Where have I gone?

I'm reading my old blog posts because I'm supposed to be doing other things, and I'm feeling too mopey. Specifically I should be applying for healthcare, which I apparently don't have. I am told (via text) that there's a message in my inbox (which I can't access without calling the Healthcare Marketplace) explaining why I don't.

Can't face it right now, so...unless I find time and space to face it tomorrow, it looks like I might just not have health coverage until I get a real fucking job. Note to self: don't get sick. (PS, I'm feeling like I might be getting sick.)

In other news, Ian and I finally retrieved my ring today from the jewelers, it having been resized. (Did I mention that we're engaged? This is a relatively new thing.)


In reading old blogs I am noticing that I used to write much nicer things. I used to spend much more time alone, watching the sky; I used to spend much more time alone, thinking and writing about the sky, and about the trees, and about my heart. Where is all that now? Though I have no desire to own my own pet, I am beginning to think that I ought to have a dog--because evidently that is the only damn way I get myself outside for walks every day. And it seems that not walking means not breathing, in an expansive metaphorical sense.

It doesn't help much that I've been living in the city, and people discourage me from walking alone at night. This doesn't mean that I don't ever do it, but when I do, I feel like I need to look purposeful. Looking purposeful cuts down significantly on meandering, and walking with my face up to the stars, and occasionally sinking to my knees in prayer, or joy, or grief. There has been none of that here, and I am missing it.



Perhaps the issue is in part that I'm never alone. I haven't particularly been feeling that "get the fuck away from me" feeling (which is probably a good sign, in some ways), but nevertheless I haven't really spent any time alone since I moved in with Ian and Sara. And yet, even when I took my mostly-solo August road trip this past fall, I still moved too fast to stop and reflect in any meaningful way. I filled almost every moment with driving, rushing, researching, audio books, and exhaustion. I spent weeks alone, and weeks distracted. I can't say I didn't spend any time in quiet reflection, but I did spend far too little.

It seems that the lesson here is that I do not only need to learn to take time alone for myself--I need to learn to utilize it for myself. Not for rushing from one destination to another, but for simply being, and watching, and appreciating the world and the blessings around me. I need to feed and soothe and caress the quiet, expansive thing in me that is my spirit--the quiet presence that will so easily shrink and defer to the frantic, purposeless demands of whatever stupid whim happens to be yelling at any given moment. I've been spending all my time rushing around in vain attempts to quiet those endless whims, and forgetting that attention only makes them louder. That the only peace I'll ever find is inward.

In brief (ish)

I often think of things I'd like to write here and then don't do it, perhaps because I feel that doing so would take too much time or because the thoughts are too long to type on my phone keyboard. This, however, is a brief thought, and definitely not too long.

I've known for a while that I am somewhat lactose intolerant, but in general I eat what I want anyway aside from limiting my cheese intake and eating cereal with almond milk.

Yesterday I put real milk in my cereal (oh, the horror) and today I woke up wishing I were dead. That isn't a metaphor--I actually lay there and wished I could simply wink out of existence.

Obviously there are other factors at play here, and I am certain that my fatigue and my uncertainty regarding how to proceed or whether I am in the right place in life and making the right decisions contributed to the moment. Still, I don't usually get that far. So that's something to keep an eye on.

Wanting

This post is one that wanders, according to my custom.

It's a gorgeous night tonight, and somehow walking under the nearly full moon made me start to think about what I want.

And what I want is to do what I want. Just me. No compromising or making nice, which feels as natural as breathing. And so when I daydream, I daydream about being alone.

I want to spend my days writing and walking by the water, rising early and drinking coffee in sunlit rooms (built to bring the outside in), staying up late under the stars, reading poetry, doing yoga. That's my most persistent daydream. The daydream of my stilted, crumbly heart.

Of course, there are others. I want--perhaps on principle--to be a person who welcomes others into her home. The kind of woman my great aunt was, who hosts missionaries and refugees, who invites people to dinner, who opens her home and heart to those in need.

I also want to move in with my friend Kelly. I want to treat my car nicely, as it deserves to be treated: get her all fixed and tuned up, clean her out, paint her pretty colors with rustoleum. I want...hmm. I want to be more of a doer, and less of a killer-of-time. I can kill time like it's an Olympic sport I've been training for all my life, and it's shameful, wasteful, sickening. It is not life-giving. I am learning, slowly, slowly.

And today (or at this point in the evening, yesterday) was my three-year anniversary with Ian. And I want unfair things of him. Or are they unfair? Maybe unfair for me to ask, or expect, or maybe "unfair" is a meaningless term here. But:
Sometimes I want to marry him. Is it, would it be settling? Marriage is not something I desperately want right now. I don't walk around feeling overwhelmed with lovey fuzzies. I'm not consistent in my feelings and I am often uncomfortable with them. But at times I do feel the lovey fuzzies. And in some ways we balance each other quite well. And in some ways we drive each other nuts. Am I supposed to wait for or find someone who makes me feel lovey fuzzies more consistently, more confidently, or what?

Regarding nuts: I am, in many ways, quite independent. I do not always respond well to advice, or to others' expressions of concern for my safety. I also don't like to plan things. Typically I'd rather wing it. Also I am unbelievably forgetful. All that drives Ian nuts, and still he graciously acts as my personal reminder service on a regular basis.

Here's what drives me nuts: Ian is not very independent. I don't mean to imply that he is emotionally dependent, but rather that he likes to do things together, and make decisions together, and sometimes those things are hard for me. He also likes to plan things down to the most minute details, which I find tiresome (but which I admit is a good quality). The downside there is that he is not comfortable with much spontaneity, and that is difficult for me. Lastly, anxiety. He is working with it, and working hard. Still, wrong as I may be, I have been unable to escape the idea that anxiety is the king of Ian's life. Because of that idea or fact or whatever it is I become irritable, angry, condescending, demanding, and sometimes mean, and that needs to stop one way or another.

More importantly than the way we drive each other nuts though is the way we communicate. There is plenty of friction in our relationship--there is a lot we don't have in common--but we go out of our way almost daily to better understand ourselves and one another. I've never had a relationship with communication this good, and I definitely can't take the credit here. Every step of the way, this man has asked questions, communicated his feelings and frustrations, and, when I finally started talking, listened to what I had to say. We often have trouble understanding one another; for example, I strongly suspect that the phrase, "life giving," would have no meaning for Ian. And that upsets me because I want the things that are important to me to be important to everyone I care about. I want Ian to believe in the God I believe in, and to feel the connections and the joys I feel at the same moments I feel them*. But isn't that life? As difficult as it is for me to grasp, life is different for everyone. The best we can do is try our best to bridge the gaps.

*why? Because I'd feel connected? Because I'd believe in his depth of emotion? Because I feel that I'm "right," and I want him to be right too? I don't know. There is a story I've heard about a child with autism who had trouble grasping the idea that everyone had a different point of view, and everyone had a different experience of the world. Sometimes I feel like that child.

Forgiveness. Is that a thing?

I did a really stupid thing this morning, which probably in the long term, grand scheme of things wasn't a big deal, but for me it is so symbolic of my personal eff'ed-uppedness that I am very ashamed and I don't want to talk about it. And I sent Ian a text about it, and he, in an attempt to be kind and helpful, sent back (among sympathy and other things) reasons why this wasn't my fault. The same reasons I had come up with myself. But really, the bottom line was and is that it was my fault. Entirely. Yeah, things could have been different, could have been easier for me, or the other people involved could have made more of an effort, but they shouldn't have had to. I wasn't where I needed to be, doing what I needed to do. I was the irresponsible, lazy one. No excuse will change that.

While I was going on about this, Ian pointed out that I have a tendency to beat myself up. And while I guess that's true, I don't feel like I'm doing that right now--or at least, I don't feel like I'm doing it more than I deserve, which I guess is the issue.


I realized, not for the first time, that while I am pretty good at forgiving other people, I am really not good at forgiving myself. And that's pretty normal, I guess. But it still isn't healthy or good. I don't ever do it. There are some things, a lot of things, I think, that I sort of just let slide--I consider them to be an acceptable symptom of an issue that is "in progress," or whatever, I let them go, I move on. But then sometimes I do things that are much more difficult to let go of. Usually this involves breaking/losing something irreplaceable, doing something unfixable, and/or doing or failing to do something really stupid that would have taken little or no effort to do correctly, if only I would just be where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to do.

So instead of dealing with this or forgiving myself or whatever, I obsess over it for a while, and then I push it away and forget and refuse to think about it until the next time. And today I realized--or remembered--that while I do a fair job of convincing myself (when it comes up at church or in conversation) that 'I have got that shame thing under control; that's not an issue for me,' I don't. In actuality, I have a denial complex and I am pretty good about temporarily forgetting things when I want to, and what looks like a clean slate is really a sheet thrown over this big ball of unresolved shame and anger that I carry around. Doing stupid things like I did this morning, or obsessing about having done them, brings back memories and more negativity about stupid things I did as a child, even, and spins in circles of why-am-I-such-an-idiot?


I don't write this as a pity party. I write this in hopes that I will remember it this time so that I can work on it and so that one of these days I can, I hope, find a solution.

I feel like this shouldn't be news.

My sister Chloe and I discovered the other day that a woman we know struggles with an eating disorder. I wouldn't normally mention something like this in a public forum, and I do not do so lightly now. I share it only because of the conversation this discovery prompted between Chloe and myself.


I don't remember the entire course of the conversation, but I remember saying, "well, refusing to love yourself until you deem yourself worthy of love is never, ever, ever going to work. That's just not how that works."

I said this expecting something along the lines of a nod of assent from my sister, but instead she said "Oh."


She didn't know.


Is this a thing that people don't know? Have I somehow been lucky enough to stumble into this patch of truth by accident?  Do you punish and withhold love from yourself?

I asked her whether this was something I should have said years ago, and she told me that I should write it. So hear is what I need you to understand:

Refusing to love yourself until you are "worthy" is never going to work. It is never going to make you better. It will never work because it isn't possible to build yourself up while you are tearing yourself down. It will never work because you will never deem yourself worthy until you are perfect, and you never will be. It will never work because people don't reach their full potential when they are living in the shadow of disgust and disapproval and criticism--they reach their full potential when they are forgiven, loved and encouraged and supported. So try this for a change: love yourself. Respect yourself. Forgive yourself.

When you royally screw up--like you will and like I will and like everyone else--apologize, set right what you can, and carry on. What good comes from flagellating yourself?

Forgive, encourage, and support yourself--as you would a beloved child--and see how you grow. See what you can do.

Staff training: an emotional reflection.

I am home, and (judging by the hour) possibly not resting as I should.

I both love and do-not-love the way that in my eyes, all of my coworkers are the same age--as each other, as myself. It can be an excellent way to view things, but it can also be unhelpful.

I love the way that this place is a perfect venue to get to know people on a level that is simply unavailable in any other situation I have ever experienced. There's something about the mix of the work and the training and the prayer time and the decompression that brings out true hearts.

I love the joy and laughter of our little staff bonding traditions--I speak here of "The Challenge." Even if I did nearly run into Melissa in the dark. Even if I did do an accidental full body slide on the wet grass in the dark. Victoria and I remarked to each other that "we have such a good group this year." We felt like proud parents.
    And when the guys returned from their own version, and the newbies walked in with huge grins, we clapped and cheered. This is a wonderful place.


I love the peace and truth and discovery that come, and I love the dancing and the singing and the silliness. I love that in the middle of our campfire the other night, we took a break from teaching the new kids camp songs and broke into Bob Marley's "Three Little Birds." I love the fighting and fatigue and stress, and the struggle and epiphany and euphoria. I love the sudden surprise of hot cofflet in the morning, and I love the spontaneous games that spring from nowhere, from the minds of the crazy guys that come to work. I love it all.