Home

I keep wondering when I'm going to stop feeling as if every misfortune that happens to me is punishment. Or justly deserved consequences. I keep wondering when I'm going to stop believing that I will never build a home because I don't deserve to have one.

It feels like a piece of me was stolen today. I feel so hopeless when I think of my foolish dreams, of this idea that I was building a future, a home, one piece of furniture at the time. A bookshelf now, then a bureau, then a desk, plants, a little more mortar each time.I could tell myself that my life had worth because I was building and adding and accumulating and what I now feel is that the only thing that can possibly give me worth is whatever I have managed to accumulate within myself because all other things are transitory.

That is so completely true that it frightens me. There is no further security, that is what you find when you move past illusions: the only thing of true worth in your life is you, the person you are. And it's the only thing you can never be sure about. You can buy good furniture. You can get a little house of your own. You can graduate and have a degree. But all these things mean nothing if you cannot make something of yourself. Why would I have thought of that when it's so much easier to gauge the quality of a bookshelf's wood than it is to gauge the quality of a person's character?

When I thought that this one piece of furniture was taken from me, this is what I thought. This is how I felt. I felt that a part of me, of who I am, of the home within me was gone. It had been taken away. Alongside the despair, there's been a lot of anger too, a lot of wanting to blame someone, especially myself. There was a lot of loneliness, most of it fixed on Saturday night, a lot of wondering what I was going to do now that I'm all alone in my own head.

But I think a lot of it has also been realizing how much things have NOT changed, and that this loneliness is the simple nature of the human condition; a fact often disguised in the illusion that love gives, the illusion of traveling through the journey of your life with somebody. I'm letting go of that illusion. I'm learning what home means and how much of it is made, solely, of my own self.

Words, Words, Words

Or I could also say Work, Work, Work. Every time I stop to think life seems insurmountable. Every time I try to look at the bigger picture, things seem impossible. Distant thunder turned out to be nearer than I could have possibly predicted.

I'm getting used to living in my own skin. I'm getting used to being alone in my head. I'm getting used to the cold in my bed. Sometimes I forget how lonely and scary that can be. Sometimes I am forcibly reminded of this very fact.

So I try not to pause. I try to keep working and toiling and working because the silence has questions which I cannot answer (What is your worth, really, as an individual? Where is your significance now?). I'm afraid that if I don't learn how to be alone now, then I never will and my entire life will be made of fear and uncertainty.

In so many ways I am still a little girl. I thought true love would give me meaning. I thought true love would give me transcendence. When the simple truth is that nothing does, nothing can guarantee you this. Life is so quick and meaningless. I'd forgotten that. Meaning comes from each day, from whatever enjoyment you can wrestle out of the circumstances you are given. I'd protected myself so well from reality with the fiction of love that overcomes all. How can I not feel the temptation to do it again? How will I search within myself now for what truly matters?

I feel like I'm too tired for tears. I feel sick to my stomach at the thought of sorrow. I'm so tired of crying and crying and feeling like my entire life has been crying. I just want to be okay. I just want to enjoy the health and happiness I have found lately. I want to sleep and wake up refreshed and stop wondering impossible things. I want my routine again and for life to feel normal again. I want to gaze towards the horizon without fear and I want to be free. I want to stop expecting so much from myself and to start enjoying the journey.

Today I want to lay on the grass and smell the sun-baked earth. But I don't want to do it alone. I want to turn around and talk, about the things I wish to do and the things that are being done. I want to talk about nothing and fill the silence with the joyful, meaningless, chatter of deep understanding. To say nothing and everything.

But there's no time. There's so much to do. I want to keep resting and resting and reading and reading and not thinking about the future and at the same time I want to WORK, WORK, WORK. I haven't wanted to work in such a long time. I want to write and to talk about writing. I want to draw and to talk about drawing. I want to graduate and to write and to move on. I want it all, now, everything.

One step at the time I suppose. One story with each step, one drawing, one sentence, one word.

I've been working on this lately. It's been more play that work but it has been fun and productive in its own small way:

It's been restful and enjoyable but it's not my own stuff. It's not my talent and my work, just my joy. For the moment, all my joy.