Wednesday, November 28, 2007

I think there may be light coming...

So, I am posting a bunch of depressing stuff I wrote in the last week below, but today I woke up feeling lighter than I have for a while. My acting coach told me that freedom comes with responsibility, and that thought is percolating in my soul - also that God doesn't give us freedom but he gives us chances to grab it for ourselves. So I am realizing that I have to get up off my butt and reach for what I want even when it scares me shitless.
Anyway - the depressing stuff. Here it is.

****
I’m not sure I believe in God’s love anymore.

I believe He exists. That He is who He says He is. The whole dying for sins thing too, being the saviour of the world.

But my saviour?

It is so hard. To trust. To have faith. To believe that He cares for me, that He cares what happens to me, that in the outcome of my life He has any interest.

In chapel today we read a psalm aloud. “In Him does my heart trust.” Trust came out as a whisper.

I don’t trust God right now and I think that maybe if I did I wouldn’t feel so full of pain and despair but the feelings aren’t going away and I don’t feel His presence any closer so it’s hard to start trusting Him now.

God, I hate this.

I don’t know why it started and I don’t see any ending.

It goes away for a day here and there which just makes it that much worse when it comes back.

And I keep running into blocks in my acting that are connected to specific things that happened in my life that are connected to how I feel now, and I can’t make any headway and I am despairing in everything.

I know I need to get help but I am reluctant. Afraid.

Pray for me. I ask this with the awareness of the irony therein. Pray for me, that my faith might come back and my joy might return.

I have to learn to trust myself. I have to learn to listen to myself. I have to stop being so hard on myself.

It isn’t that I don’t believe in God. I still do. I believe he exists. I just don’t believe so much that he cares about me. And I’m wondering just why I should care about him.
My faith has never been super strong. My brother said it well – I’m more sure that I won’t let my 6 year old watch LoTR than I am that I will be a Christian when I have said 6 year old. God know this, or He should. So why is He testing me this way? He knows I’m not strong in this area. He knows better. He is gambling and He might lose. I don’t understand why He would do this.

I am not strong enough to be Job and yet that is who I am being forced to be.

****
Stream of Consciousness Murky and Dark

How can I act now? I am missing my soul.
How can I make art? My tool is an empty shell without heart or warm blood.
How can I create when I am dead?

My soul is trapped so deep within me
it screams and all that comes out is a smile
on an empty vacuous face
How are you?
Fine, fine
and my spirit is dying but no one can see it
and I have no fire left within me
the Ecthroi have won
and they chew on my bones


In all seriousness I do not know how I can go on being an artist when I feel so dead. I cannot access anything and I feel that all my acting is a mask behind which is so much anger and pain that it overwhelms me so I shy away from it.
I am sick. I am tired of being full of pain and anger.
I want to be happy from the depths of my toes to the lightness of my head.
I want to be free in every way – I want my body to be everything, my voice to be unleashed, my soul to fly and swirl and my eyes to see something other than blackness.
My eyes to be something other than empty.

Why does my spirit only flash and spark sometimes?
It isn’t gone, it teases me with moments of fullness and life and then hides away in some deep mark of my psyche that is hidden, so hidden that I can barely feel the pulse to let me know I am still even alive.
Not so gone that people worry about me.
Not there enough for me to be truly alive.
Not gone enough for me to abandon all hope.
Not present enough for me to believe that it will come back.

Am I going to be like this forever.
Am I going crazy? Have I lost my mind?
Am I imbalanced somewhere?

I feel like a living lie.
I am crashing and burning and I do not know how to be honest.
I don’t know how to tell anyone so I hint and I pull away and wait for someone to see and reach out to catch me or cushion my fall. Or at least say look, someone is on fire.

All my soul is on the outside of my body burning me alive
and it doesn’t hurt
because my soul is outside watching
and I wouldn’t be on fire
if my soul could feel the burning
It doesn’t care enough to come back inside
It is tired of being trapped
so it has gone on vacation
and is waiting, somewhere, for my body to catch up to it.

Maybe I’m just tired.
Maybe I just need a break.
Maybe I’m depressed.
It certainly took long enough coming.

I don’t want to die though.
That’s a good thing. I think.
I just want to sleep until it all feels better.
Or until it feels like something.

Other than pain.

Because I don’t want to deal with it and I’m sick of being weak.
That is what pain is to me – tears and weakness that I should control better.
I thought I had dealt with this but apparently I haven’t.

And I write this and I know people will think this is my every waking moment but it isn’t
I just feel like this a lot
not all the time.

I still laugh from a real place
watching cats jump into walls on YouTube
I still smile from a real place when Scott leans his head against me
I still feel love from a real place
just not a God place
because God has abandoned me
and left me to fend for myself
like I always do.
Like I always have to do.

I know he’s the one who’s footprints I’ll see later
but I think that’s a crock of shit.
I’m drifting away from him
but he isn’t stopping me
or even trying to answer me when
I pray

God.
Why have you forsaken me again?
Again again again again again
Always forsaken in the end
He would rather watch me self-destruct
than come down and meddle with his fucked up creation

Fuck you, God.

Why can’t I just leave you and try to find a way out alone?
Why do I always pray and cry out for help that doesn’t come, help that you so sporadically ladle out that I have some hope that maybe you do care after all and you are leaving me like this to grow in some way?
I hate growing
you should know that by now

I want the growing part to be over
I want to be an adult already

I am sick of adolescence. But that is where I’m stuck
forever.
****
So there you have it. Two statements of where I've been at for what seems like forever.
Although I think I may be done throwing the tantrum now.
We'll see...

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Small Mercies

It seems that God will only grant me small mercies these days. No voice, no consolation from Him, just dreams that flicker in and out of my waking mind and words from the people around me that bring the light back.

Today I had two unexpected conversations that helped me, conversations about trust and letting go of fear and control.

I don’t do either very well. Maybe if I could learn to let go and let God I’d be happier.

One of my classmates told me that he is letting God steer his life. He saw through the show he just finished that if he trusted his scene partner instead of trying to control the scene, then the magic happened. He somehow gained the wisdom to apply that to his life – God as the ultimate scene partner – and he is finding so much peace right now.

I am very envious but at the same time I suddenly saw that I only trust God with reservations, which isn’t really trust at all.

That is how I trust. With reservations.

That conversation showed me that my lack of trust is really my own insecurity that in some way I won’t measure up – I will be lacking. I am not interesting enough, smart enough, experienced enough…I don’t have the beauty or knowledge to be worth spending time on. I am not worth loving. I am not worth caring for. I don’t have the faith for God to want to help me and because of that, I feel that I’ll be tested over and over until I learn to trust. Written down I see that doesn’t make any sense. How can I learn to trust if He doesn’t show me He can be trusted? But that is still what I seem to believe.

I am not alone in this either. Every weakness, every folly, people have been perfecting since the dawn of time.

People around me accept me and value me even when I think I have lost everything that makes me worthwhile. I don’t understand. I don’t understand.

To be shown such great mercy when I feel that I deserve nothing is more than I ever expected.

For some reason I have been blinded but God is still all around me. Why is it so hard to trust that to be true? Why do I feel so alone in this?

I know that I need to trust and I cannot.

He gives me small mercies anyway.

Date of Origin: November 12th 2007

I Had A Dream

I had a dream.

In my dream I had a giant moth for a companion. It’s name started with a G and had a lot of vowels in it; it was at least nine letters long. I remember seeing it written down and saying it, feeling it in my mouth. It was gone as soon as I woke up.

The moth was my guardian, protector and guide.

I was riding on its back when an Ecthroi who looked like Mr. Jenkins popped up in front of us, floating in the air, completely out of place in the world of northern trees and familiarity, completely unfazed by the surrounding, intent only on one thing.

Me.

And more than that, the tiny ball of light deep within me.

Its stare hurt me, scared me. I closed my eyes to keep the light inside so it couldn’t be stolen away. Its gaze kept going through me, I had to curl up to keep the light safe, eyes closed hands clinging to the fur covering G--------‘s body.

And then something made me stop. I stopped shaking. I let go of the fear.

I opened my eyes and uncurled my body and looked the Ecthroi in the eyes and let the light out.

Instead of going away it grew bigger until my whole self was alight, light was pouring from me and filling the world, and the Ecthroi screamed and was vanquished, vanishing into nothingness before me and the un-defeat-able light that lived within me.

We had won. I had past the test. The light that had endangered me had saved me; what has brought the attention of the Ecthroi had defeated it.


This is my life.

I am surrounded by Ecthroi, and I can’t see my moth-guardian and I feel very alone. I feel that I am the Farandoli being seduced, promised an easier way if only I stop the dance, stop the song, let the light go away and then they’ll leave me alone.

They don’t tell me what will happen if I stop, if I surrender. I will be left alone, ‘in peace’ but they don’t tell me what their peace is.

I am so tired, their call is beginning to sound reasonable. Sensible. Easier at least.

The thing is…I know what will happen if I stop dancing and I just can’t let the light die.

It hurts so badly. It’s so damn hard. I am so afraid. And I feel so alone.

I so easily forget the dreams.

They seem to be the only way that God will speak to me any more and they are so often gone when I open my eyes.

The light isn’t getting any bigger. It isn’t chasing away my enemies. They aren’t afraid, they aren’t screaming and vanishing; they’re whispering, comforting, telling me gently that my light isn’t really there, there isn’t anything to let die in the first place …there is no sun, there is only the lamp that I have changed with my childish imagination, isn’t that a silly thing to do! I feel like I am surrounded by fairy book characters – Ecthroi, the Green Lady – but I have no fairy tale saviours. There is no Aslan to save me.

Yet I know that this battle is important. That my light matters, that someday I will see the fruits of this struggle but right now I can’t see anything.

Hope is very far away.

Faith is dying.

Fear is everywhere.

The light isn’t getting any bigger. It isn’t getting any smaller although the scope of the darkness seems to be expanding. I’m being shown all the darkness and I don’t get to see any of the light except the small share that dwells within me. It seems pitiful and shabby, and defeat seems inevitable. There is no hope in the vision I am being bombarded with every day.

Why is God silent now?

Why does He only speak to me in dreams that fragment and vanish?

I despair, and the Ecthroi gather around me like vultures waiting to feast on my death. But I don’t die and the light keeps flickering.

For now.

Date of Origin: November 11th 2007

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Gilmore Girls

I watched Gilmore Girls this morning. If only my life was that uncomplicated and straightforward. I can understand their problems and see the solutions to them; most of the time they have a clear way out if they’d make the hard choices and act on them. Granted, part of the reason I have such clarity about their lives is that I’ve made many of their mistakes, and part of the clarity stems from the fact that their lives are scripted and consistently so. But it offers comfort seeing as I’m in a place where there is no clarity and thus no choices to act upon.

My life is a fog.

In truth, I’ve accepted that. It’s nice to not be constantly frustrated about the fog anymore. I admit I wistfully think about problems in life that require a clear choice and present a clear action but I know that I don’t have those right now so I am just living. That is all I see in front of me right now so that is all I do.

Okay fine. There is still frustration. I don’t like this feeling of forced stagnation. I don’t see a forward path, I don’t see anything that I can do to break this off, I don’t see how I can progress in any of my chosen fields. All I can see is the routine – wake up, eat, go to class, do the homework, do the show, find time to socialize in there somewhere before going to sleep again, and a lot of waiting, waiting, waiting. It feels like I’m waiting for news of my future but I don’t really know what I’m waiting for. I’m the one who will be creating my future at this point. There is no one else to wait for, no one who will be giving me news.

Perhaps because I don’t know how to create my own future yet, I am stuck. I’m in that horrid adolescent stage of school. It seems I am always in that stage with something in my life – first actual adolescence, then the teenage separation from my parents which actually happened just last year (complete with tedious rebellion), then towards all authority figures and now with school. I am growing towards life and I can’t say the growing stage is very enjoyable. I am getting tired of the un-enjoyable stages of life. Please, somebody tell me that this isn’t what life is! I cannot bear the thought that this is going to be my life…going from one time of fog to another. I really cannot bear it.

The one particular spark of hope from this is the revelation that I am not alone in my struggles and experiences. I am not the only one who liked a guy and didn’t tell him, to lose him to another girl and then experience fits of envy. I am not the only person who isolates myself when I’m struggling. I am not the only person who would rather live in fantasy than in reality.

The fog isn’t lifting.

But I do remember that there is a peculiar beauty in mist.

Date of Origin: October 31st 2007