5 July 2015

A friend asked me if I thought goodness was determined by the actions they have taken, or whether it was the actions they would take given the opportunity. But I think it’s the other way around. I think that the temperament of our souls determines the valor of our actions, and I think that the color of our minds will always determine the hue of our words. Actions and words both pour forth as a manifestation of our philosophy, of the things we dwell on.

But here’s the problem: I can’t bring myself to dwell only on things that are noble, true, right, pure, and lovely, because the world is not made of those things. The world is base, wrong, corrupted, and ugly, and denying its true form will not lessen the harshness of it. I know people whose denial of the depravity of the world comes from both extremes. You cannot pretend that certain actions are not evil. You cannot pretend that evil only exists when seen. To hide myself from the world and its dark nuances would be to effectively disarm myself; I cannot fight what I cannot see. 

I can’t balance goodness with honesty, and that is a strange thing to say, but I have thought it before. I can’t balance kindness with truth, and it makes me cruel. I can’t balance goodness with transparency, and it makes me crass. I think the world is made of twilight; the meeting of light and dark, and to separate one from the other creates something that is so concentrated that it corrodes. Too much light will blind you, but so will too much dark. 

There will be some that say, “Jesus is the light. You can never have too much of him.” Well, to you I say that I have seen people abandon their friends in the name of purity. I have seen Christians so wrapped up in their need to keep themselves pure and spotless, that they forget what a large stain disloyalty leaves. It’s hard to believe in a God that heals the broken when his followers are the ones doing the breaking. I think that there has to be some way to refuse to participate in someone’s depravity without leaving them to drown in it. Telling someone that they are drowning is not very helpful if you aren’t going to help them out. (And to those who say that you cannot worry about what others think; you cannot worry, but you should care; be wary what sort of Christ you present to the world.)

We are selfish creatures, and we wrap ourselves in bitterness to keep ourselves safe, and this too is a mingling of light and dark. It is no crime to desire shelter. It is no virtue to harbor resentment. 

Perhaps I’ve taken the question and lost it in the answering. Maybe I don’t really have an answer. I just know what I’ve always believed; that we walk a narrow road with a bottomless cavern on either side, and one is marked Decay and the other is Preservation, and somewhere in between the two has got to be something called Living. 

28 June 2015

Sometimes resolution hangs like a death sentence, and forgiveness has a lightness that feels like a weight.

I think we put off resolving things because once they're over, they're done. There's no hope for a better outcome, and maybe that hope is worth the anxiety that waiting brings. It is hard to know that you are the last one believing in something. You wonder whether or not your hope is even valid. Whether your persistence in hoping is faith or just idiotic stubbornness.

Even worse is, when granted pardon, the mixed feelings of continued guilt and freedom. Freedom, because even if it is your fault, you aren't blamed for it; guilt because you feel as if you are betraying everyone by being free. Sometimes I think that if I could just take all the hate and hurt into myself, I could bear it for them, and they could love each other again.

I spend hours wondering whether or not any of it would have happened if I hadn't tried to claim the friends for myself. It seems to me that without my grasping presence, there would have been no conflict. And when I see the sadness that the loss causes the friends I succeeded in tearing away, I think that I would gladly give them up so that they could have their family back. I play the downfall over and over again, and I'm constantly falling on the sword of my memories until I don't know the difference between introspection and masochism.

If only it were so simple; one relationship for another. But now I realize that nothing is that simple, and that even the so called 'stable' relationships are immensely complicated. Sometimes I wonder if any of them are worth the fight, and then I remember that I have not had an honest relationship since the year I turned sixteen. That will be two years in October.

I constantly struggle with the tension between wanting to be known, and knowing that there are others who need understanding more than I. Every chance I have to tell my story and bare my soul is a time that could be used to help those who are unused to wearing sadness the way I am. I will not hurt myself over this, I will not end my life. But there are others that might, and I can't justify taking their time for myself.

I spent years of my life trying to escape from stereotypes in an attempt to make people see me, but all that I succeeded in doing was sliding into a new label: angry. I have given up now, and sometimes I think about what I would want people to know about me if I had the chance to tell them. Here it is: anger is just sad's bodyguard. I think my bones are made of mourning and my veins are filled with black ink instead of blood. I grieve the loss of finite family and friends. I endure the end of intimacy. I weather the withering of love and kindness.

But I would not call myself depressed. To me, depression is something that sucks the life out of you and deprives you of your ability to create or enjoy the things you love. But I don't know if I could write without my sadness. I don't know if my fingers could create music without its galvanizing force. I have my days of sunlight, and they are just rare enough to allow me to enjoy the haze of the gray without all the garish light of constant elation. I suppose, in the end, I like my world of purple and gray. It suits me in the same way that light and gold suit some of my friends.

Sometimes I think that sad isn't such a bad way to be.

25 June 2015

Life is a mess of interconnected webs and each tragedy bleeds into another. I once thought that October and January were separate events, but now I see how they bled into one another and how the ripples joined and swelled into the tsunami that has crashed over my life. I've cut and been cut off until the last one standing is me - and I'm not even standing, I'm just sitting here, in love with my own grief and the way it looks on paper.

I struggle to believe in a God that heals and changes when a lack of changes in those closest to that deity caused a wound in me that couldn't be healed. Or maybe it's wouldn't. I've never been good at gray, so I stay as deeply immeshed in the black as I can; I don't know the difference between mourning a loss and drowning in it. Maybe I think I deserve to drown in it.

When my parents carved out half our family and threw them to the curb, I learned that friends are only worth keeping when they don't rock the boat and that hard times tear us apart. So when my own hard times came, I vowed we'd stick together, not realizing that their hardship had also been mine and that the rough seas had cracked my hull. So it was with desperation that I tried to force two serrated beings together and got everyone hurt in the process. Sometimes I think my life is just a compilation of all the ways that I've failed - as a daughter - as a sister - as a friend.

Friend, friend...I've put too much weight on that word in the past and now I realize that the idea of 'kindred spirits' is a fairy tale. There is no one out there who will ever understand or even want to understand the dustiest corners of our mixed up souls. And even these words are missiles loaded and waiting for anyone who thinks they want to know me; trust me - you don't.

I used to want to save people, to help them. Well, I've saved two lives now, and here's what I've learned; it doesn't mean shit if they didn't want them in the first place, and I wonder if we can every truly help anyone, or if we're just springboards for those who care to help themselves.

Do I want to help myself? I don't know. I don't even know if I'm broken.

But, really, aren't we all? just a little?

to everyone i have ever ruined

Perhaps, if I knew more, I could have handled things differently. Perhaps I would have been more clever. Perhaps I would have been quieter. Perhaps I would have been silent. I don't know what would have happened, but I know this; that if I had known the outcome, I would have been different.

I know that I would have fixed it.

I would have changed it, somehow, someway, made it better. I wouldn't have let it hurt us. I would have kept my family together, no matter the cost. I mean, isn't that what I'm trying to do anyway? One corner of my heart is tethered to you, and even though I'm not sure that any part of me can ever belong to them, I know that part of you does.

I don't know if we were ever whole before, but I know this; we were happier, then. There is a void in your eyes now, drowning out the light that used to shine. Perhaps, all along, we were all just a collapsing star and this was the only possible ending to our story. Maybe that's why I became a writer; to try and craft some new end to this tragedy. But try as you might, Romeo and Juliet still die in the end, and the Parent Trap is great in theory but will never amount to anything more than pain in the real world.

Move on, they say. How can I move on when the ghosts haunting me still live? I was seen, I was known, and in my selfish desire to have you as my own, I - broke - you. Well, I say you, but what I really mean is us. I am broken too.

I am broken too.

I am broken too.

I am broken like Attolia's amphora, like Eponine's heart, like Pandora's box. I am cracked wide open and all that spills forth is hate, because here's my secret; I hate what happened to you. I hate those who tormented you, who abused you, who abandoned you.

I hate myself.

I hate myself and I can't separate hating me from loving you.

I picked up a friend off the side of the road today, and while it may have been a great turn of events for her, I'm not sure how good it was for me, because with every word my dad spoke, I could hear the ghosts of others that broke the family that we used to have. With every kind glance, I saw that there'd been a chance to turn away from this road we're on.

Dad: every piece of your kindness breaks me. It's nothing more than a reminder that you chose to shoot us.

All these things are running through my head, but I know that I have to push them aside and soldier on, because now is not the time or my heartbreak. But it's getting kinda hard because now you've moved on and you're talking about how we all need community and how you want to help - well, what about us? What about those who depended on you just a year ago? Where are they now?

I'd like to think you mean well but the aborted remains of our family are lying in the gutter of our lives and I can smell the corpse from here.

I thought I could move on and help others despite my fears, but grief makes me selfish, and I can't see to lead others when I'm blinded by my tears.

19 June 2015

I went to Haiti last week, and I encountered a world where the air is hot and thick, sticking to your skin and filling your clothes with the constant scent of burning rubber and human filth. Trash littered the streets and animals ran amuck amidst a sea of people who seemed not to even notice that their gutters were overflowing with old bottles and crushed cardboard. And as we watched natives carve two feet for every six inches of ours, I wondered what the point really was.

Here we were, a bunch of fat white Americans, come to do in five days a job that could have provided income for several Haitian families for two or three. Here we were, handing out cheap plastic toys that we would never, in America, pretend were anything significant, and yet we presented them to the Haitian kids as if they were something devastatingly special. It seemed so condescending to me, so pointless. What were we actually coming to accomplish? What could we actually do for Haiti? Nothing. It seems to me that the money might have been better donated to an organization that could actually accomplish something instead of spend a lot of money to feed 17 people American food once a day.

To be fair, the youth leaders said that the point was not to try and save Haiti, but to try and connect with the people and have our own hearts changed. But how can you connect with someone when you don't even speak their language? How can you know and love someone if you do not understand their thoughts, their passions, their dreams, their hopes, their trials? Without some basis for communication, we are just a bunch of white teenagers expecting kids to feel loved because we can mispronounce some of their names and ask how old they are.

As for having my own heart changed? It has changed, but not necessarily in the way that, perhaps, my youth pastor might have wanted. My questions about honesty and loyalty and the lack of it in the Christian church were met with a surprising amount of resistance, an attitude that seemed to suggest that I should blindly trust someone's opinion because they were older than I. My suggestion that perhaps not all teenagers are as hormonal and stupid as we are made out to be was met with a kind rebuttal that once again alienated me from the rest of my age group. My opinions seemed to be treated with a sort of disinterested condescension. As if I were not old enough for them to be considered valid. As if the fact that I had not read all the Bible meant I could not think.

I think a lot of Christians spend so much time worrying about the Truth that they forget to care about individual people's truths. I think that sometimes personal experiences and convictions are pushed aside and ignored in the face of doctrine. I think that Christians tend to forget that we believe many lies about ourselves and, instead of trying to kill those little lies at the root, they try to cover it over with a blanket truth.

I think that sometimes Christians are so concerned with keeping themselves pure and staying away from all appearances of evil that they forget that disloyalty is one of the biggest evils there is. You cannot love someone and abandon them; you cannot claim to love everyone in the world and cut off people who think or act differently than you. You cannot isolate yourself from the world and still claim to care for it.

And yet, I think there is a difference between abandoning someone and stepping away. Sometimes, you reach a point where you can no longer help someone. The difference, I think, lies in the message sent whilst stepping away. I think that you can distance yourself but still remain open to helping that person if they are willing to change. However, I think most people feel shame and inadequacy when they cannot save someone, and to cover over their shortcoming, proceed to treat that person like trash, justifying their damnation with Bible verses about purity and righteousness. You can refuse to join in someone's depravity without severing from them completely.

We're supposed to be the light of the world, so what is the point of us if we never venture into it?

8 June 2015

There's something within me that cannot believe in something without knowing the reason why. If I do not understand a motive, I do not trust it. Perhaps this is why I distrust people who only say nice things about me. Perhaps this is why I distrust charity and help. Perhaps that's why I distrust christians so much. 

I think that sometimes christians are very good at acting loving towards someone without actually loving them. They claim to be motivated by love, and yet, it seems that more often, they operate out of a sense of duty as opposed to genuine affection. This unique and well intentioned duplicity is hard to pinpoint and verbalize, but is always detectable. 

I think that a crucial part of loving someone is liking them, at least a little bit. Otherwise it is not honest. It's a false front put up to keep people from seeing what you truly think about them, and I can't reconcile dishonesty with love. How do we balance honesty with loving everyone?  Do we simply love those we can and leave the rest for someone else?

I would rather know that I am not liked than to suspect every friend of kindly meant falsehood. I would rather face the world alone than be surrounded by people who must call upon their God to survive me. 

In a society that claims to value kindness above else, is truth the price we will pay for our attempts at benevolence?

to a friend

I went looking for songs to soothe my soul today, wading through half begun lyrics in search of some kindred emotion, and came up empty. For a while, I wondered why there was no soundtrack for this part of my life. Then, I realized, it's because there are no words for this. No way to explain the ache that comes from missing someone who isn't even gone. No way to convey the pain of two families torn apart. No tune to carry the guilt for missing someone you shouldn't, by rights, even know. I used to think that you had to be in love to have your heart broken. But, to every lovesick soul, I know how it feels to have the pieces of your heart walking around somewhere beyond your reach. I know that slippery slide of unanswered texts and severed intimacy. I know that fear that lurks in the back of the mind, discouraging questions and ruining relationships.

If you're reading this; I shouldn't even miss you. You aren't gone, and you weren't really mine to start out with. The part of me that thinks, the part of me that I loved most, tells me that maybe it's better for everyone involved if I stop trying to pull the ragged edges of this wound back together again. But the part of me that feels, the part of me that you loved most, says that I am the only one holding out hope. And I do hope, and sometimes - well, actually, I always - think that my life would be better if I didn't, because I don't even know what I hope for. To move forward? To simply stop sliding backward? To go back to where we were?

The truth is that I forget where we were.

I can't remember what it was like when our family laughed and played together. When I fit as easily under your arm as my father's. When we all taught your babies to make faces. When jokes flowed freely. I know those things happened, but I can't picture it anymore. There's no picture frame in my mind that can hold the five of us without cracking and shattering under the strain of this enmity. I can't recall what it was to trust anyone completely and to know that my careless damage would not destroy us completely. I forget what it was like when my unannounced presence in your kitchen was carefree and open. I can't remember the last time someone got me the way you do. Loved me the way you do.

Did.

Perhaps you're rolling your eyes, chalking this up to my casual melodrama. But even if you are, even if you hate me now for my hand in our tragedy, know this: that I never meant to hurt you. I never meant for family to be the price you paid for my friendship. Whatever part I've played in this, know that I never meant to hurt you, and that I loved you with all my meagre abilities, and in the only ways I knew how. I know that it was not enough.

I still love you.

And I miss you.