Quote of the day :)

She did not believe that she could ever stop hating Nicky and Lee, until her pastor told her that when God was going to do something wonderful, it started with something hard, and when God was going to do something exquisite, He or She started with an impossibility.

Anne Lamott, Blue Shoe

Staying hot.

Um, how 'bout you do it yourself, yo?

Relationships are ridiculous. My relationship is ridiculous. How else can I possibly describe something that involves being with a whole entire complete other person, another human being, who has an entire life of their own, who thinks thoughts that are their own, who has been and done things for a lifetime that have made them them? Relationships are crazy and hard and anyone who says otherwise is wrong wrong wrong (but not really - I just like being right).

I struggle with wanting to control other people. I struggle to admit that I am wrong. I am defensive and angry when I'm scared, and other people scare me all the freakin' time with their otherness. I struggle to be myself in the presence of other people, to truly be myself and not adjust myself to be more in-line with the other person. I am weak in that way. It worries me.

All of these things are compounded exponentially in an intimate romantic relationship, in a one-on-one, no-one-else-sees-this-but-us kind of relationship. And my flaws are microphoned out on a loudspeaker with the person that I love. I am ugly when I don't get my way. Ugly ugly ugly.

I am drinking a cup of coffee from a small coffee cup, and it gets cold very quickly. It is hot for a moment, and then it is cold. I have to refill it if I want it to be hot, or have one of those constant-candle-warmer kinds of things. I need a bigger mug. It needs to be thicker and deeper so the coffee stays hot. I need my soul to be thicker and deeper so I can stay hot and grounded and steady. Some people call this an ego. It's all the same thing. It's my innermost part, my deepest me. This is the thing I am working on, this thing I carry around in my broken human body. This is the thing that matters. I have to trust that God is in control and can do all of those impossible miraculous things I've seen over and again, and sit in stillness and wait. This waiting will make me better. It will make me still. It will keep me hot.

Making good choices.

I believe that I am the master of my own destiny, that I in fact can determine the course of my life merely by making decisions that point me in the perfect direction. This is flawed logic. See, I can't predict what will end well with 100% certainty. I can guess. I can use past experience. But I can't emphatically know what will make my life as awesome as possible.

Seriously, I don't even know why I keep trying. All it takes is one bad decision to royally fuck it all up anyway, as the protesters at Planned Parenthood remind me every morning on my way to work. Life is not a series of equally significant moments. Life is a series of benign, uninteresting moments, interspersed with crazy important ones that change the entire trajectory of one's life. Yet I continue to believe that I can be more powerful than I am, that I can predict the future, and thus completely avoid pain. And it is these times, when I have set everything up in such a way that absolutely nothing can go wrong, that everything goes wrong, and I am painfully reminded of how small and helpless I am in the face of an infinite universe and unpredictable people.

So I eat more chocolate chip cookies, because I predict that they will be good, and then they are, in fact, very good. Nothing else matters. I have control over nothing else.

You don't understand.

Taylor & Ng has an entire collection of animal orgy mugs - classic

There is something that happens when a woman becomes the only single person she knows. And the secret is that she knows plenty of other single people - they just don't count. I have been through season after season of seeing all of my friends get married, and having to make new friends. Now it's been about a decade, and a new normal has set in, a realization that this is my life. There's a good reason that the men I date are still single in their thirties. There's a good reason I'm single, I suppose. Girl can't take a hint.

After a while, after a breakup, I make a decision to just stop already. It's the smart thing to do. But then I go and do it again: open myself up, let my heart stretch and hurt and soften in ways it never has, and then I get to today, the morning after, and remember why my life is the way it is, even if it hurts sometimes and is lonely in a way that other people cannot possibly understand.

I wonder why God chooses some people to have lives of stability and love and family. I wonder why God hasn't chosen me for those things, why I'm different. I'm pretty tired of fighting it. Fighting God is futile. And the hope of beauty is only crushed when reality steps in and shows its ugly face.

And I shall write.

Isn't this an amazing mug? I wish I could give it to everyone.

Esperanza means to wait -

Oh if I'd known this alternate definition,
I'd have suffered patiently,
to wait for healing, and precision

God exists within this pain -
she, triumphant in this waiting tumult,
years passing with each day

Inside my cold and wasting heart,
blossoms bud in silent reverence
for this Abba others cast away,
to ease their confusion, disbelief

I am quiet in my closet,
marking down with lines each day,
waiting for my esperanza - hoping God will find her way

I wrote this poem a few years ago, when life was bleak and I wanted something to hold on to. I was looking for God, or meaning. I was looking for a reason for pain. And I found that sometimes there are no reasons, that to truly accept the depth of evil, deep down in your soul, is suicide, and all we can do sometimes is love one another, and speak truth, and hold hands, and all that good mushy gushy hippie stuff.

Much love.

I am bad at being patient.

After waiting two years to find these in my size, when they arrived, all I could think was, "Meh"

So I moved into my new office today, and found that in spite of my saying that "yes, that's okay with me", it did not feel okay to have someone else's things in the office. The previous occupant needs a little bit of grace to move her things out. And in that moment (which extended into a school-day long of feeling crappy and anxious), I realized, "Hey Megan, you're not as patient as you thought you were." Shit. I was afraid of that.

I have waited for a lot of things in my life, and for some of them, I am still waiting. Scratch that. I've been waiting for a lot of things for my whole life. I thought that this waiting was making me a patient person, but in fact, it isn't. I've become angry about the waiting. I'm angry with God for the hand I was dealt. I'm angry at God for not plucking me out of my own life, and giving me a similar, but easier, alternate reality. Instead of being an adult about the whole thing, I've allowed my three-year-old self to run the show, and she's constantly asking, "Are we there yet?" And I don't know what to tell her. "No, we're not there yet. I don't know when we're going to be there, or if we'll ever get there, or if I even know where it is we're supposedly going." Is that what I say?

Whatever I end up saying, I want it to be something that helps me to be more patient, that points me in the right direction, instead of where I am at the moment, the decidedly wrong direction. Somehow, I need to learn to be patient for the things I want. But it's so hard. I want it now!

Also, I'm terrible with change, so that might not be helping the situation. Prescription? More cowbell!

Friday morning rant :)

I'm really struck lately by the number of people in the church-at-large, who find complete satisfaction in an individualistic faith that focuses on sin and personal development. Now, don't get me wrong, I am the queen of personal development. Personal development is great! Go get yourself a therapist! But please don't let that be the end. Personal development is for the world, for the needy and the broken. We work towards healing for ourselves so we can pass it on to others.

I'm so tired, just bone-drained tired, of this endless religious craziness in the US. I'm tired of people yelling about "traditional values". The Western church is now completely about my personal relationship with Jesus - my best friend, and how my life was changed, and how great I feel about myself. It's all about what my neighbor is doing wrong, how my neighbor is sinning, or causing me to sin, all about how frightened I am of where my country is going. I just want to scream, "Get a freakin' grip, people!"

I might be single forever (lest you forget that this blog is all about me finding a man), because I'm not willing to put "Jesus is my homeboy" on my eHarmony page. I might be single forever, but I'm not willing to live a life of family devotions and being a submissive invisible wife. I may be single forever, but I'm not going to buy into the idea that women should cover themselves up to keep men from sinning. It's 110 degrees out? Yup, I'm gonna wear shorts. Deal with it. You had a sexual thought about a person other than your spouse? Deal with it, and move on. I want everyone to collectively throw in the "personal sin elimination" card and just accept the fact that they're flawed and are going to do and say and think stupid things. Yup, you are. You're human. Deal with it. You think God agonizes about forgiving you? It's doubtful. There are, after all, seven billion people in the world, and they all need four hugs a day, so...you do the math.

Now go out there and do something that helps people, that doesn't involve a sign. Peace out.

It's all about the afterlife.

Isn't this SO cute?

They always throw around this term "the liberal elite." And I kept thinking to myself about the Christian right. What's more elite than believing that only you will go to heaven?

Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

We are not cylons.

 

I'm starting to hope that somehow, some way, I can overcome the monstrosity of my childhood and manage to eek out a healthy, long-term relationship. Most of the time, it feels hopeless. People who don't really know me assume I'm attached, because for all appearances, I look like someone who has a stable person in her life.

I'm not trying to be coupled to meet anyone else's expectations. I don't even know if I could manage a long-term relationship under one roof. I don't know because I've never done it. I don't know, because in my life, it has not yet proven possible. It is a very difficult thing to hold two things in constant balance: the desire to be with another person along with the need to be comfortable in my own skin and content with my own life, as it is, today.

Somehow, I have to hold on to both of these parts of myself, and continue to move forward. I have to choose to be the person whose life I have lived, whose full life I have lived, and still hope for something different to be created in the future. That person has suffered. That person hurts. But that person is only a person, a human being, if all of those things are true. To be human is to feel pain, and not be able to turn it off, or successfully wish it away. To be human is to be imperfect and my imperfection happens to be highlighted in this one particular area.

We are not cylons (tee-hee -- I am currently hooked on Battlestar Galactica).

What are you recycling?

There's a woman on Etsy that makes envelopes from old containers (think cereal boxes and the like). It got me to thinking-why can't I do that? Why don't I do that? So I am, right after I finish writing this post. I have an empty cereal box in my recycling basket just waiting to be cut up and reused.

Last week's unpleasant feedback re. shipping made me question myself, and that's never good. Questioning myself leads inevitably to self-hatred, and that's a dangerous road for me. So I have to work incredibly hard to allow criticism in without it affecting how I see myself. Bleh.

But I took it to heart. I am more committed now to presentation and aesthetic. It's obviously not going to change overnight, and I'm not going to change who I am, but it is a movement towards allowing other people's feeling to impact my life in healthy ways. I haven't always done that. I was raised to swallow other people's feelings and make them my own. I don't do that anymore. It's difficult to protect myself and love other people at the same time. It's a constant process. It means not denying pain when I hurt. It means letting myself be truly angry, and then figuring out why I'm angry and how I can act on that anger in a productive and meaningful way.

For me, I always come back to recycling. It's the core of who I am.

It's how I see God.

Ack! Lent is coming!

I haven't given anything up for Lent in years. My life is already about deprivation. Not a day goes by that I don't willingly live without something I want. The only reason I'm considering going to weekly Lenten prayers at my church is because everyone goes out for bagels afterwards. I'm tired of living through Lent, listening to people detail their wonderful deprivation skills, their ability to go without. Am I being judgmental? Definitely.

I am often judgmental. As long as this depraved habit doesn't affect my life in too negative a way, I usually just forgive myself and move on. Except then I miss out on what Lent offers for me (ah, perhaps individualism could benefit me in some way in this instance). Maybe Lent offers me a reason to spend less time on the computer. Maybe Lent offers me outside time for gardening, or more yoga and less ice cream, or vice versa. I don't know.

A while back there was a significant other in my life, in that he was significant because he'd seen me naked, and an other, because he wasn't a lady from my gym locker room. He was always looking to be more spiritual. He tried and tried to be monk-like without actually being celibate. We listened to monks-chanting-psalms on tape in the car. We lit candles and read the bible. When he was upset, I read to him from my favorite book of sermons.

This all felt like an act, like a play with meaningful lines, but with actors playing parts, not real people living their real lives. It all felt false, and I felt empty. On the surface, for me, it looked like I was making good decisions-I'd chosen a good Christian man, hadn't I? But being in this relationship made it feel like someone stuck a maple tap into my heart, and blood just dripped out day by day. I needed an infusion, and I was lost.

Sometimes spirituality is empty because it's only on the surface. We can't make something happen in our souls. We can try, but there has to be a response from the other side. Even Mother Theresa felt like God didn't speak to her. Being "spiritual" doesn't always mean what we think it means.

Maybe take some time this Lenten season for your spirit, in whatever way feeds your soul. I will continue to contemplate the ritual, as I do every year.

What's up with that?

 

At my job, I can make one hundred good decisions, and generally just be my bad ass self, and then one bad decision, and suddenly, I'm a failure. Everything I've done for the past few days is for naught, and I should never be gainfully employed, and I suck suck suck.

What's up with that?

Forgiving ourselves: treating ourselves the way we'd want to be treated by other people, is a difficult thing indeed. I can't tell you how many times this subject comes up for me in conversation with other people. At least once a day, I have to explain that it is unacceptable for you (i.e. the person sitting in front of me) to demean yourself in my presence. Don't do it. It serves no purpose. It is never therapeutic for you to hate yourself. It will never do you any good, no matter how much you think about it. So knock it off.

Speech over. Peace out mofos.

Anne Shirley on love

“For a moment Anne's heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert's gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one's life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one's side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps...perhaps...love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath. ”

L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

The double bind

I really wish I could take this lot on a beach vacation :)

The web is full of women and girls telling the world how thin they are (or want to be), how clean their house is, how awesome their kids/husband are, and how much Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. And in some ways, I'm totally into it. I like "miracle" recipes for carpet stains, and I think the female body is one of the most beautiful things we'll ever see. But I really hate it when I see anything along the lines of "You are single because God is busy finding the perfect man for you."

Maybe I'm subconsciously bitter, and taking it out on hopeful twenty-somethings who feel burnt by men. I really don't think this is the case. I just wish that all of this energy was put towards something more meaningful. Partnering is meaningful, but only to a point. There's a whole wide world out there, and sometimes it makes me sad to see loads of people playing into their aesthetic fantasies, showing off their "perfect" families and homes as if this is the point. It's not.

This isn't a finished thought. I haven't eaten breakfast yet, and I'm trying to recreate a thought that began last night after looking at Pinterest. People aren't evil, and they aren't intentionally oblivious, but sometimes they make me crazy. I can also be pretty judgmental. I'm trying to be an adult, and sometimes that feels awesome, and sometimes it feels really lonely. Here I am at the end of my education, and the beginning of my professional career, and all of my old friends are in a different place. They're happily married and nesting, and I'm living in a garage and freezing at night.

It's hard to know that I waited ten years to tell the person I loved how I felt, and he just walked away.

Shame in me

Shame is an awful thing. I can feel it in my chest. It's like a fist grabs my heart, and then wrenches it to the right. Ouch.

I am feeling shame at this very moment, and I am trying to talk myself through it. I feel the shame of a little kid who is tattling, something I don't directly remember doing, but imagine I did quite often. Doing the right thing is very important to me. And when I see it out there, possible, I want to grab it and make it mine. I want to own the essence of being right. I want to own it and let it define me. I want to be right. I want to be right. I want to be right. Ad infinitum...

Being right makes us feel safe. It makes us feel in control. When that is questioned, when we make small mistakes, we are struck with the uninvited wrenching fist in the chest.

I have to talk to myself often, remind myself that I am fallible, remind myself that I cannot know the right and perfect way to do everything. All I have is myself, and whatever faculties are available in that particular moment.

In all reality, I am human and flawed, and I never do the right thing. But so are you, so at least we're all in this thing together.

A life of thrift

"You're blessed when you feel you've lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. You're blessed when you're content with just who you are - no more, no less. That's the moment you find yourselves proud owners of everything that can't be bought."

Matthew 5:4-5 (The Message)

Thrift means never having everything you want, all at the same time. Thrift means sacrificing what you want for the greater good. Thrift means being content with who you are, no more, no less.

 

Living a life of thrift means not selling your soul, the invaluable, intangible part of you.

Looking ahead, somehow...

"If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a 'wandering to find home', why should we not look forward to the arrival?"

 C.S. Lewis

How can there be punishment for life on earth, when life on earth is so hard, every day? It never ends. There is no rest, no peace; there is only more pain, and suffering, and death, and sickness. Even at our very best, we are imperfect, flawed, and broken. We walk around in weakened bodies and poisoned minds. We may hope for better, but no one knows what "better" even is. We're told to be happy, but we aren't. We're told to be strong, but we aren't.

I am an extravagant hoper, yet I still fail. You read it here, as I hash out my own life on this blog. I talk big, and act small. I strive for the best. I want so much, and end up with so little. I am human, and impatient, and these past five days, although I have tried desperately to put a brave face forward, have been so very painful for me.

Please hug your dog for me, or your cat, or someone else's dog. If I could somehow spread a little dog love with this post, I think I could stop crying and eat some dinner.

Thank you :)

Just pick something.

 Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.

Bertrand Russell

In reality, hope is the worst of all evils, because it prolongs the torments of man.

Friedrich Nietzsche

I am a stubborn fool, and believe in things that will never be. But I am also a wise fool, because I believe in the impossible, and maybe, just maybe, hope things into being. I've been told that I would die without hope, because I said I didn't have any. But to live without hope is no life at all. To live without believing, even somewhere deep inside your own unconscious mind, that something better is possible, is to be dead.

Every person alive has some form of drive to live, and I call that hope, I guess, whether or not it really fits (If I tweak the definition a bit, I can claim that I have some and no one will worry about me). Depression can be the realization that there is no reason to hope, and no thing to hope for. So every day, I wake up, and I find something that keeps me going. Sometimes, it's completely delusional. Actually, it's usually delusional; that's why it sticks around. It's the rational hopes that don't last long-they are quickly swept into the "not possible" pile and filed away in the garage.

I believe in the impossible. It has gotten me through decades of life-not-always-worth-living. And to give it up, and hope in a God I cannot see or touch or feel, who may or may not ever return-that seems more delusional than thinking you can time travel to win the lottery, don't you think?

No one asked for this.

The following statements may make you shudder. I don't know you all that well, so please bear with me. This is a personal thing for every person, a decision that no one does or should make lightly. The decision is whether or not to have children, or more specifically bear children.

When I was a child, I learned about overpopulation, and it seemed like a perfect time for me to decide not to have kids. After all, from my experience, families weren't all that great, so I'd be doing myself and the rest of the world one big favor. Well, I was a kid, a kid without hormones. And now I am an adult, one big grown-up, and boy have things changed. Could I care about overpopulation? Not much.  I figure that a couple won't hurt anyone. But that's not true.

For every child that I bear on my own, I have to raise: feed, clothe, emotionally support, etc. That child, once brought into the world, is in it. They didn't ask to be, but they are, and it will be my responsibility to care for them. Now that's all well and good. I want children. I (hopefully) have the capacity to bear children; great. But just like my vocation, I choose my personal familial set-up based on a higher ethic. I do not only think of myself and my own needs when I bring a child/ren into the world. My faith informs me that I am not an island, and in knowing that, I lose the blasé attitude that what I do doesn't and shouldn't matter to anyone else.

There are children in the world who already need homes, and they aren't all in China, or Ethiopia, or Guatemala. They're around the corner from your house. They're living in a broken foster care system whose only hope is the faithful action of millions. It may not be a childhood dream of mine, but it's the reality I face as an adult. And right now, I'm not in a place to have a child, but when I am, this reality will weigh heavily on my decision.

You can read more here about people who make this same decision, but for other reasons.

For more information about foster-adoption in your area, search with your specific state or county.

9. Pictures of beautiful tattoos

I have been thinking about getting a tattoo since I was fourteen. My best friend and I would sit in the back of history class and draw pictures of what we'd get. At the end of four years of high school, I was firm in my decision, that the only tattoo I'd ever get would be the Olympic rings (obviously because I'd be in the Olympics-duh). Well, my Olympic aspirations are far and done, unless I pull a Dara Torres in a decade or so. But seriously, swimming is a far-gone part of my life; I don't even think of myself as an "athlete" anymore. I believe I've mentioned this before.

Of course I can still appreciate beautiful tattoos though.

1. Quotes are always lovely; the script has to flow just right though
2. A heart on the wrist, a heart on the upper back; anywhere works (Extras! 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)
3. Finally, trees are always nice; I saw a tree meditating on the calf once-it was nice. It's difficult to get a tree that doesn't completely overwhelm the rest of the body. I like them to be small. I am a firm believer that the body is already a work of art; to add to it is to presume that one knows better than God, that there need to be additions. I am a total prude though. Get all the tattoos you want-but no face tattoos! I love your face.

Ack! I always rethink my decision not to get one, but I think sometimes it's more fun to dream...