Friday, January 30, 2009

It's Official

I've fought that very sweet, quiet, fairy-like voice in my head that keeps saying "DO IT YOU BIG CHICKEN FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD AND HOLY" concerning writing anything as regards my future plans anywhere near the realm of cyberspace but, after being inspired to possibly be held accountable via blogging by a dear friend, I believe I may have received the proverbial kick in the pants to get me to listen to that really sweet, little voice.
I hate that really sweet, little voice. 

Truth is, folks: I'm scared as all alkjdfoiwelkjaldkfjoiusljl.
Making future plans and carrying them out can oftentimes be two horses that are coloured very differently. 
i.e. I make the plan to apply to my university of choice to study my degree field of choice and don't get accepted/can't find a way to make money in the meantime/get drug out of the country by my hair whilst kicking and screaming.
All-in-all, discover  a few, oh, minor dead-ends that might just result in total and utter disappointment. 

Being that total and utter disappointment is something I am never fond of facing, I usually take the mature road and ignore whatever it is that is bothering me, don't talk about it with anyone, proceed with business as normal, think I have the whole world fooled and everything in the hand  until someone mistakenly and unknowingly poses the question of, "So what are your plans after this?" and I hear a voice coming form my innermost depths (that suuuuurely is someone else) saying, "I DON'T KNOW BUT YOU DANCING ON MY BACK ABOUT IT PROBABLY ISN'T GOING TO GET US ANYWHERE NOW, IS IT?!?!"
And it's then that I realize that I might be a teensy bit stressed about those "future plans."

To avoid any such mishaps this time around, I have decided to try a new and different approach. 
I started off by crying. 
I am NOT a crier but, seeing that that whole bottled-up-emotions tactic was leading me nowhere, I ventured to the movie theatre to see the new Baz Lehrman film, "Australia" and hoped/prayed/pleeeeeaded that it would be horribly devastating, that every character might die, and that I would be brought to tears. 
I figured this might help. 
Well I cried all right. 
And cried. 
And cried.
 And then got mad because I couldn't stop crying and because I was beginning to feel that all my searching to "feel"  was just a bit over-the-top for me and that I was better off not having cried for three and a half bloody hours during a film featuring witch doctors and kangaroos. I felt like a fraud. I had stolen the crying-in-movies joy from the true diehards around me by crying louder and longer than all the rest of them. 
I suggest never trying this method of therapy as you feel like a big phony afterwards and then you're just the big phony with the red nose, puffy eyes, hoarse voice, and a fantastic headache. Extremely unprofessional.
And those diehards all know you're a phony, too. They KNOW.

My second approach was to communicate with my mother a bit more about what it is that was bothering me and apply the mother-daughter rule of asking mom for advice.  Cause moms always know, right?
After a few instances strongly resembling the aforementioned scenario of  polite-question-from-innocent-bystander-awarded-with-a-swift-kick-to-the-knees, I feel like I am getting a bit better in the daughterseekingadvice department and that is mainly due to the fact that my mother is in the US, I am in Germany and she can't smack me a good one for acting like a madwoman.
That and she's unbelievably patient with me. 

In keeping with the name of the game and being fair to the blogging public, I should include that my third approach was definitely one Vodka Gorbatschow. 
He's a swell chap and he does you proud until he leaves you the next morning and you realize that the "sweet nothings" he had been whispering to you the night before were all in your head and that he had had actually been beating you with your shoes. 

Be all this as it very well may:
I am recording on here that my future plans are very tentative, that I am applying for this and that university and applying for this and that job and looking for this and that place to stay. 
I'm sure that, as situations arise, that I will feel more comfortable talking about the huge elephant that has been standing over me, staring at me, drilling holes in my head, for the past few weeks, and I will be a little more specific. But, for now, don't ask for specifics.
Specifics I can't do. Specifics I won't do. At least not right now. 
After all, I'm still a work in progress and it's baby steps, people. Baby. Steps. 











Friday, January 9, 2009

To Zack

There's so much that I would like to say. Really, a lot I feel I have to write down. I've done a good deal in my real journal as of late but that is not for your eyes, my dear,  because, well, a girl needs a place for her secrets. 

I'd probably say something about having been in Berlin and absolutely despising that feeling that  I have every time I leave that city: that feeling of losing the ability to pick up my heels and run to whatever it is that life has in store for me next. That feeling that I have whenever I am in Berlin. 
I might say something about experiencing three days straight of amateur fireworks throughout the city and how it just felt really powerful to be in such a city that has seen so much throughout time and is now welcoming another year. 

I might then say something about being in Belgium (because uh, I am) and being in Brussels, walking alone for a few hours on end, letting the overpowering thoughts in my head empty out onto the streets, reveal themselves in the leftover Christmas lights, weave through the thousands of people and mix with their thoughts, then become extremely insignificant in the grand, ever-loving, scheme of things. 
What a put-it-to-you. It was swell.

I might talk about talking with my mother and how I hate it.
I would then follow that up with saying that I love talking with my mother and that my previous statement would definitely be worth a consideration regarding a retraction since she reads this too  but it's going to stay. 
I would then hopefully clarify  that I don't hate talking with her for any reason except for the simple one that I love her more than she might ever know and that the sheer fact that I can't be there and here and then here and there and back again breaks my heart. Simply and truly. 

And speaking of hearts, I would probably let my train of thought lead me to mentioning a conversation that I had:
the idea was that living in one country and then living for a period of time in another simply results  in never being able to really go home.
Your heart is there and it's here and then it's there but, no, it's really here. 
And "home" then becomes an abstract concept or an idea that can only be chased and never achieved.

And that would lead me, ultimately, to saying that - in answer to you-  maybe that is how one will feel about a spiritual walk with this Christ. 
Maybe we are never supposed to feel like this is "home" and yet how can we ever know that there is Home until we just know for certain? 
Maybe my wading and your wading and the fact that we are both waiting doesn't answer any of our immediate questions .
Is there any other choice, though, other than to continue on knowing that we won't find "home" until we are brought to it?
I might casually (and oh. so. casually.) mention that what you had to say was heart-wrenching, gut-punching, "tear-jerking," miserable, fantastic, horrible, and exactly what I needed. 
I would probably tell you that I sat and cried while donning my boots to go outside because it was then that I saw what you had to say.
And I might thank you. 
I probably would thank you. 
Thank you. 

And I might follow all of this up with talking about this post not being funny.
I would say that I prefer witty, lighthearted posts - ones that involve a lot of onomatopoeia, clever historical, philosophical, hell, even a few metaphysical references, and posts that don't leave me feeling any differently afterwards after reading them than I did before. 
But then I might say that this was just not one of those.
 Out of a hit-and-miss categorization, I might leave you to decide.
But I would have to be honest then and tell you that I really didn't care one way or the other.