stressful, much?

okay, so i'm a little behind. my friends are amazing at this blogging every day thing. but me...well you know how it is.

i'm frustrated beyond my ability to put it into words. painful. life is friggin painful.

timothy says my blogging is more vague the closer something is to me. the less important it is, the more specific i am. today i'm feeling... unable to control the pain. i want to talk to someone. something. so, you want specific? you got it.

a while ago i wrote about a relationship in my life that had become quite a bit idolatrous in my own heart, and how i had to cut it off. unfortunately, the party of the second part wasn't cooperative or supportive of this decision. i keep thinking eventually he'll give up and leave me alone. but instead he's become increasingly more...well, clingy and obsessed with the idea that everything has to be okay and "go back to normal". and all the while his actions and decisions hurt more and more. and i fall farther and farther into this pit of mean ugliness, becoming this person who looks and acts nothing like me.

and i can't control it! garbh.

but i promised to try. so yesterday came, and everything else fell apart. without going into great depths of gore, i will say that the things i usually lean on, my family, my friends, my church. they all left me. they fell apart. i was holding them together. with my own broken insides, with my barely-able-to-function heart, i was taking care of them all the best i could. and no one was there to take care of me. because i sent them away.

my defense is to shut everything out. which is mean, particularly in the above-mentioned case. if i'm hardly able to move, 3 seconds away from crying, the last thing i can do is look into the eyes of the one person who has been such a rock for me. who shielded me, held my hand, sat with me, listened. the last thing i can do is look into his eyes and see nothing for me. i can't stand up under that. so i didn't. i hid. and i hurt him yet again. i'm still doing it. today. probably tomorrow. all week.

but i wonder, what else can i do?

i don't feel like there's any other choice.

and as for the rest of this business, i just need to keep taking it. like punches to the face. eventually they'll stop.

squeaker

soooo....

did you know that people are more beautiful, exponentially when they smile? you even feel more beautiful when you smile, or at least i do. kind of like convincing the inside to come to the outside for a little while.

funny thing. when people fall off the edge or jump into a hole on super mario brothers, i always catch my breath and my heart races a little bit. people run into things, no big deal. get eaten by turtle-ducks. no sweat. but falling, almost falling, jumping from mushroom to mushroom, spanning caverns and gaping holes. NERVE WRACKING.

and the wii is the new bane of my existence. takes up much mental energy. woot.

garhbhfff

have you ever tried to love someone through a disagreement. a terrible difficulty. tried with all your might. and in the end, your love never reached them through the mess they'd built up and scattered between the two of you?

it's futile. it's frustrating. it's painful and exhausting.

but sometimes people just can't hear things. i mean, i've been that person before.

i might be a little short on patience today anyway, really. it might be a little easier to get to me. i'm already vulnerable. i'm already frustrated.

i'm already feigning a positive outlook.

this guy was scary today. he called me every name in the book. cussed me up one side and down the other. but i suppose i'll have a little patience with him.

i suppose some days at least the inside of me looks a lot like that anyway.

the coolest ever.

i was walking down the street this afternoon in delano, heading back to my car after a totally unnecessary shopping (ad)venture. that's when this idea hit me. i stopped and evaluated myself for a moment.

eeeeeiiirch. just a helpful hint, don't evaluate yourself in the middle of the street, even if you are in a crosswalk. burnt rubber. mmm. brake smell. add that to the evaluation.
check.

weird army-green athletic type jacket from a ski trip on which i never skied.
check.
hot pink vinyl loafers.
check.
recently procured orange wool gloves from the hat store.
check.
mmmmm. lemon grass lip balm from the nice lady at the red store.
check, and double check.
hair that never really dried quite right, no make up, and black plastic rimmed glasses.
check.

it occurred to me that i probably look like someone incredibly mysterious and inspiringly cool...intriguing and endearingly quirky.

then again i may look more like crazy mike's girlfriend.

it's possible that my mumbling/humming, and excessive applications of lip balm made out of foliage might point observers in the direction of the latter. also standing in a crosswalk looking up at the sky tends to encourage doubts about a person's mental faculties.

but i suppose today i'll go with mysterious and endearing.

i've been waiting...

well it sure has been a long while between these two posts. i don't think it's so much that i'm having trouble figuring out when i have time, it's just that it seems like i don't really have anything that i feel is worth saying these days. i came here several days, sitting, staring at the blank box, blinking cursor, and always ended up saving the draft. i would delete anything that made it far enough to publish. i'm all bottled up. it's hard for things to break through and get out.

but this morning i was thinking about the major decisions that i've made in the past 48 hours. i was mulling over some kind of outlet for the pain and frustration they've caused and will continue to cause. and it occurred to me that i've probably waited all of you out, and you don't read this anymore, so i'm completely safe explaining myself here. safe. ha.

idolatry. do you know what it really means to have a problem with idolatry? because i thought i did. and as it tends to be with the things of god, i came quite abruptly to the realization i didn't. a few days ago, it occurred to me that as much crap as i tend to give the israelites for their cyclical issues concerning the subject, i'm a blatant violator of the same commandment and worse yet, i'm in denial.

however, this problem, in my defense, was not as easy to spot. you see, it isn't really any one thing that i place before god. it's....well, it's everything.
relationships. psh.
friendships. boy howdy.
my job. understatement of the year.
it's like i use god's name to get me the v.i.p. pass into any christian event or relationship or conversation that i intend to wriggle my happy little self into. and the piece de resistance...i do everything possible in my minuscule and pathetic power to eliminate any time spent alone with my own thoughts, through which the father might capture my attention and correct me. which creeps out the people i use to accomplish that end, and makes me feel like i don't even know who i am anymore.

and this, my friends, is why i don't write anymore. until now. because i'm facing the demons now. i'm alone now. no one is here to save me from the work that i have to do now. two nights ago i drove around and cried. all night long. from 4 am when my friend and i got done with middle of the night coffee, until 8 am when i had to go to work. i listened to the same song over and over and begged god to tell me just one thing i could do to make this better. to stop this horrible blackness that was eating my insides. to end the voices clamoring for me to stop plugging the holes in my soul with faces. i begged him and he told me. cut it off he said. cut it off, cut it out, remember who you were. how you were. and when i promise god something i do it. there have been people i would have married, places i could have lived, jobs i would have made substantial money doing. but those things weren't god's will. i promised him i wouldn't. i can't break promises to him.

so i'm cutting it off. sawing it roughly, really. jagged edges tearing away at it. breaking nerves, capillaries. i'm bleeding out, and it feels like i might suffocate for the weight of the pain sinking into places i never knew existed. but this one relationship is symbolic of the entirety of my unrighteous ignorance. it hurts me to be alone. but it's righteous pain. they can't save me. they can't fix me. he's my immanuel. i've been plugging that hole long enough.

consider yourself unloaded upon.