(no subject)
i'm not here for you anymore.
you were never there for me.
so...we're even. (?)
when i first started this whole lj experience,
i belonged to a community called "articulate".
the only rule was that you had to express yourself in fifteen words.
no more, no less.
it was pretty cool in the beginning. of course, most of the articulate entries were depressing and artsy, as for some reason, grey and gloomy somehow are great foils for colourful words and punchy images and rhythms that roll around in your mouth like candy. and then it started to get...dumb, i suppose. or just stale. hackneyed, trite, adjectives like that. so i disjoined and now whenever i go back to look, i'm glad i did-- it has a new look and has been taken over by teenage girls expressing heartbreak. not to discredit teenage girls or heartbreak. it's just not as...elite, i suppose, as it used to be.
but the idea of restricting my words, to choose my words carefully and yet be able to convey what i want to convey-- that has always kind of stuck on my mind. so i write my own, and stick them up silently, like a girl with wispy hair who pulls her ponytail out and rearranges it so that the bumps and stray hairs are fixed back into place, and you notice it out of the corner of your eye, but you don't really notice it until she's putting the finishing touches on the newly-made ponytail. as if that makes any sense at all.
when i tell you to leave me alone,
i just want you to hold me.
i've noticed that i think a lot. and i think about how i think and what i think a lot. but moreso, lately i've been noticing that the things i think about seem to have such insignificant bearing compared to all the other issues that i could be thinking about. i believe this has a lot to do with the workshop i've been in the past four friday nights at church. it started out with the idea that we would prep our seniors for college based off of steve's and my experience and things like that, and i admit, i thought that it'd be easier. i don't know, i mean i knew that i shouldn't expect the class to change their lives or whatever, but i...hmm. homosexuality, worldviews, life. everything is so much more complicated than it seems. even little things like baptism and wedding ceremonies. and it's hard for me because while i can admit that i am a struggling and weak Christian in the solitary silence of my own bedroom, when i get out there, when i get in front of people, i seem to put myself on the defensive whenever the topic strays to something Christian, because a part of me is like "well jen, you should know this, you should be a better Christian, *gets all defensive*" even though on the other side of the wall, i'm yelling at myself that i should stop expecting so much of me and stop being worried about what other people will think of me. oh, le sigh. which is why--
this summer, i plan to deconstruct.
because if i don't, i am going to
explode.
one of the beauties of college is that you have absolutely no homework over the summer. not to say that you don't have work, but it's not like getting an AP packet to finish or book notes to complete or something along the lines of that ilk. so i plan on using the time that i'll be given to think-- more specifically, think about the things i've been gently pushing aside and avoiding for the past, oh, six years. things that the experience of a year in college has exacerbated and brought into new proportions and lights. such as, say, homosexuality. because i know what the Bible says, i know what God has to say, and i know what i, as a Christian, should think. but that doesn't mean that i do think that, and when i'm in the mood to agree with God, i'm not quite sure of the hows and whys behind what i think. but there's so much more than that-- the basics, the fundamentals. the Bible in and of itself. one of the reasons that i both love and hate (and am intimidated) conversing with people (i.e. david, steve, todd, ben walker, mom, dad, janet) is because they go back to the Bible-- the Bible that i am so clueless about sometimes (most of the time) that i feel like how i described in the last paragraph. they throw out these verses, they sound intelligent about them-- because they are-- and my brain just wilts in response, because...it's kind of like those situations where you have some shrimpy dorky-looking dood and a buffer, tanner, bigger dood, and they're both going after the same girl. and the shrimpy dood looks at the buffer dood, and he wilts, thinking, "how can i compete with that?"
i've got to stop viewing this as a competition. i've got to stop thinking that i have to be "better", i have to stop giving "better" such a hold over me. because i'm not. because, as kristen's header reads, you see, in the final analysis, it is between you & God. it was never between you & them anyway.
i feel like crying, but not out of frustration. not out of anything, really. i want to cry as much as i want to just sit and stare at the wall opposite my bed. but i think i just want to do both in an attempt to avoid reality that i have a ten-paged single-spaced paper due on friday and i haven't quite yet started researching, much less writing.
so to sum it up:
for more reasons than one,
i can't wait for summer.
(hey, i never said that my articulates were good. =P)