Beyond Where We Should Have Gone

Don't. Waste. Your. Life.

What does that even look like.

I. I am without the means to continue in the same way. If I were to stay here, stay the same...I would die. I have been suffocating for months.

For one, small, barely conceivable moment, I felt the tiniest breath of freedom. The weight was gone, the air was clean. It was but a moment. This. This is a cheesy song that everyone else laughs at but breaks my heart. The lyrics have become a haunting part of me.

Pray, pray, pray, seek, beg, pray, beg. Please please please please please fight for me I cannot fight for myself it never worked it won't work now just please please please fight fight for me on my behalf nothing I do will do anything I need You to fight please please fight.

Nothing.

...

.

I'm hanging on another day just to see what You will throw my way.

That anthem is slowly dying.

Turns Out Freedom Ain't Nothing but Missing You

What do I say?

...I said it all. And nothing at all.

That feeling, when the words are right there and so is the moment but if they came out I would be more surprised than anyone at their content, and everything would change.

I'll go back, all the time.

Happiness Looks a Lot like Sorrow

There really is nothing to say. I have had a rocking good weekend, but it always seems like the things that should make me feel good...well they don't. They make me feel fishbowly. And I think back over every word I said, every move I made, and criticize the curlingiron outta myself. And I mousetrapping hate it. Hate, hate, hate it. I beat myself up over the stupidest of inconsequential things, then beat myself harder over beating myself up in the first place. Sometimes I want to sink into the ground and just have the air compressed out of my chest so I can't feel it anymore. I hate walking into a room alone. I hate fending for myself in conversations I didn't necessarily choose. I despise myself for wanting things I hate with good reason. I was doing so good today, for the first time in weeks. Back at square one.

Cuttingboard.

Like I said...there really is nothing to say.

And I Hate how Much

Why does everything come hard right now? Nothing is just natural. Even my writing is scattered and halting...like my every move. I've been putting on a brave face (or at least trying; I'd see through it if I weren't me), but I'm cracking on the inside. Every look is another wrench in my heart. Why? Because I'm crazy.

The end.

The Roadtrip Sage: When Silence Speaks (Day 2)

Hello morning! Hello Idaho! The most beautiful State I have ever been to, its roads lined with purple heather and mountains and fields everywhere. It made me feel...home.

It’s a waterslides in the rain kinda day.

You know that feeling? It’s actually better because of the rain! ...Not that it was raining, but those few hours driving through Idaho farmland had the same kind of magic.

I Feel Inspired Here!

And I haven’t felt that way in a very long time.

I also got to use the netty this morning, now that I finally found a place that has it free. But what I realized as I checked Facebook messages and emails was that, ultimately, I didn’t really care about any of it. What I’m doing right now is just so much bigger for me in this stage of my life.

At around 10 A.M., I hit Twin Falls, Idaho, population 34,389. And I fell in love. It had small town charm but with sprawling farmlands laid out on every side. The church was perfect, and the cemetery looked just like one in a movie, what with the hundreds of upright headstones with trees draping over them. A quote above a store: “Hot heads and cold hearts never solved anything.” A white farmhouse with green shutters. Green hay that stretched to the mountains and the sky. My favourite feather trees.

I do not know how it happened, but I fell in love here.

I will come back one day.

Today was also the day of driving through the Nevada desert for seemingly endless hours. It was 36 degrees and impossibly hot. I passed the time by singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” and playing games against myself and, when all of that ran out, I began memorizing Romans. I started back in September but stopped after awhile. I was happy to find that I had retained most of it and went from there. I saw truths in it that I never had before, despite saying it aloud hundreds of times, and was blown away by the Majesty of God.

When I finally reached California, I was so grateful for trees and green and shade that I nearly got out and kissed the ground. Trying to put unwanted thoughts out of my head, I left my thoughts blank for a long time before I was completely caught off guard.

Coming over a ridge, I was suddenly on top of a mountain and the horizon as far as I could see was pale blue mountains with a burning sunset behind them. And it was at this time that Silence spoke. He could have said anything to me, but instead He said nothing...and I felt the weights I’d placed on myself being removed as I drove. It was, well, brilliant.

I reached Redding by 9 P.M. and finally reached the destination I had been striving for: In-n-Out Burger! Oh. My. Gosh. You take the first bite and are blown away. Yet somehow the second is even better. And with every bite, it only gets better and better! My only regret was that I didn’t have someone to exclaim to with each new bite. Afterwards, I headed to Wal-Mart and once again crawled into the staggering heat of my backseat and let my body rest after more than 12 hours of continuous driving.

Baby, Why Don't You Stay?

Side mirrors only make you aware of how close things are that you don't want to hit.

I'm tired of looking back.

Is there anything to look forward to?

This song has been stuck in my head.

Which chorus do I mean?

Couldn't tell you.

All I know is that I don't know anything yet.

I'll be twenty-two in twenty-four days.

And I still know nothing.

Nothing.

My heart's on my sleeve.

Again.

Ugh.

I never care for the right person at the right time.

If there's any such thing.

don't know what to say

i've given the best of me

so why don't you stay

There's Really No Way to Reach Me

I've become a stone. I can't cry for anything or anyone, and it's breaking me. Normally crying is a kind of release for me so that I can bring things to the surface and properly evaluate them. Right now I feel as if it's all still bottled up inside and I have no means by which to alleviate the pain that comes with the pressure.

Nothing is working. Someone has to be able to reach me...I can't do it on my own.

Uno, Deux, Three

My favourite blogs usually start when I have nothing to say. Tonight is one of those nights.

I do my best thinking alone in my car (bathroom, bed), talking myself through life. Reliving the past, contemplating possibilities for the future and coming up with wishful ridiculousies for the present are some of my most cherished activities during these times. Tonight, I talked with someone (slash they weren't actually there, although I do think I could play them rather convincingly on stage if ever called upon) about the intricacies of love from my point of view. It took a lot of explaining, but I think he got it in the end.

Tonight was my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary. 50 of us gathered together to toast, roast, and (best of all) love on them. As the night wore on, more than once I caught them smiling into each other's eyes and realized that it takes more than luck to find a love like that. I was beyond happy for them, yet sad in a way I can't possibly describe.

As I explained my thoughts to my friend in the car on the way back to school, I realized some key things about myself. Uno: I am not crazy to be scared. Deux: It's probably all my fault. And three: I want someone to really see me before they love me.

The more I look around, the more I talk to God, and the more I converse with Invisibles, the more convinced I am that this has to be part of the plan.

Nothing

There are no words to say, once again, to describe right now. Endless, spiraling thoughts? No. Bottomless pit? Cliche. Uncontrollable outbursts followed by indrawn frailty? Perfect.

I'm staring at a melted cream soda slurpee. Its bright bubbles shine in the faded light of the sink bulbs and it looks so lonely. Slurpee hunt with Emily turned into not knowing where we were going, followed by free slurpees because it was his birthday, and, to top it all off: SNOW! All while I was wearing a tank top. I love Canada.

I have a pile of books and movies taking over my desk. Why they're there and from whence they came? I know not. All I know is that nothing sat on my desk when there were better things to fill it with.

I haven't sat on my window ledge in awhile. Instead, I've taken to running over to the edge of the field too late at night with not enough clothes, staring out into the nothingness. The question: Is this where You are? Because I don't feel You the same anymore. Is this where I find the answers, in the wilderness? And the overwhelming answer always seems to be... "No." I've also forgotten shoes on occasion.

Tomorrow is church. I'm so glad Emily is coming. And tomorrow is back to regular devos. One day and I'm lost. Tomorrow is Youth Church and feeling at home. Looking forward is helping to fill the void that is here in the present.

Making Love Out of Nothing At All

Sometimes I just don't want to blog. Today, for example. I have nothing to write about. There is not a single original thought in my head. I don't pretend to be a revolutionary, but I love sharing something that is really on my heart; I live to share the words that refuse to come out in speech but flow effortlessly through my fingertips.

I'm nostalgic to the max right now. I'm thinking back to months ago when it felt like everything that came out in print was the perfect expression of a moment or a feeling, or an overflow of certainty that nothing could be more right in that second. And here I sit. Nothing. Not a thought on what I could possibly fill this empty space with.

So in my search to discover the perfect words to say, I came across some of my own from September. Gosh I love haikus.


Purple-blanketed
Sunshine singing to my back
Smells of grass and me


I don't know why these seventeen syllables bring me so much joy, but as I read them...I can almost feel the moment again. Maybe that's why I write.

How do you photograph heroism, paint a broken dream, or dictate true love? It haunts me that we have all these emotions and words and senses that are so difficult to capture. So here's my mission: do everything in my power to put these things into words. Faulty, failing, inadequate words, but something tangible nonetheless.

I set out to write about nothing, and I ended up writing about everything all at once. Maybe you can't see it, and maybe this doesn't mean a thing to you, but my heart is beating faster just thinking about the last few paragraphs.