december 10th

You were an angel even in life, and that gives me something to strive for every day. Missing you today and always, momma. Thanks for watching over me. In a while, crocodile.

Line up

It's all about lines. The finish line. Waiting in line. Then there is the most important line. The line separating you from other people.
 You need boundaries between you and the rest of the world; other people are far too messy. 
It's all about lines... drawing lines in the sand and praying like hell no one crosses them. 
At some point, though, you have to make a decision. 
Boundaries don't keep other people out, they fence you in. Life is messy. That's how we're made. 
So you can waste your life drawing lines, or you can live your life crossing them. 
There are always some lines that are way too dangerous to cross...  but here's what I know. If you're willing to take the chance, the view from the other side is spectacular. 

It's a big girl world now, full of big girl things

So I have to write a sermon for August, the weekend I get back from Mexico. Something tells me to wait until after the trip, because something there is bound to inspire me, but I just don't know.  I've also been wondering if it's really something I can do. My majors were really keen on it when they approached me about it, but I feel like they have a lot more faith in me than I deserve.  My love for the Lord should make me confident in the message I've been asked to give, right?
The more I think about it, the more I know exactly what I need to speak about.
Sorry for the pointless post.

Break me out tonight, I want to see the sun rising anywhere but here

There are times lately when I feel hopelessly alone. I know full well that I am not alone; my life is overflowing with people who love me, but in all honesty, I feel a disconnect from them all a lot of the time. I feel like I'm stuck in this limbo between a frivolous adolescent and a full-fledged adult. I bounce around the people who don't consider me quite at their level, or perhaps it's the other way around. This is the first time in my life where I feel like I'm lacking a significant other person in my life, not romantically, but definitely relationally. I don't really have a best friend, not like I've always had in the past. In Nanaimo, I always had Michelle, or Caitlyn and they blessed me in unfathomable ways. When I first moved to Vernon, there were people who became a huge part of my life, and I relied on them a great deal to fill the gaps left by those I had left behind. After we parted ways a bit, in every way we needed to, the disconnect between myself and everyone who remained began to grow. I didn't mean for this to become a list of all the people who I have left or who have left me, because all those people remain as significant parts of my life, but none in the ways they once were. I have some extremely incredible people in my life nowadays, all of  whom I truly love, and I don't want them, or anyone else, to think I feel anything but complete appreciation, but it's been months since I've felt like there's been someone to fill my needs socially, spiritually and.... I don't know. Maybe that isn't something I should rely on. Maybe now is a time in my life when I should try to identify myself separately from everyone else. Maybe this means I should look to God as the one to fill any and every need. Knowing that this is absolutely the case doesn't make this any easier. I feel alone.

so please remember me seldomly

You know, sometimes it seems like such a waste.  Such a massive shame. I mean, I  stress to my friends how important it is to cherish their mothers, to not take them for granted. Because one day they may be gone.  And then I think of you. We were all so incredibly close when I was growing up. It was actually kind of pathetic how close we were. Like I couldn't find enough friends within my peers, so I settled for my parents. Pathetic, but also so wonderful. We would sit around on friday nights, playing card games and laughing. We laughed a lot. I never thought it'd be like this. We were't supposed to end up this way. It feels like a separate lifetime. You don't even look the same anymore, do you know that?
Your face changed, all of the sudden and slowly over time. Sometimes I lay in bed and think of what a terrible hypocrite I am, harping about parental relationships, and you and I are so estranged. That's the word, you know. Estranged. You are a stranger to me. I cannot remember the last conversation we had.  You know nothing about my life and I wonder about once every 3 weeks if you're alive, or lying somewhere, with no one to claim you, because you've alienated everyone in your life.  I never thought this would be us. I think back to 14 year old me, smiling and laughing, and I know that that girl would never be able to fathom any part of the last 9 years. Even jaded, angry 17 year old me can't quite wrap her mind around it. Slowly over time, and quite suddenly, we became strangers.  I wish our story had turned out differently.  But the truth is, it hurts to look at you. It hurts to imagine you so utterly alone and broken. I don't know how to relate with you anymore, how to talk to you. I don't know how to let you know me. I don't know how to be your daughter anymore.  And I'm sorry.

Why We Broke Up

"Dear ____,
In a sec you'll hear a thunk. At your back door, the one nobody uses. It'll rattle the hinges a bit when it lands, because it's so weighty and important, a little jangle along with the thunk, and your mom will look up from whatever she's cooking. She will look down in her saucepan, worried that if she goes to see what it is it'll boil over. I can see her frown in the reflection of the bubbly sauce. But she'll go, she'll go and see. You won't. You wouldn't. You're upstairs, probably, sweaty and heartbroken. I hope. So it's your mother who will open the door even though the thunk's for you. You won't even know or hear what's being dumped at your door. You won't even know why it even happened.

 It's a beautiful day, sunny and whatnot. The sort of day when you think everything will be all right. Not the right day for this, not for us, who went out when it rained, from october 5 until november 12. But the sky is bright and it's clear to me. I'm telling you why we broke up.
I'm writing it in this letter, the whole truth of why it happened. And the truth is that I goddamn loved you so much.

 The thunk is the box. This is what I am leaving you. I found it down in the basement, just grabbed the box when all our things were too much for my bedside drawer. So it all went into the box and the box went into my closet with some shoes on top of it that I never wear. Every last souvenir of the love we had, the prizes and the debris of this relationship, like the glitter in the gutter when the parade had passed; all the everything kicked to the curb. I'm dumping the whole box back into your life, every item of you and me. I'm dumping this box on your porch, but it is you who is getting dumped.

 The thunk, I admit it, will make me smile, a rare thing lately. Lately, I've been like Aimeé Rondelé in The Sky Cries Too, a movie, French, you haven't seen. She plays an assassin and dress designer, and she only smiles twice in the whole film. Once is when the kingpin who killed her father gets thrown off a building, which is not the time I'm thinking of. It's the time at the end, when she finally has the envelope of photographs and burns it unopened in a gorgeous ashtray and she knows it is over and lights a cigarette and stands in her perfect green of a dress, watching the blackbirds swarm and flurry around the church spire. I can see it. The world is right again, is the smile. I love you, and now here's back your stuff, out of my life like you belong, is the smile. I know you can't see it. Not you, but maybe if I tell you the whole plot, you'll understand it just this once, because even now I want you to see it. I don't love you anymore, of course I don't, but still there's something I can show you. You know I want to be a screenwriter, but you could never truly see the movies in my head, and that is why we broke up."

Sometimes I'd like just to ask her what honest words she can't afford to say

I feel very fortunate lately to recognize the fact that I seem to be growing into myself. It's not as though I'm "finding" myself, or that I've finally grown up, but I've reached a point where I look back at the past 5 or so years, and have no regrets. I no longer feel like I'm trying to successfully maneuver a route away from the choices I've made or the people I've hurt. I had a really incredible talk with an old, cherished friend recently that really helped me realize that. Nothing was incredible about the talk itself, aside from the fact that it happened. For the first time, I looked objectively at the last year or so before I moved to the Okanagan, at some of the decisions I made, or people I impacted, in both positive and negative ways. I have somehow, by some beautiful miracle, been able to trace the path of my life, and pinpoint why I did some of the things I did in the past, and what has lead to me growing beyond that into the person I am now. The thing is, I'm not entirely sure who I am now. My life feels like a gigantic puddle of who I was, who I am and who I want to be. I'm slowly picking through the debris of the last 23 years and having to decide what the ultimate conclusion will be... not now, or even years from now. But I know that this is the time when I start working toward the person I wish to be, and the impact I want to make. Now is the time when I stop analyzing the past and start building a future on God's will for my life. I'm terrified and nervous and overwhelmed... but I'm also excited. Above all, I know that everything that has happened to me or happened as result of myself, both the good and the very bad, has had an affect on where I'm going and who I am, whoever that is. I'm thankful for those experiences now. I know now that they were just growing pains, and the result feels very worthwhile.

I miss you
and I'm scared I don't really remember you anymore.
I live my life with people who never knew you, and the only real perspective I have is my own now. I have the same 10 memories that I feel I replay over and over, and I worry that those don't make up a fair representation of who you are.
I feel like it's only getting harder without you, and as more time passes, my understanding of my life and of you becomes more and more skewed. I have all these ideas of what a family is supposed to be like, and what it means to be raised and grow up and celebrate and love, but I feel like my experiences with all those things began to end when you left, and they don't fit with who I am anymore. It's like all my memories aren't mine, but are just a story I've heard so many times. I feel fragmented and missing all the time, and I don't know where I fit anymore.
I feel like I've lost you.