It makes it that much harder to actually get any writing done, because i am so tired. And yet, i have always written at night. I am a mystery even to myself.
So, really, i just wanted to write to tell you how incredible you are, and how i am getting used to smiling again. I really am still in shock, and i imagine i will be for a while. Two and a half years is a long time. And yet, even in the midst of the shock, i am so thrilled and ready to move forward with our lives together. I still sometimes find myself being kind of sad out of force of habit, and then i will remember--i don't need to be sad anymore! And then i start smiling. And it feels so wonderful, and strange, and unbelievable, that you are really, truly mine, and i don't have to hide it. That i am no longer in a holding pattern. That i no longer have to wonder when, and if, it will ever happen.
And believe me--there were times when the "if" was much bigger than the "when." Many, many times i thought that i needed to start deciding just how much longer i would wait before i yelled "Screw you!" and ran to you as fast as i could.
Luckily, God somehow managed to keep me from doing that, and He kept me sane, and just when i was at the point of giving up, He convinced me to hang on just a little longer.
And now--here we are. Together. Real. Out in the open. And the more time i spend with you, the more i want to be with you all the time.
I can't wait to see what this next year will bring.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Saturday, September 6, 2008
I suppose i've always been a rebellious sort
Maybe that is why Super Christians just piss me off.
In my family we have a saying--"Oh, don't worry--they're just a Christmas card." This is used whenever one of us runs into someone and, after speaking with them for about 5 minutes, we begin to feel like crap in comparison to their perfect, charmed existence. but of course, no one actually has a perfect, charmed existence, so it's obviously all just a load of rubbish. Like those horrible Christmas cards that you receive every year--the ones that recount all of the amazing things that happened that year in the lives of the sender. They learned so much about themselves on that trip to the Australian Bush, and while yes, there were times they were hot and tired and didn't really love the fact that they hadn't showered in two and a half weeks, they really just became such a better person. Oh, and their fourteen-year old graduated from high school and started teaching physics at one of the local colleges, and they just couldn't be prouder! And the whole family just loves spending time together so much that they have family night every Saturday and they all recount for each other the ways they grew and learned in the past week.
Gag me. I hate those Christmas cards. Not that i need a blow-by-blow account of every fight and sickness that occurred during the year, but honestly, those Christmas cards with the starry-eyed story attached to the photograph of the family in their matching red turtlenecks just makes me want to kill someone.
It's just not real.
Neither are Super Christians.
I have no problem with someone who has a conviction about not watching certain shows or movies, or not listening to a certain type of music, but these people who say they don't watch tv--they don't even have cable!--are so ridiculous. They are the same ones who insist their children dress in fashions from the 1800's--can we say FLDS, anyone? Why is it that dressing like Laura Ingalls somehow makes one a better Christian? And God forbid the women wear any makeup!! You don't want to look like a harlot, now, do you?!
No, Super Christians can not be bothered with wearing normal clothes or having a normal life. They have important tomes to read to their children--those glorious children who never scream or fuss and just want to memorize Scripture. They have to talk about nature and how they sat under the tree and just breathed and wrote a poem about it.
But all of the starry-eyed, breathless commentary on their lives stops when something like pop culture comes up. Pop culture?! What is that?! I don't even know who Paris Hilton is!!!
Suddenly, all the gentleness goes away and you get something that is astonishingly close to snobbery. You must not be very spiritual if you know who all these celebrities are! Why, i've never even heard of that movie! I'm too busy cooking delicious, healthy meals for my glorious children and awe-inspiring husband! You apparently waste alot of time paying attention to the world!
And what is implied by these virtuous people as they wax eloquent about just how blessed their life is, is that yours obviously is not if you are wasting your time watching tv, going to movies, listening to anything other than worship music, or reading anything other than devotional books--in other words, anything they deem to be "worldly." Editor's note: The Lord of the Rings obviously does not count as something worldy, since it was written by a Christian man who was friends with C.S. Lewis, and anyway they're only watching it because of it's important lessons!
Ironic, i think, that so much of this is yammered on about on blogs, Facebook pages, and Myspace pages, although far fewer are on Myspace because Myspace is bad, whereas apparently Facebook is quite Christian! And there is seemingly nothing wrong or worldly about wasting so much time on the internet--just don't waste time watching tv! Television is evil!!!!!
Whenever i read these things, i find myself wanting to post about all kinds of things that would just horrify the Super Christians' sensibilities. Even if i just made up some crap, it would still seem more real than the garbage these people are spewing out.
In my family we have a saying--"Oh, don't worry--they're just a Christmas card." This is used whenever one of us runs into someone and, after speaking with them for about 5 minutes, we begin to feel like crap in comparison to their perfect, charmed existence. but of course, no one actually has a perfect, charmed existence, so it's obviously all just a load of rubbish. Like those horrible Christmas cards that you receive every year--the ones that recount all of the amazing things that happened that year in the lives of the sender. They learned so much about themselves on that trip to the Australian Bush, and while yes, there were times they were hot and tired and didn't really love the fact that they hadn't showered in two and a half weeks, they really just became such a better person. Oh, and their fourteen-year old graduated from high school and started teaching physics at one of the local colleges, and they just couldn't be prouder! And the whole family just loves spending time together so much that they have family night every Saturday and they all recount for each other the ways they grew and learned in the past week.
Gag me. I hate those Christmas cards. Not that i need a blow-by-blow account of every fight and sickness that occurred during the year, but honestly, those Christmas cards with the starry-eyed story attached to the photograph of the family in their matching red turtlenecks just makes me want to kill someone.
It's just not real.
Neither are Super Christians.
I have no problem with someone who has a conviction about not watching certain shows or movies, or not listening to a certain type of music, but these people who say they don't watch tv--they don't even have cable!--are so ridiculous. They are the same ones who insist their children dress in fashions from the 1800's--can we say FLDS, anyone? Why is it that dressing like Laura Ingalls somehow makes one a better Christian? And God forbid the women wear any makeup!! You don't want to look like a harlot, now, do you?!
No, Super Christians can not be bothered with wearing normal clothes or having a normal life. They have important tomes to read to their children--those glorious children who never scream or fuss and just want to memorize Scripture. They have to talk about nature and how they sat under the tree and just breathed and wrote a poem about it.
But all of the starry-eyed, breathless commentary on their lives stops when something like pop culture comes up. Pop culture?! What is that?! I don't even know who Paris Hilton is!!!
Suddenly, all the gentleness goes away and you get something that is astonishingly close to snobbery. You must not be very spiritual if you know who all these celebrities are! Why, i've never even heard of that movie! I'm too busy cooking delicious, healthy meals for my glorious children and awe-inspiring husband! You apparently waste alot of time paying attention to the world!
And what is implied by these virtuous people as they wax eloquent about just how blessed their life is, is that yours obviously is not if you are wasting your time watching tv, going to movies, listening to anything other than worship music, or reading anything other than devotional books--in other words, anything they deem to be "worldly." Editor's note: The Lord of the Rings obviously does not count as something worldy, since it was written by a Christian man who was friends with C.S. Lewis, and anyway they're only watching it because of it's important lessons!
Ironic, i think, that so much of this is yammered on about on blogs, Facebook pages, and Myspace pages, although far fewer are on Myspace because Myspace is bad, whereas apparently Facebook is quite Christian! And there is seemingly nothing wrong or worldly about wasting so much time on the internet--just don't waste time watching tv! Television is evil!!!!!
Whenever i read these things, i find myself wanting to post about all kinds of things that would just horrify the Super Christians' sensibilities. Even if i just made up some crap, it would still seem more real than the garbage these people are spewing out.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Early Attempts
Writing is hard.
Hard for me, anyway.
Which is terribly ironic, since i am, in actuality, a writer.
Always have been.
When i was a little girl, i wrote fake newspaper articles. I would write one main article and then fill up the rest of the sheet of paper with ads, weather reports, and j0kes.
I wrote a short story about fairies called "Dance of the Nymphs."
I wrote bizarre recipes for things like Coffee Lettuce Cups and bread made from bricks.
I wrote a novel entitled Victoria of the Violet Meadows, a direct rip-off of my favorite story in the whole world--Anne of Green Gables. I wrote it in pencil in a five-subject notebook and cut out pictures from catalogues to glue in for the illustrations. I filled that entire notebook. I even started to write the sequel, Victoria of the Sparkling Lake.
I wrote fake letters from a girl named Kari who was in a concentration camp. On this i was particularly confused, thinking that the camps were in Russia and/or Yugoslavia. And Hitler himself would come to the camp almost daily and feed the prisoners things like stale bread and mealy apples. I also wrote a short story about a woman named Maria who was from Yugoslavia and who went to Russia to work as a prison nurse. On this i was confused as well, since Maria's mother packed her a lunch for her trip to Russia which consisted of fried chicken, biscuits, bananas, spice cake, and milk. Of course when she reached Russia the landscape was barren, dark, and gray, with only a few lonely meager trees. All of the buildings were white and/or gray and all of the people were harsh and forbidding.
I'm not sure why i was so taken with Russia and Yugoslavia, and why, if i was so taken with them, i didn't attempt to learn anything about them.
Ah, but you see, i didn't need to study about those places. I already knew them. They were there, in my head, along with the fairies and the recipes and Hitler and the newspapers. I lived so fully in my imagination that it never occurred to me that what i wrote may be faulty. Indeed, accuracy was not the point. The point was simply, to write.
Perhaps it was all of the years of drinking all night and taking too many drugs that deadened my imagination. Those drugs took me places my imagination alone could have never traveled to. And of course, it never should have. Those are not places i was meant to go.
And so, somewhere along the way, in those places i always wanted to see but should never have traveled to, i got scared.
Scared of people. Scared of failure. Scared of dying. Scared of....easy to say life here, but that would not be the truth. I certainly wanted my old life back. The easy, dreamy life i had lived before drugs and parties and too much alcohol and no contact with your family and black candles and tombstones by your bed. I had been Anne of Green Gables in the flesh before all of this. What would i have given for one more afternoon of traipsing naively by the creek with my best friend who was as silly as i was. What would i have given to stand in front of the church and sing a bad song that Marie and i had written and were so proud of. What would i have given to again be that girl who had no fear of what others thought or said about her.
But that girl seemed to have disappeared irrevocably.
Until God brought her back.
As much as was left of her.
And now, i sit here, trying to write. Trying to think of how to bring more of that girl back. That silly, ridiculous, laughing girl who just wanted to hold hands with her best friend and pick flowers and steal fruit from the tree down the street and write novels by the lamp late into the night. If only i could think of something to write, maybe i will truly become her again!
Or maybe, i've been her all along.
Let's wait and see.
Hard for me, anyway.
Which is terribly ironic, since i am, in actuality, a writer.
Always have been.
When i was a little girl, i wrote fake newspaper articles. I would write one main article and then fill up the rest of the sheet of paper with ads, weather reports, and j0kes.
I wrote a short story about fairies called "Dance of the Nymphs."
I wrote bizarre recipes for things like Coffee Lettuce Cups and bread made from bricks.
I wrote a novel entitled Victoria of the Violet Meadows, a direct rip-off of my favorite story in the whole world--Anne of Green Gables. I wrote it in pencil in a five-subject notebook and cut out pictures from catalogues to glue in for the illustrations. I filled that entire notebook. I even started to write the sequel, Victoria of the Sparkling Lake.
I wrote fake letters from a girl named Kari who was in a concentration camp. On this i was particularly confused, thinking that the camps were in Russia and/or Yugoslavia. And Hitler himself would come to the camp almost daily and feed the prisoners things like stale bread and mealy apples. I also wrote a short story about a woman named Maria who was from Yugoslavia and who went to Russia to work as a prison nurse. On this i was confused as well, since Maria's mother packed her a lunch for her trip to Russia which consisted of fried chicken, biscuits, bananas, spice cake, and milk. Of course when she reached Russia the landscape was barren, dark, and gray, with only a few lonely meager trees. All of the buildings were white and/or gray and all of the people were harsh and forbidding.
I'm not sure why i was so taken with Russia and Yugoslavia, and why, if i was so taken with them, i didn't attempt to learn anything about them.
Ah, but you see, i didn't need to study about those places. I already knew them. They were there, in my head, along with the fairies and the recipes and Hitler and the newspapers. I lived so fully in my imagination that it never occurred to me that what i wrote may be faulty. Indeed, accuracy was not the point. The point was simply, to write.
Perhaps it was all of the years of drinking all night and taking too many drugs that deadened my imagination. Those drugs took me places my imagination alone could have never traveled to. And of course, it never should have. Those are not places i was meant to go.
And so, somewhere along the way, in those places i always wanted to see but should never have traveled to, i got scared.
Scared of people. Scared of failure. Scared of dying. Scared of....easy to say life here, but that would not be the truth. I certainly wanted my old life back. The easy, dreamy life i had lived before drugs and parties and too much alcohol and no contact with your family and black candles and tombstones by your bed. I had been Anne of Green Gables in the flesh before all of this. What would i have given for one more afternoon of traipsing naively by the creek with my best friend who was as silly as i was. What would i have given to stand in front of the church and sing a bad song that Marie and i had written and were so proud of. What would i have given to again be that girl who had no fear of what others thought or said about her.
But that girl seemed to have disappeared irrevocably.
Until God brought her back.
As much as was left of her.
And now, i sit here, trying to write. Trying to think of how to bring more of that girl back. That silly, ridiculous, laughing girl who just wanted to hold hands with her best friend and pick flowers and steal fruit from the tree down the street and write novels by the lamp late into the night. If only i could think of something to write, maybe i will truly become her again!
Or maybe, i've been her all along.
Let's wait and see.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
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