My heart’s been feeling awfully cramped lately. Cramped and precariously balanced: ready to charge into battle, sink into wallowing oblivion, or rejoice in a moment, or all 3 in three consecutive moments. Reminds me of a boulder, set up by Wyle-E-Coyote on top of a steep and narrow pass, ready to fall, destined not only to fall on the wrong target, but since this boulder is a metaphor of my heart, destined also to splatter and take on collateral damage.
I couldn’t place it before now, and to be honest, though this feels like an epiphany right now, sitting up on Gold Camp Road, looking over the city, listening to Ray LaMontagne alone in the October near-cold, I doubt it’s the complete answer.
But do we ever have the complete answers? Nope. In a different state of mind I might say it’s the non-answers that make life interesting. But tonight, no dice. Answers would be nice, because a clean cut version of me is much more user-friendly.
And just so you know, I’d normally cut myself off Ray’s music so as to not drown the world in a sudden flow of emotion. However, tonight I feel the catharsis coming, and will therefore aid the process rather than stifle it. So Ray stays.
I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ve begun seeing myself as the sum of all my awkward parts, all my flaws. I don’t mean awkward like “haha, oh sam, you’re so odd”. I mean awkward like “this box I’m carrying isn’t really heavy, just awkward.”
Truly, I have a lot of those can’t-fit-in-people’s-arms-well qualities. I’m moody and over-sensitive and loud and often brash. I’m needy and dramatic and selfish in my action about 60% of the time, selfish in my thoughts pretty much always. I’m and attention hog and a rabid silence seeker when the inclination hits me. A lot of these thing just shouldn’t belong together but cohabit somewhere in the area beneath my ribs, due south of the mouth that communicates so frequently and expressively. I’m a little girl who’s scared of nearly everything I haven’t experienced, but I want to be treated like a time-worn veteran of the world. So often I feel like both at the same time.
Lately these things are all I can see. And I feel like an awkward, but not heavy, box that my friends (and even I) can’t quite figure out how to manage.
Like there are just too many character flaws, that I’m far more a burden than something that makes life better.
Because you see, even if the box isn’t heavy, it’s still hard to carry, and that’s what you remember.
I just don’t want to be remembered that way.
Somewhere in the logic and positivity and I think truth I have stored up in my mind I really do know that all these things are beauty, that I’m just looking at them from the wrong angle or something. But I can no more shift my perspective by willing myself to do so than a blind person can just decide to one day see clearly.
What I can do is cry.
I can once again acknowledge my utter dependence on a God I cannot see and give up. Because that invisible and never-changing, never-exhausted Mercy always comes to save me from my darkness. My sin darkness and my dark thoughts. They roll in like deep purple clouds, and He breaks through again like the sun.
I hate being charity, but it’s what I need regardless, to be rescued by people and God and not be able to repay it. And I need your charity, WorldAtLarge, maybe to try and put on a happy face when you realize mid-carry that something you thought was a good thing and was initially easy to bear is actually incredibly awkward to carry and not ideal. Try and realize I’m not so much a weighty load to carry, and that I might be worth it if you can only find the patience and grace to keep your arms around me.
I can’t promise I’ll always offer you the same grace and long-suffering. I hope I will. Maybe the best I’ll be able to work up is empathy and pray it’s enough.
