Reflective

Looking back over old posts, it's strange to find that, one, I was rather silent last year considering how much I experienced and faced.  Two, that I can read moments that I remember so vividly, they feel as if they happened only last year, and yet they occurred two years ago.  As it stands, I do not have the time to relive everything that happened within the last year or so that has managed to slip away, but I do have a few moments to remind myself what I have endured and learned.

1. I confronted.
2. I learned the power and privilege of having a voice.
3. I discovered that your world can, and often will, shift beneath your feet.  Stumbling through this is allowed, so long as you try to get your footing.
4. I learned that dreams are attainable, but not without risk or exposure.
5. Hope, Faith, and Love carries us farther than we can fathom.
6. Sometimes parting ways is necessary.
7. What we expect and deserve is not always what we get.  Some days this is for the worst, but most days this is for the better.
8. Transparency is refreshing, frightening, and necessary.  I suck at this.
9. I struggle with things I am just beginning to understand.
10. And, on that note...I understand nothing
11. I am in need of a loving, forgiving, patient, loyal, redeeming God.
12. My greatest strengths can be my greatest weaknesses, and my greatest weaknesses can be my greatest strengths.
13. I have so much more to learn, grow, live, and love.  
14. I cannot take how I live for granted.  It compromises who I am, until I find I am reduced to a mere product of my impulses, desires, and fears.
15. The darkness I carry in me is darker than I want to know.  But the light is much brighter than I can see.

True Story

Me: "I want to marry him."
Shea: "Ask him out."
Me: "I can't. I'm an ASSHOLE."

Yeah, that about sums up the crush I've had on the record store guy for the past seven years.

Words to Live By

"Today you can cry, but tomorrow, tomorrow you're twenty-six."
-Sam

Nearly every day I'm tempted to delete everything I've ever written. And then I realize, when all is said and done, these are all I have left to take with me.

I can never tell if I want to burn them more or less because of that.

Remember scrunchy socks?

Some days I feel caught between worlds. This is one of those days.

Lullaby

I'm lying in bed, in my mother's house, in Pine. The mattress is springy, the pillow soft, the window open. The locusts sing to me but my eyes are closed. Closed so that I may hear every rustle, every croak, every note drenched in moonlight and folded in earthy rich hues. So that I may tuck it safely away in my soul as a token of this night of peace. It may be a long time before I find such solace in the night.

I sit here, under the weight of the white, blank page.  I am silent.  Silent, because I know words mean marring a page with the blackness of my being.  So I don't type.  I am afraid.  I let the cursor blink back at me, reflecting nothingness, hoping that blank is the same as white.  Blank being unwritten, unwritten being perfect.  Hoping that there is still hope because I have not messed up yet.  I have not disappointed yet.  I have not given others a window with a view by which people are confused.  I have not paved a path by which people can wander.  I have not dimmed the light in an already dark world.  Silent.  Blank.  White.

My mind swirls.  My emotions swell.  Colors fade. I close the door and spin a record, clinging like a widow who mourns and clutches to her rosary, trying to find solace in reciting words already written. A whisper crackles gently between two layers of frequencies I can't hear because I am silent.  Blank. White.

A boy sits at a table across from me with a man and a woman--two people who are talking.  Two people who take turns sipping their coffee and saying things like, "well that's why there's Jesus."  Two people who aren't acknowledging his questions or telling him the truth.  That the book they are trying to protect doesn't address every 'why' he has--not even theirs.  That sometimes it makes them uncomfortable, some days it feels stale, and others they are disturbed.  They forget that David was too, and who he was to God.  They even forget why they're there.  They smile and pray that the words they keep repeating to the boy will land with some sort of relevance, because they don't know how to be honest without endangering him--without endangering themselves. They are closer to him than they are comfortable with so they throw out the sand and just draw lines.   He is never heard, so he never hears. He is silent.  Blank. White.

Night falls and the stars try to call our names--to keep us looking up.  They are bright, fierce and burning.  But they are far and small and we see them fall sometimes.  We are afraid of the darkness that swallows them.  Afraid of the atoms in our bones that tell us we might be the same.  Forgetting about who created both.  So we draw the shades. Light a candle.  Turn another switch.  

It's all silent.  Blank. White.