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.

Geysers are big.

Yellowstone postcards from 1931

Oh wow. I've gone off the deep end. I've lost track of the words that are coming out of my mouth, and my mouth has taken on a life of its own where it operates without the presence or direction of my brain. Bad times, my friends. I am in trouble.

Bipolar disorder runs in my family, and I have only ever run on the severely depressed side of the mood spectrum. I've been having a lot of different weirdness going on in my body, and I'm not feeling like all is well, or as it should be. Tomorrow is a holiday, and I work all day on Tuesday, but I'm calling my psychiatrist as soon as I can. Whatever is happening is abnormal and not at all okay. Maybe it's nothing; maybe it's just a ton of anxiety, but I am not going to let it continue.

That being said, if you have any kind of mental health issues/diseases/conditions, please know that there are always people willing to hear you. Whether it's a suicide hotline, or a teen crisis line, or a domestic violence hotline, people want to help you. Sometimes all we need to do is reach out from the frenzied clutter of our brains and tell other people that we need help, and we gain a new chance at freedom. So I'm gonna do that, before things get worse, while I still have a chance of turning this train around.

Decisions, decisions

I'm very particular about decision-making. I do things because they are "the right thing to do". This may get me into trouble at times, but I've never felt bad for trying to do the right thing. When I was a kid, I listened to Adventures in Odyssey from Focus on the Family Radio, and there was a show about this topic. The conclusion of the show was: You can do the right thing for the right reason, the right thing for the wrong reason, the wrong thing for the right reason, or the wrong thing for the wrong reason. This really stuck with me. So for me, the right reason is always the goal. Of course, the right thing is preferable to achieving that goal, but the wrong thing will suffice.

Sometimes the voice in my head tells me to do things that seem weird, out of character, or rather, very much in character (just the crazy, neurotic character that I regularly try to downplay). Oftentimes, this voice does not go away until I do the thing, and then I find out how great it was that I chose to do it, how much I learned, how great it is for the Kingdom of God, blah, blah, blah. But that intermediary space totally freaks me out. "Why am I having this thought?" I ask myself. "Am I subconsciously trying to sabotage a relationship?" This wouldn't be out of the question. I've been known to do this quite often.

Lately the voice has been telling me to tell someone something, and I'm not even sure about the specifics of the something, just the generalities. And the telling is not bad for anyone. No one would be harmed in the telling, but I do have a deep wish that the telling would somehow change my circumstances, at least in the distant future. But the second voice, the "me" voice, says "You're crazy."

What is wisdom? How does one find it?

On a lighter note, when it comes to wisdom in the realm of thrift, I have again proven myself to be flush with it. A friend needed clothing yesterday; we went to Goodwill; she got shorts; I got tops. Mission accomplished. Ten minutes. Also, we'd just met. So yeah, I assessed her size, style, and ideal look-for-body type that quickly. I'm so awesome.