so cradle your head in your hand and breathe

I was going to say something profound but then I didn’t have anything to say.

I did. But I got wrapped up in a song and breathing in and out and thinking how wonderful it is that I can breathe on my own, but that I shouldn’t be breathing on my own.

Because every breath should be the stepping in of divinity. It isn’t always a bad thing to be on life support. If I need help just breathing, i certainly can’t live my life on my own.

I have to have this realization every day. I can’t just realize it once and it be so. Every day I have to wake up and come to the conclusion, completely separate of other days, that I can’t go it alone.

Though it gets kind of frustrating, because while this is something I have to decide for myself every single day, there are always people telling me what to do when I’m already doing it of my own initiative without their assistance and they act like if they didn’t tell me I wouldn’t do it. I am capable of doing things for myself without everyone hovering over me and babysitting me and watching what I do. I can take care of it. I’m a big girl.

A big girl that still needs help and still needs love and still needs her friends and still needs her mommy and still needs her daddy, but capable of doing things by herself. I’m always asking my mother what she thinks will become of me when I’m not living in her house where she can tell me when to go to bed when I’m already going, or to do my homework when she doesn’t even remember which classes I’m taking. She usually diverts away from that. Nut one of these days, I’m not going to live with my mommy. Not that I don’t love my home or my mother or my family, but hopefully that will be sooner rather than later. Not that i’m not thankful to have things taken care of for me, but I have to learn how to take care of myself.

Or rather, I have to learn that I can’t take care of myself--and that there’s only One who can. Just one. Even my parents can’t take care of me. And I certainly can’t actually take care of myself. But I have to get out on my own before I can experience that and live it and realize it for myself in the real world.

I mean, seriously, I live in my parent’s basement. There is nothing real about it. My life is an 80s chick flick.

And there may be screaming and crying while going at it, but there will be joy and laughter, too. Give and take, up and down. Only the bad things can make you truly appreciate and thankful for the good. Only the ugly can make you see the real beauty.

Man, this really spun out further than I thought it would.



Love,
Amelia

A thought.

I saw a t-shirt yesterday. It said, "If you aren't praying for peace, what are you praying for?" And that brought a thought about in my mind.

Well, I'm praying for turmoil, of course.

Wrong. No. We pray for peace. Peace of mind, peace of finances, peace of spirit, peace of nations, peace of Jerusalem...we don't pray for turmoil. That's ridiculous. Fire, perhaps. Perhaps we pray for fire. To go through the refiners crucible and come out the other side, not unscathed, but refined. But not turmoil. That's off the mark.

Life is personal. It is. People try to de-humanize it, to make everything on the same level. To make it all straight and all "normal" and all "functional." Life isn't that way. It is personal. Why should we try to be anything but people? That's what we are. That's how God made us. As people. Yes, we've lost some things along the way, but we were always--people. Life is personal. If life isn't personal, what the hell is it? Nothing. It is nothing. Because life, as we know it, inherently has to do with people. If you take away the people, you are left with nothing.

If you aren't praying for peace, what are you praying for? If life isn't personal, what is it?

maybe i don't make myself clear

I never talk about you, personally. Any of you. I talk to myself. I talk to people who don't really exist, because my image of them is what I think them to be, not ever necessarily what they are.

If you're reading this, you probably understand me better than I do, or could ever hope to. You may have noticed, but I have a masochistic tendancy to tell people exactly what I'm thinking. It never ends up well. It is my "Freudian slip." I entrust you with more information than you can handle, and then become upset when you ignore it, forget it, or throw it back in my face later on. I let too much "slip." Every little thought, every little two-bit thing. I find myself overcome by the urge to share my joy or misery with the world. It's my tragic flaw. It brings about my, or my circumstances, downfall--invariably, every time.

None of it is about anyone in particular, personally. It is merely the collective hodgepodge of my mind. Have you ever seen a most terribly unorganized office? That is a small inkling of what I imagine the inside of my head to look like. It's a mess. Nothing lines up, and nothing comes out right. When I mean to say one thing, I say another (or, as the Freudian slip pun goes, "when I mean to say one thing, I say your mother"). It's a complex, convoluted, confusing mess up there. I get tongue-tied and I get mixed up. Sometimes, however, that gets other people mixed up. It's a hard thing to deal with, when you know that your confusion has led to confusion in someone else.

Another thing you may not know about me: I have panic attacks. I have gotten myself so worked up or so afraid or so confused that I could not breathe. On numerous occasions. It doesn't happen often. Only as often as I find myself absolutely terrified that I will lose something or someone or some part of myself. Unfortunately, that happens more often than I should ever like.

I am intense, I am passionate, I am a type-B personality, I am confused yet know what is what. I think I'm a paradox. Maybe that's just my thought, but I think I fit that bill.

I always think it's hard to be me, but that's because I've never tried being anyone else.

"see which way the wind blows" part one.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl. We'll call her Alice. It's a nice name, and people often associate it with being lost, so we'll make use of that.

Now Alice wasn't quite sure where she was going. She knew where she came from, we'll give her that, but at the present time, she was just wandering about, trying to decide where she was and where she should go. She tried asking other folks where she was, but they we're quite sure themselves, so they couldn't answer her. She tried asking the trees, but trees never move, so they couldn't give a very definitive answer either. She tried asking the wind, but the wind is terribly unpredictable and isn't ever quite sure where it is at the moment, so all it could tell her was to "see which way the wind blows." Alice never could figure it out without a weather vane.

So Alice wandered about for a while.

reflection on the unknown love of a six-year-old

I'll cut your picture out and call it finest art
Hang it on a wall and watch it in the dark
My mother took it years ago when we were only ten
And my it's hard to say how much we've really changed since then

This is my Portrait of the Artist, I'll be your Mona Lisa
You were just a Young Man and I just tried to reach ya
I tried to be a Lady, talking proud and walking tall
Only just pretended like it was nothing at all

You never knew that beneath this smile was hiding adoration
Behind this laugh, just facing you, lurked all the inhibition
Henry James could novelize me: I made myself a fool
I never tried but here I am, it has become the rule

So make a list of your objections, sign it with your name
Think of them and write them down and I will do the same
False or true, this time tomorrow, I suppose we'll see
If you and I or you and me will be able to be we