It's June 5th, 2013. Eight o'clock in the evening and I'm watching the Weather Channel. I'm wearing a shirt that doesn't belong to me and American flag shorts. Really good chicken and waffles rests happily in my stomach, all warm and cozy. It's raining outside, but I don't mind so much.
I've been home for a month. I guess that means I'm a Sophomore in college (I just had to use spell check to figure out how to spell sophomore, though). I don't feel any different. Not older, not wiser, and not anything like I thought I would feel at this point of my life. Honestly, I haven't even thought seriously about my life and where it is going in awhile until this past Friday at Tribe graduation. That was me last year. That was me, all shining and new with hopes and dreams of falling deeply in love with Jesus and traveling the country and writing poems and living my life as an adventure. A life that people write stories about. I still have hopes of that. I want my life to be extraordinary. I want to point potheads and hippies and emo kids to the light and teach them how to sail straight. I want to be stitched to the man that has hiked along the stalactites of my mind and decided to stay. I want to have kids that have his eyes and my lips and teach them logic and philosophy and how to hear the voice of the Lord.
I've always said it takes certain levels of stability and awareness to keep a journal, write free verse poetry, and paint, and I've been painting a lot these days. I haven't been able to form words lately. I don't know if I've been thinking too hard or not at all, you know. When you lay on your bed, hands on stomach, feeling your heart beat through your skin, do you forget to breathe? You can't. Not really. But it's like when you look in the mirror and pick apart every feature until your face is no longer a face. It's like that. Breathing no longer makes sense. The rise of your chest and pushing air out your nose no longer seems adequate enough to keep your soul tied down. I don't know what I'm saying anymore.
All I know with certainty is you have to surround yourself with what you want to become or you become what you don't. I wish I would have realized the truth of that before now. It's not a cliché. Read a lot of John Green and Donald Miller and listen to Levi The Poet and La Dispute. Write down every chaotic thought. Talk to Jesus. Throw paint on canvas. Make your days count.
I think I'll spend the rest of my life wondering what I could've been if I hadn't wandered as I so often do. I'm still wandering, but I know one of these days I'm going to make it back to California. Don Miller said in Through Painted Deserts that everyone has to leave their home before they can love it again for all the right reasons. I guess I have three years.
It's June 5th, 10:05 pm. I'm sitting Indian-style at my desk, listening to LTP screaming about how anti-depressants used to scare him. I'm exhausted, and I feel more confused than ever. I'm going to bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment