not here nor there

I’ve realized that I put my worth as a human in other humans. It’s a terrible fate, realizing that what I despise is exactly what I’ve done.

Sometimes, friendships are weird. Some friends bring out the best in you… those who enable you to be the best you. Other friends who love drama, drag you into it, then spit you out. It’s hardest with these friends, because for some reason, they’re the ones that tend to hold fast.

In junior high and high school, it was Liz. I loved hanging out with her. We laughed a lot, had such great memories. As I grew older, I realized that our friendship was one-sided. She talked, I listened. She wanted to see a movie, I watched the movie. She wanted to talk on the phone, I listened on the phone. She wanted to hang out, I’d drive to her house and we’d hang out… She did all these things and, I followed along. And in the end, I was hurt and left alone…striving to keep a friendship that wasn’t meant to be kept.

In college, I met some of the best people I know. The best friends anyone could ever ask for. Drama free. Truly loving. They brought out the best in me, challenged me and what I think, helped me realize who I am… Those friends I’ve held with me for so long, close to my heart, because they’ve changed me, and how I think of the world. How to understand myself better, and how to be a better version of myself. They made me realize that I am not who my friends are, but who I need to be.

Now, I fear I’ve returned to the high school age where I had no idea who I was and let people walk all over me and made friends who were not truly friends. Friends that I would follow around like a sad little puppy dog, like I had no idea how to be myself. Left alone in the wake of their drama, hollow, and useless and ridiculous.

But here’s the thing. I can’t find my worth in human beings. I think I’m going to start being my own self again, fight against this pull to follow along, and strive to be a better me, because that’s who Christ meant for me to be… not to follow someone around like a sad, hopeless puppy, hoping for the best, or doing it just because someone else is doing something. But to follow Him, the only truly sincere and trustworthy and genuine being in my life. The only One who loves me as I truly am… in whatever form that might be.

I’m following along in this life, and I hate it. I’ve lost who I am, striving to be someone I’m not – trying to mold myself to be who someone else wants me to be has destroyed who I am. Which is what I do in friendships where I’m the follower. I follow. I don’t exist outside of them. I can’t exist outside of them. I want so badly to be accepted that I do almost anything, to the extent of feeling abandoned if things don’t go as needed/planned, and in the end, because they’re human, I’m left alone and trampled, and forgotten…

I need to follow God, not self-seeking, self-involved human beings. Because they all fail. They’re only truly thinking of themselves, no matter how they try to spin their tale. I am not a follower. I am not someone who craves drama. I am not someone who gets so involved that I can’t see past what is right in front of me. I’m growing, but I’m still stunted… because I’ve placed far too much in mankind; in the hopes that someday I’ll be able to “fit in” even though that is, ultimately, impossible…and unnecessary.

My dream, my hope, is that some day I will end up in Scotland, married to a sheep farmer, fully pregnant (yes, pregnant,) with tons of dogs, a donkey or two, a little house with a fireplace that overlooks Ben Nevis, or the Isle of Sky. My dream, though mostly shattered, still has a stronghold on my heart. I will not settle. I will not be a follower. I will be myself, and I will be someone who strives to live as Christ, and not someone who strives to live alongside mankind, as mankind. Because following the only One who hasn’t destroyed me, who hasn’t hurt me, is the only thing that I have left. My heart, whatever is left of it, is His. End of story.

social-media forgotten

I don’t even know how long it’s been since I haven’t been on facebook. I thought it would be difficult, like it has been in the past, where I get bored and figure, well, what else is there to do other than go on facebook and waste my life away?
I haven’t had an urge to go on. Not once. Maybe I am simply over it. I don’t have to hear the same people complain about the same things over and over again. I don’t have the need to share my life with facebook. I don’t feel left out when friends announce things tell things on there instead of telling it to me personally. Being oblivious to life outside of my bubble has returned me to a contentment that I haven’t felt in a really long time. Because as much as facebook keeps you updated on your friends, it’s no longer personal. It becomes media. Because no matter how close of a friend you might have, they still tell the facebook world more than they tell you. Facebook has destroyed the meaning of being personal and intimate. Now it’s just lies and whines and games – both technologically speaking and mentally speaking.

I still love Oregon. Even with its hick nature (it still baffles me, and i’m not overly fond of it,) and its oversized raised trucks, and its bad drivers, and its poor economy. I’ve grown up a lot here, and I’m still growing up. I’m not the same person I was. I’ve realized that in order for me to heal from a lot of the hurt in my life I need to be separated from it so that I can be away from the hyper-sensitive and overwhelming nature of what all that causes me. I need to be away from it so I can process objectively, know where I’m wrong, know how to pause, know how to heal. Because when I’m in that hyper-sensitive state I cannot see reason. I cannot heal. I cannot see anything in the distance… only what is in the past and how much I have to build up walls to protect myself from things ever happening again. I’m not someone who can get over things easily, unless I have this period of time to process in my brain where I’m going wrong, and how to focus on healing, instead of protecting. I wish I had a gift for speaking, because then it would have saved me a lot of heartache. It would be easier to make people understand what is going on in my head, and how I deal with things differently. But most people, myself included, can claim to understand all they want, but they’re too selfish to have empathy for that person and give them the opportunity, and the respect to deal with it how they need to. 

I have my little reading nook in my bedroom almost all figured out, along with a desire to write – though still no desire to write books for other people. It would be a delight to write stories for a living, but I’d never survive under deadlines… perhaps I can start writing, and finishing my stories, have multiple books written, and when I am dead then they can be published to my heart’s content. Until then, though, I will continue to write stories for myself, destroy them when I deem them destroyable, and enjoy the experience.