Consistency

Right now I'm sitting on the loveseat in my dorm room, where I fit perfect with my back against one arm and my feet against the other. The air conditioning is on, and I cleaned my room this morning so it feels orderly and wonderful.

I'm alone right now, but I don't feel lonely. Loneliness has been a prevailing theme of my life for the past year and a half or so, and I fight feeling hopeless in light of it. My times at home have left me feeling lonely, without a community and without a solid family. My times at school have left me feeling like somehow I'm not living up because I don't have a partner to work towards permanence with. I'm learning slowly that life doesn't consist of those things. 

My mom is dating someone and is getting married in June. The man she's marrying is wonderful- and he embodies belonging. He and his family are very close and I value that. My mom grew up with this man and their paths have become intertwined again, and I'm very thankful for this new development. Last weekend he and Mom drove up so that he could work on my car, something that spoke volumes about their generosity and self-sacrificial nature. I'm amazed that my mom has found someone who is equally as generous and kind as she is. 

At my pottery lesson on Tuesday night, the clay wouldn't cooperate with me. Janda and Vickie, the class instructors, hold to the principle that you have to be grounded and centered in order to center the clay (the first step in creating a piece). It sounds cheesy but it's so true. That night I felt like screaming because everything went wrong, and I knew it was because the clay was reading me and my emotions. Each piece was lopsided, with one side of the piece significantly thicker than the other. They all looked and felt like leaning towers of Pisa, mocking me with their weakness. We made two pieces that night and each one looked like shit. I hold myself to a standard when I'm sitting at the pottery wheel and it wasn't working. I was frustrated that the clay was forcing to evaluate why I was so emotionally uncentered. 

At the end of the night, tears were welling up in my eyes and my throat was burning, but I slowly allowed myself to recognize that it was my loneliness and anxiety that was fucking the clay up. I was so lonely and had been struggling for days to identify the avenue that I should take to resolve the hole in my heart that I've felt consistently over the past year and a half. I missed James, my surrogate father, so much that I felt like I would break down immediately if I didn't leave. Slowly I came to the realization that I feel like everyone leaves and I'm anxious that the new man in mine and Mom's life will leave us too. I hold myself back from investing in him emotionally and trusting him because I haven't been able to do that with my dad for so long and the man who I trusted most to do things like check the oil in my car had been taken away from us. 

I'm recognizing that I have the capacity to trust and love again. I trust my friends beyond a shadow of a doubt and I know that our lives will change and evolve along different paths and that we'll grow away from each other. I know that I'll always be able to call them and pour my heart out to them. 

I'm recognizing that my life contains stability, even if it's only within myself. I create routine for myself, by making up my bed every morning, doing laundry and cleaning my room on the weekends, and drinking tea at night. I am not controlled by my circumstances, and I have the capacity to be stable. 

Along with that, I have the capacity to trust in the stability of others. Yes, my friends love me and that won't change. Yes, my mom and Wade will be married, and they won't move out of the house that they live in now. I'll always be able to go home and drink out of the same cup that I use every time I'm there, and I'll be able to decorate the tree and cook meals for holidays on a consistent basis. Wade will care for me and love me and fix my car when it messes up. And he'll give me advice and he'll be wise and caring and compassionate. I don't expect him to take my dad's place, but if he happens too, he's a damn good replacement. 

I'm not lonely. I sit with my friends and tell them the things that make me feel most vulnerable. I feel translucent in front of them and that doesn't bother me. I curse and rant and cry and yell, and they still love me. What's more, they respect me for who I am and they value my place in their life.

For all of those people in the world who feel lonely and alone, I hope my actions and consistent care shows them that there is value in stability. I hope that I'll be a stable mother, wife, friend, community member one day. I hope that I cook the same meals and sing the same songs and drink the same cup of tea every night. I will prove to my past that I'm capable of consistency.

Why must it always be stop and go? 
Where in this life can I find constant flow? 
Inconsistency on a larger scale 
Impersistence forcing me to bail out 
Look left look right look left again before you take a giant step 
All this side to side takes me out of my groove makes me feel inept 
I toe the straight line for one short time 
Forget about regrets and doubts that 
Make me stop on a dime 

I'm a fool for distraction 
Can't keep cool throughout my action 
Once in a while I find satisfaction 
I have too much care beyond my reach 
And too much love that I can't preach 
What I really need is consistency 

Everywhere that I go I don't want to be 
Cause I keep telling me "You're missing out, gotta move, gotta break on free" 
A modern-day busybacksoon 
Kind of figures cause I was born in June 
The month of moody, happy feet 
The people that no one would like to meet 
Of wandering no-clues, but why should I have to choose? 

What if what I need is just to believe 
Day in day out I find I'm searching for the key 
My head and heart are too stubborn to agree 
Where it begins must lie within me 

I've been so busy finding my way 
I'm not content with the roles I've been playing 
But something occurred to me just the other day 
I am who I am come what may 

luscious
flipping through
mouth waters

the smell

of must

and mist

and lust

and experience

of shame and

daring

dying, lying cheating

I sink in

I

b

  r

    e

      a

         t

           h

              e

in deeply

I close my eyes

fingering the depths

allowing the tips of my fingers to w  a  s  t  e 

       time

in the softness of it all

I dream 

of just another day 

   when I expose myself

expose my heart

to the aspirations and adorations 

that exist here

Damn

Pain

I live in a world whose children go to bed hungry and thirsty. Where people live without health insurance live adequately. I live in a world of violence. I live in a world whose corporations do not think twice about outsourcing jobs to third world countries whose people live far below our standard of living. I live in a world where every 2.5 minutes, someone is sexually assaulted. I live in a world where I see women; beautiful, strong, graceful women, whose hope has been torn from them by the violent act of someone who took their very livelihood through the act that should be the most intimate and precious one we ever take part in. I live in a world where people suffer from cancer and multiple schlerosis and whose babies are born premature. I live in a world whose homeless are faceless, and whose homosexual population is degraded. I live in a world where sex trafficking is a billion dollar industry, and where people still live as SLAVES.

Yet I live in this world, and the cost of my living could pay for dozens of wells in African nations, (providing clean, safe, water. LIFE! )Where the things that I buy support those corporations. Where the stores that I go to do not provide adequate health insurance for their employees. I live in a privileged world.

I hurt. I hurt for the privilege that I maintain, despite the hungry, hopeless, homeless, overworked, & sick. I fail to recognize their lives with my purchases and with my activism. My world is far too priveleged. Yet given the choice, yes, I would stay on this side. The classes and experience that this overpriced education have given me enlighten me to the pain I should be experiencing every day. On behalf of those hurting individuals.

What right do I, who drives a working car and eats well, and sleeps in a warm bed in a stable home, have to complain? WHAT RIGHT do we have to say one negative thing about the way we live?

It's all too much, I think sometimes. I may as well give up, return to my ignorance, and live my life of safety with no thought to those that are hurting. But DAMN. Damn. I live in a world that values status, that values money, that values thing that don't mean a damn thing on the other side of this world.

It's all too much. I'm ashamed at my ignorance. I'm ashamed that I stand by and let these things happen, that I don't involve myself enough or speak out enough or hold up my candle at the vigils ENOUGH. I am but one voice, and the passion overtakes me at times. I can't just pick one issue, and every issue, it seems, makes my heart hurt.

But I live in this world. DAMN.

"Those who sit around and wait don't leave lasting legacies. Those who stand up and make something happen do."

how do you sit in pain
surrounding me, everyday

1,000 dead
thousands displaced
their tears heard across the ocean
not just a face, not just a tribe

a life altered
friends dismayed
families crying, unsure of the future
not just a case, not just a patient

a marriage unwound
silence replaces
where there once was noise
not just one life, one marriage

the ripples travel outward
shaking us, like earthquakes
I feel my foundation cracking
my faith, diminishing

how do I sit in this pain
and do any more than
lose this faith
this unfounded faith
that I have clung to
for so long

Father

on the surface

apathy

underneath

pain

feeling it in my shoulders

the anger, frustration,

rage

with so much commitment

to justice

how do I stand

in the shadows

and let them be hurt?

what is it really like to

stand up to the lions of injustice?

and furthermore, why do I feel like

my father is one of those lions?

why is he a threat

that I must protect myself from?

It is not about protecting myself

anymore. I have to protect another

innocent

human being

whose innocence and joy

(qualities that should be present in every teenager's life)

are being stolen,

ripped from his hands

by the selfishness (brute selfishness!)

of one person

blind to the feelings of others

Is this not the profile of an abuser?

the cycle of power

a bulldozer

hurting everything in its path

destroying

attachment

attachment!

does he realize that he

cannot possibly walk into a

child's life for two years,

support them, build a relationship with them,

however problematic,

and walk out in order to protect himself?

Life is not all about you

You have never truly had someone walk out on you

You just walk out to protect yourself.

Today

Freedom

Having mutilated
and freed myself
from the very wings
which for so long
held me aloft
I have cast my heart
like a purpled fruit
toward the violent earth
far from the Heaven
of your arms.

-Jewel Kilcher


"It's about a love story, Giovanni. I had to say good-bye to someone today."
Then my hands are slapped over my eyes again, tears spraying through my clamped fingers. Bless his heart, Giovanni doesn't try to put a reassuring arm around me, nor does he express the slightest discomfort about my explosion of sadness. Instead, he just sits through my tears in silence, until I've calmed down. At which point he speaks with perfect empathy, choosing each word with care (as his English teacher, I was so proud of him that night!), saying slowly and clearly and kindly: "I understand, Liz. I have been there."
-Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

Success

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and to endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a little bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. -Ralph Waldo Emerson


Two days at home have given me ample lazy time and thinking time. After so much go go go, I have enjoyed it. Remembering to be thankful for rest and the ability to be alone, I have come to the conclusion that I couldn't do it forever. I miss the excitement of Connecting Henry, the involvement in everything going on in the county, knowing that people's lives are changing for the better, or at least that the community is dedicated to seeing that happen, even if people aren't necessarily for it.

There is only so much passion I can feel while watching the Food Network. I love to cook, but don't have sufficient supplies to do the cooking that I want to do. On days like these I want to fast forward my life- the kitchen that I have always dreamed of would be waiting for me, and my career would be on its way.

I'm getting antsy and ready to go back to school, and trying to relax and enjoy myself. I'm just ready to affect change! To be busy! To make new friends and enjoy my already close friends.