C'est La Vie
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What a beautiful piece of heartache this has all turned out to be. Lord knows we've learned the hard way all about healthy apathy. And I use these words pretty loosely. There's so much more to life than words..
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Thursday, September 26, 2002
Last night was one of those nights. I felt good about my shift at work, but it was exhausting and I was hurting for energy by the end. The sad part about that is it was only five hours, and most of my shifts will be 6 or so. Hopefully, though, with the added lunch break, I'll be ok.
One of the things that was, perhaps, a factor in my exhaustion: I was straightening up some items in the health and beauty area when a couple came over to look at contact solutions. I noticed that the man didn't have shoes on. I then took a few minutes to debate internally whether I needed to go let someone know, to tell him directly that he needed to have shoes on, or just to leave it. That was very much one of those gray areas, where any of the above were right, and none was clearly more right than another. I mean, if someone walked in with a gun or something, I'd know exactly what to do without hesitation. (Run, flee, remove myself quickly. But tell a manager first.) And if someone walked in with raggedy shoes or something, I'd also know to just let them be. But this was something that is against store and federal policy, and where I'm too new to feel comfortable saying something myself, and where I also know the freedom of being barefoot and how much I'd love to go barefoot more places. So I eventually decided on telling a manager and letting them decide what to do, and they got security to escort him out (which is exactly what policy says they should have done) and I spent a bit of time feeling trapped after that. I mean, it was one of those situations where one person puts another person in a "tight spot" and no answer is wrong but no answer is really right, or at least comfortable. At any rate, I did leave it at that, and went on about my work. From there, I went down to the coffeeshop, since Wednesday is Karaoke night and most of the gang usually shows. I hadn't been planning on going down because of a very uncomfortable incident that happened there last Wednesday, but I figured it'd be a good way to unwind and feel connected and all that. But I reckon I figured wrong. Recently, I've been feeling even more disconnected down there than I was my very first time walking through the door. I know so many people there, but don't hang out with any of them outside the coffeeshop except on rare occasions (which is mostly my fault, since I lost the love for initiating hangouts a long time ago), and haven't been having any real conversations (and I don't mean deep or "meaningful".. I just mean more than a few words exchanged) in quite some time. I think maybe when I was new, I was a novel thing, I was a new person to get to know, and maybe someone with some potential for friendship. But I can't help feeling like now that they know me, they've realized I don't have that kind of potential, or maybe they're just all looking for different types. I'm aware of my faults, mind you. Not hyperaware, just aware. I understand what they are and I'm taking measures to weed them out bit by bit. In the meantime, though, I'm a meaneyhead and I don't really fit in, and these both have been true nearly all my life, so that I feel like I'm just trudging through tar or something trying to get out. The point being that I was down there, and I was sitting with folks I know, and I felt like I shouldn't have been there. As each person left, one by one, without saying goodbye, that feeling became heightened. It's not that I want people to go eons out of their way to say goodbye to me. It's just that when I'm standing less than 10 feet away and it's still not worth saying goodbye, I feel like I'm either so mean you don't want to talk to me, or that for some other reason you just don't care. Beyond that, there's the possability this will be the last time we'll ever see eachother, and not saying goodbye means no closure. And people walking right by me and not so much as looking my way feels that much worse. That happened several times. Every time I turned my head, I'd ask someone if somebody else was still here, and they'd say "no, he left a long time ago" or such, and I'd be like "wow, this is a growing trend." I did run into an old friend last night, though, which was great. Haven't seen this Mike in about a year or more, and it was really pleasant to find a familiar face that actually did want to talk to me. There was one of the other coffeehouse regulars there that has been friendly through all this, too, and I don't want to neglect recognition for that. I can't tell you how much I appriciated having him, this whole past time period since I started feeling so disconnected, be one of the ones that doesn't make me feel outcast or unwanted. Not that the others are intentionally doing so, but I need people to intentionally want me, rather than just tolerate or such. All the same, Robert was a great help to my emotions last night, and one of the three or four people that I know that when they're also at the coffeeshop, I'll be welcome. Out of those three or four, though, he was one of two there last night. Likewise, someone else I thought was in that crowd was one of the ones that was really ignoring me last night, in a very intentional way, which of course hurts much more than the other folks I have no other expectations of. So I went home and cried a great deal. It was immensely good to be able to cry like that, though. I'm pretty sure I've hinted in a few past entries about how I've been so numb for ages now, and that's blocking my ability to deal with feelings appropriately and has been making me very out-of-sorts. Crying that much was, I think, a first step in becoming less numb. I started writing, too, which is another great sign for the unnumbing process. I've only been writing about one or two subjects this past year, and most of those were pretty empty, from my mind instead of my soul. These were for real, including the use of one line I wrote down some time ago and was never open or free enough to complete. I fell asleep, somewhat more reliant on the love of my Saviour than I've known how to be in a long time, and slept mostly peacefully, despite one strange dream I can still remember. Actually, it's not the dream I can remember, it's my reaction to the dream when I halfway woke up.. my "No, that wasn't what was supposed to happen.. it should have been either this or this.. let's try that again," and then I fell back asleep. I can remember what the options were, but I don't remember the dream beyond that, or even what DID happen in the dream instead of the other two options. I woke up this morning (and I wrote down this song.. oh, wait, that's not original..) to hear my bedroom phone ringing, which was odd since the ringer on that phone is normally always off. I'd also turned off the ringer on my kitchen phone so I wouldn't wake up before my alarm went off. However, my alarm never went off, and the wake-up-call-of-sorts came 15 minutes before I was supposed to be at my babysitting job. Not the best way to start this new day out, but at least I did get a little extra sleep, and the babysitting time brought lots of fun and laughter, so that was a very good thing. I realized many years ago, prolly about 6 months after getting out of depression, that I did spend over 9 years in depression in my childhood and teenage years, and that it would always be a struggle for me to stay out and remain more balanced. I don't know that I ever realized how much of a struggle it could become. Last night, and even various parts of today so far, I was really tempted to just stop everything remotely considered social, with the two exceptions of my jr. high group and one particular online area of friends. (Some would call them the bannerpeople. We know better.) See, I know that my jr. high group is important, and I know that I have a place there even if I often doubt I'm not doing more harm than good. Likewise, I know that among the bannerzens, I'm certainly a part of the group and I'm loved and love others. Everywhere and everyone else (and I mean everywhere and everyone.. including blogging, email, the coffeehouse, my old roommates, everywhere and everyone) is too in-question in my mind right now. This most recent struggle with depression is probably not over, but it's at least a lot farther from the edge than it was before my cry last night. The thing is that when I'm struggling with depression, I can't tell what's really going on and what's just my warped perspective. Most things are a bit of both, but a great deal of things are completely real .. and so when I blame it on my perspective and then the wave of depression finally outsts itself and I find that the reality is still the same, it can be dizzying. So I try to look objectively, but that usually means looking at things that don't necessarily speak for themselves. For example, since my time online has grown so sporadic, my email box has still remained remarkably empty from folks from one of the msg boards I used to regular. I haven't been on there but a handful of times in the past month, and this whole summer has been a lot more absent from there than the past year, but none of them have, to my knowledge, tried to keep in touch to see how I'm doing or let me know what's up in their lives. This (here's the theme to this entry) makes me feel very outside the group. And seeing as how every group I've ever been a part of is like that, and all the close friends I've ever had are pretty much not in my life right now (Sarah's hangin' in there, but this semester has brought on a great deal of busy-ness for her), I can't tell whether it's ME or just life, and either answer is still no fun. I don't know. I think I'll go down on Sunday, and I'll prolly read one or two of the things I wrote last night, but I likely won't be down for the next week after that, at least 'till the following Sunday. It's just more painful to be somewhere alone than to be home with my thoughts.
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Hippie: (after hearing Max wants to avoid the draft)You still have options man. "So how do i do normal "It's been known for a train to jump its track. It's ok, so you'll know, most times they come back. It's ok to lose your life, when you finally see your birth. It's ok to say, "I love you," and figure sometimes it's gonna hurt. "As a comedian, you have to start the show strong and you have end the show strong. Those are the two key elements. You can't be like pancakes, all exciting at first, but then by the end you're sick of 'em!" "Hey, this is weird! I ordered one frozen yogurt and they gave me two. You don't happen to like frozen yogurt, do you?" "I love it!" "You're kidding! What a crazy random happenstance!" "Only one more trip," said a gallant seaman, "It was Flannery O'Connor who said that 'grace must wound before it heals.' Her words help me to separate what is most true about life from the things we want to be true. We want life to be painless. True grace is a hard sell because in order for the human heart to understand forgiveness and love, it must first experience darkness and isolation. A life lived under the rule of grace is a life of need which allows us to receive an appreciate the gift of the giver of grace. This is why we will always have the poor with us; this is why God will not allow us to ignore injustice; this is why we are called to a life we cannot handle alone, which can and will break us in the effort to live it -- because grace must wound before it heals." Regarding 2007: Should auld acquaintance be forgot, I thought Christmas Day would never come. But it's here at last, so Mom and Dad, the waiting's finally done. And you gotta get up, you gotta get up, you gotta get up, it's Christmas morning. O little town of Bethlehem, Walk humbly, son Strings of lights above the bed "In a little while I'll feel better "Please tell me once again that You love me. That You love me. Please tell me once again that I matter to You and You really care. Please tell me once again that You're with me, forever. It's not that I could ever doubt you, I just love the way it sounds. I just love the way it sounds." "Every once in a while, a bannerzen posts." "7:30. What kind of people have to be at work at 7:30?" have you seen my love Traveling is significant because it takes so much effort. Either you're going to some place you love, or you're leaving some place you love. Usually it's both. I think I have Bond's ability to get into trouble but not his ability to get out of it. Someday I'll be in some foreign country with 5 thugs with automatic rifles pointed at me, and I'll just.... fart "You had no alternative .. We must work in the world. The world is thus." --- "No .. Thus have we made the world." The summer ends and we wonder where we are And there you go, my friends, with your boxes in your car And you both look so young And last night was hard, you said You packed up every room And then you cried and went to bed But today you closed the door and said "We have to get a move on. It's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead, We push ourselves ahead." Looking out the bedroom at this snowy TV.. ever since commencement, no one's asking 'bout me. But I bet before the night falls, I could catch the late bus.. take small provisions and this Beethoven bust. I could find work in the outskirts of the city, eat some fish on the way.. befriend an old dog for a roadside pal, find a nice couch to stay -- a pull-out sofa, if you please!" Ooh! Get me away from here I'm dying "The trouble with folks like Brownie is they hold their life in like a bakebean fart at a Baptist cookout and only let it slip out sideways a little at a time when they think there's nobody noticing. Now that's the last thing on earth the Almighty intended. He intended all the life a man's got inside him, he should live it out just as free and strong and natural as a bird." "Life is a phantasmagoria .. It is a pell-mell of confused and tumultuous scenes. We try in vain to find a purpose - to bring an order, a unity to life. I suppose that is the appeal of art. Art is the blending of the real and the unreal, the conquering of nature. It is real enough for it to reflect life, but has the unity that life lacks." "in time memories fade. I've always had this feeling about Patty that she's complex and intriguing...I like Patty alot. She's got a good heart and tells terrible squirrel jokes. "Try to remember that world-weariness isn't necessarily a bad thing. In the book of Mark, I think its Mark, Jesus looks at a blind man and sighs. Jesus sighed before even telling the man he would be healed. He sighed, and I'm not sure that there's a much more human expression of frustration than this. Faced with the horrid picture of a cursed earth and looking into the white eyes of a man blind from the day he was born, He sighed. The Creator of the universe in human form was sad "of the evils of this world," the world He created. Your Creator sighed for you in the same way before He healed you and made you His." After the last secret's told After the last bullet tears through flesh and bone After the last child starves And the last girl walks the boulevard After the last year that's just too hard There is love -- Andrew Peterson, After the Last Tear Falls "when you most need people, you don't need perfection - just to know someone gives a damn" "A CALL TO ACTION: "My brother's always [telling me], 'You should be more mysterious--boys like that.' But I'm not good at that. It would just make me more uncomfortable." "Loners want to kill you, but not for any particular reason, and they'd probably like you if they weren't being guided by the violent voices in their head." "No one wants to oil a snake these days!"
-- Her mom: "We're all safe." -- Jamie Bevill and her mother during Christmas-Decorating dinner, December 20, 2002 i'd throw out all my shoes i'd set up cans for friends to dump their shoes senseless shoes a pioneer of callouses lordy-be and bless my soul i'd be a barefoot spaceman the first you'd ever know" "The best way to have God's will for your life is to have no will of your own!" "Generations circle and each one atones. The sins of the father are seperate from my own. In Pilgrim's Progress, it's forgiveness that makes whole, and as time levels and consoles, I place the daisies in your bowl." "For a moment he just stared at her. Then, with an urf-urf-urf of laughter, he turned back to the controls." "It's on the internet.. so, then, it must be true." "Be at least as interested in what people can become as you are in what they have been." Blessed be the rock stars!" Get up for the shower.. wash and scrub and scour every part as if a cleaner man could better bear the shame.. "She was eating gnarly amounts of calcium." Homeless man to girl trying to give him money: "No, thanks, ma'am. I never work on Sundays." "Wow! I never thought I'd need a radar-guided spatula!" "Isn't it great that I articulate? Isn't it grand that you can understand? ... I can talk, I can talk, I can talk!" I believe that people laugh at coincidence as a way of relegating it to the realm of the absurd and of therefore not having to take seriously the possibility that there is a lot more going on in our lives than we either know or care to know... I suspect that part of it, anyway, is that every once and so often we hear a whisper from the wings that goes something like this: "You've turned up in the right place at the right time. You're doing fine. Don't ever think that you've been forgotten. When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of "No answer." It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, "Peace, child; you don't understand." CCM: You've spoken a lot more about crying than I ever thought you would. "Youth is not a period of time. It is a state of mind, a result of the will, a quality of the imagination, a victory of courage over timidity, of the taste for adventure over the love of comfort. A man doesn't grow old because he has lived a certain number of years. A man grows old when he deserts his ideal. The years may wrinkle his skin, but deserting his ideal wrinkles his soul. Preoccuptaions, fears, doubts, and despair are the enemies which slowly bow us toward earth and turn us into dust before death. You will remain young as long as you are open to what is beautiful, good, and great; receptive to the messages of other men and women, of nature and of God. If one day you should become bitter, pessimistic, and gnawed by despair, may God have mercy on your old man's soul." ""Don't go matchmaking for me, Ilse," said Emily wit a faint smile... "I feel in my bones that I shall achieve old-maidenhood, which is an entirely different thing from having old-maidenhood thrust upon you." "I wish Aunt Elizabeth would let me go to Shrewsbury, but I fear she never will. She feels she can't trust me out of her sight because my mother eloped. But she need not be afraid I will ever elope. I have made up my mind that I will never marry. I shall be wedded to my art" "Tomorrow seems like a long ways away. But it will come, just like any other day... Deep inside, where the wounded creatures hide, I am afraid. Maybe I got lost somewhere along the way somehow. Please rescue me... Yea, though I walk through the valley of the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me... Though I fear, though I am afraid, You are with me. Though I'm angry, tired, broken down and confused, You are with me. Though I sin like I've never sinned before, lose myself right out an open door, You are with me." "The invisible people agreed about everything. Indeed most of their remarks were the sort it would not be easy to disagree with: "What I always say is, when a chap's hungry, he likes some victuals," or "Getting dark now; always does at night," or even "Ah, you've come over the water. Powerful wet stuff, ain't it?"" -- C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader "When People object... that if Jesus was God as well as Man, then He had an unfair advantage which deprives Him for them of all value, it seems to me as if a man struggling in the water should refuse a rope thrown to him by another who had one foot on the bank, saying, "Oh but you had an unfair advantage." It is because of His advantage that He can help." "But, you know, as a Christian, one of the big questions you always ask yourself is, "So we believe in Jesus, we believe in the teachings of the church, but what does that look like when it's lived out?" Because surely, one of the things that Jesus said that I think we often overlook is, "The person who hears my words and does them is like the wise man who built his house on the rock." He didn't say "the person who hears my words and thinks about 'em" or "whoever hears my words and agrees with it." But he said, "Whoever hears it and does it." "find that which gives you breath and grants you more to give "I have packed all my belongings. I don't belong here anymore. This pair of sandles, one pack to carry, this old guitar and this tattered old Bible. And I know I won't be afraid. 'cause I know, I know Home is where You are." "Open up your weepy eyes, everyone is dancing. Angels peer through sweet disguise, through a fire of cleansing. "Long hair, no hair; Everybody, everywhere:
Breathe Deep, breathe deep the Breath of God!" "You may be bruised and torn and broken, but
you're Mine!" "I don't deserve to speak, and they don't deserve
to hear it. It's makin' me believe that it's not
about me." "Kickin' against these goads sure did cut up my
feet. Didn't your hands get bloody as you washed
them clean?" "They say God blessed us with plenty. I say
you?re blessed with poverty. ?Cause you never
stop to wonder whether earth is just a little
better than the Land of the Free" "Computers will know everything in the 21st
century. They'll be like me in the 20th
century." |
