nothing is happy anymore

unexplainable feelings

nervousness
anxiety
fear
...mistakes...

unexplained feelings

silence
silence
silence

speaking

backstabbing
regret
friendlessness
frustration
pain

heartbreak

crying
unrequited love
abandonment
loss

unhappiness
bitter tears

spite
jealousy
judgment
unfaithful

faithless

rejection
solitary
wandering
lost
...despair

darkness
grief
death

...

light?
hope?
a promise a future joy?

happiness?
friendship?
love?
eternity?

...

waiting.

Photography

Michelle is going to help me purchase a camera soon. I have decided it's time for me to go back to my photography because I love it and miss it so much! I have lots of ideas, and I have been taking pictures, but since my Canon Rebel is a manual, it takes a lot of work to get my photos online for sharing. My new camera will be a digital Rebel and I will begin posting almost as much as Michelle soon--though my pictures won't be as good as hers, that's for sure!

For anyone who's interested in watching the progress, ask me for my username and see my photo uploads fly!

...this should be a healthy competition...especially since I live with a photography expert and it used to be my major as well! I'm looking forward to this.

Never to Be Undone

I had a long talk the other night with some good old friends (people who have known me longer than almost anyone else I know!) and the conversation was really interesting and revealing. It was both fun and encouraging to share views and experiences, even if we did just discover that life is equally disheartening, at times, in all directions.

We talked about how strange it is that there are few good Christians in the world, at least Christians who maintain a public desire for purity. So many Christians are content to just slip right into the ways of the world. I don't call myself innocent on this count myself, in all ways. It's easy to be deceived by some people and to fall into the traps that are laid in sin. Sometimes people can be that conniving and deceptive, and sometimes even Christians can be that stupid, whether it comes by the help of others or not.

The part that bothers me is the bragging and unrepentant attitudes. We are so quick to judge other people for their wrongdoing, but so many of us are already too far gone to even consider what we might be doing wrong in our own lives. We all make stupid decisions and create through our errors and instead we think only about what we can gain out of the things that we do.
We create disasters for ourselves, but we cannot seem to learn from those mistakes and stop making them. We don't realize what we may have destroyed
But...what are we losing as a result of our errors?

I have to wonder sometimes...

"What if I missed you, you got caught in the sun; what if I did something never to be undone?" -- Course of Nature

This has been a lifelong fear of mine and yet I walked myself right into some of these set traps as if I had forgotten...

Relationship Schmreelashunshiphs...And the latter word is what most of us end up feeling like at the end...

I have been thinking quite seriously of late about the way in which we, as human beings, and young ones at that, tend to engage in the relating process...and I have come to the conclusion that it is rather an unpleasant business that we make of it.

Please allow me to note, for the sake of clarification, that this post is coming from a notoriously hopeless romantic, and therefore if presented in the negative should be seriously considered without a write off! Don't take me at face value only. I have a'plenty to say...

Alright, first of all, I have not been in a relationship continually since I have been an adult, but I have been in several relationships since I reached the age of 18 (and none that counted before that, which is a really good thing, in my opinion...I got to have a strong foundation of Crystalism before entering myself into the state of being a half of a whole).

I have come to the conclusion that singleness is a refreshing thing right now. I don't know when I got to the point where I was confident and comfortable being myself, but I am glad that I have fully arrived at that place. I am burdened by loneliness at times (I do tend to be a very social person, when it comes to emotions...sometimes I want to share my feelings with someone else). It's not that I am incapable of love right now--I am in love, always perpetually in love, it seems--but at the moment I have found that being alone is the way to create in myself a certain strength of character that I have long desired and only slightly achieved throughout my periods of relational attachment. And yet, I realize that I have learned a lot about myself because of those very relationships as well...Life is truly a grand period of self-realization and new revelations of things that have always existed are constantly surfacing.

Right now, I am comfortable being alone, not because I don't feel loneliness, or don't want companionship, or do not feel love for someone, but because I am interested in pursuing this path right now, interested in seeing what I can learn about me for a while. Who am I, what do I want, me, me, me...but isn't a form of selfishness a good thing, once in a while? I am not trying to exclude anyone, but that is the exact reason why being technically alone is probably for the best right now. I'm actually optimistic about it right now, and it surprises me, because I generally love companionship to the utmost. But at this point, my friends can surround me and have been giving me new life through their loving support.

Now it's time to be both sides of a whole, and perhaps undivided as well. I think I am almost learning to find what I would want in a partner--if ever I should have one. I have learned the importance of growing with someone, not changing someone or being changed by someone...relationships should be complementary, not controlling. I realize, now that I look back, that there are probably several really great guys I passed up because of not understanding what relationships were all about at the time, and probably some really great people who just didn't work with me so the failure was inevitable. (It calls to mind the MuteMath song, Lost Year, which says, "At least now we know something we can't become..." It is a good realization when one comes to it: some things just don't work between two people and it's not something to feel wretched about...just accept, treat each other with respect, and move on.)

I don't really know what I want...that's why I'm better off not wanting or doing anything right now. Too much pain, too much frustration, too much of too much this year...I need a break from love for a while.

Disclaimer:
No, this post is not directed toward anyone but me; consider it a self-reminder.

I didn't want to resort to this...

I don't like REAL blogs to have questionnaires, but I thought I would JUST THIS ONCE, as long as it's particularly profound...

10 things you want to say to 10 different people:
1. I wish my dreams didn't have to be shattered by whatever you're going through, but I hope you find yourself through all of this. I can't say I'll be waiting at the other side, but I'd never turn you away.
2. I wish I didn't have to hurt you so much, and I wish you didn't hurt me back; we might have made it if I wasn't so broken, but as it is I'm not even a whole person to begin with. I wish I could go back and change it somehow, but I think it was an uncontrollable storm.
3. Meeting you has been like getting to know a soul mate that I never knew existed, and I love it! I think you could be a new best friend.
4. Meeting you has been like getting to know a soul mate that I always knew existed and it's great to finally know you! You have always been the one who knows everything about me.
5. You get me like no one else ever has or ever will. You see through my facades and know the REAL ME...I hope to never lose you.
6. You always tell me everything like it is, and even when it's harsh, I really appreciate it. It keeps me grounded.
7. I am glad that once all the crazy fun times were over, you and I were still friends after all. You've made everything a lot easier.
8. I hate it that you're gone. Really, really hate it.
9. I was really disappointed in what happened, but I will always love you no matter what you do
10. I have always been in love with you, ever since the beginning, and I believe that I always will see you as the best thing I've ever found and never had.

9 things about yourself:
1. I am passionately in love with little way that F. Scott Fitzgerald makes words go together.
2. I love being in love, and like The Format laments, I love it in spite of what it does to me.
3. My dreams are all mixed up in a crazy hope and a romanticized ambition...when it comes to knowing what I really want, well...that's a whole different story
4. I have a secret passion for dance music, and dancing, though I am positively terrible at it. There is something so exciting about going out dancing. It makes me feel like a modern debutante.
5. I adore my bed, but I don't spend anywhere near as much time in it as I ought to.
6. I have a weakness for designer handbags.
7. I'm really sorry to a lot of people because I often have a very self-centered appearance to my attitude, but I do love my friends more than myself. Most of the time, when I'm silent, I'm plotting to destroy someone who has interfered with someone I love (or some other less dramatic concern, but similarly related.) In short, I am a lot more likely to stay mad at someone who has hurt a friend than someone who has hurt me.
8. My dream of being a writer when I grow up has gotten more and more vague. I have realized that I am a writer always, whether I ever publish a book at all.
9. The best year of my life was when I was 22, and I miss it. This year has been the worst ever, as occasions of great lesson-learning is apt to be...

8 ways to win your heart:
1. Love the Lord with all your heart.
2. Mean what you say.
3. Be there for me when I need you.
4. Know who I am and love me for it. Don't try to change me. I'm too old for that now.
5. Be yourself with me, and don't lie. I won't judge you for who you are, or try to change you.
6. Cook for me.
7. Share books with me.
8. Be sweet to me and dream with me: I need to dream.

7 things that cross your mind a lot:
1. Someone I never stop thinking about
2. A top-secret project I've been working on, off and on, for 5 years
3. The great, mysterious future
4. Literary curiosities
5. Different songs that I love
6. Scenarios that could but never will happen, and so go into my fiction instead
7. My health, of late...

6 things you want to do in the future:
1. Go to Europe for an entire season
2. Get my own place and decorate it according to my taste...but I do not particularly want to live alone
3. Become a professor of literature
4. Write something worthy of my aspirations
5. Begin the love story with the love of my life, if such a person exists
6. Live the song "Kokomo" as my honeymoon (not kidding...this actually makes the list)

5 Turn Offs:
1. Social ineptness (in its many forms)
2. Arrogance or rudeness, even if it's a compensation for insecurity
3. Overt clinginess
4. A sense of humor that I don't understand, or a lack of appreciation for my fine-tuned sense of humor ;) hey...I work hard to be funny!
5. A lack of imagination

4 songs that describe your life:
1. If I Am - Nine Days
2. On the Road - John Hampson
3. Dog Problems - The Format
4. Books Written For Girls - Camera Obscura

3 places you feel the most at home:
1. My car
2. My house (go figure)
3. With my nose in a book

2 people you can't live without:
1. ONLY TWO?!?!
2. I refuse to limit it to two

1 confession:
1. My life is nothing like I ever thought it would be at this time, and I'm strangely okay with that.

Discovering People

I have come to realize (and this year "I have come to realize" more than I have ever come to realize before, so I feel the assertion is pretty valid) that people of value are few and far between. However, I have also learned that we all react to different things in different ways, so it's unfair to judge a person solely on the basis of their behavior in a certain situation. How are we to know what we would do in the same situation, given a selection of circumstances... Sure, we can judge and assume we would be so much more levelheaded than the other person, but who are we to say we're better than someone else?

My big problem, of late, is with judgmental people, people who like to look other people in the face and say their actions are somehow deplorable or inappropriate. I don't believe that it's fair for one person to place that kind of weight on another person, especially, in my case in point, on a fellow Christian. If the actions aren't sin, in and of themselves, the other person does not have the place to point out those supposed flaws, and even if they are sin, who has the right to remove the speck of dust from another's eye while ignoring the plank in their own? Jesus Christ shared this example with us himself, and yet somehow so many people think they are in the position to determine how other people should "work out their salvation."

Consider also in the New Testament where there is mention made of eating meat sacrificed to idols. Some say this is a definite sin, while others see nothing wrong with it, and the only insight the Bible gives about this decision is that it is up to a man to decide, and that a man should not do this act in front of someone who considers it sin. Well...allow me to get to my point, as my purpose here is more in depth than to merely point at Scripture and say, "See?"

If a Christian believes it is all right to do something that falls into the Biblical "gray area," the place where there is minimal mention of whether a thing is "acceptable" or "not," then clearly they should be wary of displaying this behavior for other Christians who do feel that it is "not" acceptable. The apostles warn against the "stumbling block" this will cause. For example, if a Christian feels something is wrong, and does it anyway, simply because someone else says they should, they are sinning in their own heart. But what about the other direction, because we seldom talk about this...

What about the Christian who is always trying to convince someone that something is a sin when the other person believes that it is not? I ask, because I have been guilty of this attempt at forced assimilation, myself. Is it fair, I wonder, for two people to be in a relationship with each other, trying to force different morals upon each other? Of course, this also requires a necessity of speaking up. (I have been the "convincer" before, without knowing how strongly the "convincee" felt about the subject, and I would like to regret that, but due to the lack of communication, I can't feel entirely at fault.)

I know that I am in very poor standing when it comes to judging relationships, since any that I have been in have ended in disastrous failure--whether by my own fault or not does not really matter in a track record. However, as I began with, I have learned a lot about people this past year. (As Claire says, "I don't know a lot about everything, but I do know a lot about the part of everything that I know, which is people.") I once thought I could understand humanity as a unit, that I just had to find a niche where I belonged and all the sensible things that made sense to me would just flow around me in peace. This is what I [unconsciously] expected out of life, and I think that this year served to teach me, once and for all, that nothing in life is ever what we expect or want initially. Whatever we plan, whatever we hope for, whatever we decide we want, is not necessarily where the road will take us if that is a part of our plan instead of His plan.

So, I can't control the people in my life, I can't control the people that I love, and although I honestly never wanted to control anyone, I did want to be sure of them. I sleep more comfortably knowing you are down the road and in your bed sleeping peacefully, or that you are up at work, but I know where; I can rest easily knowing that I am in your prayers, wherever you are, and that you love me in spite of my many poor qualities and often terrible attempts at having good qualities...

These people are my best friends, the ones who have weathered the storms with me and come out loving me more in the end. I have come to embrace these people for their nearness to my heart, even if they are distant in body. A lack of constant communication is not a problem for me anymore, though once I thought I would go crazy without communication (thought that was for a slightly different reason), because I have learned that if I truly trust the people I love, if we have proven to each other that our friendship is for life, it doesn't matter how often we talk, or how many times in a week, month, or year we see each other, because we will always come back together loving each other as much as ever! And I love that.

Even the GREAT Writers...

I was thinking last night about my much-loved F. Scott Fitzgerald, and while I was browsing the Interwebs, overly concerned with something extremely unimportant, indeed, I was led to the following thought...

F. Scott Fitzgerald has always been a writer known for severe and lasting bouts of writer's block. This very characteristic is what makes me respect the man more than anything. I always hope that somehow, I have a genius waiting to get out on paper too. He and I have dealt with writer's block in much the same way, except he had a Gatsby, and several hundred other delightful tidbits to show for himself. Maybe someday, I could be even a tiny fraction as good...

"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath. " -- F.S.F.

But, what, dare I ask, would have happened to American literature if the Internet would have been around sooner? Would Hemingway have been too busy playing a FPS on his XBox360 and never written The Old Man and the Sea. Maybe he would have written The Old Man and the TV. Would Melville have been too busy playing FISH: the Flash Game to have ever written an actual novel about the subject? Would Dorothy Parker have been updating her blog once a day and never ACTUALLY written any stories? Fitzgerald sat around drinking highballs and writing lists in order to cope with his writer's block, but what if he had just written lists AND played Sims? What "great American novels" are WE failing to breathe into life because we have too many useless things to do and therefore too little time to do them all?

I have thought though...Oscar Wilde would have had a subscription to GQ, and would idolize Justin Timberlake.

This is the biggest worry we had about Fitzgerald...

"I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library." -- F.S.F.

All writers have suffered from writer's block, that looming and evil disease, but that fact makes me all the more encouraged when I hear it from them, in the shadow of their great works of art...

"One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily."
(Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

"People have writer's block not because they can't write, but because they despair of writing eloquently."
(Anna Quindlen)

"If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word."
(Margaret Atwood)

"Don't get it right, just get it written."
(James Thurber)

"Lower your standards and keep writing."
(William Stafford)

"I only write when I am inspired. Fortunately I am inspired at 9 o'clock every morning."
(William Faulkner)

"If you want to write, write it. That's the first rule."
(Robert Parker)

Quit?

I am misunderstood, even by those who understand me most. There are few of them who do understand, but even so there are those gray areas--more abundant in some people, I'd say--that no one can ever quite grasp. I think I have so many confusing twists and turns that even I do not understand. I don't even think I want to understand anymore.

I've decided to stop. I have gotten ahead of myself, miles and miles ahead, and I need to just stop. There is nothing ahead on this road, and certainly nothing ahead on several roads I've attempted to wander down this past confusing year, so I need to reconcile myself to the endlessness of the futility and just quit.

It's funny because I've never been a quitter; I've always persistently pushed forward to succeed in the things that I first set my mind to, but if I've learned anything this year, I've learned that quitting actually DOES have it's place in this world, and it really IS necessary sometimes. So many people just hang endlessly on to things that they need to separate themselves from, and if that's what they want, that's what they get. I don't know everything that I want, but I know a little bit about what I want and what I want is to find it, whatever and wherever it is.

If this is too cryptic, it's because it's supposed to be, and that's okay with me.

I was watching Big Fish tonight and it reminded me, yet again, that all I want is to go back to the dreams that stand out as most important to me. I want to be a writer, I want to fall in love with a dreamer, and I want to spend the rest of my life in stories. I want to be his "girl in the river" to my storyteller, and I want to be in love forever...

And I've discovered that, if it exists, I haven't found it yet. No one has ever loved me so comfortably, so completely, and no one has ever wanted to be with me so much that they just were; there is always a complication, always a difference between the story and its reenactment. If I can't write my own original tale, I'd rather just read someone else's.

I don't want to be a dime novel...

And I don't want to be a fortune in a discarded cookie...

I want to be a whole book, and I want you to be my Fitzgerald.

...whoever you are

English Majorness: The State of Being an English Major, a Lifestyle in and of Itself

This past week has been...so many things. I can't even begin to analyze it. Being the writer that I am, therefore I must commence the analysis. I know, I know, it sounds counterproductive, but it is highly necessary.

This week--and one particularly great English major friend--helped me to be reminded about what I wanted to do with my life. I don't know how I could have forgotten, but this year has been disastrous and confusing on so many levels. I think I slipped into survival mode and started to forget everything I was supposed to remember.

But all of that has changed.

This week I read an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, and buried myself in the wisdom of my forefathers. I have made myself exceedingly happy yet again, and I feel great hope in what is to come--whatever it is! I feel like a wandering soul that has lost faith in its usual haunts, only to return and discover there is no better place to belong. This week has been tragic and difficult (I was not in tears in the halls of Purdue for the first time in my life this week...) but in spite of the tragedies, I have found myself again. I finally have remembered who I am, and I am so thankful to belong to myself again.

My master's program, while technically looming to an end, is actually first beginning to open up its doors to me. Who will be my director? I don't know... But I am ready to write, and that is all that matters.

Well, actually, there are two other matters at hand now. The first is doctoral school. I am most certainly intent upon going--and upon not going alone! I am so in love with English major lifestyle, and I cannot imagine being anything but a student of the literature of my language. I was talking with a post-graduate friend at work this afternoon and she told me there would certainly come a time when I would be ready to be done, and that may be true. It certainly was true 7 months ago! I think I have been renewed in my desires for my life, though, and I am ready to be ready once again. I want to make up for all the lost time that I have spent being anything in the world but myself. I am intent upon surrounding myself with the people who love me for who I am and let me be that person, indefinitely. Whether it's good enough for them should be a matter of little consequence; this person is ME.

Which leads me to my other matter at hand. Acceptance! I am not naming names or identities of people with these concerns, but I am going to express my concern with the concerns themselves. Why, please tell me why, it becomes necessary for people to say that I am wasting my time "not living real life" by pursuing continued education? Just because I don't work a 9-5 job (and hopefully never will, THANK THE LORD!) does not mean this isn't real life. Once upon a time, an advanced degree in literary studies was the highest form of intellectual accomplishment (besides, like, inventing the universe or whatever Copernicus did) and now it is deemed lesser because it doesn't reap the "money" that the dull jobs do. But I don't want to work those jobs, I want to work this one. I want to be an academic...forever! I've learned that I always will be one whether I am in school studying or not, so why not be in school studying? I can't see this road ending and I don't want it to end; this road makes me feel alive! This road makes the deepest stirrings of my soul stir for a reason, and makes the unique quirks of my identity actually make sense.

So whatever comes next, I'm ready for it, because I can face it with myself inside of me again. I am no longer a strange soul inhabiting a familiar body, though I am undoubtedly changed. I am at least ready to return to my own heart and to walk again in my own path.

Literature makes me alive, and my Fitzgerald-soul communes with Hemingway in my heart.


*First photo, compliments of Michelle Cox*

The Gateway to Nothing

My heart is tired. It aches within me.

It seems that my dreams are like resounding echoes in an empty room. The sounds come from distant desires, and are the ghosts of spoken words that mean nothing: stolen kisses in dark rooms, whispered words through weary lips. All the things you say and swear you mean, all the things I say and truly mean... The words are jumbled together in my head until I can't remember what you said and what I said and what I merely felt in the gentle sweep of your hands upon my face. What did it all mean? For I know what it means to me, but to you? I am barred from that understanding, and I can never know.

I feel that I should give up and let go; after all, what does it matter to a broken heart as hard and cold as a crater of gray slab? No life could survive there unless you bring it, and you remain distantly within your own mournful sadness. Maybe the two will never meet, though my living depends upon it. Or maybe deep down, within the depths of our individual sadness a tunnel will span the distance between our two graves and we should meet...

I should break away from the dismal existence of hopeless hope, of longing that will never be sated, and of pain that will never be relieved. I am destined for nothing, and in weariness I travel alone, solitude before me and behind me, with no evidence that anything else will come...ever.

In spite of it all, you are still a tower of light, to me, a beacon of hope spanning a distant horizon I can never reach on my own. I see you, but cannot stretch out my hand to grasp you. You are always escaping me, yet I keep you always in my sight. Your light pours out on me and gives me warmth, even if we should never touch again. I am a weak and frozen stone beat upon by the waves of heartbreak...nothing without your love.

Please, please, please just take me away forever. I can think of nothing better than to leave this cold emptiness forever and go with you to a place of warmth and happiness and love, just you and me.


"The strongest guard is placed at the gateway to nothing. Maybe because the condition of nothingness is too shameful to be divulged." -- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Night of Ice

In the quiet and stillness of a winter night I sat. I could feel the crinkle of the wind against the house, though it was shut out. It seemed that the house was as delicate as an eggshell, coated in a thin layer of ice, and it could crumble with too much movement from within and too much wind from without. I held my breath and tiptoed as if I could keep the house standing by my near immobility.

Although the blinds were drawn, I thought with a shiver of what I was shutting out. The snow encrusting the earth was like a china dish: glossy, smooth, and fragile. To set foot on it's delicate crust was to fear a crack in it's surface, and a crack would shatter the earth. So I sat still and quiet, fearful of the outside.

I listened carefully to the silences, hoping only for the sound of your footfall on the delicate earth outside. I needed you there, I needed you home, because I missed you. It was as if I hadn't lived since I last saw you, though you had just been there with me that morning, warming me with the sweetness of your smile and the tenderness of your loving arms.

The silence invaded my soul and brought a cold darkness over me, from the inside out. I felt so desperately alone and yet I could not remember why. I could hear the patter of soft feet inside the walls and the beat of bat-wings above my head. White spots formed before my eyes like the foreshadowing of mini strokes that would leave me trembling in paralytic immobility. I listened for you, awaiting your arrival at any moment. The opening of a heavy door, the crack of a frosted hinge, and warmth would be restored to my frozen heart. I pressed my forehead against the floor, my palms and tingling fingers groped to balance my reeling mind.

I sat thus for the longest time, until the gentle tick...tick...tick of the chime clock on the wall became drumbeats in my ears. My mind went dark against the pounding waves of sound, like a rock smashed time and again by the beating of the surf: whoosh, whoosh, whoosh...until erosion has rubbed the rock into nothing it once was.

CRACK.

I startled awake from a sleepless stupor, lying in a pool of saltwater on the floor, the sobs I had been gushing forth were still wracking against my ribs like a clamoring beast struggling to get out of me.

CRACK.

I shivered uncontrollably and huddled into the corner of the room alone, my feet slipping on my own tears as I crawled away from the windows in fear. The earth was like a piece of glass, shattering around me because someone, somewhere, had cracked its surface. I grasped the slippery floor and reached into the darkness around me, but nothing was there to hold on to. The sobs beat inside my body until I couldn't hold them and they controlled me. Where were you? If only you'd come; if only you were here to hold on to now.

The white spots before my eyes grew brighter until they were long white lines of piercing light. The walls and floors of the house were crumbing into giant cracks and I would fall through into the depths of the earth. I sobbed, incoherent, begging the earth to swallow me, wanting to be taken.

Without you there was nothing, and I willed myself forward, through the pool of my own tears, toward the precipice where I could throw myself over the edge.

In a sudden moment of clarity before the end, I remembered why you would never come. I remembered that you were dead.

***

When I awoke, it was morning, and a pool of sunlight illuminated me as I lay in a heap of aching sadness on the hardwood floor of our home. I had survived the first night of the rest of my empty, lonely life...