Saturday, September 29, 2012

I think I posted something like this last year.

I think there should be a rule against time travel, particularly where feelings are concerned.

Fall is my favorite seasons, it's a time for endings and beginnings. It's a time for color and life and vibrancy. Fall is the time of year where you can eat pretty much any food you want, wear whatever you like because the weather is changeable as the tides, and it has so many things to do. Corn mazes, bonfires, Halloween costumes, Thanksgiving, School starts (yes, I like learning), so many things that I love.

Fall is also one of the hardest seasons I have experienced. I used to hate summer. I'm much more a cool weather person than a warm weather person. I hated summer for other reasons, but then I had two good summers in a row and that sort of got fixed. I learned that seasons are just seasons.

However, when we put a season on repeat. I get a bit testy. When I have to make choices that I don't like, I get angry and frustrated and sad. When I don't know what to do and feel helpless, I feel like running forever and ever. 

Right now I want to run and run and run until I'm out of breath and can just drop down and not get up until everything is back to normal. Except that I think that normal is a myth. Normal has never existed for me, therefore it's a useless word used to describe a conformity to a routine defined by someone years ago. I despise normality, and yet I crave some semblance of the wretched thing. Stability might be the real world I'm looking for.

The stupid truth is, I'm lonely again. I have more friends than I think I've ever had in my life, and I'm lonely and overwhelmed by life and the things I'm facing right now. Before this summer, when I would get overwhelmed I would shut down emotionally. It was just easier for me to turn off all emotions and exist in a semi-alive world. It sucked because it meant I couldn't deal with the things I needed to deal with in an efficient manner.
This summer I learned to feel. I learned maybe too many things this summer, but none the less I learned a lot. I healed a lot.
I promised myself I would not shut down again. I'm sticking to that promise and right now, it sucks. I hate emotional pain, I hate fear, I hate stress, I hate uncertainty. I hate not knowing what the heck I'm doing!

I don't hate people, I just hate dealing with myself after interacting with people. I don't hate myself, I just don't like processing things. It's messy and I hate crying and I hate feeling because I'm not used to these things. I never thought I would be able to feel so much. I felt some wonderful emotions in the past few years that I thought would make me burst from their power, that means that there must be equally powerful emotions that could drag me down.

It seems like a lot of people are feeling this way lately. I don't like seeing my friends hurting. Doing something that you know is going to hurt someone close to you is the worst thing I can think of. Maybe I'm just too loyal and care too much about my friends. All I want to do is to console and fix my friends. I want to be able to hug them and say "let me hurt for you."
I once told my best friend that I thought I was going to be the one who hurt enough for both of us. It didn't really work out that way, but I sincerely believed that for a long time.

"Too much" was my cry last year, everything seemed like too much. Now I feel like it's mixed with "not enough." There is too much and not enough in my life. I can't tell you what of. The lines seem to blur together like text on a page.

I will not go back to being a shell of myself. It took me months to learn how to smile, nearly a year to relearn how to laugh. My laugh still sounds foreign in my ears. I surprise myself when I start to laugh.
My parents keep talking to me about finding a faith community. They fully acknowledge that it's not easy to find. In my experience I haven't made friends in my faith community very easily. It takes work. That's not a bad thing, I just don't know where to look where I would be accepted.

God, I need you to carry me, because I can't walk anymore.
Surrender is the hardest thing for me to do.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Promises.

Yes I feel very guilty for neglecting my "real life" blog.

Here's what happened- real life.

Bristol ended, and school started. Along with school, I am working part time as a barista and earning more in one week than I earned in two weeks at my old job. Part of that is they pay me a little bit better, and I also have a minimum of 12 hours a week because it's a union job. Along with schooling and my job, I teach dance on Thursday nights and take dance on Monday and Thursday.

Oh, and I went to one audition on Saturday, and am planning on going to another a week from tomorrow. I didn't do my best at the audition on Saturday, but you win some and you lose some right? I'm actually okay considering that I think I won't make the show. I have only been cut from something once, and to be honest, I'm looking forward to getting some rejections.

Along with dealing with the lovely stress of auditions, I have the lovely stress of having a teacher in my Western Civilization class who likes to stress me out. That is all I will say on this topic because I do not want this blog to turn into a ranting spot.

Add on top of that, trying to maintain the friendships I started this summer at Bristol. It's tough. I miss people. I miss a LOT of people.
I remember one of my friends from Bristol promising me that they'd have a movie night and have me come and visit. Now, with some "theater type people" saying that "we should have a movie night" is like when you meet an old acquaintance and promise to have coffee without really ever meaning what you say. I've learned to take promises of future events with a grain of salt and try not to hope too hard. I also try to follow through on my promises of this type of nature, or at least acknowledge that these speculative ideas are simply ideas.
However, I had a good amount of faith in this person and they made good on their promise. So yesterday I hoped onto a train and got myself to the city for a Pirate Movie Night. I think I was almost looking forward to this too much.
To put things briefly- this week has stressed me out more than most weeks. On top of social complications, work, school, auditions, and a queasy stomach, I've had to make some hard choices about how much my faith comes into my life. This does not make for a very sane me.

Last year I relied on coffee as my pacifier, this year it is Chai Tea.

It's amazing how seeing just a few dear friends can make a difference. I was actually able to eat a decent sized meal for the first time in about five days. I found myself able to relax without having to remind myself to release the tension in my shoulders. I was up until about 2 AM playing a board game that still doesn't make any sense, but it was fun and I was with people I've been missing for weeks. This was a promise fulfilled.

As I was thinking about this today, I've been wondering about what has God promised me? I can't say I like all of the challenges put in front of me recently. Some of them have been downright painful and I want to know why. Have you ever felt like just asking God, WHY?
A few weeks ago I made a commitment to go further in my faith and welcome the challenges that would be brought to me. This week's challenges made me remember exactly how miserable I felt last year, because that's how I felt for a few days this week. There was lots of Chai Tea and teddy-bear hugging. Now we're back to just the Chai Tea stage.
I remember hearing the small voice that said "I can't wait to show you the plans I have for you." and I knew it was God talking to me. That was only two weeks ago. My life has certainly become topsy truvy in the last 14 days.
If last year was about learning to trust God no matter what. I think this year I'm hearing the word "Obey" and "Surrender." Not easy concepts for me to grasp. However, I want to see what promises and plans God has for me this year. 

Now I've got to get back to more of that stressful history homework for that "wonderful" professor who is currently driving me up a wall.