time to journal for myself
livejournal has always been about broadcasting. i want to journal for myself now, without thoughts about how my words will sound or who will be listening.
today i went back and read things that i wrote in high school: english assignments for esther, maple journals. my vocabulary was much more extensive senior year of high school than it is now. it is so strange to read the musings of my former self. i hear the words and the tone and it feels like my own mind, but the ideas . . . . did i really think that maybe some day in the future i'd get a second chance with kellan? was it truly revolutionary to say that racism doesn't have to be about hate, it can exist in making the distinction in the first place? ideas which seemed to me so new and original come across now as a stereotype. from the small glimpses provided by my writing it seems that my entire consciousness was devoted to musings on love and injustice. i was so naive, and yet so jaded. I wrote an essay about the hypocrisy of high school teachers - it is venomous. the teenage mind is so easily consumed by the minor offenses of fellow human beings. there is so much more to life than annoyance and infatuation, but at the time i saw none of it. i was wound so tightly that i could never really be still. even in moments when i thought i felt peace and love the undertow of anxiety was ever present, dragging me along through my tiny textbook existence. anal retentiveness is not just a tendency applied to specific instances of obsession, it is a lifestyle. i held on to everything. every emotion, concern, or trespass past and present i experienced as the raw force of a hurricane in my own microcosm life - my bryn athyn snow globe - tiny pieces of glitter and plastic pelting me in the face as i struggled to keep my footing when the world turned upside down. i don't blame myself for my shortsightedness, but i am deeply fascinated by it. i've come to realize that every human being experiences the full range of emotion regardless of the events of her life, because the scale is subjective. whatever we perceive to be "the worst" is set to zero, and we zoom in on the visual representation of our emotions until "the best" wrests in the distinguished top-right corner of our graph. if i exist entirely inside my snow globe, then that reality fills my perspective; it is unavoidable.
i have changed very much in the last year. through an excruciating process of razing i stripped myself down to my core. i had to know which parts of myself were my own. what i found is that at the center of my being is the belief that what matters most is that we honestly strive to find the truth and live by it. I believe in a God and i believe that he is compassionate. other things stop mattering when you adjust your focus. annoyance is by nature trivial. judgment is as poisonous as the sin being judged. friendship is a gift, but it does not supercede personal regeneration. these are some truths that i have discovered in my searching. i've also come to believe that the simplest pleasures are the most powerful: beauty, silence, the tangible presence of another person. this week i've experienced the unadulterated, chest-constricting, tongue-tying sensation of being held close. simple pleasures, not fiery passion or personal triumph, are God's true gifts. I have little excitement in my life, no future plans to speak of, but i am happy.
today i went back and read things that i wrote in high school: english assignments for esther, maple journals. my vocabulary was much more extensive senior year of high school than it is now. it is so strange to read the musings of my former self. i hear the words and the tone and it feels like my own mind, but the ideas . . . . did i really think that maybe some day in the future i'd get a second chance with kellan? was it truly revolutionary to say that racism doesn't have to be about hate, it can exist in making the distinction in the first place? ideas which seemed to me so new and original come across now as a stereotype. from the small glimpses provided by my writing it seems that my entire consciousness was devoted to musings on love and injustice. i was so naive, and yet so jaded. I wrote an essay about the hypocrisy of high school teachers - it is venomous. the teenage mind is so easily consumed by the minor offenses of fellow human beings. there is so much more to life than annoyance and infatuation, but at the time i saw none of it. i was wound so tightly that i could never really be still. even in moments when i thought i felt peace and love the undertow of anxiety was ever present, dragging me along through my tiny textbook existence. anal retentiveness is not just a tendency applied to specific instances of obsession, it is a lifestyle. i held on to everything. every emotion, concern, or trespass past and present i experienced as the raw force of a hurricane in my own microcosm life - my bryn athyn snow globe - tiny pieces of glitter and plastic pelting me in the face as i struggled to keep my footing when the world turned upside down. i don't blame myself for my shortsightedness, but i am deeply fascinated by it. i've come to realize that every human being experiences the full range of emotion regardless of the events of her life, because the scale is subjective. whatever we perceive to be "the worst" is set to zero, and we zoom in on the visual representation of our emotions until "the best" wrests in the distinguished top-right corner of our graph. if i exist entirely inside my snow globe, then that reality fills my perspective; it is unavoidable.
i have changed very much in the last year. through an excruciating process of razing i stripped myself down to my core. i had to know which parts of myself were my own. what i found is that at the center of my being is the belief that what matters most is that we honestly strive to find the truth and live by it. I believe in a God and i believe that he is compassionate. other things stop mattering when you adjust your focus. annoyance is by nature trivial. judgment is as poisonous as the sin being judged. friendship is a gift, but it does not supercede personal regeneration. these are some truths that i have discovered in my searching. i've also come to believe that the simplest pleasures are the most powerful: beauty, silence, the tangible presence of another person. this week i've experienced the unadulterated, chest-constricting, tongue-tying sensation of being held close. simple pleasures, not fiery passion or personal triumph, are God's true gifts. I have little excitement in my life, no future plans to speak of, but i am happy.