Every once in a while, the thought of reflecting weighs on my heart. I used to reflect daily about life in physical journals, keeping flowers and ticket stubs taped in with captions so that I would remember why these keepsakes were relevant. Over the past year, though, I’ve completely lost touch with my journal.
This blog began as a means for me to write down my findings and discoveries about my God and savior, but that was before I knew much about tumblr or what type of blogging platform it was. Over my freshman and sophomore years, I would share ramblings of very intimate details about my life. I would very stream-of-consciously drift from boy troubles to self-reflection. Writing on tumblr was very cathartic and it would come to serve as a quick alternative when I wasn’t near my journal or I needed to type very quickly and very messy.
Then came my junior year. My junior year of high school hit me like a wind storm. It polarized things and I lost control over many things, and, truth be told, the winter months of my junior year were a very dark time in my life. I ended up not writing in my journal as much, I started seriously withdrawing from church, I became very focused on boys and relationships, and I felt very lonely. The loneliness came mostly because I wasn’t with God, but I didn’t have any friends to distract myself from it. I had walked away from my old church friends, I had cut every tie with my former public school friends, and I wasn’t really included in the groups of friends at my new school. During this time, I began using tumblr very superficially. I would post poorly-written incomplete sentences that fell right into pace with the self-regard as often seen on tumblr. You know the saying that Twitter is like a bunch of people talking to themselves in a room full of people? That’s how I began using this blog. I separated the humorous, and mostly probably inappropriate, posts I wanted to reblog to a different sideblog. I started another sideblog for very material and superficial things—and through that blog, which I have kept very active, I shamefully admit, I began to romanticize unhealthy things. These things include break up pain, depression, suicidal thoughts, self-harm, and other unhealthy topics.
Towards the middle of my senior year, I had begun getting more involved with my youth group again, but I used it more as a social thing because I knew people there would probably care about me. And then friend/boy/best friend drama ensued, and I completely cut myself off from my youth group family. I was slow to forgive and vowed to not forget to prevent further damage—I had let my heart convince me to stray from what I knew was probably right, and it didn’t end well.
"The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is?
Jeremiah 17:9 (NLT)
Towards the second half of my senior year I began to force myself to be more sociable. I realized that, in transferring so late in high school, I had convinced myself subconsciously I would not make any close friends, and after I made acquaintances with everyone in my class, I didn’t search further for friendship. It was hard, with five months left of high school, for me to weasel my way into the social scene when people had only merely acknowledged my existence socially. Now, being the introvert that I am, after taking up a part-time job, taking three AP courses, and trying to socialize while taking up a new sport, I was really burning myself out of energy. I stopped writing completely. I can’t remember the last time I sat down and poured out via tumblr or pen and ink.
I’m writing all of this for a purpose.
I’m going to come up with a few resolutions, the biggest one on my mind right no regarding the future of this blog. As I’ve seen many of my favorite tumblr-users do (@northwestsong jamesjourneys, meganmaverick), I’ve long considered abandoning this blog. I don’t know if I would completely restart, make a companion blog, or just a new account, but I want to make a change. 3.5 hundred posts into this blog, and over the past few years, any post of spiritual substance has been reblogged, not original. I’m not abandoning this blog this very moment, but I’m also considering the fate of my other attempt to leave (a Wordpress blog was made, and quickly abandoned). I definitely think that this blog, which has been with me through 3.5 years of my high school career (starting just after I left public school due to my eating disorder), might be coming to the end of the line soon.
As always, prayers would be greatly appreciated. I know that asking people to pray about whether or not I should stay in this community (though I am not at all connected) sounds petty and frivolous, tumblr used to be a very important part of my life and served a role that helped me strengthen my relationship with The Lord. As I enter the chapter if college in my life, I want to know what else should end with this progression.
Thank you so much,
Rachel
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
