self-inflicted darkness.

I am feeling quiet.
It is 5:17 am, and I am attempting to reset my sleep schedule by staying awake through the day, and going to bed at a good hour Friday evening. I need to be able to not stay up so late.

It is always dark, you see.

Crazy

Restless restless restless. I like it when the little crazy things become known about a day.
Examples:
I wanted to steal a polar bear.
I cut my finger while trying to make a flashlight out of an Altoid box.
I took photos of ice and light today.
I have to ration my socks to the feet that need them the most.
My room is shrinking.
I only like living alone sometimes.
My car has been starting since my dad came and fixed it.
I went sledding with trash can lids, and was the happiest I have been all day.
My sister sent me a mooning elf and I think she meant 'I love you.'

Some Things Look Pure But Are Not

Me.

School ending.

I am not as motivated as I used to be.
As much as I complain about school, I like the feeling that someone is caring about the state of my mind-- about what and how I am learning.
Perhaps it is merely that I am not as obsessed over this. I am not sure where to go from here-- I am going to be a senior next year-- and you cannot go to school forever. I will probably go to graduate school, or disappear to London. Which has been a mild dream for awhile.
I would like the luxury of this--- painting perhaps and writing light stanzas here and there, living in a shabby flat, and drinking shabby wine, and being utterly unaccountable for anything. Perhaps utterly happy.
I do not like it when people start making your life into a time-line. It is my life, and I prefer not to have a map detailing when and what I should be doing with it.

Mostly, I want to be surprised.

Some Things Look Pure But Are Not

Snow.

Decisions

I have decided I enjoy this journaling to the nothingness.
Perhaps I will find in these tepid fingers a few words
to manipulate and coax, wield and petition politely.

I have no sense of how they come or when they decide to go,
but I wanted to let you know,
they will be here for awhile.

Joy

I was having a conversation with my mother recently, and she commented on my writing, noting that none of it was joyful. I was unsettled with this comment. In reading through my past poems and short stories, I understood the confusion. I used emotionally evocative wording, and uncomfortable subject matter. However, what I found to be useful as a comparison (against to a black sheet of paper, the white looks whiter) she found to be simply sad.

My mind drifts, as I go to my grandparents. It has been an odd week.

I am tired. Of starting over. Of being afraid to let people invest in me, being afraid of relationships that will give me something to miss, to mourn. I am tired of not having definite answers, of having too many damn feelings welling up, constantly, of injustice and suffering and the lack of faith rampant in this country. Rampant in myself. I have been bemoaning the ripping of my heart, left in various places in the hands of friends who can do with it what they will. I try to ration it carefully, how many pieces, after all, do you have?

Should I really entrust so much?

I have lost dear, dear people-- to time, to death, to space, to fear.

I am almost at the point of welcoming a monotone, an easing, just let me feel nothing! It would be easier. That same lack would be almost a relief. But not quite.

That, would be a lie. Unfortunately.

Because, I genuinely want to know people. I genuinely want to know this God whom I serve and fear and do not understand and love. And His world. I believe that this world is full of adventure and heartache and is the most brilliant place. Everything, is amazing, really. So in losing the tiredness, losing the fear, in becoming an emotionless creature-- I would lose this also. The way thoughts burst like electricity and light and something palpable across faces of those you know, or are trying to. The dance of making an unknown face someone who means something to you, who becomes precious unexpectedly. The surprise, of the depth in the light of their faces, glimpsing realness there. Pride in knowing that these people will be and are living, always and eternally, and thinking, and feeling-- every second of every day they have. Not always perfectly, in fact-- but simply with integrity and honesty. Striving to be worthy of their purpose, to be men and women who are worthy of the image they were created in.

I don't want to know what it is like to have nothing left to look forward to, a sort of completion, a resignation of having lived a good life. Of being satisfied with dying, because, really, haven't I lived? No more cities to explore, no more hearts to know and love, no more wishes and dreams and secrets to share.

My grandpa is a good man. So as I listen to him speak with no sadness in his voice, it hits me. This is what he is saying, I realize, as I listen to the stories and ask questions about love and life and dreams.... Why does it feel like he is saying goodbye? Why is he done dreaming, and talking of life like it is done? Resigned to leave his home, the truth in his friendships, the hope of newness and wishes?

I have been praying for just this, I realize. Wishing so desperately not to be so invested in living, really living.

And it is this sentiment perhaps, that has me after talking to my grandpa for forty-five minutes, a man whom I adore with all my heart, pulling off the side of the gravel road and sobbing so uncontrollably. How dare I pray for a lack, when I have been so filled?

If you memorize the textures of things, with your eyes instead of with your hands, the textures of walls and lights that make shadows on these walls, then you will understand. You will understand how the emotions and the twitches in peoples' eyes have textures too. The quick and quiet flinch of pain that briefly precedes the smile that is supposed to be there. The light that leaves the peoples' eyes, the darkness that swirls around the thin skin underneath those eyes. You will understand the texture of the sighs, and recognize the lilting music and the notes that raise just a little bit off in the voices, like a piano that needs tuning.

And then there is the joy, or the excitement, or the passion, or all of these things. When people cannot get the words out fast enough, or they stumble and let out too many, and stop and catch themselves. Like they have accidentally revealed too much, too soon, and want to take back all of the things that they have given away.

All of the people, everyone, have surprises in their movements and answers, and not necessariliy the answers themselves but the way in which they respond to the questions. The way in which they crinkle their eyes, or look away, or mask themselves with monotony.

This is the way in which I love people, knowing these things.