There are only four more sleeps until this year is over. That makes today Day 227. It's almost over. It's almost over. It's almost over.It. Is. Almost. Over.Lord, give me strength.
Today I slept. Period. I woke up for brunch, went back to sleep, and woke up for dinner. I planned to do five hours of homework, but instead read 50 pages from one book.I am slipping into old patterns. I am not who I want to be.You were wild and crazy.I am shutting down; not of my own volition, but by nature. I have stopped being in control, I think.Just so frustrating.I had months go by that never imprinted in my memory. I call them the "dark days." I am beginning to see echoes and it's scary.Intoxicating.I need something to excite me to full consciousness before it is too late. I need to feel alive.Got away by some mistake.One day I will stop blogging again, too. That will signal defeat. Not of my own volition, but by nature; self-preservation will have kicked in and it will be too late.
I feel kind of like I am waiting for my life to happen.When does it begin? When do the trivialities cease in favour of an existence worth pursuing? When do dreams stop hanging on my walls and over my head and in my sleep, and start becoming the reality I know they were made to be?When do I wake up from everything I could never be to the woman who always was but was too afraid to show her face?"One of the saddest experiences is to awaken at old age and discover that one has been using only a small part of self."- V. W. BurroughsFind me here. Meet me here. In the depths of my pain, in the sorrow that is too profound for words. In these things is where I need You the most. In these things I drown. I need living water, the kind that does not make me thirst again; then I can stop drowning in a sea I am desperately trying to swallow in a futile attempt at quenching my craving. Be my everything.
Tomorrow is packing and cleaning and packing and organizing and unpacking things I still need and re-packing in their place. Tomorrow is doing whatever the heck I want: sleeping when I want, eating what I want, shutting myself away from who I want. I need me time. I miss me time. Coming home exhausted at the end of a long, stressful day and falling asleep doing devotions is by no means me time.Tomorrow is hours closer to tomorrow's tomorrow. Tuesday is final packing and weighing and sleeping in and quick good-byes and even a silly good-bye and a flight home and lots of hugs and Starbucks and my car and a bed that feels like I belong in it. Tuesday is forgetting for a minute that I ever left the land of sea and stars and ocean and real air and real water.Today was good-byes and t-shirts and promises and frustrations and stress and McDonald's and Die Hard and making way too many moves and exhaustion and, ultimately, relief. Today was the final day of expectations.
Oh trains, how you plague my already pitiful days.Jasper is picturesque, postcard-worthy, and the perfect vacation spot...when you choose to be here. Returning from my Stephanie's wedding, my car decided to die. Of course. Cameron really knows how to be a jerk at just the wrong times in the wrong places. As we had no choice but to sleep illegally in my car across from the body shop that couldn't open until monday morning, we were forced to cross the railroad tracks every time we wanted to go into town.Trains, I hate you.We were situated right beside a main CN junction, so trains go by about every 10 minutes. This is especially inconvenient when I want to eat or pee or do anything immediate.Oh trains. There is nothing more to say on less than 20 hours of sleep in 5 days.
1:34 A.M. / 3:43 A.M. / 2:34 A.M / 2:05 A.M. / 12:27 A.M. / 3:31 A.M.These are the timestamps for my last six blogs. See the theme? And I mean besides eerily similar numbers over and over. They are all in the A.M., they are all later than I should be doing anything except sleeping, and they're all separated by a forward slash. Ha...ha. This is also the starting time, meaning that some weren't even finished until an hour later.
This needs to change. I have to be up by 7 tomorrow. The last time I woke up at 7 was...the last time I had to for classes? Ugh. But I need to get used to it. I'm just not ready to commit yet.
The point I'm trying to make is that I don't know how to make myself change back. Or how to write a coherent blog.
If this were someone else and I saw this written, my tip to them would be...go to bed earlier. Dangit! But I don't want to. This is a sucky moment for hypotheticals.
If I am ever going to reach the person who I want to be, if I am ever going to be at that pinnacle I've been reaching for, I need to give up wants and start going with needs. And I NEED to sleep.
This week has been called many things: Hell Week, No-Sleep-Week, and The Week of Death. For me, it's some inconclusive combo of the three. It's hot as "that place" in this classroom, I have had more class hours than sleep this week, and I've definitely felt on the verge of death for several days now. I have barely ventured out of my room except to trudge through the rain to yet another class that I will barely stay awake through, and I desperately search for any spare moment to get some more Old Testament reading done. By the time I finally finish class and move into homework mode, my brain is so fried that you could cook an egg from a block away.
So why am I blogging when I obviously have no time? First, I desperately need to write about something non-hermeneutical to retain some semblance of sanity. Second, my brain is dead and there's no way I'm taking in any of this anyways. Third, maybe if I explain myself and the way I've been lately, at least some people will understand why I am the way I am.
Normally I take great joy in looking decent. Hair done, contacts in and make-up on is usually a given, as well as clothes that match and smelling delicious. This week I honestly couldn't care less. I can't remember the last time I picked up an eyelash curler or shimmery lipgloss, or how long it's been since my underwear matched my t-shirt. I've been wearing flipflops in the rain so that I can more easily take off my shoes in class, my sweaters can't recall what it's like to match the shirt beneath them, and perfume is but a long-gone memory. It's pretty pathetic.
It's only 44 hours of class in a week. I guess that's not so bad. I mean, who am I to complain? It's not as if I go from 8am to 5:15pm every day or lose my Saturday to a class I hate. Oh, wait.
Sweet, sweet last year, where have you gone? I miss you and your carefree days. Somehow 19 credits worth of writing was so beautiful compared to 16 credits of reading. Let's look on the bright side, though: it's Thursday. On Tuesday, I didn't know if I would ever make it here; this is cause for great celebration. I love you, Thursday. Your name tastes scrumptious on my classroom-silenced lips.
Today is also the first day of October. September is already gone, and it makes me sad. I haven't put the same effort in this year; I have barely made new friends and it makes me feel like I have been wasting my time. Hopefully this realization will help me get my butt in gear. When I think of where I was this time last year (here I go with the comparisons again) and it blows my mind. I have come so far, and yet I cannot make myself believe that I'm better off, except in my relationship with God. That's a lie. Yes I'm better with God, but I'm also HUGELY better off because of the people who I've come to love. Right now, the number one person in my mind is Emily. She'll be here in two weeks, and my heart already knows it. I can feel myself growing lighter and the sadness dissipating. I love her so much it makes me ache.
Tomorrow will be better. It will be Friday, which means: the week will be nearly done, I will be almost finished with my scrub lifestyle, and I'll only need to survive through a day of two intensives. And on Sunday, oh glorious Sunday, the clouds will part and the sun will shine and this heaviness of heart will depart (hopefully). Just that knowledge already makes me feel so much better. This "sweatpant sickness" will pass and I will feel human once more.
Earlier today, I was a perfectly sane, rational human being who felt somewhat in control. Although frightened at what the future might hold, I was being directed and knew Whom those directions were from. Now, everything is different.
I am antsy beyond belief! It feels like I cannot possibly sit still without exploding. All of my insides are ready to burst, and there is nothing I can do to prevent the fallout. My heart is ready to jump out from inside of me, and drugs are the only possible option. I'm sure if I were on some, then all of this would make some sense.
As it is, there are no drugs and there is no sanity, so I don't know what this is all supposed to mean. Where just a few days ago there was a beautiful inner peace that coincided with the world and brought bliss to all future projections, I now have a peace that is punctuated by a burning yearning to dive into all of this that He has prepared for me.
I am on fire, and every natural life function within me is crying out, trying desperately to convey that this is not enough. The mundane, same-as-it's-always-been mediocrity that once passed as life is not enough! I have so much more to live for, and every second, every heartbeat, every keystroke spent on this couch, in this house, in this state I've always dwelt in is a waste of precious time.
I don't know how I'm supposed to sleep tonight, or what any of this means. How do I put this craving (for lack of a sufficient word) to the back of my mind and let rest prevail? I'm so heartsick for this "more" that I know is out there, and I'm horribly restless for all of this to unfold. I know that tonight, like any other night, is just one in a long series of necessary events to lead me to the "eventually" that I'm awaiting, but that doesn't make 12:01 any easier than 12:00 was or 11:59 or 4:27.
Tomorrow means decisions and promises (broken and new) and ideas and dreams and everything I'm too scared to deal with. It also means decisions and promises and ideas and dreams and everything I'm so excited to delve into that tomorrow will probably never come. I say a lot how I never thought I'd live to be this old; not that I thought I'd die prematurely, just that I never thought 20 would ever come. Mirrored perfectly is my feeling that tomorrow could never possibly come because I don't know how I could ever possibly live until the morning of the 17th of May without imploding. Every second that ticks by on a clock unheard means one more second that doesn't make sense because how can tomorrow come if I don't know how to face it?
Plain and simple: I'm antsy. I don't know what to do with my hands except type because I'll probably end up ripping something apart with my subconscious. I want everything to be decided, but I'm so frightened of what this will all look like in the end. I have absolute faith in tomorrow, and that's probably what scares me the most. I've never been so absolute about anything in my life, and if that fails...well then what does that say about me?
Today started like any other. I woke up way too early to go eat a breakfast which somehow never fills me up to my satisfaction, mostly due to my pickyness in breakfast food. I'd skip the whole ordeal altogether except that, whenever I do, I have horrible headaches and feel physically ill until I finally get some nourishment. So I ate breakfast in record time, went back to my room and got re-undressed, and went back to bed. Normally this would be just enough sleep because of the combination of 5 hours before breakfast and 2 after, but on this ill-fated morning, my mother decided to call.
To properly understand this story, you need to know my mom. When we were growing up, she was the kind of person who believed in only-healthy-filled-with-veggies-but-never-in-any-circumstance-dunkaroos for lunch kinda moms. She also went through a phase when I was about eight where we only ate stuff with kamut in it. Until my brother was nine (he's four years younger than me), he never even knew what spaghetti sauce with meat was like. I always felt sorry for him. She was also the kind of mom who only had whole grain cereal, and NEVER Lucky Charms.
My favourite cereal in the whole entire world is Lucky Charms. It is the only cereal I'll eat, and I don't plan on changing my ways any time soon. Not only does it take longer to get soggy than anything not made out of cardboard, but who doesn't like fun, coloured marshmallows with a catchy jingle that never quite leaves your subconscious?
So my mom gave me a call this morning at 9am, a full hour before I needed to be up to become adequately beautiful for my Bible Research class. She had pure motives, so I can't actually be mad.
Two months ago I was in a car accident that not only totaled my car (which my insurance gave me next to zippo for, thus leaving me carless and get-around-like-normal-less), but also wrecked my back...again (I was in a similar accident 2 years ago). So to get to all my numerous massage, physio and doctor appointments, my mom has so awesomely driven me around and made sure that I make it to everything on time. Basically she's wonderful. So when she called this morning, it was just to remind me that she'd be here to pick me up at 1pm. I'm sure I was perfectly polite before I hung up and tumbled back into bed.
So how does this all fit together?
For my birthday this year, my parents bought me the lovely laptop I'm currently typing away on. My brother, being the superb young man that he is (and the poor 16-year-old-without-a-job young man that he is), got me Lucky Charms. It made my life. I screamed louder than for any other gift in the history of time. Even when I pretend I don't, I definitely love him for his thoughtfulness and sensitivity to my needs. My mom rolled her eyes, took a picture, and gave me a look that spelled out my ridiculousness.
The point I'm trying to make is that my mom cares more than most would normally be willing to admit that their mothers care about them. Did she shove kamut down our throats for five years out of hatred? Of course not. Did she deny me my favourite sugary meal of morning glory because she wanted me to be unhappy for all the years I lived in her house? For sure not. And because I didn't rebel and hide a box of my personal cocaine in my closet, I think it's safe to say that I also love her far more than I love those delicious marshmallows.
