What Reverence

What reverence I have for big, deep, vulnerable, altering love. I'm not eager to find it again, I have a healthy respect for the risk that it is. I see it as a far off, distant future that could be. No imaginations of what it will look like and who it will be - only haze, and a sense of openness but not quite desire. A quiet longing, but a knowing fear. A caution to do everything I can to not have it only to lose it again. A hidden, buried thought that if I don't want for it, I will be okay. I tell myself I have safety within myself; I can be okay no matter what...but love had me awestruck at its heaviness, its weight. Losing love makes you sure you'll never want for it again, build around you a fortress, impenetrable and therefore unaffected by comings and goings. Yet appreciating love, even that which is lost, makes one long to know it again someday.

The Split Path

Man, it really blows to wake up every day feeling like shit.  I didn't feel this way in depression for some time...  I feel numb, hollow, and achy all at the same time.  The actual thought of him never being in my life again is unreal.  I swear it feels like my chest – my heart actually aches. 

Then I go back, always the same, to wondering how in the hell would I ever do this again?  In the past, I wanted to want to marry someone, just because we were together.  Now, I wanted to be with and build a life with him, I began seeing the way we were in each others' lives as beginning to build a shared life.  I saw someone I trusted to share well in life's challenges, who gave me comfort and support and laughter, who shined a light on my dark days. 

There are many reasons and yet no clear one as to why we are not anymore.  Maybe that makes it hardest of all.  He was there and present, loving me so well, I never thought there was a major plot twist coming.  It's like all my systems cannot process the change in course. 

And I believe that love stays.  I value the trust that I've earned, the person who I love...I just don't know my place, anymore.  The one that he wants, not whatever one he thinks I should have.  

My damn heart keeps hoping.  I'm so rooted in my gut, that I can't go in the direction of "shoulds".  It's like I have to follow through, to the end of the path, or the fork, whichever it may be, to believe against her.  It's not that she's never been wrong, that inner voice, it's that too many times I've doubted her and messed things up. 

It does feel like I'm at a fork, and either path appears treacherous.  There is no way without pain.  I've sat here a few days.  I'd started down one, but something didn't feel right.  Maybe I'll just never learn how to not be loyal to a fault.  I've tried before and it wasn't less painful, nor did it evidence being "right". 

I suppose that's kind of how my gut-inner-voice works though.  I'll sit here, at the split path, until she tells me the way.  And I'll do my best to trust her, – and if she's wrong, I'll double back.  But either way there is pain. 

Life in the Gray

Lately I'm floating on a sea of so many questions, so much uncertainty. I'm someone who likes to ask, likes to seek, and likes to find. It's been a while since I've found much, but I'm still asking and still seeking. Some of it has been quite painful, I'd be lying if I didn't acknowledge the depth of pain that has also been with me through the questions. But I ask. And I seek.

One thing that is not a concrete "answer" but one I'm finding as I ask the questions is that some things in life are just in the gray. There has to be space for wonder and questioning and seeking and growing and stretching and withdrawing. We seem to want so badly to have answers, sorting everything by rule into the black or the white. But I've been finding I cannot live without the questions; I cannot push them away and live as if they do not beckon me to examine them.

Even as I write this, I am sitting a few feet away from a family eating dinner at this same cafe. The couple's young son is questioning everything, and it's like music to my ears. Drink it in young one. Ask the questions and seek to understand.

Because the thing I'm learning is I'm better for seeking to understand rather than just taking things as they come, without wonder. Some answers are harder to come by, and may look more gray than black or white. Learning to live in the discomfort of questions unanswered has made me stronger, increasing my endurance for the gray of life – of which there is so much, if we're honest with ourselves. At first, this state of unknown was taxing, and it's still less comfortable than certainty, but it's helping me become better and stronger, and more empathetic.

And I think that's an option with everything we encounter in life. Not just what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but every pain, every hard place can be something that breaks you down a bit more, or helps you become stronger, and better, even if worn. I'm not to the 'better' yet – though I feel good today – I'm seeing more how there is courage in facing the fear of the unknown and the pain.

Unraveled

**Disclaimer: This piece was written pre-deconstruction of religious beliefs and faith system. Many of these beliefs inform the sentiments of the writing and are not in alignment with my values. As this is a part of my journey and an extensive blog over years, I have chosen not to remove a majority of my posts written on faith. Please as a reader, take this into consideration and take what works for you, leave what does not. I also apologize for any harm my words from this past perspective may cause to any readers.**

Somehow it happened. I've always been pretty sure of myself but then I unraveled. I've spent more days in the last year (plus) wishing I didn't feel the way I did, than being okay with how I feel. So many days have been sad days or lonely days, hard days. I've wondered a time or two if this is me now: a sort of cynical, "realistic" person who buries herself in television and struggles to get out of bed nearly every day.

Questions I didn't know I had have come to the surface. The basis of everything about life is up in the air. I've begun questioning why I believe certain things that I just always have. I'm longing to experience God tangibly as I have so much of my life, and yet I feel like I'm wandering a desert in circles. Explaining this to just about anyone has been impossible, I never quite feel like I've done it justice just how uncomfortable I feel with myself and the questions. I'm stuck between feeling completely apathetic and yet not being able to live life without a deeper meaning that makes sense.

I took a break from attending church for a few weeks, then last week I went back. No certain reason other than Easter seemed like as good a time as any to break a church fast (it happened to coincide with lent, oddly). I realized I'd really missed my pastor. He's an interesting and insightful speaker, and tends to be realistic and honest. That's what kept me at the same church for so long, I liked that the pastor wasn't acting holier than others, but self-deprecating. His message on Easter was the exact one I needed, honest in that sometimes it feels like we're still losing. I've been in a long season that feels like losing, and it's so easy for anyone to look at it and say it will turn around or that God loves me, but those things don't change the reality; those things haven't eased the pain, they haven't pulled me out of bed in the morning.

Thankfully I have had my wits about me enough to know that if I don't show up things will only get worse.

Easter was a special occasion but I decided to show up to church again today. I sat in the back because I was late, which is usually a death-sentence to my concentration. Naturally I was in and out of the sermon versus my thoughts. A few times something would hit me and I felt on the edge of tears. Then came the singing. It wasn't anything particular in the songs, I just decided totalk to God as I often do during worship and sat down. I thought about all the questions, the doubt, the loneliness, the distance, the pain. Tears started creeping down my face seemingly out of nowhere.

I feel so out of place and like I'm in pieces, but I don't even understand it – yet somehow it was important that I sit in the back row at church and let slow tears evolve into an ugly cry. I needed to show up, just for that. There aren't any easy answers, there's no quick solution, there's no cure, but there's space for ugly crying in the back and hoping that hope returns and that things make sense again. Somehow, someday.

Before I Knew

Sometimes I wish I could pull a Dorothy: click my heels together and go back to a simpler time. I'd go back years ago, to when I'd never had a relationship before and didn't really know what it was like; back to when my faith rose up to life's challenges; back to a time when my feelings were big but it was sort of expected.

Nearly eight years ago was one of the toughest times of my life. I felt such deep pain, I thought if I weren't alive that would be the only thing to relieve it — thankfully time would, though I didn't know. This past year I went through another such pain, though romantic not platonic. As I trudged through, day by day, I quietly thought the same thing but dared not to tell anyone for fear of being committed.

When I was younger and went through hard things, it was different. The emotions that came with everything at 19 years old were more acceptable. Sure, now that I'm an adult I know how to manage my emotions better, but that doesn't mean heavy pain gets any easier. On the contrary, as an adult there's a job you go to so you can pay the bills that don't wait for time to pass for you to heal. As an adult, you have to squeeze your feeling into the free space in between it all.

I began this year thinking it would be "my year", whatever that even means. And here I find myself tired. Nearly daily battling anxiety. Feeling the slow creep of apathy because nothing really feels good. Nothing's really going well. It all feels...hard.

I worked toward a financial goal last year that has me the most independent I've ever been. So it's ironic that as I finally feel like I'm settling into adulthood, I long for that time before, when things were so easy. When I first moved to the city, all the days spent biking around and goofing around. I spent my days pining after guys who worked at coffee shops, yearning for a boyfriend, for love. I had no idea how much love would hurt me; not a clue in the world how much relationships would teach me about pain. I expected love to build me up, not weaken me. I didn't know how hard it would be to walk away. I didn't know what it would be like to try not to loose it at your desk. I always thought love would be important, I just didn't know it would be because there's so much risk.

When you break a bone, even long after it heals, a cold front can bring about aches. Right now, life feels like a lot of the aches. I find myself nostalgic for the simpler time, before I had the scars I do, before I was tired.

Dorothy clicks her little heels together, repeating, "There's no place like home, there's no place like..." and you watch with a swell of hope. And I guess that's what I want, to be able to find my way back to a place of hope.

Questions & Whims

I have a lot of questions and a lot of uncertainty. That's oddly something I've never had too much trouble with in my life, certainty, or the lack of it rather. Open-ended questions don't bother me. Not having a set plan is more my M.O. than adhering to an outline. So I'm living with the questions, giving them space to wander around in me. I'm letting myself become an experiment of sorts, but in the most effortless way, waiting for things to rise out of my subconscious throughout the day and week.

I like to discuss theories and ideas with people, I like to write about them, but to delve into personal thought occurs more when it possesses me. The many things loose in my mind percolate and seek exit or attention whenever they please. Whims aren't good travel guides. No, that's not true at all, I take it back; they're excellent travel guides, but terrible professors and life coaches. Over the years I've learned to weigh the whims and fancies, determining which ones will pass and which ones will have some pull. Some of the questions that are coming up have slowly risen in me over time. It's as if they've been growing, a part of me, almost unknown, but recent events have knocked them loose.

I've asked a lot of questions in my life that as I explored them, I began to find there were never answers to be found. I've come to accept this as a part of life. And sometimes a question's answer is useless as it begs to send us to the past to correct some thing, or take the other path at the fork, and we know that we cannot.

A mere week or two ago, as I pondered the sudden discontentment I had with things not being what I expected, I felt as if I am at a precipice. It was a strange premonition that I really had no reason or cause to believe, other than maybe an odd bit of hope amid disappointment. This thought that I might be about to head in a direction that was unprecedented, but not an omen by any means; an impression of good. The logical side of me wants to blame the beautiful spring day it was as I walked the park by the river and the sky exuded the color blue as if to visually define it. That side of me wants to say it was my heart fighting to have hope instead of more disappointment.

But the side of me that houses all the orphaned questions believes maybe it was truth. Maybe to get to something new and different and good, I have to get comfortable with the questions, the skepticism, the space. It feels like something of a risk, but I also feel like I'm gathering the breath of courage, as before something big - like a leap.

The Hard Lesson of Vulnerability

I thought I had this whole vulnerability thing down pat. But my heart hurts right now. I keep learning a hard lesson about this, but the lesson is only meant to reiterate that it will be hard; it will be painful.

Vulnerability never seems to get easier. In fact, it feels to me like it's getting harder. I'm fighting getting jaded. I'm fighting myself, trying to hold back the anger that comes out when I'm hurt because that's how sensitive me once learned people will actually listen. If you hurt, more often than not, that's unimportant to he who caused it. Remorse is hard to come by anymore. Vulnerability is supposed to beget vulnerability. It really doesn't. And you can't know until you try, and with every try the will to try depletes.

There's a secondary lesson learned from the fight of vulnerability, and that's compassion. I was brought to learn compassion by falling on my face in vulnerability, time and time again. A bruised and scarred heart recognizes the same when it sees it, and there's a knowing between the two.

So it is I fight and I struggle to remain vulnerable, to be honest, and to be true to myself, in spite of the pain it's caused me my whole life. I repeatedly tell myself that's it's a strength, but it sure as hell feels a lot more like a weakness; like stepping up to a fight without armor. I tire of it. I begin to think to myself, maybe I'll just pass next time. Maybe I'll decide no one is deserving of or trustworthy for my truth, my story. Maybe I'll give up on blazing a trail with honesty, and wait for someone to light a path to me.

But even as I think it, I doubt it. I can't bring myself to believe that the heart can survive without being known. That's the very root of the rejection epidemic: there's risk and the risk is painful. So I have to bring myself back to believing the risk is worth the chance, the possibility that it is in fact a strength and one that someone needs. Likely that will land me used up and tossed aside, as it seems to have a track record of doing. But surely someone needs it; surely another heart needs its story to be held, its tears to be regarded.

So I must do my best to bind up my wound, even while it's still aching, then revisit the worthiness of the cause.

It Was Still Meant To Be

I think I had to love him. There was no other way. 

I mean, I got to, but it was bound to be a part of my story. And figuring out what to do with that love now is confusing and unclear, because life doesn't always jive with matters of the heart. Sometimes it's completely unfair because it draws you into something you can't have, but you do. Your path crosses with someone else's and you can't help but walk with that someone for a while. And that walk may be grand, - it may be all sorts of things, including short, shorter than you'd like. 

But if you've had that love, it may just have had to be a part of your walk. That helps me to sort through my feelings now, because the love doesn't just go away. If it's good and it's deep, it doesn't have to be cultivated forever to be an important part of my story, and I believe, a part of his, too. I felt privileged to love him and privileged to be his. 

It had to happen. 

I'm Not Okay Yet

I'm so tired of being in pain. I keep mistakenly telling people I'm doing better, usually because I haven't cried in a couple days, so I think it's true. And I just want it to be over.

Truthfully, the swells just get further apart, I guess, but still another inevitably appears and pulls me under. I could be having the best day I've had in a while, and it comes. It is a persistent bastard, pain. I want so badly to just rid it from me; to not feel like a wave of despair is creeping around every bend. I knew it would take an ambiguous "forever", I just didn't know each day could be so heavy and feel so long. That they would slowly stack up as a meaningless figure that simply informed me how long it is I've been entrapped.

Everyone wants me to be fine, so instead of talking about it as incessantly as the thoughts are streaming through my head, I cry in the bathroom for a few minutes and leave with puffy red eyes. I feel like a fool, for loving with a heart so open, but there's nothing I can do but hold to the shred of hope I have that someday it won't hurt.

Grief is exhausting, pain is relentless.

Writer's Block Isn't Real

Writer's block isn't real, writer's block isn't real, writer's block isn't real...

At least that's what I have to tell myself when I feel stuck. I heard someone talk about it once in a guest lecture at the U[niversity of Minnesota]. When I do feel stuck and tell myself this, it's like I only get more stuck. I hit these patches in life, dry spells if you will, in which I feel like I have nothing insightful to say. Nothing new to offer the world, and yet a hunger to write.

That's the side of writing I much prefer. I think one of the jobs of a writer is to deliver from their perspective. That's one of the beauties of writing, letting yourself come through. Literature snobs can get hung up about this, but I think it's a part of it. We as humans like to dive into the mind of another, even better if we can get lost there, swim around for a while.

Writing is a beautiful and incredibly challenging task. It feels like an ever-changing beast. Today, I feel ok at it, months ago I felt great at it. Tomorrow I might feel awful at it. Sometimes I'm driving somewhere, or walking around and a thought comes to me. BRILLIANT! I think, I'll write that later...Later then becomes forgotten, or later it comes out in much less an interesting manner than your high hopes perceived it would.

To tell a story seems easy. What are the facts? How does it arch? Who are the players? Who's your audience? Then, to make the proverbial rubber meet the road - to write. I don't think about any of that, to be honest. Whenever I was told to write an outline I went crazy. For some reason, when I think about it, it doesn't work.

Which is exactly why I sat down today, to write something of significance and somehow started writing about writing. Because I have "writer's block"...which isn't real.

In the end, I bet I have a story to tell - I think I have one in me. Maybe I'll give it a go...

Unemployment: A Photo Series

(Also known as "The Boredom Reel of a Lifetime", or "I'm Still Getting Used to Having a Built-in Webcam") 

                                   

For No Real Purpose

"How many sheets do you own?" you'd ask as I roll up the dirty one like a mother would a diaper. "Not enough," I'd say, "not enough. I have a lot of books though, more than I have read, or probably ever will read in my life. I like collecting them. I like the way they smell; new or old. I like the way they look. I have two sheets. I have a scattered collection of postcards.

I especially like coffee table books, but they run more expensive than other books, because there are more pictures which is more expensive to print. Which also makes them more interesting and accessible to an attention deficit, mildly dyslexic, sensory learner such as myself.

I'm also terribly forgetful, I think because I'm trying so hard to gather and store away facts all the time. Then some things stick though I don't intend them to. It's the main reason I journal, partially to keep record of anything important, but also to process things.

All of my journals are green in color scheme. I suppose that'd be another of my collections. I've probably filled about ten of them since age 12 or so. I debate making it known in my will, someday, that they should be burned.

See, sometimes I just feel the need to write, even if not for eyes to see; for no real purpose. I also know I'll write something of purpose in my lifetime, though I don't know what."

Talking With You

When I'm with you, the room hollows out; as I talk to you, it's like my words are caught just outside of my mouth, in the thick of the moment. No matter who's around, and who's listening, You adore my very thought. You value my words because you love my heart. Each one is like a sweet drop of water in your parched mouth. But it's not that you need me, but you want me. To know that is the only thing that keeps me.