I've moved... Again...

But i'm going to be there for a while, for sure. probably at least two years.

Visit me: http://melindaguerra.myadventures.org/

it's been almost a month now...

Oddly enough, it's probably the month wherein I've had the most to say, but I've said the least, on here (obviously), in my written journals, and to other people. It's been a month of almost not talking...

He said that my hesitance to conversations is evidence of my general unhappiness with life. I spent a few conversations (with other people-- we haven't actually talked since then) dissecting and then digesting that, and then the rest of my time in the five weeks since then pondering it in relative silence.

I don't know that I'm unhappy with life... I know that I'm not happy, but I don't know what it looks like to be happy, so I'm not sure that I would know it, even if I felt it. I don't think I've ever really been happy... I've enjoyed moments, and I've enjoyed watching other people enjoy their lives, but I don't know that I've ever really been happy. Watching Jesse be happy and enjoy his life and our time together, is probably about as close as I've ever gotten to really being happy. It's weird, admitting that. Admitting how infrequently I've been happy. I guess, in some circles, this means that I'm a bad Christian. Well, whatever. I have bigger vices; the ones who can't handle that can't handle the rest of it.

But what is it that people are ever really happy about? I don't even know... They enjoy their lives... Enjoy what?
Other people? I enjoy other people. I love watching other people be happy in their own lives. Maybe it's because I sit and wonder how it is that they're managing to find happiness? Maybe that's why I love people-watching so much... because I try to figure out not only what it's like to be those other people, but how in the world they smile and mean it so much. It's strange to me.
I think that's why I loved that movie so much... United States of Leland. The guy is so... in touch with everyone's sadness. I get that. I think I feel like that all the time. I just sit down sometimes and think of all the people in the world that are so sad and all the things in the world that suck... and yeah, it's depressing. How the hell can we live around all of it and not feel that, not be that depressed, as well?

I'm not happy.

I love my family, and I love watching them enjoy something, watching them joke and smile and laugh...
I love the few friends who I haven't driven away. I know... people will be crying bullshit on this one, but it's true... I only let people as close to me as I feel they think they need to be in order to not walk away. And I carry them there. Sometimes it seems like honest vulnerability, but that's not the case. I'm just as vulnerable with them, with the things I think they perceive as vulnerability, as they need me to be; they then think the friendship is deep and I can move on. There have been very few times in my life when I've ever broken that... i could count the relationships on one hand, where I've let people in to a place that really let me feel vulnerable. Every time that it's happened, I've fallen in love. And i then push them away. High school was easy... I pushed him until he pushed me away. The second time was a lot harder, but in the end it was either going to be marrying him and knowing I'd hold him back, or shoving him away; I shoved and it took a hell of a lot of shoves, but eventually he left and found happiness with someone who can give him what he deserves. And then there was this last time... and I spent months wondering what would happen next; in the end, I pulled away and he responded in like fashion (though I'm not sure he'd see it that way), and here we are with a healthy amount of space between us. Otherwise I've been as honest as the relationship demanded, but I've kept careful stock of just how much that amounted to.

i can imagine myself easily without God. It's my life... only without the glimpses of hope I let my fingers brush past. And an ability to indulge in my own self-medication without this annoying sense of conviction; I'd turn immediately to sex and drugs and a hell of a lot of alcohol. It scares me that I can so quickly go to moments where I can run away, leave this behind, and chase a different life; I never follow through, but I get increasingly closer each time. The more deeply I can feel God, the more deeply I can crave a life where I'm not bound by these arbitrary rules intended to save me from myself. It's a pendulum that's being swung, and each time I can touch the idea of one end, I can just as tangibly touch the idea of the other end... I've never felt so palpably the thought that I could reach out and touch God in my suffering with another human, nor have I felt so overwhelmingly the realization that I could leave it all and embrace something completely other. And honestly, I think that's why I'm afraid of a certain kind of freedom. There are things that I don't trust myself. i hardly trusted myself to drink with him without seducing him, and it's part of why I knew i had to draw away. Sometimes on the train with strangers, I was overwhelmingly aware of how easily I could go home with one of these people and leave everything else behind, if only for a night. To trust myself to drive? No. Some nights I'm afraid that if I drove I would just ram the car into a tree. More nights though, I fear that I would leave and never return.

my life.

I guess i'm accomplished?
I'll finally be graduating, but i still feel like i'm not doing anything of consequence.
I'm pretty sure I'm afraid of failure and that's what keeps me from jumping and trusting myself, but i don't know how to.

My vices overwhelm me...
i've stopped drinking, in an effort to deal with my emotions instead of self-medicating. It's been an odd month, and not one I've enjoyed. Dealing with my emotions is almost worse than not dealing with them. Sometimes, I'm sure it is. In any case, i attribute the moodiness and withdrawn demeanor partially to that... but then I don't know what i'd blame the rest of my years on... It just feels like the last month has been worse... haven't wanted to spend time around people at all. Alcohol withdrawal... I think it was what made social situations manageable. Hmph. If Jeff thought I was unsociable and unhappy out there, it's a good thing he hasn't seen me without all the wine they seemed to breathe out there.
Guilt...
Self-doubt...
Fear... Too afraid to even put on here the things I feel guilt and self-doubt in reference to.

I want to break free from the shadows, but I'm afraid of the sunlight. The rain is a comfort on skin that hurts this much. The wind is distracting, the thunder gives me a reason to look afraid, and the lightening provides all the illumination i need. Sometimes though, in the moments between the flicker and the crash, I allow myself a shiver, because it really is so damn cold.

i have some changes to make

aaaannnnddd they won't be easy, but they remain necessary.

i HAVE to find a community to become a part of. I mean, one that resonates with who I am. I love my home church and I can give there and I can serve there, but at the end of the day I need people who are like-minded individuals, who I can be with and challenge and serve and be challenged and be served by. I need more people in my life with whom I can be absolutely honest and still be absolutely loved. Sometimes "home" isn't the best place for that. I feel that I need to give back to the community that has given so much money and energy to me. But I also feel that I need to have another place where I can just be on level ground with everyone and no one is asking me to be the leader-- I need a place that lets me be an equal-- equally frail, equally fallen, equally insecure, equally broken and in need of hope. My soul necessitates it.

i HAVE to stop giving in.

i NEED to decide, consistently, that who I am in Christ triumphs over who I am in my own eyes. That he has borne, once and for all, the weight of sin. He will not do it again. And I can not do it. There is nothing left to be borne. All my trying and trying to earn his approval just break his heart.

i have just recently been reminded of how insecure i am. I mean, really. I think that at some point when I get really excited about some new idea or task, I temporarily forget how insecure i am.
but then i have one slip up.
i neglect one item.
i forget someone important to me.
i act in the opposite way of everything i've ever wanted to be.
i give in to lies, doubts, temptations.
i disappoint someone.

...and all of a sudden, my enthusiasm has been shown to be a foolish mistake and all the energy that moments ago believed ardently in a cause, is turned to instead fuel hatred, mockery, condemnation.
My acheivements i've always found it hard to acknowledge. but my failures-- i record those each permanently. and i read through the whole list again each time a new one is added.

i'm screwed up. and i'm a sorry excuse for an example, most days. i know that better than anyone. and yet there's also a part of me (so often standing in a shadow) that knows i am not these things. i am not what i see so easily. i am not my failures. i am forgiven. i am guilt-free. i am stumbling into what it means to be holy.

i NEED to believe truth.

i MUST stop self-medicating my life, getting just enough of this or that to deaden my sensitivities to the things that i used to breathe: Hope. Redemption. Forgiveness. Grace.

i MUST come to a place where I let myself be loved. Really, really be loved. Where i stop trying to discern the hidden agenda. Where i stop trying to talk myself out of some potentially great relationships because i'm worried that the more people i love, the more people i'll let down.

i have to find a community to be a part of.
I need a place that lets me be an equal-- equally frail, equally fallen, equally insecure, equally broken and in need of hope.
My soul necessitates it.

I've got a heavy heart today

Lack of sleep?
Onset of entirely non-seasonal, sporadic depression?
Overwhelmed by current financial crisis?
Overwhelmed by 4 classes to begin and finish work for in 1 month's time?

Anxious about visiting my friend for the first time in five years... as we head off to his mother's wake and funeral?
Anxious about his family hating me for taking him away from them during this time?
Anxious about meeting his friends and re-playing PA all over again, where I just really want to go home?

Sinking feeling that I've lost a friend and I don't know what in the world to do about it, because he says nothing's wrong?
Worry about camp and its future?

Scared that something will happen to my family while I'm gone and I won't be able to be there for them?
Scared that life will start to change and I won't be ready for it?

Terrified that my life is really going to amount to nothing-- what do I have to show for almost 25 years on this planet?

Frightened to try new things because I'm terrified of failing?

Shame that I've neglected my walk with God?
Shame that I'll never find another community I can be vulnerable with, and I'll find myself alone and trying to be strong, but just living a thinly veiled lie?
Shame that guilt and suffering motivate my walk with God rather than love or passion.

I don't know...
I feel like I'm living in a dark cloud and it's seeping in through my pores...


Good things happened... changed my flight. I'll be there for my friend. Flights back are looking reasonably priced. Hung out with Rich on Sunday. Hung out with internet-stranger friend Henry today during my layover. Slept two hours on the plane.
I need something. And I don't know what it is, but I need it soon.

If I stand, let me stand on the promise that you have brought me through... If I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you. If I sing, let it be for the joy that has born in me this song... If I weep let it be as a girl who is longing for her home.

I can be a real jackass sometimes

I hate that about myself.

I think that, sometimes, there are things about other people that I don't know how to deal with. I don't know how to deal with their loss or with their pain or with their moods or their confusion. So... I act like a jerk. Mostly this is just with the people that I'm really close to.

But... it occurred to me last night that I might take it too far. Yes, i want you to get help for your problems. Yes, i think that you're making yourself live in misery because you won't really deal with what's going on. Yes, that sucks. So... I'm going to be a jerk to you and maybe you'll decide I'm right?

I think my logic is flawed.
But, perhaps even more pressing, I think that I do it because it allows me to convince myself that I don't really care about the other person.
"Fine, have your shit and don't get help-- whatever." And I try to convince myself (under the guise of "tough love" or something equally eye-roll inducing) that what he/she/they need most is someone who's not going to lie, someone who will give it to them straight.

I can be a real jerk.
I hate that in myself.
And I'm sorry to you. And you. And you, too.

I don't know how to make him see in himself what I see

It might be my lot in life, surrounded by people who shine brilliantly, but walk as if they were clothed in shadows, as if they need apologize to others for existing.
I love my friends, and i see beauty in them. I see honesty and determination and courage and grace and trust. I see people who aren't going to give up on me, people who want to make the world a better place, want to give hope to one more person, want to see people cry less and work together. I see the frailty of humanity grasping for something better, reaching for something that's worth living for. I see people who give me a reason to believe that the world isn't full of selfish bastards, but contains some of the most vulnerable, struggling, *real* people I could have imagined, and I get to call these people friends.

But they... (not just one or two, but "they" as a group that includes too many of them) they don't see these same things in themselves. Oh, they see the cracks that prove they're broken, but they don't see the light that runs out of those cracks and reminds me that all is not loss. They see the pain, but they don't see that they themselves are part of the reason I don't hurt like I used to, part of the reason I'm able to live with the suffering for one day more. They don't see that they are an integral part of why I can keep living. Of why, no matter how hard things get, I always remember that I'm not alone, even in the darkest moments when I feel that the Creator has forsaken me. They don't see that it's my relationships with them that allow me to feel love, and it's that love that provides the bandage and salve for the wounds I've been given by others and dealt by myself.



They don't see it, and I don't know how to let them.

I don't know how to love them *for them. I love them for me... I love them because I can see past the imperfections that are all too glaring in their own minds. Because I see how much they are worth and know how important they are to me, and to others.

I love them.
And i don't know how to make them believe me when I say that.
And it makes me sick.

She's going to die soon

Talked tonight with one of the closest friends I've ever had, certainly the most consistent one my life has known. His mom is dying, has been for a while; he left work today to go and be with the family.

I was supposed to go out and visit next week, just hang out with him and catch up in person.
But now we aren't sure how much longer she'll be alive.

When he first told me she was sick, I vowed to myself that I would do whatever I could, even if it involved emptying my bank account, to cross the country and be there with him during that.

Now, it looks like that just might happen. And I feel as adamant about it now as I did then.

i don't know why God gives us the grace to be able to sit with one another during times of crap, but he does. I'm grateful for it. And I don't know what my friend needs right now (his emotional life has always been complicated... in that over logical, emotion-who? sort of way) and I don't know if I can make things any better, but God help me do my best and try.


Heavy heart tonight.

Wish I could be there right now for him. But I'm not the one who knows best. If he feels that I wouldn't be a hindrance there, I'm still flying out. Just waiting for the word.

Love.