Be Better, Damn It.

Of all the things I spew out during these one-hour counseling sessions, the most reoccurring theme is guilt.  Of not being enough (okay, that’s not the most recurrent theme, but it’s one of them).

Not a good enough daughter, to both my mom and my dad.

Not a good enough sister.

Not a good enough friend, to him, to her, to any of them.

Not a good enough student.

Not a good enough housemate.

Not a good enough employee.

Not a good enough writer.

Not a good enough club vice president.

Not a good enough event planner.

Not a good enough Christian.

Not a good enough feminist.

Not a good enough anything, everything, any possible thing I could be, just not good enough.

And then equals guilt.  Lots and lots of guilt, tumbling over and around in my head and stomach, constantly nagging at me to,

make better decisions,

be a better.. everything.

It goes deep.  It impacts everything.  It always leaves me feeling like others are unsatisfied with me.  It always leaves me unsatisfied with me.  So in these counseling sessions, we talk about the unrealistic expectations I have for myself.  And we begin to talk about the things I can’t control, the things I can’t be, the things I have to let go.  We talk a lot about the things I’ve picked up that I never should have been allowed to touch.  And about the things I grabbed anyways, even though I knew I should have left them alone.  The process of identifying those things and processing them and putting them back down is, well, painful.  And difficult.  And liberating.  (Okay, I’m anticipating it will be liberating, because right now the farthest I’m getting is setting the things on the ground but never actually removing my hands from them.)

But right now, it’s still guilt, all the time.  It becomes a kind of lullaby, right below the surface, quietly playing tunes over and over about inadequacy and should-haves and regrets.

It’s a learning process.  A deconstructing, of sorts.

An Update

I worked out this morning.  I went to panera and did homework and ate lunch.  I bought a new pair of pants.  I watched a grown man eat a lollipop while watching something on his ipod.  After he left, another man, in a sweater-vest, sat down in the same seat and did something important looking on his laptop.  I watched a new worker at panera go through the computer training process, and I made a note to myself to never work in an establishment that will require me to do something like that.  I made plans to meet my mom for lunch tomorrow.  I read about the inventions of radio, television, and computers.  I also read about Russian Formalism.  I reread a series of texts on my phone.  And I typed out several texts to send to people but ended up deleting them all.  I didn’t go for a drive, though I wanted to (I went and bought the pants instead).

There’s an update.

an empty house, a warm bed, an ignored call

and solitary trips to all wheres

-

please, and, I’m sorry

rinse and repeat

but it does not remove

the spots and white ribbons and bruised crooks

it does not remove stairs ascended

please, and, I’m sorry

-

an unfinished psalm

shut the book, shelve it once more,

try, try again

-

shut the door, take off your shoes–wait, no–please keep them on

you won’t be here for long

drink your tea, faster now, please

-

and sometimes there is color

and we sit in chairs and on couches

red nails and black cups and pink bowls

green eyes and blue sweaters

but sometimes everything I love becomes shades of grey

when all the color leaks through the crack in the window

-

it seeps in and out

the vibrant will dull

until the pane is replaced

and we all exclaim how new it looks

the colors shining

until we are reminded the glass will break again

-

take it while you can

-

we only truth about what we’re contexted

even then, it’s not assured

sometimes you lie, you false, you kill

eloquent graffiti can convince anyone

and it’s hard to cover once again

-

please, and, I’m sorry

Silence

(From a writing class.  We had to write credos, and this was mine.)

 

I believe in silence.

To silence the inner and outward tattoos of drivel, to silence the meaningless words that pour out of untamed mouths, like water out of a cracked jar—there could be something meaningful, but the overabundance makes it impossible to capture the refreshing liquid; it streams too quickly.  Stop.  

I believe in letting my words be few; abundance does not equate quality.   

Listen.  The hum of technology is an incessant reminder of progress, of busyness, of quick; don’t stop; do. 

I believe in turning off my cell-phone, in shutting down my lap-top, in turning off my i-pod.  Filling my ears and eyes with words will not fill my soul. 

 Listen.  Voices spurt anything—everything—anything that enters the mind.  Thoughts fly in, buzz through and zoom out of the mouth into the ears of those surrounding.  The process repeats word after word after thought. 

I believe the noise is a safety-net.  As long as there is sound, I will not have to face myself.   

Listen.  The tongue stills.  The music turns off and the companions disperse.  Silence is still unattainable.  Thoughts remain in the brain, bouncing off imaginary walls, growing in size as time passes, until the sound internal is greater than all externals could have been. 

I believe I am too willing to listen to idiocy.  Instead of nurturing my mind I numb it with an overload of culture.   

Stop.  Listen.  Take each thought and place it in a jar until they all have been collected.  Shake the jar; set it to the side.  Listen.  Slowly, slowly, silence fills the mind.  It is in this place that the unnecessary becomes evident.  The thoughts are controlled enough to be evaluated. 

I believe the unexamined life is not worth living, and I belief life can best be examined when the mind is not consistently bombarded with clattering nothings.   

I believe in silence, for without silence I am destined to live in disorienting cacophony.  I believe in learning to practice silence, even in the midst of frittering sound.

Inconsequential

“Every little trifle, for some reason, does seem incalculably important today and when you say of a thing that ‘nothing hangs on it’ it sounds like blasphemy.  There’s never any knowing–how am I to put it?–which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it for ever.”  E.M. Forster

It’s somewhat haunting to me, this quote.  Our actions, our idlenesses, who is to say that they won’t have consequences which are long-lasting?  Obviously some actions do have consequences; in fact, for every action there is a reaction.  But every trifle as something magnificent in scope?  Everything having the same potential for impact?  And I don’t think that’s exactly what is being said here, but I do think it’s important to note that the point is–there is never any knowing.

Causality.  Interconnectivity.  Integration.  Balance.  The profane versus the sacred.  The physical and the spiritual.  A correlation.  The past versus the present versus the future.  The impossibility of completely erasing anything.  The fallacy of memory.

—

Today is January 1st.  I used to get really worked-up about beginnings–the beginning of a new day, week, month, and especially a new year.  I would gear-up and plan things for my life which seemed like good goals, aspirations, practices, etc.  These, well, let’s call them resolutions, were always made with good intentions.  But they were made unrealistically.  They were putting areas of my life into words on a piece of paper which I could tack up on my desk.  Each area become a sentence.  Each sentence became in and of itself a goal.  There were no arrows, no circles, no back-glances.

There was no connectivity.

—

Of the things I have learned this past year, one of the most important has been the concept of interconnectivity.  In some ways, this concept makes dealing with hard circumstances more tricky because along with it comes the truth that issues cannot simply be dealt with and left in the past.  The consequences follow through along with me and continue into the future.  That can hurt.  I’m sure everyone has things they would like to leave behind, whether they be memories or choices or anything else.  Sometimes I think we fool ourselves into thinking this can be done.  But I don’t believe it can be.  I think there can be healing.  I don’t think some things will always be as poignant as they are in the moments of most intense pain.  But I don’t believe we can leave those things behind.  I don’t believe there is an independent act.  I don’t believe in the separation of the physical and spiritual, and I don’t believe anything is inconsequential.  Nothing.  Not the drinking of a cup of tea or the writing of a word or the killing of another being.  The lifting of a hand to wave hello or to strike another person.  The raising of a foot to take another step forward or to stop a door from closing on a hand.  Nothing is inconsequential.  My idlenesses–those are not without impact either.  The things not done, the words not said, they are just as meaningful, whether in a positive or negative way, as the things done and words said.  Something the idlenesses are more striking.  More shocking.  More heart-breaking.

There are always variations.  Sometimes things are subtle.  Sometimes things are noticeable.  Sometimes it takes more time and sometimes it takes no time at all.  Nothing can be gridded, nothing can be separated, and my life cannot exist on a sheet of paper, numbered one, two, three.

—

I made no resolutions for this new year.  I have ideas.  I have some things I would like to see happen.  But more so, I am hoping to realize the interconnectivity of the things in my life, even if that means accepting that I have to carry certain things with me that I would rather forget.  More so, I hope to remove that blasphemous part of my being, the part which says, this is of no consequence.

I think I’m supposed to emerge from this as a less bitter, more graceful type of person.  I feel like the possibility of that actually happening is bullshit.  I think I’m supposed to emerge from this as a more loving, understanding individual.  I feel like I want to yell at every person I come into contact with, and I want to tell them all to stop being so selfish, so ignorant, so naïve and pathetic and fake.  I want to yell the same things at myself; I want to shake myself.  I keep saying, “Sarah, wake up!  Stop focusing on this; look past it, stop feeling it, stop, stop, stop.”

Of course, I haven’t emerged yet.  There is plenty still to happen, still to change.  There is time and time and more time in which to sink further, to emerge, to stagnate, to fall and fail and try and try again.  There is time.  It seems that is all there is, really.  Time.  The cursed and blessed constant.

Because time will change things.  Time will make things hurt less because it will allow them to become numb.  Maybe it will allow them to heal, but it will, at least, make the searing pain less.  Maybe it’s more of a desensitizing thing—maybe the pain doesn’t numb, but we live to operate with a new level of that in our lives.  Maybe it does mellow out, becoming a dull ache that we don’t always notice.  I’m not sure.  I do know that time will change things, though.  Even memories change.  The mind and memory are not infallible.  Facts shift and things get mis-remembered and altered over time.

And then I think: Shut up, Sarah.  You know these things.  Other people know these things.  You’re not saying or thinking or wondering anything new.  You just keep going over your own pain.  Over and over and over.  Shut up.

And then I sit down to a blank document, and I begin to write something new, something fresh, something which doesn’t focus eternally on my own damn pain:

When we were little, my brother and I would swim in our pool every day during the summer.  You might say, every day, really?  But yes.  Well, almost yes.  Even in rain, we would swim.  Only when there was thunder and lightning would we refrain, mainly because of restraints put in force by our mom.  We would begin mid-morning, stay in until lunch, reenter after having eaten, and spend the rest of the afternoon playing various games we made up, making whirlpools by swimming around in circles repeatedly.

There it is.  I will look at one moment.  I will refuse to look at what comes after.  One moment in time.  That moment is good.  Remembering the time I accidentally got elbowed in the nose and had a horribly bloody nose.  One moment.  It hurt then, but now it’s just a memory.  I can’t feel that pain anymore.  I can’t see that blood anymore.  One day.  One moment in that one day.

But my mind doesn’t believe in these isolated moments.  My brain doesn’t disconnect that bloody nose from the bloody fist that came five years later.  My mind can’t see the pool with the laughing children in it without seeing the empty, unused pool.  I cannot look at a box of Kraft macaroni and cheese without remembering the time I puked and Jesica made me clean it up, and I cannot disconnect that memory from the card she wrote me two weeks ago expressing her love.

So I say I want to sit down and write one memory, one moment, disconnected and shining in its entirety, but I do not believe.

I do not believe.

Wreckage

I begin to observe the wreckage which surrounds me.

And I begin to observe the wreckage inside of me.

Hope and wait, he says.  Hope and

Wait.

But for how long,

And what for,

And how, how?

By minutes, mainly,

And by cups of coffee and days you move past.

By leaves missing off the branches and grey light shining through the blinds in the early morning.

By pages filled with these same words,

By loads of laundry and cookies baked and candles extinguished and novels read.

Mainly, by minutes.  Wait and Hope.  Hope and wait.

Little pieces of wreckage fall off;

Little pieces of wreckage align.

Little pieces of wreckage float.

Little pieces of wreckage stay still.

The Lord is near.

He is in the wreckage, though I tell him to leave.

He is the ruins, is in the ruins, is excavating.  Is dropping

and aligning and floating

and remaining.

The Lord is near.  Hope and wait.

Silently, or with sighs, or with tears

And shouts of anger.

With feelings of hatred.

The Lord is near, though I tell him to leave, though I tell him to stay.

Time changes all wounds.

Hoping and Waiting

I can operate for a long time without stopping to directly think about the state of my inner life, but I find those thoughts and questions are always milling around the back of my mind.  Questions such as, what is my motive for this action, this relationship?  How are my external actions and words matching or not matching my internal beliefs?  What are my beliefs, the truths to which I cling?  To which I used to cling but no longer can because of the things that have happened?  What do I believe, and who am I, and what does that all mean for the present and the future and how does it all spring back to help me interpret the past?

And I can operate for a long time without letting myself feel.  But all the while, those feelings are accumulating.  Pretending they’re not real doesn’t make them not real.  Saying that something didn’t happen doesn’t make it true.  There are facts, visible and invisible, to verify the truth.  Hospital bills and empty closets and scars and birthdays and holidays and pages of written confusion all verify the existence of the feelings and the truth.  Looking back over the past eight months or so, I realize that I’ve been lying to myself for most of that time.  Oh, there have been many honest moments, but the way in which I’ve been operating has been a lie, and it has been detrimental.  Worn thin, I guess would be a good way to express myself at this point in time.  Fairly empty.  Generally lonely.  Heavily sad.  Much more bitter and pessimistic and biting than I used to be.  More realistic?  Because here is where one (of the many) questions/conflicts come in:  The manner of living, what is it to reflect?  Because I can be encouraging and kind, and I believe I am those things.  But I am also shrewd.  I am caustic.  I feel harsh, to myself at least.  But my struggle to maintain normalcy in my personality and identity has broken me because I no longer feel I am that person.  I was so focused on looking at the things changing around me that I failed, for the most part, to notice the changes within myself.  The external changes caused pain; I could focus on that.  But my internal changes, I let them remain unexamined, which has resulted in dissonance.

These things coexist inside of me.  I have hope, to an extent, though not in the same things in which I used to have hope, at least not in the same way.  I also have sorrow.  I have joy.  But for the most part I feel the sorrow outweighs the joy, and all I think about is the brokenness which I experience and which I see everyone around me experiencing, whether they can see it themselves or not.  It’s a broken world.  Broken, broken, broken.

In a class this past Friday, my professor said he wanted to leave us with two words: Hope and Wait.

When I heard him utter those two words, I felt the brokenness within myself and the resounding echo of wholeness.

I don’t like the dichotomy.  I don’t understand it.

Hope and Wait.

In the present moment, I’m going to wait for the next few days to be over.  And I’m going to hope I can make it through them with the smallest hassle as possible because that’s all I feel I can handle right now.

In the more long-term facet of my life, I have many things for which to hope and wait.

I will anticipate a level of discomfort and pain and bitterness.  I will anticipate a period of relief, as well.

A different professor said the other day that the hard thing about goodbyes it that it means saying goodbye to what is present and known.  It means stepping into something unknown.  Here is bit of hope, though it includes a level of bitterness (I’m fond of that word, lately):  the unknown will eventually be the known.  I can look straight forward and focus on that truth-the unknown will become the known.  And I can choose to, right now, not look side-to-side and become overwhelmed by the process, by the path, which I have to walk in order for that unknown to be known.

I have hope in the truth that I am loved by the One who understands what I cannot comprehend.

I have hope in the truth that, flawed as I am, I am able to love and receive love.

I have hope in the truth that life is a process.

I have hope in the truth that I am in process.

And I will wait for the bitterness to subside.  I will wait for the unknown to become the known, though I know I will have to say goodbye to that known at some point and step into another unknown.  I will wait as I become known to myself.  I will wait until the beauty of life becomes more predominant than the brokenness.

I will wait as I live my moments, and I will hope.

Memories and Friendships Past

I realize that my answer made it impossible for you to make a decision.  And I know that you knew I knew what you were asking, and you knew I knew that my answer wasn’t sufficient.

But you were gracious.  And you made a way for me to not have to answer.  You allowed me to leave that door open, just in case I needed an excuse, an escape.

You didn’t tell me I was being difficult and ornery, though I was.  Though you knew I knew I was.

And you told me it’s okay to not be okay.

That’s all I really wanted.  A promise that you would still be around when I returned from my loneliness.  Someone to sit with me, but to not ask anything, to not speak, just to sit.  To let me be alone, in my mind, but to still be present.  That you would let me in again, that I would let you in again, when I returned.

You held my hand and we watched Seinfeld and I cried.  I told you about my bad choices.  And I told you about him and about that relationship and the things he had done.  And you listened and held my hand and looked in me and said nothing.  That was all I needed.  For you to not let go.

Then we sat on the couch for a few more hours, a few more episodes, and you didn’t let go.  Then the night ended, and weeks later I left, and I haven’t seen you much since.  A few times a year, if that.  And we’ve both moved on.  But sometimes I remember.  And sometimes I miss you with such an ache that I think I’ll die.

The memories are more happy than sad.  They are happy, and I laugh when I remember you.  It’s only sad when I recognize what I lost.  When I miss you.

I miss you.

You were my best friend.

I miss you now, when I need you to sit with me and watch tv and hold my hand.  And I think about calling you, about making that seven-hour drive.  And I know you would and I would and you would be there.  But I won’t call.

But I will miss you, today.

It’s such a nice Bible, but I can’t bring myself to use it.  Even with the page ripped out of the front, I can still, looking closely, see the imprint of your words on the previous page.  The words are backwards and faint, but it’s still a remnant.  I can’t use it anymore.  And so it sits in my bedroom at home, and I use a smaller Bible, one that no one has written in but myself.

And I realize that Bible, the one I don’t use, is you and me and our relationship and my life.  Because I can rip you out as well; I can.  I can.  But the imprints are still on my body, on my heart.  The lines from the tear will be ragged.  It can never be a clean break.

Removing you is harder than removing that page was.  In a moment of anger, I ripped it out and crumpled it into a ball, threw it across the room.  I thought about the lies that page contained.  And I remember how I had been overjoyed at the fact that you had written to me in it when I first received that Bible.  I thought it was proof of something.  And several years later, that page hit the wall and that Bible was put on a shelf.

There is something about the shattering of illusion.  Something about truth.

Maybe I’ll be able to open that Bible someday.  For now it’s going to sit, and I will continue to think about the similarities and the possibility, the reality, of removing you.  It won’t be swift.  But, one centimeter at a time, I will remove what I can, and I will learn to live with the lasting imprints.

It’s a slow fade.