Here we are again.

I have a lot on my mind right now. There are lots of pieces threatening to come together, to resolve. The suspense is killing me, but the next 2 years are going to determine so much of the course of my life. And there are lots of questions that refuse to be answered. Mostly, I want a lot of conflicting things that God has little interest in helping me sort out. Instead, I am processing things that I thought I had long since finished the grief process for. But it turns out that you can start the whole process over in a moment's notice...and that has been a hallmark of my life.

I get angry when I realize that I am back in this familiar place. I have a lot of bad poetry from the first few times. I am not here to contribute anymore of that tonight. Mostly, I am here to write until I understand myself.

See, I loved my growing up. My running through the woods of Montana under the watch of mountains and sky. My making candy in mom's kitchen. My long ago friends with our silly adventures. These are all precious pieces with specific pictures of people and places.

And yet there is this haunting feeling of loss. I don't know how to explain it except that in psychology it is often referred to as abstract loss. It is the loss where you know that things as they are do not quite qualify as normal, something is missing...even if you don't know quite what the name of that thing is. It is not that something physical was taken away or stolen. For me, it is that I grew up so fast. I went from 7 years old to 18 and from there to 30 years old. Or something like that. From child to adult and from adult to parent before I ever turned 10. More or less. It is not an exact science. I cannot say that I was paying much attention to the details of the experience when it was all happening.

And now I am trying to explain what it means to have lost so much of your childhood, to grow up so early. It is not as though I can try to be 8 years old again. The best I can do is be the age I am. I get flack for that sometimes, for really holding onto being just my age and no older. Our society is so good at praising those who mature quickly. I loved being 19. It was horrible year of life filled with abandonment, but it was the first year that I got to deal with my problems as a 19 year old, my actual age. And I will never be 19 again because I grew up. But there are ages that fell into the chasm of survival. I never was those and it wouldn't be healthy to try to reclaim them now, ten or more years later. How do I explain the loss I feel in knowing that? There is no good comparison because I do not know what I missed except by the quiet envy I experience from time to time.

Looking back, I think I made the best of a bad situation. I think I chose well. I think it was all that could be asked of me and I would give it all again. The anger and hurt rise though when some secret wind whispers, it didn't have to be that way. The game was set and the odds were stacked before I ever had a chance. It is then that I remember that I live in a world under a curse. Most days, I am fine and grown up and unaware of the damage done. But then something small happens and all of the walls of the rooms that I have built inside myself crumble under a torrent of emotion that I wish I could control. Then the feeling of loss overwhelms and I wonder if healing is possible, if it ever really stays. And I think it does. It is just slower than I am patient.

But then that whispering wind hands me more discontentment as it howls around the ruins inside me.

You may heal but you will never be restored.
You will always be just a little bit

broken.

 It helps when I remember that we all have lost something in this curse, that we are survivors of a heavenly war that we chose the wrong side in. It is best not to compare pain and loss. No one wins that way.

Mostly, tonight I hope that healing is still possible. That restoration is a bigger miracle than I can imagine. And that eternity can provide things that are impossible amongst the mortal, cursed, and dying.

And that all of this grieving really will be turned to a celebration that is not forced or false in anyway.

I have been playing with an idea for awhile now. It is kind of silly in that I have been slow to accept it even though its truth is apparent and obvious to probably everyone but me. Ready?

I will be misunderstood and that is ok.

I have treated that fact with an inordinate amount of contempt. I have dedicated my entire growing up to knowing myself as best as I can with severe honesty so that I can explain myself plainly to others and escape miscalculation. I have not yet succeeded.

There are a lot of factors that have robbed me of my success. First, there are the sciences which teach that people are liars above all in their self-perception so you must disregard what people tell you about themselves. Second, there is the plain fact that many people are liars and so experience also teaches a wariness of other's opinions with a high value set upon the observer's limited view. Thirdly, people are human. They will see what they want to see, what they are afraid of seeing, and they will draw judgments when they should draw up a chair and ask more questions. We are busy creatures who contract business with misinformation as our currency.

And I am learning that all of this is ok. I thought that I needed to be understood; and I have benefitted greatly from that belief in what I learned from myself in order to correct the generalizations that I was saddled with but never fit.

The truth is, for the rest of my life I will fit the average American's definition of a man more than that of a woman. I will have the psyche of a oldest child crossed with a middle child and I will be a little bit culturally confused because of my growing up and it will defy the definitions people try to dress me in. I will always be confused about my socioeconomic classification. The truth is, I will always disappoint those who live their life under the rule and reign of stereotypes and generalizations. Part of me will always answer to a name that is not actually mine. And I am aware that that is just fine.

I am not the first to have to learn to survive in a world that is not built for people like me. I will not be the last. It is a lot to expect the world to drop their presumptuous habits, their hurtful ways of speaking about what is obviously true for "people like us" as I look over my should and realize that "us" means me and I don't identify that way. I often wonder what happens when they realize that, if it is either "us" or "them", I live in a different camp than them. The truth is, I do not suffer the worst of this assumption and presumption. In many cases, the identity I am handed is one of a privilege that I barely understand much less know how to use. Therefore my grievance does not cause me the suffering that it could if I was assigned a different descriptor.

I am still misunderstood, but I am learning that this is the rule not the exception. I am learning that people live and build their identities in the cracks between the names that cultures and societies give us. When you do not expect to be understood, the sting lessens and the disappointment fades. And those who do understand you and who take the time to know your real name become that much more valuable. It is then that you realize the gift they have given you and stop taking it for granted.