Respite. (I apologize for the ironic haste of this post)

A little rest. A few dreams. A little art.

It is funny what creeps into my mind's eye and gets lodged there when I am not looking.

I have finally had the space and freedom enough to unclench and remember a little more of art. You know. The art that I loved and breathed and was before mechanic's classes and Bible College and Portland. It's been two years and only this week have I come to terms with how much I need to budget art supplies in because it is a matter of sanity and life and living...not a question of "

responsible stewardship" or whatever else I use to justify these last two years.

And so now that I have reclaimed my imagination. Or at least come to terms with it. Ya. I begin my summer term in...8 hours. Sweet. This is going to be interesting. Also, these are the saddest photos I have taken in awhile, but I start my summer term in 8 hours and have every intention of going to sleep...twenty minutes ago.

Descent.

Two days into break. Failed waffles stuck to the iron. (Blame the lack of gluten not the maker.) Birds all excited about something... or everything. They seem to understand something more about living than most of us.

No food related pains for almost a week. Stress knots rolling, trying to self-medicate, not quite understanding how life's rhythm has changed. And myself.

I am adjusting quite well to this respite. Except... my mind is turning against me. I think. Maybe. Having enjoyed my health for some consecutive days now, I hear dangerous thoughts circulating round the tables in my mind:

I overreacted.

I was just being dramatic.

I wanted attention.

I did not want to do my work.

It was not as bad as I said it was.

I imagined it.

I am just making life difficult for no reason other than I do not know what to do if it's not.

I can eat what I want.

It is perplexing to me how easy it is to distrust my own experience. The mind and the imagination are endlessly fascinating not to mention bewildering. And the power contained therein is often amazing and frequently frightening. Moreover, this is where I find myself less than a week removed from my last food related pain and about two or three weeks from my last... immobilisation. Each day forward leaves those memories a little more wane, a little more transparent, a little less real.

I should be able to hold onto them. I should know the truth that they contain. And, today, I do.

Today that is enough.

But my grip on reality is not as strong as I would claim. And knowing what is about to happen does not change its likelihood. I will forget. I will convince myself otherwise. Call it curiosity. Dub it denial. Regard it as a lack of responsibility. Whatever sanity I have will slip and I will try again. Why?

Because the answers I have been given are not persuasive. There are still too many uncertainties. So I will keep asking questions. Not exactly the same one and not posed exactly the same way and not to anyone in particular because everyone else knows even less than I do for the most part. It is a long road to discovery, but I have the rest of my life. More than any immediate pain I may have, however acute, I loathe the thought of living with false caution and unnecessary sacrifice.

Either way, it feels like something between falling down Alice's rabbit hole and a slow but steady descent into darkness. I am not quite being hurled into the unknown, I am choosing it; but it lacks all the comforts of control all the same.

And then it was June.

Life has a new rhythm.

It is a good one too, despite the apprehensions that try to persuade me otherwise. Leaving my apartment was more... emotional(?) than I thought it would be.

It was my first apartment all unsupervised and pretending to be grown up. My first time not living with a stranger in some capacity in over a decade or so. It was the healthiest living situation I have ever had. I guess it makes sense that I would be attached, but the depth of that surprised me.

For nine months, I built life and living and home with my roommates and they are family. We did not just live together and occupy the same space. We shared our dreaming, our loving, and our growing. It is weird to me to think of that apartment as it was after they left and I was moving

out...devoid of all the fondness I had attached to it. And I knew I did not belong there anymore. I could look out the windows and see the same things I always did, but it was not my home anymore.

It is exceedingly strange to me that we should spend so much time pouring hope into a place. (I swear the walls and carpet are saturated with it.) Hope for where we would go and who we would be and what we would do. And then we outgrow it.

We leave to build new hope. To be those people that we hoped we would be or even those people we did not quite dare to be while in that former place or possibly those people we always hoped

to escape.

Whatever it is that we do after, we are forced to build or rebuild hope, because you cannot keep old hope alive in the face of change. At least, not as it was. Hope has to grow with you. Or else, it begins to stifle your own growth. By its very nature, it must elude your present abilities.

Perhaps that is what it means when Romans says that "hope that is seen is no hope at all". This frustrates me because it seems to negate any idea of rest or peace. Is that really life? To always be running and never arriving? I think so.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it is not without its triumphs. My discomfort comes from my continual battle to appreciate and respect things (especially myself) in process. Just because I know where I should be does not mean that I am yet equipped to be there. It is often far more acceptable to take time in transit than I make it seem.

Yep, still learning how to be a balanced, holistic person which apparently means moving slower than I think is reasonable and going about things the long way. It is a good thing. It makes hope less harsh though the striving and elusiveness continue.

Home.

I keep coming back to this idea and now is a fitting point in my life for yet another return trip. I am moving, have been moving, will be moving...am feeling quite certainly homeless. I am living between my old apartment and my new room in the new house of my future occupancy...and not quite belonging to either.

They are only 1.8 miles apart driving. It really should be the easiest thing in the world...which it is. No hang ups, blow outs, let downs to speak of. I even have two more weeks befo

re my old lease ends. It really does not get easier. Except for the silence. There is a certain ineffable vacuousness. It is not a normal silence.

But I do not think it is dangerous either. I have never been afraid of silence and I have never yet been able to find boredom for much time at all. This next while will not change that.

Even now, I am discovering things. Turning ideas round in my hands. Getting a better look at where I stand and what surrounds me.

I have said so many goodbyes in the last few days; and they have been good, healthy goodbyes. Yet, they were not without my requisite not-saying-what-I'm-thinking because when I say it, I feel it and the depth of feeling I find often frightens me. Anyway, to the point and away from bad diary-ism...

In a lot of ways, home has left. I am finding that I have given up attaching home strictly to places. And I think a good many more of us on this planet do this than I previously thought. Any place that was a home can have all of that fondness and safety revoked in a moment. And while the sights and sounds and textures may well remind us of home, it does not take very much for them to betray us and feel empty.

I see and feel and hear now that I have built my 'home' into the people around me; and that is a very hard thing for me to accept. It feels so fragile, ephemeral, and so very likely elusive.

Most of all, it means I have no control once again where the pieces of my heart land or if they are taken care of much less if I shall ever recover them again. I believe I should be used to that by now. This is the feeling of loving and being loved. And that is the lifeblood of living itself. Or at least, I would contend so. It is beautiful in its own dangerous way.

I think life is supposed like that and I am sure I will regret this belief in the future; but I do, believe it that is. I think it should be dangerous in more ways than one. It should be

bigger than one person can handle. You do not need to be the world's most extroverted individual, but it may be easier then. And, contrary to a lot of opinions that I have received lately, it's not the point of marriage. It should come before that, after that, during it, and in spite of it. I do not like that some days. I do not like complicated things, messy things, high maintenance things. But I have to admit, a life that I can handle alone...is altogether too shallow. (And I will not here admit to the hypocrisy involved in such a standard).

This is why I think the feeling of falling never really goes away. I am not the five year old who believes the adults have the world under control anymore. They do not. They never really will. The only thing holding us together and making us safe in anyway is that very love that is so dangerous. And we live in a world under a curse. Love can be falsified, forgotten, and one sided. Despite that, it endures and it is still out there. That is altogether amazing and terrifying.

"I love all these fragile things." ~ Ladonna Witmer

It makes me happy that there are homes I can invade...and belong in after everyone who actually lives there leaves to do something else. I still think home is a very funny thing. It is a slippery thing, the importance of which is something too easily let go of. And somehow from here my brain catapults straight to the stars.

I do not understand what happens to me when I look up at the stars. I feel most myself then, and I wonder if it is supposed to work that way. And I wonder why it happens at all. I think it is something about feeling so small while still feeling safe. It is like all of the questions I have either in me or being asked of me get swallowed and either matched with their answers or rendered irrelevant and content to wait awhile longer for their answers.

Somehow that makes me feel at home. I like who I am there best.

Here are two semi related articles: 1. 2.

New plan:

It is a rabbit hole of discovery,
Finding out that you are different
And that it is not your own rebellious choice.

It feels like whatever authority you were fighting
Finally won and got you in a place you cannot guard
And cannot win back.

You played for keeps
And then you lost.
Lost your independence.

Lost your right to define yourself.
Lost something you do not even know how to grieve
If you are allowed to.

Lost.

And hope must be built on so much more
Than just getting better or by
Because you will not be doing either.

Hope must weigh down your very feet
To help stave off the feeling
Of just fading away.

You will need both hands to hold reality
Both feet to stand on such shifting grounds
And all of your voice to yell Truth

Lest you forget and lose all.

You will need neither eye
For both are blind
In such deep shadows.

Neither will you need your ears
Or else they may take in
Too many heavy lies.

You have enough Truth
If you do not surrender.
So bind them up!

Stop your ears
And clamp your eyes
So tight

That they shut out not only light
But shadows and deep night too.
Do not be distracted by lies and myths and lore

Even as you discover new things inside yourself.
Like how far you can be pushed
Before you finally push back

And what you do when you find yourself
Fallen
Into a rock rabbit hole

And up
Is the only direction
you can see.

But you have to
let go
of who you think you are

--who you thought
You would be
And who you wanted to be--

If you ever
Expect to get
Out.

That, and you can never
Hold those descriptors again
Without climbing [falling] back in.

Learn and be taught

But leave it behind.

This is not a place for living.

I believe I like it better this way. It feels less forced...yes.

This piece has been in the works for a few weeks now. I keep forgetting about it. Oops.

It is a rabbit hole of discovery,

Finding out that you are different

And that it is not your own rebellious choice.

It feels like whatever authority you were fighting

Finally won and got you in a place you cannot guard

And cannot win back.

You played for keeps

And then you lost.

Lost your independence.

Lost your right to define yourself.

Lost something you do not even know how to grieve

If you are allowed to.

Lost.

And hope must be built on so much more

Than just getting better or by

Because you will not be doing either.

Hope must weigh down your very feet

To help stave off the feeling

Of just fading away.

You will need both hands to hold reality

Both feet to stand on such shifting grounds

And all of your voice to yell Truth

Lest you forget and lose all.

You will need neither eye

For both are blind

In such deep shadows.

Neither will you need your ears

Or else they may take in

Too many heavy lies and drown.

You have enough Truth

If you do not surrender.

If.

I am not totally sold on the ending, but it refuses to rest any other way for now.