Alone-ness is good for me, sometimes. Like now.
Sometimes I wonder why I am the way that I am. Why I am who I am. Sometimes I wish I could be the sweet girl, or the endearing girl, or the gentle girl, or even the rabidly overly emotional girl that tells everyone everything and whom everyone is in love with.
The truth of the matter is that I am in constant need of affirmation and love. I have the waves of insecurity that overwhelm me at times like this. And I am in pain, even though I don't let that show most of the time. I don't let it show because I don't acknowledge it to myself.
I haven't talked to my father in three months.
And that's a terrible feeling. I hate it more than almost anything in the world. But I don't sit down and think about it because I know that if I did, I would shut down entirely. Truth is, I'm running away from home. Because home is where my heart aches the most.
If you know me, then you know that I have a desperate desire to be strong that manifests itself all over the place in my life. I will never admit defeat, or my own incapacity, or whatever.
Ok, that's not totally true. I've gotten alot better at asking for help. In fact, I'm the help-asking-for queen. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm admitting failure/defeat/whatever. The point is, I live my life in the paradox between radiating strength and really and truly longing to be weak and taken care of in stupid, tangible, human ways. I really, really wish that at some point over my four years at college, someone had thrown me a birthday party. I really wish that people would notice when I've had a bad day without me having to tell them. And more than anything I wish I could bring myself to ask for these things. 'Cause I know that I can be prickly. I've been thinking alot about the poker recently, Gina...and I only wish I knew how to lay it down. I wish that I could a some point turn off my stupid brain. (Recent comment from a friend: "You're always thinking, aren't you? You lay in bed at night and thoughts race through your head. That must be exhausting")
I sometimes wish I could be a temperamental artist.
I wish I could be impulsive and fascinating and carefree. And sometimes I am all of these things. But all too often I am held down by everything else.
I also hate the fact that my spiritual highs so often land in cynical crashes as I hear my own words grow hollow and cliched. Of course, I don't doubt what God does or has done, but I hate the words that I revert to to describe him. Used up, tossed out, ratty old words that have been abused too many times. So I often revert to silence, rather than listen to the tinny screeching of my own selfish and unlovely words that ring hollow.
Maybe I'm just a misplaced poet/musician/artist with too many overdeveloped managerial skills to realize it.
I wish I could describe some of the beautiful things I've seen and done. Sometimes these moments happen, and I get it - I realize right then and there that it one of those times - and I go into sensory overdrive. I absorb every miniscule aspect of what's happening, locking sights and sounds and feelings and smells into memories. And there they stay, pulled out like so many old postcards, on the rare occasion when I run across them in my mental storage locker.
Sometimes I feel like I have a deep well of experience that remains completely untapped. And a whole set of stories that remain untold. I was on the plane from Atlanta to Johannesburg seated amidst a whole group of first year business school students from U of C, and so started talking with some of them. And there were definitely more than a few who looked down their noses at this "undergrad" from U of C. I certainly wasn't a peer to most, if any of them. And any respect that I deserved was the equivalent of what you would give a high school student.
And here's the true confession: part of me wanted to rise up and show them how much I knew, how stupid their project was (a week long community service trip to Botswana. Let me not get started on the waste of time, money and resources dedicated to flying b-school kids from Chicago in order to improve the international reputation of DeucheBank, rather than doing actual community service), how foolish they all were for thinking that they were smarter or cooler, or more together than me. I didn't want to prove to them that I was special, necessarily, I wanted to be seen as a peer. And my consolation in those condescending moments was the knowledge that I could kick any of their butts all over the place if the question of travel or cultural awareness or human rights and business or anything else came up. And that, my friends, is textbook PRIDE. Gah. Needless to say, I didn't exert myself like that, but I was more than a bit tempted to do so. (and ps, God has been talking to me about humility lately).
It's frustrating to me that I can't talk about my past without boasting. Or without it sounding like I'm boasting. I perenially navigate conversations away from the need to tell people about the travelling thing. When they ask why I'm a year old for college, I generally say things like, "oh, I took a bit of time off". In order to avoid the "oh my gosh, what's your favorite place? How did your parents afford it? You must be loaded" conversation, which is terrible. Not only because of the ocmpletely inaccurate picture it paints of my family, but also because I can't honestly say anything about the trip other than that it was the most wonderful and most formative time of my life. It's not exactly something you can downplay.
So I guess that all of this comes down to an identity-something. It's not an identity crisis, in so many words, as much as an identity-weariness. If that makes sense. I'm tired of not being able to be everything all the time. And it wearies me that these moment of divine security are so short-lived. Because the truth is that I am an emotional person, and even if I have the head-knowledge of my identity in Christ, I still yearn for the complete and total knowing of who I am in him - intellectual, spiritual and emotional. I want to know how all these component pieces fit together.
And to be honest, I wish I could post this not on xanga (which has a faithful readership of Mrs. B and Gina, who I love dearly) but on facebook, where everyone would know. Finally.
This brings us to another point: As wonderful as Josh and Ben were during January, I've been feeling the gradual melting away of my friendships lately. Either distance or business or leaderhip will do it. Female friends graduated...male friends with serious girlfriends, which (as it should) places barriers on the relationship. Younger friends are lovely, but young, and in some ways "under my tutiledge" which also limits things. Most kids my year are already deeply engrossed in their circles, which means I'm a tangent point. Plus, most of them need hardcore discipleship. So while some of these friends can come along with me in certain portions of my life, I don't think there's anyone who can really come along side for all of it. And that's probably something I won't get until I'm married. Which is probably why God made us male and female in the first place.
Still, I wish my friends were closer (in every way).
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