Bloom

I'm getting ready to spend a long weekend with my Dad and his wife in DC. Finally heading to the Cherry Blossom Festival after a couple years of failed plans and I'm so excited. I'm also incredibly nervous. I always have a lot of anxiety around my dad. He says hurtful things constantly and is just generally condescending. So that puts me on the defense emotionally while at the same time I want to please him and feel his acceptance. (as i reread this I realize that is exactly my posture in my dating relationships, thanks dad)
I'm never sure if he knows he is being a jerk and wants to get a response (which is my mom's theory), or if he is just unintentionally an asshole. And then there are moments when he is really kind and supportive and tells me that he loves me, which I'm so thankful for. In summary, it's just very confusing to spend time with him.

I listened to a sermon yesterday that spoke about giving forgiveness in our relationships, and the guy specifically spoke about his own father. He said this statement in passing that really struck me and I wish it hadn't. But he said "until I forgave my Dad, I could never truly be in a loving dating relationship."
I can't imagine forgiving my dad for all the hurtful things he has said and is yet to say. But isn't that what Jesus does? How can I withhold from my father the same grace that God gives to me everyday?
I recently gave a friend advice to make amends with her mother after she said "if anything ever happened to her, or if we never reconcile, I would feel so guilty." That's how I feel everyday about my Dad. I mean honestly, not a day goes by that I don't think about that...and I know that day will come, and I will have regrets without a shadow of a doubt. I just don't know how to do it, and make it stick. I don't know how to release it and let it go.
I thought once I got out of school our relationship would be better because I would be financial independent. and it is some days. Now I think, when I get married my relationship with my dad will get better (my sister's did...because my dad respects men, but not women). But maybe my dad doesn't live to see me get married. Maybe I just need to stop waiting on something, because nothing will ultimately reconcile us unless I have forgiveness. Plus, I don't want the broken relationship I have with my father to have any holds over me, I don't want to give him that power or satisfaction.

Letting go

“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” — Herman Hess

 “Change is never easy, you fight to hold on, and you fight to let go.” 

Today, I am relieved to let go.

Theme

All day playing in my head.

Spring spring spring

Things are actually going alright these days. I completed 16 hours of my community service this weekend with one more saturday ( 8 hrs) to go! I've started back into running...can't believe I haven't done it in so long. It's like this intrinsic part of myself that I have somehow stored away for so long. I feel more alive all the time. I've endured almost 3 months of solitude on this isolated mountain and I welcome this first day of spring with open arms, hoping for hope, hoping God says "yes" to me, hoping I say "yes" to him, and can experience the spring in the same way that the birds and flowers do...in a joyful frenzy with complete trust in the unceasing cycles of seasons and life for all that is in store during spring time. I want to bask in God's warmth this spring, unhindered by my past, my guilt, and sin, despair, and sometimes way word thoughts. I want to be full in.
Side note: Earth day is only a month away!


Behold, my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love!sitting bull

Mountain to Sea trail

I figured since my last blog was so strange and depressing I should check in so that people know I am still here, and really as crazy as my last sylvia plath postings may have hinted at. I feel like im on the other side of the mountain now. I have 25 hours of community service to look forward to, some reconciliation with God in my near future (i'm just sure of it), my family will be back in a couple of months along with tulips and warm weather, and a completed quilt  or 2 and a book that should be finished soon; So things are certainly looking up.
 I've been so aggravated with the state of my life as I am "in the middle" of a myriad of projects...funny to think that just 6 months ago I was complaining that I was not doing "anything", no hobbies or passions or things to pass time by other than work. My quality of life has certainly improved in the last couple of months, although my heart still isn't quite right, but this too shall pass....So all in all, things are looking up. A part of me doesn't want to let the heart pangs go, because it really means saying goodbye to a season of my life entailed in the good and the bad emotions the beginnings and the ends...to push that floating log that once saved my life back out to sea and watch it drift out of view, eventually forgetting it's significance and healing purposes in my life. I will stay by the shore and wait for the next drifting log to come to shore...although I hope I am not just standing and waiting for it, I hope I am dancing, spinning, laughing, and living when that drifter hits land.

I'm just afraid to let go of love because what if I can't get that feeling back ever again. What if I just forget how to feel the right emotions and have the right responses in order to give my heart to someone else.
It's surreal at times to realize that I am ok again without him, without anyone here really.I have returned to my life that existed before him (baseline), but actually I am not that same person, so I guess we are not to go back, but to go forward.... it scares me a little bit to have that capacity and be so ok with being alone most of my life, it makes me afraid that I will end up alone because it's so easy and comfortable to me, it's second nature.

Unravel

Whenever I'm feeling undone I turn to Sylvia Plath's quotes. Maybe I find comfort in her masked insanity. I was deeply impacted by her book "The Bell Jar". The main character, is an easily related to twenty-something, career driven women of young dreams and teenage cynicism.  Without any warning to the reader this woman, who struggles with the same weights of the world as you or I commits suicide without any warning to the reader. That book unnerved me,  and completely unraveled me the whole way through...I think it took me several days to get out from underneath the fog of pensive ponderings that Sylvia puts on you. 


This is where I tap into a safe "crazy" in some strange, indirect way.


"Is there no way out of the mind?" 


"Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night..." 


"That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket." 


"And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long." 


"I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them."
— Sylvia Plath (The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)


"I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it." 


"If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days."
— Sylvia Plath (The Bell Jar)




"I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet." 






"Mad Girl's Love Song 

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; 
I lift my lids and all is born again. 
(I think I made you up inside my head.) 

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, 
And arbitrary blackness gallops in: 
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed 
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. 
(I think I made you up inside my head.) 

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade: 
Exit seraphim and Satan's men: 
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 

I fancied you'd return the way you said, 
But I grow old and I forget your name. 
(I think I made you up inside my head.) 

I should have loved a thunderbird instead; 
At least when spring comes they roar back again. 
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. 
(I think I made you up inside my head.)" 
— Sylvia Plath

Tears and Dreams and Dreams and Tears although not necessarily in that order

I have truly come a long long way in the ability to even share my tears and vulnerabilities with another person. I never cried in front of anyone until I was 17 years old when my brother told me he was moving out of the house and I knew I was losing my best friend. As a kid my family was very dysfunctional and my mother's existence wreaked of fear, disappointment, heartache and disillusionment on a daily basis; Her hurt and suffering took her to a cognitive state so far away that she looks back on that period and regrets missing my childhood. To cope with the pain around me, I held tight, stayed strong, and I refused to show any emotion at all regarding my parent's relationship eventually leading to the divorce that took place when I was about 10. I didn't want to add to my mother's burdens and maybe I was afraid she wouldn't even notice my pain.  When I got a little bit older (maybe 12 or 13) I have a strong memory of my mom full out crying with me and I just hugged her and she cried. I never asked why she was sad, and I don't know if she even remembers that...but it really affected me, how I am not sure honestly...maybe I didn't want to put anyone thru watching me suffer or experiencing my grief if they did not have to. All this is to say, I've come a long way. When I got to college, I learned a lot about crying, in fact...there was no way I could have gotten through college without shedding some tears.

I am reading this great little find of a book called "God Never Blinks, 50 Lessons for Life's Little Detours" by Regina Brett; Chapters are short. I like that; One of her chapters is called  "Cry with Someone, It's more healing that crying alone," and I immediately thought of Mary Grace. She and I have cried together more times than I can count. And it's true, it is healing. I used to see crying as a severe flaw and weakness in people and now I embrace a good cry, especially the unexpected ones...when you haven't even been drinking...oh, those are good ones!

Last time we were together we listened to these lyrics that truly struck a cord in both of us for different reasons.

I was a little girl alone in my little world who dreamed of a little home for me. 
I played pretend between the trees, and fed my houseguests bark and leaves, and laughed in my pretty bed of green. 
I had a dream 
That I could fly from the highest swing. 
I had a dream. 
Long walks in the dark through woods grown behind the park, I asked God who I'm supposed to be. 
The stars smiled down on me, God answered in silent reverie. I said a prayer and fell asleep. 
I had a dream 
That I could fly from the highest tree. 
I had a dream. 
Now I'm old and feeling grey. I don't know what's left to say about this life I'm willing to leave. 
I lived it full and I lived it well, there's many tales I've lived to tell. I'm ready now, I'm ready now, I'm ready now to fly from the highest wing. 
I had a dream


A couple weeks ago I wondered what this meant for me, my only dreams had been thrown out and I've been waiting for a new one to come along in whatever form God would offer it.
Now, weeks later it has been revealed to me, and little pieces of my heart have become mine again, and I can recognize the warmth and precision of each beat. It's been awhile.
But now to share or not to share. I shared it with my sister today...something about sharing takes the magic out of a dream for me. It's not like sharing  a good day with someone which only magnifies and heightens your sense of greatness! But for me, it's like I'm giving away shares of that dream...to people who may or may not have a good reason to be invested in it. To me, the stakes are higher when more persons are in the know. But I wonder if that is true for all people.