haikus

white dress of magic
a stiletto in each hand
running in bare feet

circus of laughter
altar of piled crosses
agape lovers

tears trickle down cheeks
candle flames dance in madness
prayers drift up like smoke

hearts beat frantically
bread and wine dissolve on tongues
music flies around

dandelion hope
white roses, rust metal breath
rebellion begins

cutting starts again
blood stains clothes, ink stains fingers
purpose for the pain?

music speaks for us
when words are the most empty
tears are the most apt

the eyes, watch the eyes
sacred love within his veins
liquid agape

"Memories", "Polished Nails", "Over the Lake", "The End", "I Watch Her"

Memories
I remember when we were friends,
when I whispered secrets to you,
when I sat next to you and was warmed by your nearness.
There was that one time
when you untangled my gold chain
and i was so happy the gold wouldn't have a kink.
And that time we ran lines for my scene in theater class,
that spring when I was dumped.
And I remember, too,
when you took my virginity,
like it was your right to have.
I remember all the blood
and the pain
and having to take a shower after so no one would know.
I remember saying no
and pushing you...
but only sometimes.
Most of the time I just let it happen.
I remember every single time,
praying for it to stop
praying for you to finish so the pain would cease.
I remember when we'd stay up late and talk
about stupid stuff
that seemed so important at the time.
I remember when we were friends
before you became my sometimes rapist
and I became an always enabler.

Polished Nails
Pink and black nails
pierce the porcelain skin
draining the stream like a drought.
The Red Sea never runs dry.
Shiny metal blade
reflecting the white washed walls
of the tomb she's locked herself in.
She forces herself to see
the self crucifixion
listen to the drip drip drip
of the blood bath hit the linoleum.
Dark washed denim smears the still wet river.
Years from now,
fingertips will brush the scars
the raised white lines.

Over the Lake
She stumbles over jagged rocks
stepping stones to solace
she wants to see,
one last time,
before she leaves,
fireflies over the lake.
Like catchable stars
fallen from grace
twinkling just for her.
Lighting a cigarette
knowing she'll taste smoke on her teeth for hours
she says goodbye in her own way.

The End
Not just a statistic,
but a number with a face,
locked away in an ivory tower of thoughts,
a dungeon built of stones of fear.
The bright red screams
rip across her legs
arms
hands.
Playing mysterious and aloof to avoid getting hurt
but the loneliness she drowns in
is enough to kill God in a man.
The once upon a time princess
made to dance in a dress of ivory
is clothed instead by red
and hides behind fear
of her happily ever after.

I Watch Her
The muscles in her thighs twitch
as though they remember the feel of the blade
within easy reach
the Swiss army knife in her purse
red, of course, that's her favorite color
the color she likes to see run
the razor blade in her make-up case
tapping the lipstick tube
when she rummages for mascara
she holds the key to her cell
to keep everyone out?
to keep everyone in?
no one can come in
and she won't answer the knocking anymore
she wishes she was as far from them physically as she is emotionally
so they wouldn't see
the key she could use to save herself
become the weapon
to gouge her own flesh to pieces.

My drug of choice

This post is a compilation of multiple journal entries over the last few weeks.

I promised God (and others, later) during my church's Pentecost service in 2010 that I would let go of the anger and resentment I was holding onto that made me cut. Since then, I have cut myself on two separate occasions. The first time, this past February, I cut because I was hurt and angry and upset by fighting/tension between myself and my best friend and his fiancee concerning how much time my best friend and I were spending together. I made 4 cuts on my arm because I wanted them to be seen; I wanted my hurt to be noted, you know?
The second time was different, though. I had a bad night the night before and I reached out to a friend. I survived the night and the next day without cutting. But then I got angry at another close friend and fed up with trying to succeed with not cutting. I cut 6 lines into my thigh, knowing that no one would see them. I would have to admit to them for anyone to know.
But those cuts were done for me. In a moment of rage and sadness and hopelessness. I'm not accountable to anyone for them because they're a secret.
I am a liar. And I'm drowning.

I was--have been--thinking about whether or not to come clean about me cutting again. I don't want anyone to know I'm failing; I don't want my leadership positions to be taken away. I think I'd rather suffer alone, and have people think I'm strong, than have J. know I'm cracking, than interfere with his happiness. So the cutting will remain a secret--until he finds out on his own, or I feel like it might overwhelm me, like it did last Spring.

Maybe I'm not telling because I don't want to be rescued, or I don't think I should be rescued. Do I just want them to let me go? I'm hiding my cutting, my suicidal ponderings, my anorexia contemplations...Do I not want the rescue, the lifelines?

I cut again. I started thinking about it on Sunday, started thinking about dying--I got pretty sad in church. I ended up cutting on Monday with an attitude of anger, sadness, 'dare me not to', and 'I deserve this'. The last cut I made scared me--I was either pressing harder than usual or cutting faster than usual, because I cut deeper than I ever have before. I bled through my jeans; I actually had to use a bandage for the cuts. I bled until the next day. I wondered if I was going to need stitches. The scars will be noticeable, and they'll take a while to heal, making it hard to keep the cutting a secret.
Is this what I want?

For as long as you can remember, you have been a pleaser, depending on others to give you an identity. You need not look at that only in a negative way. You wanted to give your heart to others, and you did so quickly and easily. But now you are being asked to let go of all these self-made props and trust that God is enough for you. You must stop being a pleaser and reclaim your identity as a free self.
The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief or bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing--not healing, not curing--that is a friend who cares.
Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.
-Nouwen

God the interventionist

I was watching Intervention the other night (I'm pretty much obsessed with it), and during the pre-intervention the interventionist said to the addict's mother, "You are not turning your back on your son. You are saving his life." She was faced with the ultimatum of forcing her son to go to rehab for his addiction or kicking him out of her house if he refused to go to treatment.

And it made me think of God, and His anger. Maybe His anger with us is like the anger of loved ones towards an addict at an intervention. The anger is because of the love they feel towards the addict. Our addiction is to sin, and to allow us to continue to sin would be to sentence us to death, just like allowing someone to continue a heroin addiction would be a death sentence. Though it looks like punishment, it looks like He only loves us when we are good (or sober), like we are only accepted when we jump through His hoops, if we make the point of His anger about those things, I think we are completely missing the point.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, in his second volume of The Prophets, writes, "Nothing is so sweet to the heart of man as love. However, for love to function, the suppression of sympathy may be necessary. A surgeon would be a failure if he indulged his natural sympathy at the sight of a bleeding wound. He must suppress his emotion to save a life, he must hurt in order to heal. Genuine love, genuine mercy, must not be taken to be indulgence of mere feeling, excess of sensibility, which is commonly called sentimentality" (page 76-77). C.S. Lewis shares a similar viewpoint in A Grief Observed when he writes, "The terrible thing is that a perfectly good God is in this matter hardly less formidable than a Cosmic Sadist. The more we believe that God hurts only to heal, the less we can believe that there is any use in begging for tenderness. A cruel man might be bribed--might grow tired of his vile sport--might have a temporary fit of mercy, as alcoholics have fits of sobriety. But suppose that what you are up against is a surgeon whose intentions are wholly good. The kinder and more conscientious he is, the more inexorably he will go on cutting. If he yielded to your entreaties, if he stopped before the operation was complete, all the pain up to that point would have been useless. But is it credible that such extremities of torture should be necessary for us? Well, take your choice. The tortures occur. If they are unnecessary, then there is no God or a bad one. If there is a good God, then these tortures are necessary. For no even moderately good Being could possibly inflict or permit them if they weren't"(page 49-50).

Like a surgeon, He must hurt in order to heal. Like a parent or a friend, He can't enable us if He wants a relationship with us, a healthy and good and stable relationship that is. He wouldn't be loving us if He just let us continue in our addictions; He wouldn't be love if He didn't get angry or upset when He saw us turn to the thing that was killing us again and again.

Questioning the status quo

I’ve been attending the same church in my home town for the past 20 years, since my youngest sister was 6 months old, and it wasn’t until college that I seriously started questioning it. It’s a great church, don’t get me wrong, a lot of people love it. But to me, it’s become stifling. I changed a lot during my four years of college, and I no longer fit at my home church.

During college I started attending a church called Jacob’s Porch that encouraged it’s members to question, to wrestle with God. My college church is where I am challenged, where I find my community, where I find my strongest support and where I find unconditional love and acceptance. I don’t hide any of myself when I attend Jacob’s Porch; I don’t feel like I have to toe a line when I’m there. They know my story and I have never felt any judgment from them because of my story. My home church, though, I would never feel comfortable revealing my whole story. I think people would judge me behind my back. I’m just another face in the crowd there. I no longer share their opinions about toeing the conservative, Republican party line or accept what they say wholeheartedly. I’ve learned to question. But I like going to church, so when I’m in my hometown, I attend church and sit quietly in the attendance and I don’t make waves.

I changed that last Sunday when I threatened not to come back to the church. A couple of weeks ago, after the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, our head pastor spent a good 15 or 20 minutes talking about the tragedy. Good. Great. We should be talking about it; we should be helping the people that are suffering over there. But he has a daughter, son-in-law, and two grandchildren living there, and he spent the whole talking about them. He talked about how his family had been affected. Not about the hundreds of other people affected, but the four missionaries there from his own family. Look, I know he was scared for his family’s well-being, but by focusing all his attention of them, it was as if he was saying his family needed/deserved prayers more than any other affected person. The next week, our worship minister was preparing to read the first chapter of Job to the congregation, and he pulled out his iPad to do that. Fine, whatever, I support technology. But as he pulled up the chapter to read he starts talking about how great the iPad is, that you can read the Bible on it, and how great iPhones are, too because they let you do so much. I don’t need product placement during my church service–I get pissed off enough when I see it in movies. You know what else is great to read a Bible on? The Bible. We’re in a church; it’s no like we didn’t have any access to an actual Bible. I mean, is Apple now sponsoring our church services? Did he get a free iPad because he’s supposed to plug it during service?

I guess neither of those things are that big of a deal, but I don’t want to be part of a church that is becoming a business, a church that only preaches about what the pastors think is true or important, instead of being open to dialogue, a church that thinks only men should be in positions of leadership. I threatened to stop going after the tsunami and earthquake in Japan. If Japan wasn’t mentioned at my church, after spending 20 minutes talking about Christchurch and the pastor’s specific family there, after the church had made a point to say during multiple services and write in the bulletin that members could specify their tithing contributions to go to the pastor’s family in Christchurch so that family could decide where the money was most needed, if the tragedy that occurred in Japan wasn’t even mentioned, then I was out. I would not be going back. Ever. A church that is so unapologetically hypocritical is poisonous.

The church did mention Japan in our opening prayer. So I was appeased. I debated even blogging about this; I mean, I have some qualms, and one of them is badmouthing a church. But I believe that people should question their churches; we should be discussing our beliefs, not just sitting in chairs or pews, week after week, passively accepting whatever the guy at the pulpit says is fact. I do believe there are some ultimate truths, but I am wary of believing that humans can know those truths completely. My god is not a human, and I don’t think any human can know what God knows. So I don’t accept what any human says about God wholeheartedly. I agree with some preachers, and authors and musicians and artists and average, normal people about what they think about god. I believe some people more than others, I accept some viewpoints as closer to truth than others are, but no preacher is my god. And no preacher should be a god for anyone.

I think one of the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned is that we should question. The only way we change and grow and live is by learning and questioning.

Surprise, The First, The Rose Giver

Surprise
And, like a child, I know
that ‘maybe’ always meant ‘no’
just like I knew their ‘discussions’
were really arguments
because Daddy had been drinking for 5 days
because the Browns lost
and decided to lay into Mom
because I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water instead of being in bed.
And, as I said those words to him,
in a half joking manner,
I watched my brother of choice turn to look at me,
and he stuttered as he asked me
if that was true.
And all I could do was say ‘yeah’ and shrug,
because that was behavior I’d come to accept.
It breaks my heart
that I still have the ability to surprise him
after everything he already knows–
there’s still an innocence I can hurt.

The First
As I lay next a fire
reading poetry
and silently congratulating myself for keeping it burning all on my own,
I wonder what the first fire was like.
What the first sparks looked like
as they fell on the brush and twigs,
what the crackle sounded like
as the fire fed and hungered for more,
and the bites of flame on fingertips
as man answered fire’s desire,
and the smell and taste of smoke
rolling across the ground
as the dawn fog rolls across the river.
Did the first fire starters see the miracle of fire,
the balance of life and death
in the flames lapping the wood?
Did they see the magic,
the magic that I see?

The Rose Giver
Two long stemmed red roses
petals still in virginal buds
floating in a sooty, sticky puddle
on the blacked, cracked pavement.
Carefully placed in the careless setting
poor lighting, in a poorer section of town
the wrong side of town if you were to ask some passing by.
Though, if you were to try and ask a passerby,
they wouldn’t look in your eyes
as they mumbled a half hearted answer.
Soon the roses will be trampled
the petals will be scattered and lost
but for now, they lay softly
silent tribute to the fallen.
The rose giver says a 30 second goodbye
once every year or so
under the poor lighting, in the even poorer section of town.
12.2.2010

What am I doing with my life?

For the past year, I’ve been planning on attending Ashland Theological Seminary this upcoming fall to obtain a Masters in clinical counseling. I want to work with teens and young adults dealing with issues like self-harm, addiction, depression, suicide, eating disorders…issues that I think a lot of young people face alone. These are the problems that are kept secret and dealt with shamefully, and I think they are a lot more common than people realize.

After telling people for the past year that I’m going to apply, and then completing the entire application process (including paying the non-refundable application fee), I am contemplating not going to ATS this fall. I know, right? Completely flaky.

The counseling program is two years long, and every week students in the counseling cohort have to spend one day on the main campus in Ashland. This fall I’ve committed to being the leader of a covenant house, which is a group of people living in intentional Christian community. I’m questioning whether or not I’ll have the time, or the means to get to campus, or the money to start classes again this year. I’ve also been seriously considering joining the Peace Corps after my year in the covenant house is finished.

I want to go out in the world and help people. I mean, that’s why I want to be a counselor, because I feel this incredible need to rescue people. I don’t just want to sit in safety and take it easy for the rest of my life–I want to go out in the world and alleviate suffering. When I hear about natural disasters, the first thing I want to do is go to that place and help people. I won’t be able to do the Peace Corps for a while if I have to be on Ashland’s main campus every week.

I can start by taking classes online and at the Columbus branch campus; that’s always an option. But I won’t be able to finish the program without the core counseling courses I have to take on the main campus.

But this is all up in the air–I haven’t even been accepted to ATS.

Everyone fights their own individual war

One of the biggest misconceptions I had (have) about cutting was that all I had to was quit. I mean, yeah it sucked while I was actively cutting multiple times a week, but I knew why I was doing it: I hated myself, I was filled with anger and resentment, I wanted a physical manifestation of the emotional pain I had dealt with for the past three years. At the time, I knew that cutting wasn’t the best way to deal with my emotions; I know that harming one’s self is not healthy. But it was the only way I could see to cope with everyday life. I couldn’t lay in bed sobbing all day, so instead I cut. It was the way I survived.

Since I knew I was using cutting as a coping mechanism, I didn’t really want to quit at the time. I knew it was unhealthy, but I also realized it was keeping me sane. I wouldn’t be cutting forever, I knew, it was just a way to get through the last months of college. I figured I would quit one day.

But when I was thinking about quitting, I never really thought of it as a process. I figured I would be cutting one day, and then stop cutting whenever I got “better”. I never really looked at cutting as an addiction, and I never thought I would have to deal with the urges to cut after I quit (and I’m assuming for the rest of my life). Dr. Steven Levenkron, author of Cutting: Understanding and Overcoming Self-Mutilation, likens cutting to OCD, in that it’s a compulsive act meant to relieve unbearable pain, and to eating disorders, in that it’s a method of seizing control. The thing is, people don’t really grow out of OCD, or eating disorders, or any addiction really. The addiction is always there, waiting for you to fall, waiting for temptation to overwhelm you, waiting at the end of a bad day.

I didn’t realize that I would miss cutting. Nor did I realize that cutting would always be the first solution my brain would turn to when I needed a problem solved. It’s surprising the way our addictions simultaneously smother us and appear to help us.

A room without books is like a body without a soul

I’ve been thinking lately about being published. I’ve been in love with books forever. I remember when I was a kid, sitting up with my sisters at night as our mom read us bedtime stories. I remember the color of the book of fairy tales, the feel of the glossy pages as she let me hold one side of the book (it made me feel important), running my finger down the table of contents to pick a story, the vivid illustrations. Once I learned how, I always wanted to read the stories out loud myself.

Now in my early twenties, after obtaining a degree in English (of course), books have ceased to be about only pleasure. Books are now studied. Images are pounced on to uncover the symbolism. The words inside not only make a world in the book but effect the world outside, the world the reader inhabits. One of the books I’m reading right now is Enchanted Hunters by Maria Tatar and it studies the power of stories in childhood–the stories aren’t just about themselves anymore; now I’m reading books that study the effect of the stories I read once upon a time.

So being published, being read by strangers, is a dream, something I want to happen before I die. I submitted three poems to Ohio State’s “The Journal” and to Bowling Green’s Mid-American Review on the advice of a friend a few weeks ago and I’m waiting to hear back from them. I’m pretty excited about it, actually. I check both sites to see if the review status has changed, but it’s only been a month since submission and it can take anywhere from one to five months. I’m a bit impatient…so people tell me.

But sometimes I daydream about an Emily Dickinson-esque rise to fame. A friend or a family member finds my journals after I’m gone and decides to publish all of them as a lasting tribute to me (that’s kind of a downer, I know). I’m nothing like Dickinson–she has a level of brilliance I will never in my life capture. I love her, she made me appreciate American writers when I had all but given up on them. But Dickinson gives hope to the authors who sit in bedrooms night after night, scratching pen across paper, wondering if their unread words will ever matter to anyone but themselves-journals full of poems, drawers full of scribbling, bound by spirals and paperclips and rubberbands.

Emily Dickinson gives us hope of an immortality, almost. A way of remaining without being alive. Humans are not immortal; our words, however, can be.

Thoughts on being alone

I say that my personal hell is being alone. Not just by myself, but I mean really alone. No music, no books, no friends, no family, no pets, no writing…just me. That terrifies me. I want the distractions. I need them. I can be away from people for very long periods of time, but I’m never away from music or noise or a phone or a computer or a book. What do I need the distractions for? Is it because I don’t want to be with me for very long? Maybe it’s just the disinclination of boredom, or maybe I’m running from my own thoughts. If there is one thing I have in spades, it’s the desire to run from myself and from expectations. Maybe when I have a distraction, it’s as though I have a purpose, something to accomplish, and that gives me worth and a purpose.

What is your story?

I imagine my story is similar to a lot of other stories. There is nothing truly remarkable about my life; many people have faced more difficult lives, and many people have faced easier lives. I think my life, and my relationship with Jesus, is typical. We–Jesus and I–have our ups and downs (mostly because I chose to make our relationship have ups and downs), but all good relationships have ups and downs. Without the darkness, how can we appreciate light? Without light, how do we understand darkness? Maybe the downs in our relationship don’t necessarily have to be looked at in a negative light…I mean, of course the up moments are great and I am certainly happier in those times, because those times are easier. But real relationships, I mean relationships with real people, the relationships we have with friends and family, all have down moments as well as up moments. So maybe my down moments with Jesus–those times when I want to give up, or break it off, or say goodbye–are there to show me that my relationship with Jesus is real. It’s genuine. I’m not always going to be happy with him, or with me, but how many of us are always happy with our friends and our families? No one. Anyone who claims to be is in serious denial, or else they are not close enough with their families to feel comfortable enough to fight with them and still know they will be accepted.

I went through a time of not talking to God. It wasn’t that I didn’t like him or turned my back on him; it’s not like I stopped loving him. I actually don’t know how to explain it. I still loved him–our separation (that’s what I call that two year period in my head)–was never about love for me. I just stopped praying. I stopped going to church, and then I stopped going to bible study, and then I stopped going to all clubs and activities associated with God. All lot of that separation had to do with the religious organizations I was involved with. I had several dealings and run ins with staff members that really turned me off of Jesus and those associated with him. There was the time one of my roommates was not allowed in the bible study I was attending because she didn’t meet the criteria the other girls met. There was the constant pressure to go on mission trips during the summer. One soon to be staff member was over heard talking to a younger girl, and when the younger girl explained she didn’t think she could go on a mission trip that summer because her mom wasn’t sure about it, the soon to be staff member replied, “Did your mother ever die on a cross for you?” Several incidences like these over several years drained me; I no longer wanted to be associated with people who preached these things. I couldn’t do it anymore.

Still, I can’t blame my relationship with God wholly on others. Those people were not God, and I know this. Man’s interpretation of God is never going to be perfect or one hundred percent accurate (and if anyone claims they understand God, you should be wary). Many of the problems I had (have) with God stem from the issues I have with trust. I have serious commitment issues. Not even just commitment with love; I’m talking about all relationships in general: I have serious commitment problems. And it stems from my problems with trust.

And so it begins

I like to write. Writing is how I understand the world. This blog is going to be combination of thoughts, maybe some poetry if I’m brave enough, random observations, probably some low level ranting. So take it or leave it, this is me.