l'esprit de l'escalier, a personal definition -- (n.) all the things you wished you had said; the words that live on the tip of your tongue or in the back of your throat, tucked into the corners of your mouth and curving around the yawning spaces of your heart This is my personal, mostly journaling, sometimes fandom-y, sometimes pretty-photos-of-people-in-the-rain blog. Warning for anyone who just discovered this: Feelings. Feelings everywhere. (And while this is my main tumblr with bit of everything, I also have a one for fandom at meliorists and one for poetry/"aethetics" at ofwildstrawberries.) Current obsession: Is it Thursday yet?
I don't know what kind of drugs they put into this movie but it IS the female gaze I don't even know how to explain it. It's the yearning???? The hand holding?????? The handsome men making open displays of emotion?????? Bickering friends to lovers????? Men crying on screen due to embarassment and rejection and heartache instead of some acceptably "manly" reason??????? Women's desire for men not being demonised or viewed as icky????????? The friendship and solidarity between women???????? THE COSTUME DESIGN???????????????
“A devout cat lives at a fourteen hundred year old museum Hagia Sophia in Turkey, guarding and preserving its religious and cultural history every single day. His name is Gli.
He is a loyal feline that resides in the 1,475 year old museum. He is slightly cross eyed but a whole lot of cute.”
(via http://www.flickr.com/photos/7594928@N04/5222195178/ and http://lovemeow.com/2013/06/loyal-cat-lives-at-the-hagia-sophia-in-istanbul/)
So. It’s been a while since I’ve last written on here. A LONG while. Not for lack of trying--sometimes, still, I’ll scrawl some hasty prayers in a notebook or type out thoughts, bullet list form, on the Notes app on my phone--but every time I’ve sat down at a computer and entered a date in bold up top and tried to just....put down some mess of thoughts into text form, it just...kind of peters out. I don’t think I’ve made it past 2 paragraphs. Let’s see if I get that far tonight.
We can start simply: today is October 15th, 2021 (though the clock just tipped past midnight 5 minutes ago into the 16th) and my last actual written/journal post was April 24th, 2020. Here are some factual things in my life that have changed since then:
I got a full time job in social work
And then I quit that job 7 months later
But then I started another full time job in social work 3 weeks after that--and it’s less intense but I’m still there, and I’m NOT experiencing suicidal ideation or anxiety attacks, and that’s pretty cool. I’m coming up on my one year work anniversary and I have yet to want to quit. Which is a first. That’s also pretty cool
I moved out of the Sh’s basement and into my own studio, and I have been here also for the last 1.5 years. I love this apartment a lot--it’s my safe place, and the place where I feel most in control, and it’s home. (I still am likely to move soon, though--in some ways, it’s perfect just for me, but it’s hard to have people over or host any meetings here and....while part of me likes how small it is and likes the lack of that responsibility of having to host and likes how the studio suits ME so well....there is also that need with the church, you know? So likely am going to move again in the spring. Am enjoying my last few months here while I can!
I started taking psych meds, after the aforementioned return of depression/anxiety symptoms but also with the very needed, very grateful-for health benefits that have come with the new, more stable job. It’s a somewhat low dosage (I think) and at first I was so unsure and had a lot of complicated feelings about self-worth and not-being-enough and worries about over-dependence and worries about numbing who I am and just a lot of worries I was never able to untangle, and I actually refused them when my PCP first offered a prescription, but after I went back and they help a LOT. I have an SSRI for depression meds that I take daily and that’s made a huge difference---I actually recently forgot to take them for a couple of days when my parents were visiting and my schedule was thrown off, and I really felt it like 5 days later, when the yawning black hole of uncontrollable dread came back. Which wasn’t the best, but also was kind of cool bc it made me realize that it had actually been a few months since I had had that yawning black hole/since I fell into a feelings spiral that just ruined the entire day/since I hadn’t been able to concentrate due to the intensity of how terrible everything felt, and it was like oh wow these meds are actually really helpful. So that was cool. Still get anxiety sometimes, and I remain the most tightly wound curly fry you have ever known. Part of that is my personality, lol, but I do struggle sometimes with something beyond that and i have meds that I’m supposed to take PRN when that happens but mostly it just makes me feel sleepy and drunk and woozy and then I sleep for 8 hours which is both sort of helpful but mostly not? Anyways. IT IS A WORK IN PROGRESS and I’m still on the wait list for therapy but honestly it feels so small but so life-changing at the same time
I got a cat and I love her to a truly ridiculous degree. Her name is Dumpling. She is a rescue and a medium hair calico and is super shy but also actually the sweetest thing and I actually would die for her, I love her so much. After my mom met her, when we phone called the following week to do our weekly Bible reading, she said this quote to me which I have memorized VERBATIM because I was typing it out on my phone as she said it bc I knew it would be GOLD, but basically my mom summarized Dumpling in 3 sentences: “She’s gentle. And she’s shy. And when she looks at me, I feel like she can understand me.” #Dumplingfanclubforever. Dumpling is right now kind of curled up close to my feet and chirruping at me because she wants me to pet her instead of typing on my laptop, and she has big round dilated eyes because usually when it gets this late, I’ll play with her with the wand toy or remote mouse or something so she doesn’t attack my feet when I try to sleep, so she wants attention, but I am typing on tumblr for the first time in 1.5 years because I have FEELINGS because
I started online dating. Which I thought would be cool and casual and I didn’t really expected something to come of it--I mostly think I took the plunge and started because I was tired of waiting and felt like I needed to at least try. And bc hey, it’s fun and involves good food and I know how to talk to strangers, that’s basically what I do for my job and also what I do for church stuff and I totally have the confidence and self-possession to be able to meet strangers and make jokes and ask deep questions etc.etc. Which I did do! And can do! But...I don’t think I thought very far beyond the first or second meet-up dates?? Like I definitely didn’t. Because I didn’t expect anything to come of it. Maybe I didn’t let myself expect anything to come of it?? Idk.
But, before we narrate any further, let us clarify one thing that has definitely, definitely not changed since I last blogged 1.5 years ago:
I have so many emotions and I honestly sometimes don’t know how to handle them all, loloololololol.
So there’s this guy, right. And at the moment, he is both simultaneously both “just this guy” but he is also maybe starting to be slightly not just this random guy...Idk. Idk idk. My first date with him was actually the day after I brought Dumpling home, but we are going on our 6th date tomorrow....if that gives any context. It’s the first time we will have seen each other twice in one week? On our third date, we talked a little bit about why we were on this app and what we were looking for long term, while both acknowledging out loud that we weren’t dissatisfied with being single either. We agreed to take it slow while we both figure out what we want and whether this was a relationship wort investing in.
And so this whole thing is, like, on one hand, pretty casual and low commitment bc, like, it’s online dating right, we were literal strangers 1.5 months ago, WHO EVEN KNOWS IF THIS EVEN CAN BE ANYTHING, the chances of it working out long term are so statistically low, and if it doesn’t work out, the stakes are literally non-existent. We (I) just go back to life the way it was not even 2 months ago. It would be a blip, nothing more.
And yet. AND YET. Sometimes (usually especially the night before a date we have scheduled) it feels like I can’t stop thinking about...idk if it’s him, but I think a lot about our past conversations, whether in person or over text, and I mentally start trying to fit him into my life and imagine what it could be like--like what would I be willing to compromise on, what I wouldn’t, how I could explain this weird thing we do at church or tell the story around this touchy subject in my family history...stuff like that. And so, again, idk yet if it is guy-specific, but our current tentative burgeoning whatever is making me actually confront a lot of my own concepts about my life and what I want and....maybe I’m starting to daydream/have a lot of anxious feelings about the idea of an actual relationship and what that would mean, both the exciting things and the terrifying things.
You know what I really value and what I feel like I’ve fought for all throughout my 20′s? Independence. Financial independence, emotional independence, practical independence. Like, yes, there has 100% been the support from my parents and from the church, I’m not trying to disregard that -- but what I used to lament and get all angsty about is that, in the end, my life is mine, no one else is there to help make decisions, to decide a direction. (Like OTHER THAN THE LORD but I’m talking, like, other human beings here. Well, He is also human but YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.) What I mean is: if (when) my car gets towed, I’m the one who deals with it. When I’m sad and want to hang out with someone--yes, there are people I can call or families I visit, but those all come with boundaries and all those people have their own independent lives and responsibilities that aren’t shared with mine. When I’m sick and feel awful, there’s no one to take care of me or do things for me. I’m the one who schedules my own doctor’s appointment and I drive myself there and I pick up my prescription from the drug store afterwards. I control my bank account, I control how much I save, I decide on my health insurance plan, I calculate my retirement fund. I’m the one who estimates how much I can save towards buying property 5-7 years in the future, and when that time comes, I expect to be the one who researches real estate trends and finds an agent and, if it comes to it, I will alone make those final decisions of how much to offer, where to draw the line. And all of this is with HELP, obviously--I will consult my parents and the brothers/sisters in the church who I trust and probably ask them all to help pray--but I’ve started to just...expect it to be just me. And I thought that was something that would be overwhelmingly lonely. But now, even with such a casual incipient relationship, with barely even the hint of commitment on the table--I find that independence threatened, and I’m balking at it.
This independence feels hard-won. It feels like I had to fight for scraps of it when I was growing up, as the youngest and the only girl, when I hated being told I couldn’t (or shouldn’t) do certain things by myself. Despite everything they’ve given and provided (and still provide!) for me, sometimes it feels like I had to fight for it against my parents, to prove I can handle my finances responsibly and save for the future and pay my own bills and take my car in for regular oil changes and please oh please let me buy my own plane tickets home. To prove I don’t need to be taken care of....or, sometimes, on worse days, to prove I don’t need to be worried about. And it feels like I fought for it against my own brain, against my stupid imbalanced chemicals and the despair that would well up unbidden, sometimes for months on end, when I had to rely on so many others just to survive the day--phone calls with sisters many states away, or trips to the grocery store together being the only thing to look forward to, or some terrible nights sitting in the corner on the green carpeted floor of the dining room in 722 just feeling so overwhelmingly hopeless and when simply existing in the same space as a family who was strong and steady in the Lord was the only thing that kept me tethered. I’m not denying how grateful I am for the financial, emotional, Life support that was afforded to me--sometimes petitioned for, many times given freely--by this community and by the church that the Lord has placed me in. I’m not saying independence from that. But....it feels so, so good to be stable. To be not-in-crisis. To be someone that doesn’t need to be worried about. In that way, right now, in a way that I haven’t really felt throughout ages 21-30, I feel like I’m independent in a way that’s new and in a way that I really really love.
And yet somehow, probably definitely illogically, this independence and life feels threatened by....by, idk. By this guy from whom I have asked for very little commitment beyond dinner once a week. Or, no. Not by him. I think by the idea of a relationship, of the potential of commitment, by the potential of CHANGE. I thought I wanted change, I thought I wanted to take steps towards a family which I thought I always wanted but faced with even the second step out of a thousand towards that goal. I’m suddenly questioning everything I ever thought I wanted.
I don’t know if I’m scared of change, or scared of commitment, or scared of the hard work that I know goes into building an honest partnership. I don’t know if....if I’m really just scared of putting in the time and effort, of investing my heart, of opening myself up to feelings and new experiences--all without any guarantee that, yeah, it will work out. I don’t want to feel hope and have it come crashing down. Because there are SO MANY VERY LOGICAL REASONS that it wouldn’t work out. And YET I ALSO KNOW THAT IF I HAVE THAT MINDSET FOR EVERY SINGLE PERSON then it never actually will work out? And maybe I’ve subconsciously held that mindset for many years and it’s why I’ve never actively pursued a relationship with anyone ever since I was 24???
Idk. Idk bro.
I HAVE A LOT OF OTHER FEELINGS but it’s getting late and I also didn’t really eat dinner so the call of a 1 AM ramen packet is oh so very tempting. I know a lot of my questions and thoughts aren’t going to be resolved for a while. If I’m being honest, i don’t know how much of this I’ve prayed about, how much of my fears and doubts or even my own grasping value of independence I’ve even tried to speak out to the Lord. It’s honestly all this tangled mess and I don’t even know how to hold it out to Him bc my hand gets trapped and stuck, so instead I end up just staring at whatever portion I can hold in my fist.
Augh, ok. BALANCE. I will say that there are positives. I will say that, for all my 1 AM angst, I am enjoying myself and tentatively happy with exploring this life stage in a new way?? And I will say I’m maybe starting to entertain the possibility of liking this guy. Not in that, like, throat-burning, heart-fluttering, yearning crush way that I think I’m used to feeling for people I’ve been friends with for at least 6 months who then show a kindness or a vulnerability that causes my heart to go all :eye emoji:. But I have fun with him, and I like talking with him, and I like that I am slowly starting to be able to piece together what’s important to him. I admire his decisiveness. And, as I have told to what FEELS like EVERYONE I TALK TO ON A SEMI-REGULAR BASIS, I was really touched by this moment last Sunday when I was texting him about some vague emotional situation with my family and then he called me in the middle of the texting convo to just be like, it sounds like you had a rough weekend and I wanted to ask more about it/listen. Yeah. That whole interaction spawned some butterflies. I kind of hate butterflies. Or, no. No. I hate that I don’t hate butterflies. Ugh. Ugh, emotions WHAT EVEN ARE THEY why do they happen UGH.
Anyways. Here is maybe 5% of what I am thinking about and have been feeling for the last couple of weeks. I hate that I simultaneously want to talk about this dude all the time, but also zero of the time because I don’t want to feel any more hopeful than i already do. I told someone earlier this week that I don’t trust happy feelings bc happy feelings are a LIE and I haven’t 100% figured out the deeper meaning of what I mean when I say that, but it felt so true and liberating when I said it. Basically maybe for the first time in a long time, I feel a little bit of hope re: this whole area of life, but I don’t trust that hope so I want to smother/malnourish it until it dies, but it’s also warm and fluttery and makes me feel good so I don’t smother/malnourish it even though all logic and past experience dictates that I should.
Hm. Yes......maybe not the healthiest. i am still definitely on that waitlist for therapy lololol.
ANYWAYS HI TUMBLR I AM BACK MAYBE JUST BRIEFLY FOR THIS ONE POST, MAYBE FOR A LONGER STINT BC I AM STARTING TO REALIZE I HAVE A LOT TO UNTANGLE and for the first time in a while I don’t know how to talk about it totally with my friends and for the first time in a long long while, I haven’t figured out how to genuinely bring it to the Lord so WE ARE GONNA JOURNAL HERE until things make A LITTLE BIT MORE SENSE okay okay good yes.
being in your early twenties is like [grocery shopping alone] [having instant noodles for dinner] [remembering random details about that one friend you haven't spoken to in five years] [feeling overwhelming guilt for every purchase that isn't strictly "necessary"] [having midday naps] [finding out through facebook that the girl who was mean to you in high school has a husband and a baby] [falling a little in love with every stranger on public transport] [pretending you're not afraid of being alone] [wondering when you'll feel like a fully realized person] [listening to bands you liked in middle school] [blinking and it's suddenly december] [failing to imagine yourself ten years from now] [feeling like you're running out of time]
I have crossed the horizon to find you. I know your name. They have stolen the heart from inside you. But this does not define you. This is not who you are. You know who you are.
A small collection of things I’ve written in the past 7 days --
From a text to a group chat on Sunday, 4/19
But I’ve started to believe that finding a job will like....save me.
And it’s filling up space in my heart, because sometimes if I’m super productive and cross a lot of stuff off my to-do list [or] do a phone interview or whatever -- I feel really productive and go to bed feeling good about myself, but sometimes I never even turned my heart to the Lord genuinely that day? And it’s like, I’m seeking after my own feelings of satisfaction/productivity rather than the Lord.
From a journaling thing I wrote in the Notes app titled “4/21 - f e e l i n g s”
Frustration. Wanting a direction. It’s been a year. [No job, no apartment/settled home, no certain person/group to serve, no significant other or partner or family to attach myself to in the meaning.] Frustration because there isn’t, like, a single anchor to build around. Everything is a question mark.
BUT THEN in another sense: I’m so desperate for that anchor, for something to build around. But...in a weird way, I want what Nee warns against in [The Normal Christian Church Life, chapter 4] about a church having a center other than Christ. Like I’ve been phrasing it to myself as a direction or a word or something from the Lord...but I think it’s become twisted in my heart as me seeking something other than Christ. Where I am right now, inwardly, I would gladly take a mission or a directive and let that control me, direct me -- because I’ve felt so so so directionless -- but I think, in that, I would forget all about the Lord. I even, like...I want to pour myself into something like a job, a group of people, a mission, a project, but...I haven’t been pouring myself into the Lord. Nor do I necessarily even “want” to anymore??
And it’s that weird nuanced thing because the Lord does send us out? He gives us a field to sow in, and a garden to work, and a family that is named in Him or whatever. But I, like, haven’t even gotten those things, and already they’ve already replaced Him in my heart.
[Side note: maybe this is why I’ve been so anxious every time we’ve had a Bible study or a meeting or gospel event lately??? Because I make that event the center, rather than Christ. So then I become anxious over what I say and what I do (or what I DON’T say and what I DON’t do), and I can’t seem to find Him in any of that, because I’m trying to use Him for the event..rather than the event for Him.]
...
And now the Labor is over but my life is not normal, and neither is it for You, and it’s not what I want either. It’s like, neither. And I’m living vicariously through YouTube vlogs but that’s not sustainable.
And there was that moment where it’s like, I thought I gave myself to You and it’s not like I”m perfect or have figured it all out, but I thought it would be more romantic? I think I thought I would feel less lost. I thought You would be leading me...and maybe You have been trying, but it’s hard to lead someone who’s just sitting down/not even walking. [Who has given up.]
From another note thing I wrote to myself, containing quotes from Watchman Nee’s Sit, Walk, Stand. (All quotes from from Chapter 1, “Sit”)
- Every new spiritual experience begins with an acceptance of what God has done
- But if all these things become ours by faith alone, what then of the now very urgent and practical matter of our sanctification? How can we know present deliverance from sin’s reign? ... Once again, the secret is not in walking but in sitting; not in doing but in resting in something done
- God is waiting till you cease to do ... God is waiting for your store of strength to be utterly exhausted before He can deliver you. Once you have ceased to struggle, He will do everything. God is waiting for you to despair.
- (After referring to the story of the prodigal son)
It is not an elder brother who always wants to be the giver, but a younger brother who is always willing to be the receiver ... God is so wealthy that His chief delight is to give. His treasure-stores are so full that it is a pain to Him when we refuse Him an opportunity of lavishing those treasures upon us. It was the father’s joy that he could find in the prodigal an applicant for the robe, the ring, the shoes, and the feast; it was his sorrow that in the elder son he found no such applicant. It is a grief to the heart of God when we try to provide things for Him. He is so very, very rich. It gives Him true joy when we just let Him give and give and give again to us. It is a grief to Him, too, when we try to do things for Him, for He is so very, very able. He longs that we will just let Him do and do and do. He wants to be the Giver eternally, and He wants to be the Doer eternally. If only we saw how rich and how great He is, we would leave all the giving and all the doing to Him.
... Just you stop “giving”, and you will prove what a giver God is! Stop “working”, and you will discover what a worker He is! The younger son was all wrong, but he came home and he found rest -- and that is where Christian life begins.
From an email I sent on Wednesday 4/22
(Reference to Mark 10:45 - For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.)
The Lord Jesus was and did so much in order that we could approach Him and enjoy the sweetness of His presence. Why then would I do anything else but obey when He is bidding us to come to Him?
From another reminder note I jotted down this morning (Saturday 4/24) after 7am Bible study. It was a brother’s prayer that kind of hit home
We can strive to do different things/be certain things, but Lord, It’s You who really saves us
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