so far

i took a break from writing for the most part last week. i've been in shambles, good shambles, and i couldn't really muster enough words to write anything that would approach a paragraph, or a blog post. things are settled a little bit, though, so i think i can write some now. there are these things that happen. they are the kind of things that you had hoped would happen back when the world was the kind of place where you thought things like that still happened, and then you spent some time wondering where it went, and then you spent a long time building a wall of reasons for it being the way it was and the thing was that after you were done, you weren't any safer than you were before, or better off, or anything. and you started not to be anything, and your world filled up with rules of "this far but no further" and "this is how this works" and "grin and bear it", like a woman giving birth to a child she doesn't want. something i've learned while i've been alive, which hasn't been for very long, is that you can talk yourself into or out of anything. i thought i knew a lot about talking myself out of things, but the thing was i was really talking myself into things, and the fear of talking myself out of things was just another big section of the wall i was building around myself. blah blah blah. i don't want to write about that anymore. the dead past can bury itself.

there's this C.S. Lewis quote that has been sinking in since i read it this morning, and will keep sinking in for some time i think. he said "no one can settle how much we ought to give. the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare". i don't really know what that means, in that i don't know yet just how far its reach is, but something that has been on my mind since i read it is that there aren't rules about how your heart should or shouldn't work when it comes to certain things. not everything, just things like who you're crazy about and what kind of music you like and what you love to do and what people you want to know more about and be around more often. there's this verse in the bible, there's a lot of them actually, but the one im thinking of has to do with Jesus, just like every other verse in the Bible is you look close enough. He says "ask anything in my name and it will be given to you". i read that when i was a kid, and i stayed awake all night one night saying things like "in the name of Jesus, bring my a new bike" and "in the name of Jesus, let me hit a home run soon" and "in the name of Jesus, let me marry Princess Leia". i seriously prayed all of those things. i did end up getting a new bike and hitting a home run, but i don't think it had anything to do with my prayers. God gave me great parents who bought me a bike for Christmas and i got better at hitting. funny how things are sometimes. in the end, it's good that i didn't marry Princess Leia. besides the fact that she wasn't real, i found out she did cocaine on the set of the Star Wars movie. i don't think i'm better than people that do cocaine, i just don't want to marry a girl who does it.  so, even though i heard a sermon at some point in late highschool about how that verse was about conforming yourself to God's will, instead of treating God like santa, that truth didn't start affecting my life until maybe 5 or 6 months ago.

you get to this place, once that Truth soaks further in, where you aren't content and at peace out of resignation, or despair. you're content and at peace because you finally start to realize that Jesus is who He says He is, which might have been something you've spent your whole life wishing you knew but you didn't, at least not like this, not in a way that calmed you down and helped you start loving the people around you instead of talking about your problems on repeat.

then sometimes, awhile later, you get to this place where someone says something to you and your heavy-with-rain-and-wind-shook heart breaks, and so does hers, in the way that you both hoped they would break, which is together.

there's a lot i don't understand. i don't know what happens when you die. i don't know what gravity actually is. i don't know how sea urchins can survive the growing acidity of the oceans. i don't know why knee ligaments tear and shins won't fix. i don't know why i'm so drawn to black and white photographs. i don't know why there are these things you can't get out of your mind, like how someone bites her lip when she wants to laugh about something that no one else will get and you know what she wants to laugh about because you are trying not to laugh about the same thing.

what i am trying to say is, there are books and books still to be written, but i wouldn't change anything about the story so far.

i wouldn't unremember anything.