it.
I think I need to go away for a while. To off and be somewhere. Somewhere where I can listen only to my own voice, and the voice of God, and learn how to discern which belongs to whom.
When I said yesterday that I'd heard that
BlogExplosion increases your hits, I wasn't expecting that I would already have had 36 visitors today. I've had many weeks (mostly while I was on sabbatical from blogging, to be fair), when 36 was all the hits I had in a week!
Now I sort of feel guilty about how little I've blogged lately, and how uninteresting I've been. I don't want to be the sort of blog that you're just counting down the 30 seconds on. I want to be fresh, and interesting, funny and intellectual. I can be that way. I think. I've been told I'm all of those things! Once. In a bar. From a drunk. Who didn't know me.
::awkward silence::
Discoveries of today:
I joined
BlogExplosion. It's supposed to be a service in which you trade visits to other people's blogs for visits to your own. I actually don't care all that much for getting more hits around here, but I've been bored lately and looking for good new blogs to read. So I joined. I found some good new blogs, and best of all, I found a link to my newest great waste of time.
It's no secret that I'm a total geek. A total geek. I like superheros, and comic books, and I like writing stories. Therefore, writing stories about superheros and mutants and comic book heros has always sort of been my thing. Secretly. In a deep, dark drawer that no one gets to explore. I have a lot of characters floating around in my head. And this "easy character design" site is helping to bring those characters to life. I suck at art, so it's awesome to see my mental creations get so close to reality. It's not exact, of course, but it's really pretty awesome. Fellow geeks will definitely enjoy this:
HeroMachine 2.0: The Ultimate Fantasy Entertainment Character Generator.
I had a decent Thanksgiving. I really can't complain about it, except to say that it was kind of lonely. My brother and his wife came out with the new little baby. That part was nice. I got to feed her, and I love to do that, so it was a good thing. But the other grandkids didn't come out, and my sisters didn't come, so it was sort of quiet.
I'm strangely family oriented. I'm terribly anti-social, even in the context of my own family, but a holiday just isn't a holiday without all the fights, and nerves, and misery and joy of everyone being all together. What the heck is the point of a holiday, if there isn't anyone around to suffer through it with you?
Well, I guess this holiday does have a point. And it would probably be a fitting attitude adjustment to think about that point for a bit. So, here goes, things I'm thankful for this year:
- Unlike many Thanksgivings, we managed to actually have Thanksgiving
on Thanksgiving this year, because my mother is actually relatively healthy and we aren't all at the hospital due to some illness or surgery. I'm thankful that, though she continues to have many serious health issues, my mother has spent far less time in the hospital this year than she has in any year since I was first in high school. That's such a gift that I can hardly contemplate its consequences.
- I'm thankful this year, that I managed to finish school and get my degree. I would be more thankful if I had landed a killer job, but I'm still very thankful for a little free time. I know that I have quite a future ahead of me yet, and that being able to finish college was a major stepping stone in making all of that happen.
- I'm very thankful for my family. I am thankful that Brianne came home; that I have gotten closer to Brittany and Jessica. I am thankful for the births of my great-nephew Ty and my brand new little niece.
- I continue to be grateful for my friends, many of whom I've had the chance to draw closer to this year. I've really begun to trust a few, select people in a way that I've never been able to before; and, I've realized that many of my friends are really "friends forever," though circumstance and choice have put space and time between us.
- I am thankful that, unemployment and all, I've managed to take care of myself this year. My basic needs are provided for, and the vast majority of my wants. I know that, on the whole of planet Earth, I belong to a select, tiny percentage of human beings who worry only about the most trivial things like homework assignments and what's going to be on television instead of the basic staples of existence.
- I'm thankful to live in a country with "the soul of a Church." It's easy to forget how many freedoms we enjoy here, and how fortunate and safe we have been for so many years. Though we are from perfectly safe, and even farther from perfection in general, we have been unquestionably and incredibly blessed.
- I am thankful to have found some measure of peace, and a shadow of salvation. I have been spared much trouble that I have very much deserved to suffer through. And I am beginning to see just how very much trouble I may eventually be spared yet.
There are a million things more to be thankful about. There are too many blessings to even begin considering them. I am thankful for my life, and the lives of those I love. I am thankful for the lives of those who I have not yet come to love yet, but will, in time. I am thankful for air, and earth, and water, and....well, there too many things to consider!
So much of life is waiting! Why do I have to be so bad at it? I have a lot of practice, you'd think I'd improve. But my impatience is going to drive me mad. I want everything
now! Damn you Atari! You ruined my attention span!
Today was sort of disappointing. I woke up with a lot of lofty thoughts, full of good intentions. Somehow, none of it came to fruition.
I did manage to get into a fight with my mom over the holidays. I avoided fighting with anyone else, though I didn't really do anyone any positive good either.
Ahh, well.
There is a time appointed for everything. The time I'm longing for is coming, I know. Maybe tomorrow will be the day.
I didn't do much today. I was supposed to babysit for Jesse tonight, but I only kept him for an hour or so. We got his homework done, which is the miserable part of the night, but missed out on the part where we usually play games and such. That sort of sucked.
No new baby yet. Five days overdue and counting. Bleh.
I don't know what the deal is with my blogging habits. I've actually written a couple of lengthy blogs, and then not posted them because the internet was moving slow and I didn't feel like waiting. Rationally, I can see how silly that is; but, somehow, when I'm actually on the spot, I just want to be doing something else.
This week has been largely uneventful. We're still waiting on my brother's baby to be born. Jasmin's birthday passed rather quietly. I still don't have a job. I helped my niece to get one though, which was a good thing, and my major productive effort of the week.
I finished Thomas Merton's
Life and Holiness yesterday. It isn't my favorite of his works, but anything by Merton is leagues above almost any other writer I've read. There are a lot of things in Merton that I don't understand yet, but having read several of his works now, I'm getting a better feeling for his thought. I guess it didn't help me though, that I started with one of his most complex writings, and then have been progressively working backward toward the most reader friendly tracts.
I also read Thomas Merton's
Opening Up the Bible last week. It's another brief, introductory style text. I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I might; maybe it's because I didn't really understand all of it. What I did take from it, something that's very important to me right now, is the sense that it's okay not to understand everything in the Bible right away. My natural tendency is to recoil when I don't understand how something is godly. The Bible very often doesn't seem to mesh with the style of Christianity I've come to believe is true. Sometimes I want to stop reading the Bible altogether, just because it seems irrational and illogical and entirely remote from my life and reality. But after reading Merton, I've realized that my reaction isn't all that blasphemous or unreasonable.
Strong feelings, a gut reaction, means that I'm really experiencing the text. It's acceptable to be angry, to be confused, even to be bored to tears, just so long as, at the end of the day, I accept that this is the word of God, and I'm experiencing Him through it. If my heart and mind are in the right place, God will work through the Bible to change me and make me better. If I believe in all that, then it's okay not to understand everything I'm reading all of the time. The only part of my salvation I'm responsible for, is accepting what grace is given me. Someone else has already taken care of the all-knowing, all-powerful part.
So, I guess this week has been a lot more about my inner life than my outer. That usually makes my blog less interesting for my friends. That's another reason that I don't write as much as I used to. I think I maybe have less in common with a lot of my friends than I once did, and I don't want to come off as being "different." To be fair, though, I'm not the only one who's different now. People change as they grow older, and time passes. That's the way of the world; it's how it is.
Anyway, I have to go to a benefit thingy today for the little brother of one of Jasmin's friends, so I'd better get moving. Will try to blog on something more resembling a daily basis soon.
"He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly, To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?"
- Micah 6:8
"O LORD, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me."
"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." - John Lennon.
I've had an eventful week. I've had a hell of a lot of fun, and I've been nearly as miserable as I've ever been. I've said far too much, and not nearly enough. I've been sleepless, and had nightmares, and I found a little peace at last. Not a bad week on the whole.
Increasingly, I'm finding myself at this strange crossroads. All these conflicting feelings that I've been struggling with for years are coming to a head. What's funny is, I hadn't thought that it all would go back as far as it does.
I don't remember worrying very much when I was younger about things like, what was to become of me and what would I be when I grew up. In fact, due to a lot of circumstances in my pre-adolescence, I think I specifically learned to avoid thinking about those questions. They didn't really become a serious preoccupation again until I was in college. Since then, it's been so damned pronounced that I've been tripping over my own decisions every time, and it's only rarely that it's happened, I've managed to make one.
But I had a kind of strange experience this week that made me reevaluate some things. A lot of things, actually. Maybe even everything. And suddenly, I'm a lot more encumbered, and somehow freer than I remember ever being before.
I didn't have a bad childhood, but, like all children, I had some bad things happen to me. My parents always wanted the best for me, and they did everything they could to see that I had it. But they're flawed people and couldn't always acquire it. And I'm a flawed person, so I couldn't always receive it even when it was given to me.
In a lot of ways, I've fetishized that awful period in my life that fell approximately between the ages of say, 9 and 14. And in a lot of other ways, I never have really dealt with it, because I buried all of the pain and misery that went along with it.
I'm only just now realizing how very pivotal that time in my life was. I became an adult then, even though I was, and am in many ways, still a child.
I was maybe eight or nine when I overheard that my mother was terminally ill. By ten, I'd convinced myself that there was no God. By eleven, I had lived independently of my mom and dad, and I considered myself my own person, the captain of my own soul. By thirteen, I was making choices that no child should ever have to make; and so many of my choices were bad ones, the consequences of which I'm still dealing with now. By fourteen, I'd given myself this new identity, with new behaviors and expectations. I was then really beginning to build in earnest the person that I now am.
And at 22, I'm only now starting to realize the faulty, adolescent reasoning that so many of those behaviors are rooted in. I'm having to make the decision to keep my demons or expel them. And it's a more difficult question than it sounds. A demon might drag you down to the pits of hell, but they don't abandon you. They're nothing if not good company. So to leave them behind is not a small decision.
Nevertheless, I do not want to live my life based on some battered part of my intellectual development that I did not, and do not, understand. I want my thoughts to be my own, not those of some wandering, miserable spirit of desolation. I don't want my best friend to be my worst enemy; I don't want my confidence to stem from my conviction that my life is not, in fact, worth living.
So here's to a new beginning. To surrounding myself with influences that are a little better. To renouncing Satan, and all his works, and all his worship, and all his angels, and all his pomp. To becoming the person I was created to be.
Disappointment.
There are things in life you can never forgive yourself for, no matter how much you want to. Things like knowing what you were born to do, and not doing it. Things like being a bad friend, even though you didn't mean to.
Things will never be okay again. Not now that the secret has been let out of the bag. Freedom ain't really free. That's just how it is, and we have to live with it.
