How blessed is the blameless vessel’s lot. The world forgiving by the world forgot. Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, each prayer accepted, each wish resigned.

Sometimes I marvel at the amount of hurt in the world. It’s amazing to me that we’re so readily capable of it, and it makes sense to me that the earth not be a contained physical element–we’d clog it up with all of our emotional crap.

It seems everyday I am hearing something else that makes me think, “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard,” only to be outdone not 24 hours later. I read about how prevalent cancer is, I see how quickly people sever loyalties, I hear things I should never have heard. 

“The dark night of the soul” is not uncommon, or so I read. I’m slowly coming out of it, like a child from a closet who has been hiding from a parent–not too sure I want to come out, not sure I want to see them again. Which is ironic since I have felt like God has been hiding from me. I believe that this sorrow I feel in general and personally can only be conqured by small steps–bringing cookies to people who need to smile more often, turning the car around to give that kid who’s having trouble walking in 24 degree weather a ride to class. They are small things, but they are something. 

People seem so messy, so violent, so unpredictable, so harsh. It almost made me cry to see it snow today. There are not many things that make me gape and wonder, but this did. I was in awe to see something fall so softly, so quiet, so beautiful. It’s a gift Texas gave me today, a good omen.

I spend so much time looking backwards and wondering what I could have done differently. Makes me wish I hadn’t thrown out my middle-school box. At the time, I had thought I’d never have any reason to want it back. I find myself wanting to remember how I felt, because I feel very little right now. In the meantime, I live in my dreams where things are different, where I feel things happening to me.

Hey, God–where are you.

Love, Me.

You can run, but you can’t hide

There was a point in time in high school when I did not want to be a part of my family. I very much resented the fact that I was part of it. I lashed out at my sisters, and spoke very little to anyone. And then my mother told me something I won’t ever forget, because at the time I hated it so much:

“You won’t always have the same friends. Your sisters are the only people who will be there for you no matter what, will be there when you are so lonely and you have no one else. Whether you like it or not, your sisters are your best friends for the rest of your life.”

I didn’t believe that until I graduated high school, and even then I didn’t fully grasp that. It’s only been since Nicole has moved close to me that I’ve discovered how comforting it is to have her close, because she knows everything I’ve been through. When I need to talk about Zoie, Nicole’s there, ready to talk because we’re living it together. No matter what, we have a history we know embarassing things about each other, we love each other. My biggest regret in life is that Chloe isn’t closer to Nicole’s age so we can all be around each other going through this.

With all that said, I know who you are. We grew up together, we experienced life together. I may not know as well as Chloe, but I do know that this is not who you are. You might think it is, but it isn’t. I just don’t understand why you think this is who you are.

You can run from yourself forever but when you decide you’re exhausted and tired, home is going to be the only place full of people who remember who you were. We’ll be here. Waiting.

Counseling.

I like going because it gives me something constructive to do with all my thoughts. I can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk to literally EVERYONE I know that will listen and still not be satisfied. I talk to a counselor and they usually give me feedback, and encouragement–something more or less productive to do with all of that.

This new guy I started seeing…I like the way he’s walking me through CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy. Thanks, Social Work education) but my only two sessions have been me talking about my life, him empathizing and getting me to see patterns I’ve created for myself, and then nothing. I left on Friday feeling okay, but I haven’t cried this much in a long time. That is to say I find myself actually tearing up when I’m talking about something sad. I have felt “covered in it” since Friday.

On Monday I came into the office and just cried. After talking with Cathy, Pauline and Janine, I felt better. I felt like I had a game plan, which was to tell the guy that talking about feelings is nice, but we need to move on to an action plan now. Because I can’t just sit with my feelings constantly, I have to go to internship, I have to do school work, etc.

Just to clarify

I realized in my last post it sounded like I wanted to get away from my actual famiily and create a new one at school with my friends–not the case. On the contrary, I love my family more than anyone, I just get extra support from friends here, when my family can’t always be here for me.

Thank you for being a friend

“Lord, thank you for friends. Thank you for friends becoming family.” Pat said that prayer on Saturday night and I almost cried. In a time when my family is so chaotic I have found new family with my friends. Paula, Amanda, Mary, Caitlyn, Kaitlyn. People I will be honored to have at my wedding. People who remind me who I am when I don’t feel like remembering.

Betrayed.

I don’t know if I can ever forgive you.

After trying so hard to make our family the best we could be, you ruined it all. It’s not overdramatic, it’s completely true.

Mom always said if one of us was kidnapped, she and dad would spend the rest of their lives searching for that one kid until they found them. And that if we were kidnapped because we weren’t paying good enough attention to our surroundings, we’d be robbing our other siblings of two capable parents.

They know where you are, and it’s killing them.

It won’t be like this for long, because we’re already starting to rebuild without you.

But it doesn’t mean I’m any less hurt, and that I don’t hold you completely responsible.

Tooth fragment. Ha.

So last month I went in for a routine teeth cleaning. And something turned up on my x-rays. “A root, is what it looks like,” said my very naive dental practitioner. She gave me a referral to my oral surgeon who did my wisdom teeth because it looked like it was left behind from that surgery. Little did she know.

I go in for a consultation with the oral surgeon and when he sees the x-rays immediately recongnizes it is not a root, but an entire tooth fragment. “No big deal,” he says, “we’ll just go in there and get it out.” So I schedule the appointment.

I went in today expecting the ordeal to last less than ten minutes, because it took them a total of 20 minutes to remove all wisdom teeth and stitch me up. This is also the reason I refused general anesthesia. Going under for a 5 minute procedure? Not this girl.

I wasn’t really worried until the Doctor started to sweat. And I don’t just mean that he looked misty, I’m talking he started to drip. I was afraid some was going to get on me and I was going to flip the hell out on him. Thankfully, he kept it to his scrubs and the insides of his eye glasses. There were times when he literally was pushing his weight onto this freaking piece of tooth that had started to become hidden because bone was starting to grow over it. Nice one, Doctor. 

After literally 30 straight minutes of pushing and pulling and drilling and twisting, the damn thing came loose. I’ve never been so happy to see a stitching needle. 

All that to say they told me that even though it was a fragment, they had basically done a full extraction, and to treat it as such. Hence I am now loaded up with giant tylenol and mashed potatoes, just like after my first pull. Needless to say, Nicole will have to drive me to Glendora at 5 am tomorrow for my internship orientation. Yay.

Modern dentistry is a crock.

 

This is me, trying to roll my eyes with a cold compress on my face.

My name is Crystal, and I’m a passive-aggressive.

The term passive-aggressive doesn’t sound to me as drastic as it really is. My passive is, “I’m going to ignore you, because I hate you” which is so dehumanizing. If that weren’t enough, my aggressive is, “I’m going to burn this bridge, because I don’t believe in fraternizing with people who screw me.” 

I’m discovering that when I indulge myself in being this way, I’m screwing myself. 

Forgiveness is counter-intuitive to every bone I have in my body. Phrases that run through my mind during times when I feel like I’m being taken advantage of are things like, “Screw you,” “I never want to see you again,” etc. There is only one relationship I’ve never regretted severing, because it was actually a healthy choice. And in that case, I was truly being harmed.

But in Angela’s case, every time Cathy (my boss/mentor) told me not rooming with her best friend was the only thing that saved her friendship, I didn’t believe her. I thought it worked for them, but it wasn’t true for me. I’d been so wronged, and I couldn’t overcome that.

God has been working in my very hardened heart this summer, most recently through pre-marital counseling. We were talking about my conflict resolution style, or lack there of. Blakey didn’t know half of what happened with me and Angela, but he told me it was always better to ask for forgiveness than to harbor feelings of bitterness and keep that in. 

When we got in the car, I started talking to Ben about how that was furthest from my mind and how I didn’t feel like I was the one that needed to apologize. I was a 21 year old, at a stand still because I didn’t think I needed to apologize. 

Last night, I was reading in Genesis about Jacob and Esau, when Jacob stole Isaac’s blessing from Esau. Esau comes in and weeps violently and bitterly, desperately asking his father if there is any blessing left for him. When Isaac says there isn’t, Esau seethes in anger against Jacob and plots to kill him after Isaac dies. It really resonated with me. Even though Jacob had done the wrong thing, God still blessed him. Esau had only a heart for hate, a heart set on killing his brother. His anger had penetrated that deeply. 

I don’t want to be like Esau. So I called Angela. We both cried, and I feel a lot better. I’m not dreading going back to school, and I’m not feeling like the situation was anyone’s fault. I feel free. 

I didn’t think forgiveness would make me feel that way.

My name is Crystal, and I’ve been passive-aggressively sober for an hour.

Everyone wants to go to heaven, but no one wants to die.

I know that people die, that we’ll all die eventually. But something about Chris Laurie’s death is really bothering me.

This semester I seemed to be inundated with death, having to read books for my Aging course, and having read “The Year of Magical Thinking” for HBSE. What strikes me about death is that from what I’ve seen is that the pain never seems to dull. It may subside momentarily, but it never dulls. I drive more carefully on the freeway, I carry my pepperspray from my car to the door of my house in a futile attempt to curb my chances of dying. It isn’t death that I fear, it’s the unexpected nature by which it can creep up on anyone. No one is exempt. I guess that’s what bothers me about Chris’ death.

While saying no one is exempt, I backhandedly say “but why Greg Laurie’s kid?” And even more fervently, why a husband? Why a father? Why an expectant father? Chris’ death bothers me because it seems the clutches of death creep ever nearer as I get older. I’ve never had anyone in my family die, and so far Chris Laurie is the closest it’s gotten. Even though I never met him, I feel like I’ve lost an extended family member. Someone I never knew, but always knew was there.

I fear the death of people close to me the most. While I’m excited to get married, I’m also extremely scared of the possibility of losing the person I’m closest to. Maybe I do believe that caricature of God, where once everything is going well something catastrophic will happen. I need to fix that distorted perception, because I can’t live my whole life in fear of a cosmic being whose only purpose is to make sure I don’t get too comfortable.