Better Story

I felt like such a rage-aholic today. Such a ferocious wet blanket. And I indulged this, yes, with Natalie Merchant songs about resigning, stepping down from the task it is sometimes to keep moving on a dark day. I threw things around my room--paintings, drawings, piles of books, sweaters. And I swore in such a way that would make Eminem hide in my closet whispering prayers that the storm would calm and I would light a joint or take a sleeping pill.

Why, you might ask, was I such a hurricane of a human being? Honestly, it's difficult remembering. I have the slightest cold. I was going to have to work outside in the rain with my disgusting cold cinching my sinuses and clouding my brain, my hands numb and achey. The internet went out at my house, and I didn't do all the things I wanted to (like putting together portfolios, improving cover letters and resumes, finding businesses to actually approach about positions). I think that last reason was most of it. And the fact that I am so deeply disappointed in myself ninety-two percent of the time.

It was the lack of doing those things I had planned on doing, and the sudden leap from my not finishing those things to the thought that I am an entirely irresponsible human being, that I am ugly--my hair making sloppy shapes in the humid air, and the thought that my ugliness coupled with my irresponsibility tripleted with my terror of approaching men would inevitably lead me to a life of loneliness and poverty.

And I packed my things, loudly. I drove depressed and gray and full of self-pity out to Grand Rapids, to the Bitter End. I listened to Natalie Merchant, and I didn't feel so alone. I remembered a moment when the girls I used to work with at the cafe in Zeeland hugged me in the back room and started crying when they saw my tears about something my dad had done. I felt a little warmer. I remembered other moments where people were super-humanly empathetic.

Those memories redeemed life for me, despite Natalie Merchant (who only has one remotely positive/hopeful song on that whole album). And then The Bitter End coffee house. Looking now through the front windows, rain settled in luminescent drops, leaves limp and wet, green as ever against the dark oak of this place, I feel settled. Danielle called me and told me that she can't imagine me enraged (though she's such a wonderful friend that she really listened and believed that I am capable of rage). She told me what she knows of me. She was very kind, for the most part. I actually surprised myself by not contesting the nice things she was saying. I listened. I studied her words, and took them like water.

Chase told me a few days ago that he thinks most of what I think are my problems, are merely perceptions I have of myself that are entirely incorrect. Nobody apparently sees what I see of myself. This fascinates me, because I've always thought I was good at knowing myself. Apparently, I'm wrong. I'm glad I'm wrong.

Sometimes, we have to listen to our friends. And we have to believe people. Really believe them. We have to sit in their words and let them come into our skin. We so often are lost in our misconceptions of ourselves, that we don't live in the great goodness that lives in us--we don't use our gifts, because we deny them.

I just finished Donald Miller's new book, A Million Miles in a Hundred Years, about our lives as stories--about living them as if we are "graceful participants," rather than, "unwilling victims."

At one point he writes, "Not living a beter story would be like deciding to die, deciding to walk around numb until you die, and it's not normal to want to die."

In all honesty, there have been quite a few times within the past few years that I have wanted to die. I have wanted, sometimes desperately, to be out of it. To be done. To have the pressure off, the burden lifted. Even though I'm terrified to say that because I'm afraid of how I'll be percieved, I say it, because I know there are plenty of people who feel the same. Don's book, as well as my beautiful, generous friends, have really made me want to live the better story, which may simply mean living into me, into whatever good I am bestowed with.

I love thinking that perhaps the better story is here, and we are already the better characters, we just don't know it yet.

Space

I am imagining the ideal, now. If I could make my life into whatever I wanted it to be at this moment, this is what it would look like. It would be very very quiet. Still. I imagine very vibrant grass. Grass and feet, and wind sounds, and maybe the soft buzz of traffic--of life around, maybe a slider door opening or closing. But no words. I imagine a very clean apartment, all white walls and wood floor. I imagine curling my knees into my chest in my rocking chair near a window and not having to talk my shoulders down--not having to make myself learn how to love who I am, how to accept any goodness, how to believe that it is okay for me to be fallible.

I wrote in the margin of some book recently that it is awful being a perfectionist who is so goddam imperfect. It is painful. It feels like suffering (while I write that, I feel guilty, because my brain is rushing into images of people who are truly suffering. And the next thought is: WOW, am I capable of not being hard on myself?)

I want my own apartment--my OWN--like nothing else in this world right now. I want it like a lover. I want it like something that's always there--by my side--available for me to fall into, fold into, find myself in. I want cleanliness and SPACE. Any space. Space for me. For my voice. Space for becoming new.

The past two days have brought that thought into focus as well. Becoming new. I need to be new. Fresh. I need to make who I am. I need to choose who I am. I think I have victimized myself so much lately. I feel victimized by my financial situations. I feel victimized by the job market. I blame everything. I feel strung out. I feel wound. And I am so depleted. But I also feel guilty. I know I'm to blame for the place I'm in. But, I also want to concede that it is hard. It is super hard to be everything you want to be, and to find a "real" job in this economy, and to change a lot of habits that you've functioned in for years and years and basically your entire life.

I want to be new, though. I want to stop feeling victimized or guilty. I want to start feeling in control--feeling vibrant--feeling energized. I want to want to be around people. I want to feel even remotely free.

And I really really would like to start engaging spirituality. I want to pray. I want to want to pray, and really open myself to the possibility that I am worth anything at all. I want to believe that God is the opposite of all of my skewed perceptions. I want to believe that he/she/it is trustworthy. I want to believe that there is a better plan, a better way than the one I've been on--the one that has me hopeless, dark, exhausted, and furious.

For example, I went nuts this morning because my dog puked on the floor. Seriously, if I were a parent right now, I would be terrified that I would go nuts, get angry, and my kids would become seriously anxious people like me, always waiting for the ax to fall. Just so you know...I did not even yell at my dog. I just wanted to. I wanted to scream and rip the curtains and stomp holes in the floor. And of course, anger is always indicative of something deeper. It wasn't the dog. It's this place I'm in. This scary, unpredictable, guilt-ridden, place I'm in.

I want to get out. I want it. I want respite and hope and light and silence and strength and time and space to fail and grow and heal and explore.

I want to not feel immature for it either. I don't think I want to run from the real world. I want to work hard. I want to care. I want to be active. But I want to stop running in circles. I want my brain to take on calmer waves. I want to make changes. I want to engage in whatever's beneath or above or invisibly active in this world.

May you all find hope and silence and time and lightness.



P.S. I had an interview this week. I'm trying desperately not to bank on this as my way out of crazyness.