What can save me from my own thoughts?

 "To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write."

- Gertrude Stein

I’m a creature of the night. It’s when the wheels of my mind start turning. The thoughts that bombard me are the ones I manage to go all day not dwelling on. But at night, it’s nearly impossible because there are no interruptions. It’s the same feeling I get when I have to drive for long periods of time with no one else in the car, but me. So, I write. There’s no rhyme or reason to what gets written down or the order in which the words cascade out from my fingers. *shrug* They just flow out every which way they like. Sometimes I write about what I’m feeling, but lately, I’ve been trying to channel all of that into writing a story.

I’ve tried writing before, but I’ve never gotten more than two to three good paragraphs before I hit a brick wall. It’s the reason I think I’ll be writing this story forever. I’m going to try not to give up on this one because…I let someone else read it. I hardly ever let anyone see my writing. Normally, I just write something and discard it or I keep it where I’m the only one that can see it, but this time, I shared it with someone else, with a writer. She liked it and she spear headed an enthusiasm in me that had me thinking of a beginning and a middle and an end. I’d never gotten that far before and I was slightly impressed by the story I could possibly weave about two souls that continue to meet up in life when things seem to go amiss time and time again, sometimes by outside forces other times by their own stubbornness, fear, and just plain old mistakes.

I always hear writers talk about their characters as if they’re all real and controlling their own fates. I was talking to someone who was working on a novel. I asked her what her story was about and as she proceeded to tell me about characters, I was amazed when she said that her two main characters had somewhat derailed her original storyline for them and she was hoping they would get back on track. I thought to myself, how strange she talks about the characters as if they’re real people and she’s just a spectator in their lives, but it’s something I’ve noticed with all writers. I want to be in that strange place too because the best stories seem to come when writers talk about their characters as if they’re the actual ones controlling the way things turn out with their actions.

I call my writings snippets. I’ve written many things. I start. I can get a short piece. They flow through my fingertips onto the page with such ease and then? Nothing. It’s over as suddenly as the idea came to me. I want the snippets to turn into pages and the pages to turn into chapters. But…we’ll see because my randomness has me all over the place. For now…I’m going to share one of my snippets that only one other person has seen, but not for long.

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Snippet :) 

He was by no means a perfect man. He had flaws like anyone else. When it came to kindness and a willingness to be helpful to others, a funny warm tingle stirred in the pit of her belly, a sort of pride that he could be such a good man, almost to a fault because he tended to not want to hurt anyone’s feelings, but then…there were relationships. 

He was an utter mess. She was a mess all of her own accord, sure. It had been a mess that brought them together, a period of time where she felt like she was spiraling out of control and then she saw him walk into the room when she was out with a group of her friends one night. 

She’d never done anything like what she was about to do. Butterflies swarmed in the pit of her stomach. She was almost lightheaded at the implications of her thoughts, but she’d never wanted anything more than she had in that moment and she was used to getting her way. But this time, she couldn’t see the forest from the trees. She wasn’t prepared for what would happen when they tripped into each other’s lives. And so it began.  

She ached to be near this man, to feel him. It was a feeling she hadn’t known was there until it dawned on her how much she really cared. It was confusing. When she looked at him, she could see a lifetime, but she could see pain and hurt too. She could see a promise of happiness in spite of it all. It was these raw, unadulterated feelings that hit her with a realization. 

She was in love.

She knew it was true, no matter how much she tried to deny it. She didn't have an eloquent string of words to say why she loved him. The answer was simple. She felt alive with him. 

She knew her feelings were real because they had stayed, lurked in her heart and soul enduring pain, betrayal, lies, deceit, hurt, anger, lust, hardship, and now loss. It was this love, so pure and true that had broken her to the core, through her spirit. She could live her life without him and she would love again, but he had ruined her because she feared that she would never love anyone the way she had loved this man. She had fought against it and lost. He’d taken root within her and there was no going back from what it had awakened in her heart.

How many times had she asked herself how she’d ended up in this place with this man? And how many times had she purposely pushed all the buttons she knew would push him away? And how many times had she sabotaged any chance of having anything real with him from her naïve assumption that she could keep her heart from being broken, that she could keep herself from falling, that she could keep herself from ever being hurt if she never got her feelings involved. If she never cared enough, he could never hurt her. If that was the case, why was her heart a mess of broken pieces? 

She was hurting now and he was gone.

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The Parable of the Unforgiving Servant...

"Then Peter came up to Him and said, Lord, how many times may my brother sin against me and I forgive him and let it go? Up to seven times? Jesus answered him, I tell you, not up to seven times, but seventy times seven" – Matthew 18: 21-22

If you’ll turn in your Bibles with me to Matthew chapter 18.... The chapter must be read in its entirety. Jesus let us know in verse 35 that our Father would deal with us in the same way as the unforgiving servant. I am by no means a theology expert, but let’s break this down. The King in this chapter represents God and the servant represents people. There are a lot of nuances in this chapter and you could miss something if you gloss over it.

Understand that the servant owed the King an amount of money that he would never be able to repay in his lifetime. The servant not only asked the King for mercy, but declared he would pay the debt back IN FULL. Say what? The servant owed the King 10,000 talents. Those who have researched what the modern day equivalent of this is ranges from 3 billion to approximately 150,000 years of an average person’s salary. Like I said, I’m no scholar in this area, but the point is that it was more money than even Oprah has. The servant knew he wouldn’t be able to repay this and yet, he tells the King he will. What does that sound like? How many times has someone done something to you or have you done someone else wrong and instead of admitting you’re wrong or telling the truth, you persist in wronging the other person or that person still wrongs you? But I digress…

This servant is owed 100 denarii by another servant. This amounts anywhere from $1,000 to about 4 months of an average person’s salary. The servant demands his 100 denarii, but the other servant asks for mercy and says he will pay the debt in full. The servant refuses and has the man thrown into jail. But…wait a minute? Didn’t the servant just have his impossible debt cancelled out by the King? And now he is refusing to forgive a debt that by the same standards is pennies compared to what he owed? How had he treated this man that had wronged him? He choked him, demanded what was owed, and then threw the man in jail.  Had he forgotten the mercy that was shown to him?

When word got back to the King what the servant he had forgiven had done to another, the King was angered and turned the servant over to the jailers to be tortured until he had repaid the debt.

Forgiveness. Ladies and gents, we are not perfect beings. We are human and it is instinctual to seek revenge and hold grudges. How could any of us possibly suffer through the deliberate pain inflicted upon us by others? What about betrayal? Or people who use others for their personal gain and then cast them aside like yesterday’s old news? People can be downright hurtful, hateful, and just plain nasty to each other. We’re told to forgive them. I know this to be difficult firsthand. Do you not think it was difficult for God to watch his Son be destroyed by the people He loved? Can we ever repay that debt to Him?

 “Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the altar. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift." – Matthew 5:23-24

Forgiveness. Why do we forgive? Imagine how you feel when you’re in an unforgiving mood. Do you feel happy-go-lucky? Do you feel light as a feather? Do you feel like skipping through the meadows with singing birds and forest animals like Snow White? Probably not. Stressed comes to mind. Angry and frustrated. Sorrowful for yourself, maybe with tears. Grumpy even. Overly serious all the time. And don’t think those around you don’t notice that either when a transgression is brought up in conversation. I think maintaining forgiveness is a daily struggle. You have to be prayed up. That doesn’t mean you won’t have those feelings, but don’t be 75 years old still hating a kid you never even saw again after high school for bullying you or using a racial slur or breaking your heart. You get the point. I think the hardest people to forgive are those that are closer to you. When someone you love hurts you, it cuts deep, like an open wound that never quite heals. If you threw salt on the wound, no matter how old it gets, it flairs up again. When we forgive, it releases those untreatable wounds to God. Let go, Let God. The battle is not yours, it’s the Lords. Turn the problem (person) over to God. Let him take that burden from you and lift you from despair and hatred. So easy, yet this more than anything else is what we all struggle with. Remember, you are just as capable of hurting someone as the person who has hurt you.

Forgiveness. If you’ve ever been hurt by someone so deeply that thoughts of them throws you into an emotional turmoil that could lead down a very dark road, then you know forgiving is one of the hardest things we could ever do. Why? Because we don’t forget. Most of us are not immune to emotional pain although there are a lot of people who can hide it. Forgiving doesn’t mean we forget, but it does mean that we don’t hold a grudge. We don’t seek out revenge. We don’t plot someone’s demise. We forgive and move on even though we will never forget. That’s a hard pill to swallow depending on what the situation is. This doesn’t mean that you just allow someone to continue to walk all over you or that you keep a bad apple in your life. You can let that person and that situation drift away, but you forgive them on their way out of your life.

What I’m beginning to understand is that we are not intended to be divided, but together fashioning after the unconditional love that has been divinely bestowed upon us. Reconciliation is ideal, but what about when you can’t? I think the idea is to truly release those situations and people, forgiveness. If you and that person can move on from it, great. Don’t get too bogged down in the simplicity and let’s use some common sense. No one would advise a battered woman to return to her abuser. But after having gone through a situation like that, how much resentment and hate could be festering? It’ll take time to heal, but you have to learn to forgive to free yourself from the hold of that bad place. Resentment can be a powerful thing, if you let it. I’ve struggled with that too.

I will tell you that it’s taken almost 3 weeks for me to finally start and finish this. It has been heavily on my heart for some time now. I would write, erase, start again, and at times feel the familiar prickle and sting in my eyes of tears unshed. I haven’t forgiven my brother and I have to admit that I can go from zero to a hundred when I think about everything he’s put my parents through and then now, be so ungrateful and selfish. One thing you don’t do is mess with my parents. I’ll go all out for them and I don’t care who you are. Don’t mess with my folks. They’re my heart, but I can’t have this heaviness on me. How much torture have I endured already for this unforgiveness? And what about my last job? Past broken friendships and relationships? How much have I already missed out on until I embraced the parable of the unforgiving servant? This isn’t an overnight fix. When your heart has been hardened for so long, it can take time to just…let it go. I’m working on it.

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Falling leaves you feeling like a failure that rocks you to the core…

"Great spirits have always encountered violent oppression from mediocre minds."            - Albert Einstein

Falling is easy. Getting up is the true test.

No one likes a pity party. I like to be upbeat, confident, perky, silly, and goofy. And I like to maintain those qualities even when everything has gone to hell in a hand basket and all I want to do is breakdown. Nevertheless, for whatever reason, I don’t like showing weakness. I was told once that I walked around like I was the Queen of Sheba. I was taken aback by that comment and somewhat confused because I had no idea what that man was talking about. Later, I thought about it. If you see me walking down the street, I walk like I own the damn block. Put me in a courtroom and I have my game face on and I give off this “I’m the shit” vibe. It started out as a defense mechanism, now it just happens. I walk into a room and I can be nervous with a basket full of butterflies swirling in my stomach, but on the outside? I look like I’m the shit. My mannerisms and the way I carry myself has been tailored and molded so that no matter how much of a nervous wreck I am, you will never know it because I look like I know what I’m doing all the time, even when I don’t. I wait until I’m in a room somewhere by myself before I let my guard down. But I digress…there’s that vulnerability again.

There is a reoccurring dream that has me leaping out of my sleep sometimes. I’m falling continuously with no end in sight. Falling. Falling through a dark, deep black, purple sky. A paralyzing fear grips me, heart pulsating through my chest. I can hear it in my ears. There’s no sound though. There’s never any sound; no scream pushes out my lungs to my lips. I’m breathing quickly. In. Out. In. Out. There’s a jerk and I’m awake…

Naturally, I went to Google, as I’m the Google queen, and looked up the meaning of falling dreams. They all say much of the same thing with a slight variation here and there. There’s usually some description about anxiety, sometimes something about feeling out of control, and other times something about being afraid of something (maybe the unknown?). As many times as I’ve had this type of dream, I can’t possibly be having those types of feelings constantly…or can I? I feel like I’ve been on this never ending rollercoaster ride for awhile now, but not the fun kind that gives you an adrenaline rush. It’s the kind of rollercoaster ride that feels like the tracks are one screw from sending you careening through the air to plunge downward to the Earth in a violent crash. It doesn’t sound pleasant, right? Neither has the last couple of years for me, but I grin and bear it, as much as it has sucked the life out of me. If this is God’s way of trying to tell me something, then I’m all ears. I’m here and I’m listening. And If I’m not getting it, please help me get it because I’m ready to stop holding my breath and get off this crazy ride. In limbo doesn’t even touch the tip of the iceberg. Have I failed? I’m 28 and what really do I have to show for it? That’s what I was thinking the other day. I’ve failed at so many things…jobs, interviews, relationships, friendships, missed opportunities. Why haven’t I been able to get it right? Or is what I think and where I should be two different things and I haven’t realized it yet? I’m at a loss here.

I had a vision when I was 16 of how my life would play out. I’d go to college to get a degree and go on to have an amazing career. Then I’d have the perfect husband with the perfect cookie cutter family. I wanted my 2.5 kids with the golden retriever and the white picket fence. Who came up with the whole golden retriever part anyways? Not really my type of dog. I’d rather have something else. Anyways, that was my 16 year old naïve dream. Does this make me a failure? I think we are our own worst enemies. I have such high hopes for myself. I want to be and do everything for everybody. I want to be the best, I don’t want to stumble and fall. I don’t want to make mistakes, but I do. All the time. How many mistakes does it take before you become a failure? 1…2…3? This isn’t a commercial and you can’t ask an owl in reading glasses how many licks it takes to become a failure and get a simple answer. Life doesn’t work that way.

You’d be amazed at how you look through someone else’s eyes. Some would be surprised at how amazing someone else thinks you are. I’ve been told twice in less than three days how much I’ve accomplished and how proud two different people are of me that are not related to me. It was like being shocked with a defibrillator. I’m not gonna lie, I teared up because neither of these people have any idea how lost I’ve been. I may not have fulfilled the dream of an innocent 16 year old child, but I’ve turned out to be a decent human being and a lawyer at the same time. Whatever downs I’ve gone through, going through, and will go through are for a reason. I firmly believe and have always believed that everything happens for a reason. You can look back at your life and pinpoint the little turning points here and there that have put you where you are now. Oddly enough, after you’ve gone through a season, things turn out the way they should and if you like the person you are, you wouldn’t change the path of that yellow brick road because you wouldn’t be who are. Life will never be easy and there will always be something. That’s not to say that I won’t feel defeated at times. Having the strength of a mustard seed is not easy. I’m human, not perfect. I have to remind myself that it’s not the challenge that counts; it’s how I solve the challenge and what comes out on the other side that matters.

Remember...You is kind. You is smart. You is important. You are a child of God.

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My mind is a labyrinth that many have failed to navigate successfully, myself included

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives. – Henry David Thoreau 

A million thoughts. It’s always the one that you so desperately try to ignore that decides to overshadow all others. In a word, I’m a paradox. There’s an ambiguity there that even I have difficulty grasping, deciphering, and understanding. It’s the reason why I have countless times tried to keep a journal of sorts only to fall off the wagon looking dazed and confused. I am utterly perplexed by my uncanning ability to weave words of the English vocabulary with a brilliance that I am at times awed by. I had a professor in college who used to read passages from the top 4 or so essays from the class. I remember sitting in my chair as he read one of the most beautiful paragraphs I’d ever heard. I kept thinking to myself, “why didn’t I think of that! God, that was SO good!” And then? It turned out to be my essay. Well…I’ll be damned. I swear, I sit down and I write sometimes and have no idea what I’m writing. I start with an idea and I just take off. It’s like I’m on autopilot with the words flowing freely from my fingertips, but I can’t seem to weave those same beautiful phrases, sentences, paragraphs when it comes to putting a spotlight on myself and my innermost thoughts. Or rather, I just can’t seem to keep up with the openness of it all.

There’s a certain vulnerability that comes with the territory when you’re writing. In a sense, you’re letting others see pieces of you. I’ve always had a problem being vulnerable. You see…when you’re vulnerable and you let people in, that’s when all the negative (pain, hurt, deceit, cruelty…) can usher itself in. At that moment, someone else has the ability to take that vulnerability, turn around and blindside you with hurt. We all take a risk when we open a door to reveal something to others and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling a certain fear of someone catching me off guard. Journal, diaries, blogs…they’re all the same to me. You never really know how or what someone is feeling/thinking unless they tell you. That’s what those things do; they tell you a person’s feelings and opinions. That’s what makes it a sign of vulnerability.

People write for a variety of reasons. My purpose is to get all of this stuff out of my head. Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by thoughts and emotions that I’m not sure what to do. So, I write. Scribble on napkins, old receipts, gum wrappers, envelopes, and scraps of ripped paper. A blog is my attempt to keep all of the scribbles in one place for once. Keyword is attempt. I can be all over the place and no place all at the same time. Hopefully, I can gain some insight about myself and this crazy life I live by doing this and maybe someone else can find some comfort or clarity for themselves through my ramblings. 

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