lonely valentine’s day posts confuse me…

i’m not sure why I should be lonely today

with a full heart safely in its ribbed cage

a body that wants for nothing, save a touch

or impossible knowledge that it’d never age

 

giving back the growing number of days wasted

in youth, in gleeful ignorance, thinking

“oh, tomorrow will come in its own time—

today I’ll spend merry—eating and drinking”

 

if I were meant to be lonely, shouldn’t I always be so?

instead of choosing one day to mourn a life wasted; one

day for a series of days mis-spent, misused, misappropriated?

how could one day spent feeling lonely, even begin to dent

 

a whole lifetime of days done wrong? Days gone,

days unlived, essentially? why today, of all days,

should I choose loneliness? why not tomorrow, or last

week, to announce I’ve lived all the wrong ways?

 **this isn’t finished, dunno if it ever will be. but i’m tired.

 

 

Happy birthday to me.

My birthday is in less than 15 minutes. There are tears in my eyes. Usually, I find myself crying over what I’ve lost; mourning the parents I could never have. Hating that memories of hugs, and arguments, and safety, and stability were stolen from me. This year, I find myself broken over what God has given to me. This year, God used my birthday eve to remind me what has been taken from me (as usual), but then… to show me what He’s given me. For the first birthday I’m not angry that I was robbed of something I considered to be a right, but grateful. Because He’s never left me. Even when I felt abandoned, He was there, watching over me. I’m still sad I think, but not so much because I feel slighted… instead, I ache for my parents who spend my birthday, and my sister’s birthdays, with empty arms. My heart breaks knowing that theirs is a life of regret, filled with mistakes that can’t be taken back. I hurt for them.

Now, my birthday is in 9 minutes. I’ll sleep knowing that I’m safe. Loved. Cherished. Protected. By a God who loves me. By a God who has given me sisters that share my eyes, and my smile, and my twitchy dance, and my… awesome? taste in music. By a God who has given me a community that doesn’t let me hurt alone. And by a God who gave me a family who CHOSE (and chooses) to love me.

Happy birthday to me. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I believe that.

I keep coming back to this…

I was 21. And even though my tiny boos don’t know how young that is (they think I’m crazy when I talk about 25 like it’s 50; it feels like it)… I remember. I keep trying to forget, keep trying to move on, but I can’t. Because I remember being 21. That was the year I decided I needed to have my heart broken. That was the year I told God to leave me alone. To let me be. To let me LIVE. (To remember… hurts. I mean really hurts. My heart pushes and pulls, as if memories are carried in blood, and that bad blood needs to be forced out so I can heal. But so many of my memories… It hurts.) And that’s the beginning. It’s a part of my story I can’t hide if I want to tell people how I love God, who I am. I do though, hide it. Because… I was 21, and I said, “God let me get my heart broken. It’s what I need to become a good writer. I don’t have anything to say right now.” I thought heartache and heartbreak would feel beautiful. Like a run; it hurts, but doesn’t–all in one, it’s everything (and in the end, it feels worth it–that’s how I imagined heartbreak would be.) And so, joyfully leaving God behind, I went. I lived my life. I woke up every day, and slept every night, and in the middle tried desperately to find someone who would love me enough, who would break my heart. (Now I know that what matters in the matter of heart-break is not necessarily how much someone loves me, but how much I love them. I didn’t know that not loving someone could break my heart. I didn’t believe that anyone could ever not love me. I didn’t know that losing someone you’ve loved means losing a piece of yourself. I didn’t know. And now I do. And now I wish I didn’t.) I lived carelessly. Imagine a busy street, a rush hour highway even. Imagine a girl slowly moving moving across that road, weaving in and out of cars. Even though most attempt to swerve, attempt to avoid her, some can’t. Collision. That’s how I found heartbreak. A collision. It wasn’t beautiful. It didn’t make me a better writer. It made me unsure; it made me timid and fearful; and it made me lost.

I keep coming back to this because I want to punch 21-year-old me in the gut. I want to change the past. I want to undo what I’ve done. I want to plead with God for forgiveness. I can’t. About the latter, I should, but I can’t, because I’m ashamed. I don’t even know why I’m writing this, on this public forum. I barely write anymore. Everything I have to say, hurts. I want to love God more. I want to give Him everything. But I keep coming back to this: I asked God to leave me alone, and I think He did, and it makes me mad. And that seems wrong, but it… it feels like truth. Some things just are; even if they don’t have to be, they are.

Praying with my little boos tonight, I pleaded with them to turn to God now. I asked them not to wait. I told them… if I could be where you are… If I’d only known. My cries were those of desperation. I can’t undo my past, but surely… surely, I can play a role in changing someone else’s future?

My generation…

& the ones that come after me, we don’t know how to say goodbye. We never left home, not really. I’ve had facebook since my freshman year of college. I check it the moment I wake up. I know that there are some out there, who might judge me by the contents of my digitized address book. There are pictures, posts and thoughts dating back to late adolescence. Nothing is forgotten. No one is forgotten.

So why, then, do so many feel so alone? If we can have a record of almost everything we’ve ever said, if we are one click away from contact with almost anyone, why this shadow of pervasive loneliness? There’s more to say, but too much to do…

i’m just writing this because i said i would

i’m very tired but i’ve stopped sleeping. i hate this time of year.