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!

Black-and-White Thinking

I have not been able to find information on the artist :(

Last summer, almost a year ago, I decided that I had enough oomph in me to tell an ex that I'd been in love with him for a very long time. I'd never told him because it seemed so silly. As time had passed, from teens to twenties, it became more crazy a thought. Then suddenly, one Saturday afternoon in July, I had a chance, and I took it.

Boy did I ever take it. When I got him in front of me, I dumped a decade of thinking on him in a single evening. All of the things I never thought I could say, I said. Suddenly, I had no shame. Those years were behind me; there was no future between us. I figured I would live in the moment and do the thing I thought I'd never be able to do. Except he didn't leave. He stayed and listened. He was kind. And that's where everything went wrong. He told me we could be friends. I told him I could never be his friend - that was the whole point - and then the next day wanted a response. I poured my heart out! I wanted a response! We disagreed vehemently, and that was it. We didn't speak again.

It took me a year (I had to finish graduate school, after all) before I realized what I'd done, that I'd thrown away a relationship just because it didn't fit the mold I wanted it to. I wasn't mad at myself. I understood why I'd done it. I was scared, so very scared, and it was the bravest thing I'd ever done. But the year between then and now was a huge year of emotional growth for me, and suddenly I had more oomph left in me. I called him a couple weeks ago and said I was ready to be friends.

So now I'm trying, in spite of my emotional limitations, to be a friend to someone who I didn't think I could ever feel friendly towards. But somehow my capacity for patience has increased dramatically, and I'm recognizing that relationships can be tricky suckers, and that my black-and-white thinking has kept me from being with people I love. So it's worth the not-knowing. It's worth the gray areas, I think, not because it's easy for me. It's never easy. But I wanted something so much, I think I was willing to let go of my stubbornness. I want to be a person who has good with people, who doesn't have broken relationships all over the place. So, as it often does, this means that I have to let go of unrealistic expectations and go with the flow a little more.

Phew. Life is hard work, folks.

Thrift Share Monday :)

Signed "A. Mountanos 1980"

I found this mug last week, and haven't been able to find anything like it. There is a Mountanos Coffee Company, and I have been able to find some strand of a connection between the Mountanos surname, and Turkey. It might just be a fluke, but I thought it was really neat, and maybe collectible.

This morning, I woke up to a hilarious passive aggressive email in my inbox telling me, in essence, how selfish and greedy I was being for not accepting offers of 25-35% of my asking price, and how the buyer would send me "[my] profit" as soon as I accepted the offer. Dude, if you only knew how I get by. It's really laughable. Sometimes I ask myself if it's ethical for me to buy low and sell high, even if the item is worth what I'm asking. Sometimes I wonder if I need to cap my profit on any one particular item. I don't know. I'm not making a lot of money. I'm paying my bills.

Last night, my car started acting up, definitely structural and not the engine itself (it was still running well), and now I'm sitting in my apartment debating whether I should drive it at all before my appointment tomorrow at my mechanic. I still have paperwork to wrap up for my work year, and I have to drive to my supervisor's office to get final signatures. I'm kinda trusting that the car thing will be fixable in one day, and I'll be able to finish the paperwork traveling tomorrow afternoon. Ah the life of a VW owner! It's blissful, really :)

Linking up with Apron Thrift Girl.

Universal health care is for commies.

 

Megan: "I would like to refill a prescription."

Pharmacy: "Oh, that seems like a normal request. Let us take care of that for you."

Insurance Company: "We do not believe that this person requires this prescription."

Pharmacy: "Oh, okay...Hey, Megan, the insurance company won't cover the prescription you've been receiving for the past ten years. They need more information about the status of your need for this prescription."

Megan: "It's for test strips, you know, for my chronic diabetes. I get them all the freakin' time."

Pharmacy: "We'll have to get back to you. In the meantime, try not to die."

"Natural" remedies

In honor of being sick, I give you a list of herbal remedies I use obsessively:

1. Crushed garlic (severe cold/flu)
2. Warm Garlic/Olive Oil blend (ear infection)
3. Goldenseal/Echinacea (moderate cold/flu)
4. Vitamin C (mild cold/flu)
5. Cranberry capsules (urinary anything)

When I was trying to cure myself of diabetes, and wasn't taking any meds, I used:

1. Cinnamon
2. Prickly Pear Cactus
3. Chromium
4. Taurine

On a normal day, I take the following (vegan overload):

1. Vitamin B Complex
2. Prenatal Multivitamin (for the extra iron)

Sometimes, I eat milk chocolate

 

This recent post by Katy over at "The Non-Consumer Advocate" got some heated responses, so much so that she shut down commentary on the post.

I myself have been the recipient of some pretty nasty online communication. It hurts when people are rude because they can be, instead of assuming the best and perhaps beginning some dialogue about their "negative" feelings. I think that people on Katy's blog were generally able to say how they felt, and the conversation was cordial and honest.

I talk about online manners a lot because I work online. Very, very rarely do I get to meet a customer face-to-face, or a reader for that matter, and I have learned time and again how important it is to be literal in one's communication, and kind above all else. Sometimes, it is even appropriate to anticipate problems and address them before they happen.

I admit that this week, I did not respond well to an online overreaction. I was curt and annoyed when someone took offense at something that was in-no-way meant to be offensive. But in the end, I am only reminded that I am also human, and often fail. Sometimes, I eat milk chocolate.

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.

I'm done hiding my crazy.

 

My new motto is just to own the crazy. "Do what you feel!" I say. There is only so much emotional health I can cram into my body. Eventually, I have to just roll with it.

I've spent the past few decades over-analyzing every thought and feeling, and I'm just done with it. So I love someone I shouldn't love. What of it? I was in love with my ex-boyfriend for ten years after we broke up, and I spent way too much of that time thinking about it. I never did anything about it. I never talked to my therapist about it. It just sat in my gut, and in the dark parts of my brain, embroiled in guilt and shame. By the time I broke down and confessed it, it made no sense to anyone because I'd never been honest about it. I'm done with living that way.

Now I'm going to be honest. I love who and what I love, and not everyone understands, but I'm done hiding. The honesty isn't always pleasant, but it's way better than holding onto secrets because I'm so afraid of what people will think, or what it means about me as a person.

Oh my goodness! Who cares what it means about me as a person?! It's just a feeling. I'm not any crazier than anyone else.

So I'm just leaving behind all of the extra crazy that comes from thinking I'm crazy, and just owning it. Everyone can think whatever they want to think. I know who I am, and I'm okay with it.

Loving what you love

 

Do you ever wonder why you want what you want, what makes you interested in your interests, why you love who you love?

Sometimes our desires are born from our upbringing, and sometimes this can be good. You like Christmas music because it reminds you of the holidays with your family. You love strudel because you always ate it at Grandma's house. You like to bowl, because you went bowling every Saturday morning with Dad.

But sometimes our desires are born from suffering. You love running because it makes you feel strong, and you were made to feel weak and insignificant as a child. You love eating, sometimes too much, because it fills a void you can't quite name. You become an accountant because you were homeless as a child and want to avoid any feeling of helplessness.

These are things that trigger our deepest feelings, good and bad. Oftentimes, the things that are the most important to us are the most difficult to explain to other people. If your heart could speak, it would explain, and people would understand.

I'm beginning to think that I love what I love for good reasons, and bad reasons, and I'm wondering where to draw the line. How much bad is too much?

Hello Thursday!

The recycled tape is everything I dreamed it would be. It's like big strips of envelope that needs to be licked in order to stick. And it makes my packaging completely recyclable! I feel so good about that. I'm usually a 90-95% kind of girl. I do a lot, but not everything. I split my lot between two worlds. I do this because it keeps me sane. I do it because it's who I am.

This means that I am not a protester. I do not compost my own feces. I drive a car. I shampoo my hair. I use electricity. I shop at the grocery store. I do not have a vegetable garden. I humbly eat food that I am given, and shop at stores with picketing-protesters in front. I eat pre-prepared food and Mexican drive-thru burritos. I have $10 in my bank account, and am currently using my credit card to eat. Yup. That's me.

I am not perfect. I am human. I'm also awesome. True story.

The unattainable thrifty middle-ground

My perfect rug is still sitting on the dirty cement floor of a warehouse-sized thrift store in town. I just can't see myself spending $265 on it. It's super nice and perfect for me, and huge (and yellow!), but that's a month's rent. It's food. It's an African famine, and a broken world.

On the qualifier list for Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD; not to be confused with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) are the following:

·       is overconscientious, scrupulous, and inflexible about matters of morality, ethics, or values (not accounted for by cultural or religious identification) 

·       is unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects even when they have no sentimental value 

·       is reluctant to delegate tasks or to work with others unless they submit to exactly his or her way of doing things 

·       adopts a miserly spending style toward both self and others; money is viewed as something to be hoarded for future catastrophes 

·       shows rigidity and stubbornness

American Psychiatric Association. (2000).  Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision.

Where may hoarders fall? Yup. On this list. Where do I fall? Yup, on this list. Miserly? Okay, so I am poor, so maybe we could take that one out. And my ethical preoccupation is kind of religious, so maybe that one can go as well. But I am definitely unable to delegate, ridiculously stubborn, and unable to discard worn-out or worthless objects.

You may be saying to yourself "Well sure, but you're a thrifter. Those aren't worthless objects." Sure, but when I was moving last month, I came across a drawer of things I'd saved that might/could be used in some artistic endeavor in the far-off future. Well, it was not trash ( I cannot call it trash), but I threw it away, in agony. This is why I wail at the SPCA photos on my Facebook page. "Why has someone thrown this away?" My chest hurts when I think about throwing away the things from that box: old string, wire, springs, used tissue paper-nothing of value!

But sometimes I get so preoccupied with my recycling ethic that I move over into pathology. Friends don't want to tell me that their dog came from a breeder, that they own a pick-up truck, that they eat cheese. And I myself don't know where to draw the line, because it doesn't exist inside of me. I have to project it onto every situation: Will this drain me of energy? Do I really have the time to live with this?

So I don't have a personality disorder, as much as I want to believe that I do. I was sure raised to go in that direction, but by the grace of God go I. Cheers!

This is not food porn

So, Sexual Addictions. I know that I would dish, and I will, in part, but mostly I want to comment on the nature of the issue itself. The class was fine. I was of course offended by the usual injustices of lack of egalitarian language, and a sole focus on married people and all of their problems. Because who wants to even talk about single people and all of their problems ad nauseum? We all know that once you get a single person talking about themselves, it could go on forever, right? They're so darn selfish.

If I get too offended about these issues, I won't get much done. I'll become a tape that just plays the same sides back and forth, over and again. And of course, I can't start talking about the gays and all of their deviant homosexual problems either. So I will just stick to the real stuff. Get married in that normal hetero way. Attach fully to your spouse. Be honest; get therapy; don't look at porn; repeat.

Okay, so apart from all of my sarcasm, sexual addiction is real (and it's more than pornography), and the neurological factors involved are also real. The brain is deeply affected by visual sexualized stimuli, and pornography has become so accessible, affordable, and anonymous, that now pornography is reaching populations it may not have reached before. A lot of people struggle with sexual addiction. They feel controlled by it just like any addiction, and it's a hidden thing, a secret. Sex is always around us, but shame keeps us from always engaging in relationship in healthy ways. When we do something that we don't want anyone else to see, the shame sweeps us into a terrible cycle of secrets and hiding and unreality.

This is where I come in. If there's a huge percentage of men and women out there dealing with this, how can we allow it to remain a hidden, shameful issue? It's normal is what it is. Sex is normal. Arousal is normal. Attraction is normal. Our bodies do it without our permission. What fucks everything up is our belief that sex is dirty, that our humanness is dirty.

You are not dirty! There is nothing wrong with you! Say what you want. Say who you are.

There is no shame in being you. Start there. Accept yourself as you are, and when you feel completely okay with that, you can look into the parts of your life that aren't working so well, that are hurting your relationships, and hurting you. But don't start by hating yourself. That will never work.

"I'd rather be recycling"

I saw this Sport Chalet license plate holder on the freeway this afternoon (which I thought was weird; i.e. making recycling a sport). Also, I think the car was a nice Lexus, and I smiled because I do not drive anything resembling a nice car, and here was a kindred spirit in a Lexus of all things, next to my unwashed, broken oven of an old VW.

I was on the freeway driving home from a thrift trip out of town. I had a 50% off everything coupon for one of my favorite places, where I had a lot of success, and I was going to hit up their sister store on the other side of town when I realized how bad my soul was feeling, so instead, I stopped by the much smaller hospice thrift store on the way back to the freeway.

I love this place; I always find good stuff, and they have excellent prices. Unfortunately, they also have some of the crankiest women working there, so sometimes I don't go in there, because I don't want to listen to them complaining. It seems like they're always bemoaning the normal bits of being a thrift store: the customers, the disarray, the customers, people's piles. I am one for piles, and I got in trouble today for having a kitchen item outside of the kitchen area. A foulmouthed well-dressed woman behind the counter practically insisted that I hand her my stuff as I kneeled on the floor looking through magazines. I said, "I'll be there in a minute anyway," but she wouldn't have it.

Not every one is as easygoing as I am (for up to five minutes each day), but that doesn't mean that I have to dislike them. Yes, it annoys me when thrift store employees and volunteers are anally retentive about the state of the store, but those are usually the cleanest and most organized places to shop (unfortunately). And what's the opposite of anal-retention? Anal-explosion. Yeah, that's no good.

So here's to you, cranky thrifty ladies, for all of your diligence, determination, and plain ol' dourness: We couldn't sift through the trash without you.

And here's to me on my 29th birthday: May every year continue to be better than the last.

Racisme: Parte Deux

Where I live, people sell food on the street. It gets dark outside, and they park their food cart out in the middle of a dirt corner and set up plastic tables and chairs, and suddenly this once-dead corner is a hot spot.

During the day, men (always men, now that I think about it) ride down the street selling bags of fried pork rinds. It's been a while since I've seen a man with popsicles, but in the town where I grew up, we didn't have men with pork rinds; we had men with paletas. My favorite paletas are strawberry and lime (just water; no milk).

Just a few blocks from my house is a Mexican panaderia and cafe, and while I was walking to Starbucks a few weeks ago for the internet, I passed it and thought, "Maybe I should stop." I still had a mile to go to get to Starbucks, and I was a little motivated by the exercise, but honestly, I didn't have the energy to try a new place.

While reviewing burritos last year, I went down to little Mexico (as I like to call a particular part of town down the street from my school) and walked into a place that I'd always driven by, and looked like it sold food. Wow. They did not want me there. One of the other customers asked me if I was a teacher, because I looked like one. There's no way around that one-that is what I look like, for no other reason than that I'm white and wear glasses. I ordered a rice and bean burrito, and that's what I got: rice and beans. It makes me sad to think about it. There wasn't even any salsa. They just wanted me to get out of there. I made them uncomfortable.

So today, even though this is now my actual neighborhood for the second time, I still feel a bit weird going into a new place by myself, like that panaderia, or a food cart on the side of the road (but not the pork rinds man, because I don't eat meat) not because I'm afraid, but because I don't know what the cultural expectations are. It isn't right that the city is racially and economically segregated, but it is, and I don't want to step on anyone's toes. Even if I dressed and acted differently, I don't think I could ever fit in.

I am powerless, aren't I?

My best friend says that of all ethnicities, I probably shouldn't marry an Italian or a Latino, because there is no room in my person for machismo. I can get pretty fired up when men try to assert their implied power over me.

A while back, I got into a power struggle with an older (not by too much-ten years tops) Latin man. He felt ostracized by me and the group I was working with, and responded by impinging on my personal space, staring us down, expressionless. This made me feel so physically anxious that I demanded that he leave; he didn't, so I did. The other men in the group tried to get me to calm down, but I saw it as harassment and I wasn't going to back down and let him believe that what he was doing was okay. There was another woman in the group who felt similarly, not to as great an extent, but similarly.

Then, even though I'd left, I couldn't let it go. Suddenly, I was incredibly concerned about this person's ability to work with other people in a pastoral or therapeutic context; I kept ranting about it. It was like a switch got kicked on, and I had no control over my emotions.

Sometimes I react like that in situations where others are less affected by the same circumstances. Maybe it's a post-trauma response, but that's certainly not something I want to touch without the presence of a professional. When reactions are out of proportion to reality, there's usually something deeper going on. But when I'm in the moment, I don't feel like I'm overreacting. I feel like I'm reacting appropriately, that the situation warrants an extreme response.

This isn't the end of the road for me. I am not an emotionally whole person. I am stable, but not perfect. Sometimes I think that I need to be perfect to be lovable, that somehow even though everyone else is flawed, I need to be less flawed. I really believe that, even after all the work I've done. I still think I have to be better than you just to be okay. This totally sucks.

How stubborn is too stubborn?

My stubbornness is quite strong. It's like I don't think that giving up is ever an option. But it gets me into crazy difficult situations. How do you deal with someone who won't quit? How do you deal with someone who hangs around long after you've told them to leave? When is stubbornness just delusion?

When I love people, I find it very difficult to give up on them. I am also very bad at taking hints. In the past, I haven't read social cues very well. I'm getting a lot better at it now, trusting my instincts and all that, but I probably still fall on the lower end of the social intelligence spectrum. Sometimes I think everything should be simple. Life shouldn't be complicated; relationships should be easy. But that isn't the case, and I do my fair share of making it complicated.

I need some strong-ass hope right now to get through this rough patch. And my version of this is fierce stubbornness, an unwillingness to quit, and a impenetrable belief in a person's ability to change. When I do this to the extreme, I can find myself in the fetal position when all open doors are closed. Is this the best way to live? I don't know. I suppose I should look at the pros and cons of the issue.

When is God speaking, and when is life just sucking at one particular moment? When is a door shut and when is life just hard?

When is enough, enough?

There was a time, in the early part of my illness, before I knew about my semi-retarded pancreas, when I gave up hope. I actually gave up. I stopped taking my medication. I stopped caring about what I ate. I gave up. This was a pretty short period of time, but I remember it seeming like longer. I wanted to stick it to all the people who thought they knew what was going on, who thought I was lazy and manipulative, the people who called me a liar. I don't know how not taking care of myself showed these people much of anything, but I remembered feeling powerful. I was taking control of my own life.

Feeling in control has become a hidden, but vital, part of my self-concept. When I feel in control, I feel calm. I feel like I know what's going to happen, and I don't have to be afraid. Relinquishing control to other people, letting other people drive the car for example, is difficult for me. Being in the driver's seat gives me the satisfaction of knowing that all will be well, and if it's not, I can blame someone else...or myself; this isn't really a well-thought-out personality structure.

Within intimate relationships, I am black and white, all or nothing. I get what I want or I don't get anything at all. These two extremes are both satisfactory options. But this is an impossible way to live. No one, I repeat, No One, can successfully live this way. No one can be in control and in relationship with other people. This brings me to my current predicament.

I want it all. I want it all right now. And if I can't have it, then I'm going to forget about it, because in the middle of black and white is longing and pain-painful longing. That gray area means that some things are not set in stone, that circumstances and people may will change, that I don't have control. My heart aches at the thought. I am one who needs firm plans: What are we doing; where are we going; and when are we leaving. I won't die if I don't have the answers, but I will feel some anxiety. I'm working on that.

Putting my life on display means relinquishing control. It means allowing people to judge me, to create opinions of me, and even speak those opinions to others. It means setting aside my ego and allowing people to be people, me to be me, God to be God, and knowing that somehow, in the midst of all of that, everything will be okay. I'll keep you updated.

Who will save my impatient soul?

Sometimes you can't have it all. Sometimes what you want isn't good to have right now. Sometimes it will never be good, or maybe it will be good later. I can't answer this question for you; I can't even answer this question for myself.

That's the thing about thrift. You can't have what you want at the exact moment that you want it. You have to wait for the time to be right, for the thrifting planets to be in alignment, so to speak.

Now I love to spout the wonder of thrift in every aspect of life, but when it threatens to delay my happiness, I start to waver. My western mindset threatens to overwhelm the wisdom of simplicity that permeates my soul. It shouts, "You need this now...not later!...Patience is not a virtue; it's a sign of weakness!" And so it goes; and so it goes.

When I was a kid, I didn't think I was very pious. I thought that in the big battle of good and evil, I probably leaned more to the latter. Late at night, I begged God to save my soul, my poor little eight-year-old soul-it was bleak. I look back on that now and think, "I want to give that kid a hug, and maybe some more dinner." I don't know if I've moved too far from that. I still need a hug, and more dinner. But at least I love myself; that's growth. But I'm still impatient, and hope still scares me. If I want something, I believe that I won't get it. If I love something, I will lose it. If I am impatient, I will be punished. Still pretty bleak, huh?

Thrift isn't hopeful for every one. Thrift looks like trash, like loving someone else's trash, and that isn't attractive to a lot of people. But I'm not giving up on trash. Trash is a beautiful thing. Trash, I love you. And I will be patiently waiting to find you, or for you to find me, whichever comes first.

The one thing I won't give up

I am an eternal optimist. It's in my bones. But I wasn't programmed to be this way. I was programmed to be afraid of the future, every one around me, sleep, the dark, and the monsters underneath my bed. I was AFRAID.

I first recognized this part of me when I had a total freakout in class one morning, one of my first graduate school classes. The discussion on the table was about the ability of persons to change, and the simple answer is that some people will never change. Some people, it would seem, cannot change.

But the question I was asking, and thus the answer, was entirely different. I believe that people have the capacity to change, that God's divine goodness allows it, that this is grace, and that to deny it is to miss out on it. Several people disagreed, vehemently; I was shocked.

I think I raised my voice. I think I almost cried; my face was undoubtedly red. I was furious, raging from the inside. How dare anyone question that change is possible, that people can change? I saw it so clearly, but I couldn't communicate that which was central to my entire being.

My life up to that moment, was filled with grief, with loss, with longing. I didn't know enough to label it with those words because I was too busy feeling my own pain, but I knew enough to know that life sucked. I knew enough to know that life was not worth living all the time, that I myself oftentimes didn't want to live, and that I didn't choose to live the life I was given at conception (I use that word to avoid causing my readers any trouble continuing to read).

I didn't choose my parents or what they gave me. But damn-it, if I didn't believe with my whole being that life didn't have to suck. I still believe this, even when I'm so sad that I can't see any hope, I still believe this. Because there's a little girl inside of me who wants to die, and I'm never going to tell her that it doesn't get better, that it will in fact get worse for a while, a long while that will feel like forever. I won't tell her that. She deserves to be lied to.

Sometimes I sound deluded or naive when I talk this way. I recognize that. But if I sound that way, it's because I choose a life of delusion over the truth. I can live each day fully with hope, but sometimes, with the reality set before me at any given moment, there is not enough hope in the world to keep me alive. It is then that I lie, knowingly. It will get better. It will get better. It will get better. Because people can change, and circumstances can change, and life as you now know it, can change.

You don't always have it all together

Sometimes people surprise me. I think I've got them pegged, and then they pull a fast one. A friend accepts me when I'm at my very worst. My mom supports my sudden crazy interest in my high school boyfriend. My dad thinks I'm overreacting to something I feel quite calm about.

The thing is, people do this all the time. One minute, we think they don't care, and the next minute, they care a whole lot. I guess it's because we're human; we're unpredictable. We are capable of making different decisions. We are capable of growing and changing and becoming more healthy than we were five years ago.

This helps me to believe that God is good and loves us very much. When left to our own devices, we screw up, time and again. We run into the same rock over and over, instead of learning from past mistakes. As complex as our brains are, we can behave quite stupidly. This is where something mystical comes in. God comes into our humanness, says it's okay (i.e. the humanness), and shows us a better way. We aren't chastised or bullied. We are gently shepherded to a better place, a better path, and eventually, hopefully, a better life.

So when a relationship looks broken and unmendable, remember that human power is limited, but God is not. Don't throw away what was once a good thing (or once a bad thing for that matter) just because things don't look good in this particular moment. Recognize that change is possible, that people are surprising and not always jerks, and that sometimes you, even in your finite, limited wisdom, can be wrong.