dedioscantare

Oh paper journal in my car, the alarm is on and I won't go get you. And I can't write anywhere but there or here, so I will write here.

My life is in parts and pieces and piled in the corners of my room. I am so hectic in my life and in my brain, and I just want to shut off. I hurt all over, and I don't know why, and I know I really shouldn't because it's just not worth it. It was all never worth it in the first place.

I'm pretty sure, at this point, that I am making it worse.

I wish I could squish it all into a ball and vomit it up so it would just be out of me. I just keep coughing and hacking out little bits here and there to people, but I can't keep up with all the respawning, and now all the stupid fuckers are living in my tendons and swimming in my veins and they won't go away. And I really am trying to stand up, and I really do have this sickish, vertigo feeling every time I do, like I can't remember what my legs were for or that I used to walk like this every day. I used to walk every day, and dance, and sing, and spin. I used to live in a river of joy, and I used to wake up with peace and go to sleep with peace and chill with peace on the couch in the student union or on the wall in front of the library. I used to do this and that and other things a lot of the time, every day, and I remembered what they felt like.

Time has put such a distance between me and the memory that I still believe it's there, but it's not like I could describe to you what it looks like. Sort of like my best friend when I was five: I know he existed, but fuck if I could tell you what color his eyes were.

Do you know how many pictures of us there are together on facebook? What. The. Fuck. Get out of my life. Please.

I am going to run away from home: that settles it. I'm leaving as soon as I can pack all my messy, messy things.

I could sleep right now, for ten years. I have to rewrite this resume to submit it, but I can't bring myself to do anything real. If I could have any prayer answered in this moment, it would be for life to have a pause button.

I will try to remember to forget that I've never loved the way anyone smells the way I love his smell.

Because, as Newton tells us,

the force of gravity is not only directly proportional to the product of our masses,
but inversely proportional to the square of the distance
between you and me.

And though an object may seem large, and thus you would assume it's gravity greater,
less density is less mass. So the distance between the center and the surface
negates the effect of the size.

So greater distance means less pull.
And the orbit of fluff and air
cannot compare to the pull of rock, and soul.

So please, stay close,
and true to what you said.

This is what I told Cat:

Right now, my life is awkward on so many levels.

That basically covers it.
I also said that right now, I'm just trying to forget it. I'm trying to drown my anxiety and obsessive thoughts about where and when and what is happening there and then with coffee and cigarettes. It isn't working, really. I should've tried alcohol. That seems like a really bad idea, though.

Have you ever felt so many conflicting things that you wanted to explode? I have, because I do.

And when I'm brave enough and find a clever way to kick him out
And I'm so high, not even you and all your love could bring me down...

Oh, Amanda Palmer, your lyrics still do it for me even after years and years...

I felt I should post something because I'm a bit happier. I vomited my feelings about life and its uncertainties to Nick the other day and it really helped. Still, though, I'm having some nights...

I started Physics on Tuesday. I told Nick that I thought Physics was sort of poetic, but he doesn't really get it as he has never taken Physics. This is what I mean:

"Everything pulls on everything else in a beautifully simple way that involves only mass and distance. According to Newton, every body attracts every other body with a force that, for any two bodies, is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance separating them."

Everything pulls on everything else... Something about that is so very beautiful.

Everyone thought I was insane for taking Physics--especially since, to finish my degree, I can take literally whatever I feel like. What can I say? University of Phoenix was offering it for, like, $800 cheaper than most of their other classes...

Though, at this point, there was almost no use in me taking online classes. LFCC would've been way cheaper. I haven't yet relocated, and probably won't until after January. However, the demands on my time for an online class are far less, so whatever.

I don't care: what's done is done.

For a while, I was wondering and worry about "shoulds" or "shouldn'ts" and trying to point myself towards what needed to be. Sometimes, I caught glimpses of it, but I feel so hopelessly bogged down in the confusion of everything that all I can really do is throw up my hands and look around at where I am. I'm just here. I don't care; I'm just going to live for a while.

You can reach in and pull me up if You think I'm sinking. I lost the precise sound of Your voice a while ago...

It's ok, though. I think it's just temporary disorientation.

As time ticks by, still I try...

The only explanation is that I'm crazy. I cannot sleep. My mind keeps racing around the same little track, and I don't know how it got stuck here. I want to vent so desperately, but I won't. Instead, I'll speak in cryptic phrases and rant about how in the end, I am just insane.

Maybe it's past experience that puts me up to this lunacy. I'm set up to obsess.

All I know is that I want to sleep, I want to shut my brain off and just not think about it.
All I know is: everything is wrong. A part of me wants it to be better, but a part of me wants to keep it that way--slightly askew. Oh no, I do want it fixed, but I want it to stay screwed up just in this one, little way...

Last night, I had a dream that I killed three innocent people because the people who lived across the street from me were gangsters and I got caught up in their world of illicit drugs and crime. No joke. It was one of the most awful dreams I've ever had. In the end, I was faced with having to confess to everything I did and accept the consequences. I had the choice to get away with it, but I couldn't live with the guilt.

So. Much. Significance.

Please, God, just let me sleep.

Why do I come here to vent? I don't know. I tried to journal, but I just vomited out my feelings and felt hollow. Right now, when my loneliness is so that I feel it could grow teeth and swallow me, I think I just really want to know someone is reading this.

I was looking over some of my old LJ posts. Not the really old ones (the angsty, over-emotional Josh ones), I was looking over the ones from school--sparse as they may be. I'm glad that I have them, because I can remember that I was once happy.

I'm not happy like that anymore. I'm stopping and starting and spinning and sinking... still, though, I know that I am just as o.k. as I was in those posts. I don't know how I figure, I just know that I am.

But still, I'm stopping and starting and spinning. And sinking. And I hurt all the time.
Somehow, I know, I've got to get through this. Not over or around, or out the back door; I must go through.

You know what helps? Desert Song by Hillsong. HOLYbajesus. They sing my life.

Have you ever smelled a smell that reminded you of something you couldn't remember? It happens to me all the time, I think because I have a thing with smells. However, I know it happens to other people. Today, I smelled a smell that so strongly reminded me of something that I desperately wanted to remember that I stopped and stood outside in the cold, freezing. I couldn't place the memory, but I knew when it was from, I think. It had to be Ft. Benning, but I'm not sure if it was before or after Molly. I was young, before 11. That's it, that's all I know; that, and it was a happy memory. The smell was toasty and vague, and smelled like it was a part of the autumn wind. It was something organic, like a precise mixture of leaves and humidity and a tinge of pollution. Whatever it was, it reminded me of a day that I had sometime in my childhood around this time of year that was happy. Whatever the memory was, I was happy about it.

Sometimes a similar thing happens with a bad memory. You smell something, and something inside you winces from the memory, though you're not sure why. Usually, though, I figure it out pretty quickly, but the reaction comes before the recognition and for a startled moment I'm left wondering why I'm suddenly in a bad mood. It's like that when I smell Curve--my stomach lurches. I know precisely why I don't like that smell, though; but I won't realize exactly what I'm smelling and disliking unless I think about it for a minute.

If you're a boy and you love me, don't wear Curve.

I feel as if it's time to stop now. I just wanted to share that thought.

I want to work at the Renaissance Festival. I am not even kidding.

Yesterday, my mother and I walked around RenFair drinking out of our tankard and chalice, fairly drunk. It was a pretty tender bonding moment. I realized that I am dorky enough to want to spend $600 on an amazing Scottish Highland outfit. I put it on, and I've never felt prettier in my entire life. I'm not even lying in the slightest. I was born in the wrong century.

Somehow, today, I have to shit out about 1500 more words of a coherent short story. I have 900 now, apparently, but a good, solid paragraph of it will probably be scrapped. I'm writing about a waitress, and so much of my own voice comes to the surface bitching about the horrors of food service that I think pieces will qualify as memoir. Thank God the rest of the setting has basically nothing to do with my life, or else I would have difficulty keeping it in "fiction."

I think after this, I will write more stories. I missed writing stories.

Yesterday, I saw The Rules of Attraction, and I think a piece of my soul died, it was so dirty. Just saying. I really, really liked it, though. I'm weird.

The job from Hell is over and done with... forever. Fuck drunk people, and fuck my drunk owners, and fuck my incompetent manager who makes my life miserable, and makes me feel a little guilty because he's really such a likable guy.

Nebi-the-rat is terribly ill. I made a vet appointment, but I can't get in until tomorrow. Is it wrong that I am so torn up about it? I'm such a bleeding heart. But really, it's making it difficult to concentrate on other things. Like writing.

Warm up is over. Time to do something with my life.

I write better when I don't really try.

I took my last journal off of private, because I realized it was so silly. I never make my journal entries private. You know, I just discovered that the Genius mixes in the newest version of iTunes. I like it, because it's like those times when you wish your shuffle would play only certain areas of your music collection. I want it to look more like a playlist, though, because I want to know what songs are coming. Genius playlists should be like Pandora: you should be able to make a playlist with more than one artist.

There's a little, guilty part of me that loves to watch the Martha Stewart show. There's an equally little, guilty part of me that wants to be on The View, even though they always interrupt each other. I can't believe that bothers me, because it's the same thing that bothers my mother about that show. I don't think I will ever tell her that.

There's some idea floating around out there about how things look better in the morning. I think sometimes it takes a couple mornings. It's getting there, thought. Dreams fuck things up; like little saboteurs running around your subconscious, waiting to catch you when you're not actively thinking about it. In dreams, they say, we'll bring you all the things you don't want to do in real life, but now you can't stop yourself. It's so corny, saying that I dream of you. I see where they whole idea comes from, now. I can never have lucid dreams when I want to have them.

I think I've decided that someday, I will really, really fall in love with the person who can somehow like the handful of bands that are most important to me, no matter how contradictory and lame they are. Sometimes, someone hits one or two, but no one ever likes them all. Not saying it's a deal breaker, it's just an interesting thing to think about.

I feel like I should be doing something right now, but I can't actually think of anything to do but this. I have a ton of homework for that stupid creative writing class, but I just can't seem to get myself to start on it. This is my warm up.

My Genius has a pretty good classic rock mix.
I really, really miss my iPod. BTW.

Today, strangers opened up their house to us and fed us food. Shawn and I went to a new church we discovered two weeks ago for the second time, this time dragging Diana and Laura along. I almost forgot what it was like to sit in a room so strongly marked by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Diana and I felt it before the worship music even started, when Phil opened his mouth to speak in front of the church we knew. Every time it happens, it surprises me, as if it were the first time I were feeling something both inexpressibly strange and intensely familiar.

I'm telling you, I almost forgot what it was like to be so moved by the presence of God. It's been coming back, slowly. I had a moment at the beach over Spring break where I was in a crowd around the fire, but it was really just me and God there, and I was worshiping him. I love private public moments like that, where I'm carried a million miles away and no one knows. It's our secret, mine and God's. Today, I was in a room full of people who were not there. All of us were carried away somewhere alone with God; but not alone, because all of us were bound together like one person. It's the strange separate-but-together aspect of the Body of Christ that always gets me--the fact that we can feel like one body, but we are not sharing the presence of God. He's all ours, we're all his, at the same time. It blows my mind.

Phil invited all of us over to his house for lunch, which was an amazing blessing, holy crap. I miss that about small churches: everyone knows you're new, and everyone wants to welcome you personally--and their growth is small enough that they have the ability. I couldn't even explain the afternoon if I tried... again, the Body of Christ, the Holy Spirit, the oneness that comes from having the same head of Christ. To anyone else, Phil wasn't saying anything remarkable. But when he spoke, at one point, he would switch, and suddenly I knew that it was prophecy, and he was speaking things over us with insight that extended beyond uncanny. He looked straight at Laura, and identified everything that Diana and I have spoken over her since last year. In 5 minutes of knowing her. Not things that reveal a social, intuitive personality (which I think he has anyway), no--he just said things that I knew (and that I think he knew) were spiritually discerned and needed to by said to her by a stranger so that she would know. He had a word for all of us, really. It wasn't like it was delivered that way, no one would know unless the Spirit in them knew. We just knew. Inwardly, I think we all smiled at God as we were sharing an incredible moment of growth and encouragement.

The words freaking cool doesn't even begin to cover it.

For my thesis, I've been immersed in academic literature about the charismatic gifts associated with Pentecostalism and the charismatic movements within the mainline traditions. It's both frustrating, encouraging, and amusing to read what academia has to say about prophecy, healing, speaking in tongues, etc. It's days like this when I am amused, days when I think about all the papers and books I've read by those who think the gifts have ceased--at least those "foundational" gifts. I can see why they think that when they look at the squeaky wheels who claim to have prophetic insight and supernatural healing, and the cults that follow them. But when I'm sitting in a living room with a real man, honest and unquestionably sincere in his love for the Lord, and the words that come out of his mouth are the same ones that have been laid on my heart, I laugh. I laugh to think that people reason their way out of Scripture and away from God. I laugh, because God breaks out of every box we put him in. He defies every theological framework that tries to quantify and qualify his workings in the world; his supernatural, unstoppable, but quietly powerful movement in the everyday moment of sitting in the living room with a man I just met and taking part in the precious gift of fellowship. In other people, I see God's glory shining through, and it makes me want to praise him in the middle of the day; in the middle of everything.

In the center of the confusion of everyday life, I'm reminded that God is God, and he works in ways we can't imagine but take part in, anyway. How precious that He has the grace to show us what He's doing and invite us to join. What a gift it is, to know God and to be known. How worthy of praise is God? So very worthy.

That's really all. I'm going to go write a thesis now.

So I think I have to write something to warm up my fingers. The rhythm of typing something--anything--get's me thinking.

I'm supposed to write 10 pages on Glossolalia and Prophecy. Ideally, I'd come out with more like 14 or 15 pages (which means at least 7 pages on each.) Which means, I'm not going to finish all of that tonight. Seven pages... that's my goal. And a finished outline to email to my prof by tomorrow morning.

I'm on the second day of a dinner only fast that will last God-only-knows how long (quite literally... He told me to just go until he said when, so I'm holding out.)

Today, Shawn texted me and said that he was having a euphoric day. I said I was, too, but only because of God. There was no other reason for me to be having a euphoric day. For all intents and purposes, I am in crisis. I am in the midst of confusion and doubt--but it's like I can all see it swirling around me, but not really touching me. I'm still affected by it, but I am in a bubble, watching it all. In the end, I will be OK.

I think I should go do some work now.

And I should be doing many things other than writing here, but I am going to be writing here instead. Actually, I have nothing to write about, so I will post a line.

Or two.

Just to keep the rhythm and the elasticity in my fingers. I am out of shape, in more ways than one.

Today I pray that I will put away this computer and open up these books, and finish my research, and finish my draft of section two, and email the interviewees, and maybe clean a little. Maybe.

Today, in fact, I pray that my life stops spiraling ever away from me, turning in to a mess of incomplete projects and unfinished steps that are ever more so unrecognizable as mine. Where am I? What day is it, again?
I only know because yesterday, and I class at that time, and today I have class at this time.

Once, I used to use this LJ.
Then, I discovered paper journal.
Then, I stopped journaling altogether.
Now, thoughts bounce around in my head and fade away, lost forever.
I think I stopped for a while because it didn't feel secure here anymore. Now it is, I think.
Maybe I'll write again.

There is no place like it.
I'm home.
I hate it here.

Nothing is right or happy here. Everything is a struggle. It is probably good for me.
Doesn't mean I can't be miserable.
I am not moving back.

I hate everything, but especially papers and projects.

Papers, mostly.

Really, though, I am kidding. I don't hate everything, only school. Which, in this hour, seems like its everything there is to love and hate; but you and I know there is so much more in the world, right?

I am writing this in word, and it’s criticizing me for my use of sentence fragments. You don’t like that? For real? Well, that’s tough. How about this? And that. Bitch.

I shall be home soon. I feel weird writing this on the big-screen, computer lab computers. Oh noes! Someone could be looking over my shoulder and criticizing my LJ post; which is funny, considering I’m posting this on an especially public forum. My thoughts broadcast on the interwebz for all to see. Well, not really: about 3 people for-sure read this.

How did I start that last paragraph? Oh yeah, I’ll be home soon. Who else likes stream-of-consciousness writing? I’m a fan, for sure.

I am afraid to come home. I am afraid of being bombarded with a slew of situations I don’t want to be in, with people I really shouldn’t (and don’t want to) see. More and more, I feel as if I miraculously escaped from some horrific train wreck. Every time I come home, I feel the need to scream to everyone else that they are about to ride right off a cliff.

No, really, you must believe me: I can see the tracks running out right there, up ahead…

Oh, but to see Molly and Jackie… it’s worth it. Others, too. You know who you are. I look forward to hanging out with my new little brother in Christ, and struggling to get a hold of the ever elusive Michelle—the rare creature. My mother, too, I miss her so much… I shop alone nowadays. I miss cooking with her in the kitchen. I miss fighting. I miss my dad in every way imaginable.

If you didn’t get a personal mention in this string of “I miss”-es, don’t get your panties all in a bunch. I’ll be home soon enough and you can take it up with me in person.


I’m going to miss my house so much. I love where I live and what I’m doing. I love, for the first time in recorded history, feeling that I am precisely in the physical location and season of life that God desires me to be in. I’m not perfect, I’m ever working, ever reaching; but I’m reaching from the right floor to the right shelf. I’m finally walking on the right path, in the right direction. I have picked most of the leaves from my hair and burs from my coat that were leftover from when I tried to take the scenic route.

The narrow road is scenic enough, I have decided.

I love Jesus so much, every day. I am intoxicated with love. I am drunk with happiness. I’m ridiculous.

And I’m procrastinating. I have much to do, and less time.

I’ll call you when I get home.

I am going to post an entry because I haven't in a very long time, and I need to warm up my fingers for some paper writing in the coming week.

When I graduate, will I miss the thrill of feeling as if I have more projects and papers due in a given time frame than humanly possible? I don't know. I sometimes think I'll be happy to be rid of it, other times I think I'll miss having work to do.

In the summer time, I never feel free, anyway. Why should I feel any different when I graduate?

I'd like to let my future float ambiguously in some filmy cosmic goo in God's palms, but my mother won't have it that way. I am OK with not truly knowing wtf is going on with my life, and I have all sorts of clever stories that I tell people to get them out of my hair. But my mom and dad want results; they want applications and budgets and 1/4 scale drafts. I want to just sit quietly with my pencils and sketch with airy, vague strokes.

I am happy, though, all the same. I am so happy. I don't even understand how happy I am, or secure, or just so thoroughly alright with everything--it is beyond my capability to fully describe, and it is probably impossible anyway. You'd have to know all my desperate prayers and extensive conversations with God over the past year to know why my life is good in the most exhaustive sense. God is so absolute and wonderful. It makes me want to break in to spontaneous praise (which I sometimes do.)

My life is a constant revelation of God's omnipresence; the Holy Spirit is lurking around every corner, waiting to engulf me.
What is complete, but this?

What's weird is that every little thing is not perfect; it's not as if my life has no problems or trials or questions. I'm just at peace with all of them.
In fact, I'm so challenged all the time, in so many areas. I love the fact that I'm being challenged, though; I relish that I'm being forced to change in some areas, while at the same time being shown why I am the way I am in others.

This is what's going on, I think: I've passed the halfway point in this passage that I've been walking through the past year. In fact, it's at kind of a halfway or 3/4 point. I'm still being rushed with trials and questions, but I've so much more faith than I used to. Something inside of me that was maturing is reaching peak, it is much more solid than it used to be; almost complete.

It almost makes this Berger analysis paper OK. Almost.

Why am I even writing this paper?

I don't care what Emile Durkheim or Max Weber thought religion was, nor do I care how they thoght it related to society. I have little to no opinion on it worth writing on. I don't know who their intended audience was. I don't care to write about their sources. I do not care to make an assessment of either, let alone both, and write it in a 4-page double spaced paper in the Chicago style of citation.

I don't care about your class, either, or our pointless discussions.

I'm so tired of being a Religion major at this school. Everything seems so absurd. Here's an equation I discovered this summer:

Stuff - God = Pointless.
Religion - God = Stupid.

There was a time when the academic study of Religion excited me. I guess it still does, to some extent, but I feel I've exhausted the full dimension of religious study here-- the areas that are worth it, anyway. I'm weary of our polite, inclusive, safely intellectual discussions. I've had enough of Theology that differs little from secular humanism.

I'm fucking sick of no one ever having any balls.

It's not just that I'm sick and tired. It's not just that I'm bored. The death in their thoughts and their hearts wears me out. The air around them is still and lifeless; nothing in what they say reaches beyond their own heads. Doesn't humanity ever tire of itself? Doesn't anyone else recognize the futility of our own ideas?
Doesn't anyone get sick of Theology for Theology's sake?
Are we really so enamored of our own intelligence?

Sarah Johnson's class has a spark, every once in a while, but it pretty much gets doused on a regular basis. I've had my fill of class discussion with people like Drew and Carl. They can take their humanism and their religiosity and shove it... it's pointless.

Just like this LJ.

Holy crap, I am going to be busy.

I'll have a better idea tomorrow of what my year is going to look like... I only had two classes today. Tuesdays are my long classes (because they're only T Th classes) but I don't mind so much. I have plenty of time to make my notes pretty.

( Look: )

I am at peace.

There's still a lot that's wrong: I haven't sat down to journal/pray/Bible in several weeks. There is dead air in the space between God and me, and it's my fault.

But I know I'm back where I am supposed to be, and I'm slowly cleaning off the brambles that I brought back from my family's home. I don't think it is my home anymore; I don't know if I have a home right now, per se. Oh well, here is where I'm living, it is where I am supposed to be, and that is what I know.

I was very happy driving through St. Peter today. I had this warm sense of calm and belonging. It was basically the polar opposite of the feeling that I had when I first got back to 'Chester: an urgent sense of discomfort at having grown to big for the niche I used to fit in. Here I have a space so wide I can expand to fill it.

Today, I took my sister to go get her lip pierced. We deliberately waited until she came here with me, away from Mom's eyes, Dad in Afghanistan. I am a horrible example as a sister. XD She looks fantastic.

Don't you dare tell my mother.

My head is swirling with so much music. My eyes are dry from staring at the road. My hands are humming, like the steering wheel I held for half of the day. We made incredibly good time. Dad-good, Jackie said. She said it's because I drove first, I drove like a madwoman.

I guess I had something to get away from.
Oh, come now, don't be coy: you had everything to get away from.

I feel better with the cushion of miles between me and the things that poison me and break me and worry me. No, I am not talking about my mother. Despite any other things that may come to mind while reading this, there is more about Winchester that is toxic to me than one might guess (though, you're probably half right.) I've come to see that the source of so much of my struggle (and heartbreak) is a schism within myself, my spirit and mind on one half of the chasm and my soul lingering on the other. Yes, there is a distinct division between soul/spirit; they are not synonyms. Spirit= Holy, eternal, truthful; soul= fleshy, emotions, feelings, worldly. I've been working all summer to try to bring them in to accord.

I now know where my soul is. I want it back.
Oh, you wonder where? Just guess...

Despite my rather dark writing as of late, I am hopeful and happy. The coming year is unfolding before me, and through the parting curtains I can see plans to give me a hope and a future.