Let me, Irene

Let me, Irene
Irene, I ran to you
You never ran to me
Since then I don't know where you've been

Irene
Irene, I ran from you
You never ran from me
Since then you don't know where I've been

You didn't say goodbye,
But neither did I

Irene
Let me, Irene
Rent the room you left
Brown the walls became
They had been blue
I had been blue
For you they were brown

I ran, Irene
Let me, Irene
Let me,
Let me run

i have something to say.

Hey you,
you're just a child,
yet somehow you still
drive me wild.
I can't explain it,
it makes no sense.
I don't think you
understood what it meant.
Time goes by,
you're still a kid.
I grew wiser but I
still can't get rid (of you).
Wish I could say
you'd grown up,
or that I had, too--
--we are sorry to interrupt
this message with
Breaking News.
The child played the wiser girl;
she still is being used.

be yourself.

Be yourself. Don't give up. Make it happen. You can do it.

Everyone has a phrase. Something they repeat to themselves in the night, when they feel their world is crashing in on them. Does it make it better? Does it really give anyone the courage to wake up the morning after they breakdown and face everyone? As for myself, I too often fall asleep wondering what I've done wrong. Where I got turned around. How I got to where I am. Perhaps, just perhaps, if I stopped wondering what happened, and started looking towards what is going to happen, I would be less anxious about the past. The past is in the past. Don't look back—only look forward. You can't do anything about what is finished, but you can affect what is yet to come.

I have made mistakes in my life. I have held on when I should have let go, I have let go when I should have held on for dear life, I have stopped when I should have run with everything I had, I have run when I should have stopped and looked about, I have turned around when I should have kept straight, and I have kept going in one direction when I should have realized I needed to go back where I came from.

Do I make anything different by dwelling on what I have already done in my life, or is it all just passing nostalgia, holding me back from where I could still go? If I keep my mind and heart somewhere they do not belong, it prevents them from going somewhere else. I am sure there is something more for me in this world than a reminder of what I did wrong and what I may have incidentally done right. Go left? Right. Correct. Yes. I mean, yes. Go left. Do it, run with it all you have. You'll find your way. You'll know what you should be, where you should be, who you should be if you just keep going. If you stand still and watch the world spin around you, watch the people moving so fast, running from one place to the next, going from one life to another, and let it all pass you by, you'll never know. If you only watch others live their lives, how are you to live your own? I have spent my entire life watching other people live, and never living for myself. Living is something only you can do. No one can do it for you. You are responsible for your own decisions, for your own actions. You must make your own choices and face your own consequences. I am a people-watcher. I watch people. I notice the man at the bus stop, I know the name of the woman in the grocery store. I frequent the same many places a great many times.

Where is the line between living your own life and living living to watch others live theirs?

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?