turn the lights off, carry me home (na na na na na na na)

This has been a truly perfect and beautiful day.
Woke up at Ambers house and it was snowing.
Got to drive home in the snow. (it wasn't slippery, just pretty big twirily white flakes coming down on my windshield and making the wippers squeek)
Took a nice warm shower and put my hair up (this is key).
Had lunch and then my family left for chior except for Liz.
Made cookies because it's one of my special bake days (my baking habbits must be restricted now, apparently).
Talked to Lindy on the phone and completely ruined the cookies, haha!
Watched 7th Heaven.
Called Sam, talked for long time.
Went to the store with liz and listend to POTC music on the way. Remembered how much I love that movie and need to see it again.
Had homemade pizza with my family which I actually didn't like very much, but in concept it was amazing.
Watched a movie.
Made popcorn for the movie, turned it into carmel popcorn upon realization that we had no butter.
Danced.
Stayed up late listening to music and stalking people online.
Made a blog post.
Climbed into my soft, warm bed, currled up, closed my eyes, and drifted off to sleep.
yayyyy.

emily is:

taking suggestions on what to do with her endless expance of free time.


or her endless expance of free life.

this life sentence that i'm serving

A year ago this time I was in co-op, and co-op had me and my heart in every capacity of my faculties. I hated the work and the rules, of course, but the feeling of belonging I got out of being part of something bigger than myself was everything to me. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who saw it that way, but it was great because though we were just a class to me we were epic, like characters in Survivor or something, and through the sweat of our brows bent close together over the piles of endless books and papers we had developed bonds like those between Frodo and his faithful companions. It was beautiful just because it made me care so much about things, feeling like I loved these people to the point where I would have given my life for any of them and I knew them so well I could have written novels about each one. They all seemed so interesting and exciting that it thrilled me to think I was one of them. And I remember what church was like, before it started falling apart, and how much I would look forward to Sunday and being with Sam and Anna and Elizabeth. I remember how we'd stand in a circle downstairs or over by the Organ and talk and how we had inside jokes and what that felt like, and how we were nerds and everybody thought we were rather strange and how much that excited me, because I was on the inside know of something. And I remember teen meetings at the D's and how it was so perfect, because we'd all known each other for so long and we all knew where our places were and who would ride with who, and Issacc could make hot chocolate or we could record ourselves singing on Nate's laptop and there was so much going on under the surface, everybody falling in love and toeing uncertainly at the boarders of our futures. I remember how much I invested in my family and how much it meant to me that we were so close to our cousins, and how I would relish our game nights and trampoline seat-drop competitions and the music videos we planned at picnic tables. I thought we had something really special. And I carred about all of this so zealously, I was so wrapped up in it and it was so fufilling, like I could love and care an endless amount and there would always be more fuel for my passionate, foolish heart.

That is life. That's the way this is all supposed to be. All the pain and trials and unimaginable happiness being lived out in the fullest since, wrapped up in things that are bigger than just me. God is so real when I am living like that. Everything is real, it's like my vision is clearer and my mind is sharper and all my senses are awake to take everything in, and what it all amounts to is "I AM HERE, I AM HERE!" God is in everything and everything is in God's hands, you feel like you know Him, like you can just talk to him. That's how I felt on our vacation last summer, out there in the wild grasslands with nothing but sky and a deserted highway for miles and miles.

So what is this thing where we just keep going, where we wake up each morning and begin our tasks and labor at them until it is time to go to bed? Never quite acheiving, but always striving... for what? I don't get it. This is the life I'm being asked to lead and it's very opressive. Something in me has died long ago and I can't rekindle that passion I used to have for everything. Beaten down by the realities of my dream world? I think it's more than that. I still beleive that that world exists, I've just somehow managed to fall out of step with it myself. The moments of vibrant life that I stumble into do not belong to me anymore, they are just borrowed from people who's lives still mean something. I'm weary and frusterated, I'm tired of trying to keep up relationships and goals as though I still have love or ambition to drive them. Really I just don't care. I'd rather be watching TV, that's honestly how I feel and it makes me very sick. I want to feel something again, I want to stand outside in the rain and let it pour down my face and through my hair and into my clothes until I'm soaked through, and be able to cry and laugh for real. But I just can't.

voice mail

Today I can't think about anything except how much everything is going to change for me. I'm going to wake up one morning and it will be different. I'll realize things and those realizations will make everything else fall into place. It will be very satisfying and everything will feel right, and I'll write fantastic blog posts or pamphlets or books full of short spiffy statements explaining how my mind set used to be so messed up, but then I discovered this amazing revelation and now everything is perfect for me now and if you do what I did you can be perfect too.

But at the same time I realize that if I ever did get to that point I've become irrelevant, because for most people it's not that simple. At least for teenagers. I'm afraid that once I start understanding things I'll just be annoying, even if I am able to become amazing. Amazing people who have it all figured out really frusterate me. They frusterate me more than they inspire me because I know I can't be like that.

There really aren't very many people like that, I suppose, and I can't help but thinking that it's really just an act, that you must be blind to a lot of things if life is that simple for you. You must be shutting your eyes to them and refusing to let them in, and personally, I'd rather be a wreck and let everything wash over me then stand strong and brace against it.

And I really wish that I could find a way to say all of this that was really poetic, or maybe write a story illustrating it, or relate it all back to some big overarching principle that is a governing facet of every human's life and make it profound. That's what writers are supposed to do. If I could do that, then it wouldn't matter how messy and imperfect I am, somehow it would all be okay, like I could capture it that way even if I can't beat it.

But really this is just me, taking myself too seriously, thinking too hard, grasping at things way above my head, looking at my life and being soooo disapointed in the way it's turning out- and none of it means anything, it doesn't have any echos that come back. Because the truth is, the chances that I'll wake up one morning and find myself renewed and permenantly changed and that I'll always feel like doing the best things and I'll be able to write and figure out exactly what to do with my life and love doing it and I won't bite my nails or stress eat ever ever again are very slim.

I don't want to keep going like this, though! I mean, my life is fine, I really have nothing to complain about. But it seems like I've become very disconnected from things since people started leaving our church and I left co-op. I just kind of drift along. I don't care or love or invest the way I used to. At fist I was really proud of myself for reaching this point because it used to be so hard being that dependent on things outside of me, and now I am very very self sufficient, but I wish I could go back. Now I don't have any dreams, really, nothing cognifitve to fight for.

Doesn't it every just feel like I post the same blog over and over? I read back through and think, wow, that was lame. Why do I do this? It's so cliche and emo and unnecessary, it doesn't accomplish anything, it doesn't make me a better person, honest emotions are meant to be expressed in a way that is raw and beautiful, not just explained out as though people are keeping track and taking notes. I wish I could.

how could I be so wrong?

I need
how I need my sisters here
if I can't share my dreams
what were they for?
I thought we promised
that we would never change and never part
I thought together
we'd amaze the world
how can I live my dreams
or even start
when everything has come apart?

I thought home was all I'd ever want
my attic all I'd ever need
now nothing feels the way it was before
and I don't know how to proceed
I only know I'm meant for something more
I've got to know if I can be

astonishing

there's a life
that I am meant to lead
a life like nothing I have known
I can feel it
and it's far from here
I've got to find it on my own

even now I feel it's heat upon my skin
a life of passion that pulls me from within
a life that I am making to begin
there must be somewhere I can be...

astonishing
astonishing

I'll find my way
I'll find it far away
I'll find it in the unexpected and unknown
I'll find my life in my own way
today

here I go
and there's no turning back
my great adventure has begun
I may be small
but I've got giant plans
to shine as brightly as the sun

I will blaze until I find my time and place
I will be fearless
surrendering modesty and grace
I will not disapear without a trace
I'll shout and start a riot
be anything but quiet
Christopher Columbus, I'll be astonishing

astonishing
astonishing...

at last.

beating, beating, beating, bleeding

Wanting things I can't have is a good thing, I guess, because it makes me care more and work harder and live like I know what I'm leaving, in a way.
But it also makes me extreemly bitter and restless, like I could strangle people.
I want to escape from this house and from under my parents authority. I can't stand the authority all of the sudden, it's not just that it gets in the way, it's that I can't stand being told what to do, period. I want to make my own decisions. I want to pay my own bills and iron my own clothes and burn my own toast and I want to do it my way.
I want to have the freedom to make really stupid decisions and live a reckless youth; I want to be given the oprotunity to go through the same experiences that led everyone around me to reach the conclusions they did for myself.
I want to break away from everything I grew up beleiving and startle everyone. I want people to realize that I'm not who they think I am. I want to prove myself a rebel at heart. I want to disapoint people. I want, so much, to loose some friends in the quest for honesty.
I also want to prove that this girl has heart and soul, that this girl can change lives and make a difference, that I'm not who they think I am either. I want them to see that there is a fire in me and that I'm not just a procrastinator or a bad housekeeper.
I want to grapple with everything that I don't understand and put words to the abstract things that make up life, I want to test and try to capture every thought and emotion that humans can think and feel.
I want to throw away this courtship rubbish and give true, burning, pure, budding eighteen-year-old love a fighting chance, I want this more than anything.
I want to find out if this God we serve is relevent in reality or if we have to build a bubble for him to inhabit and worship him like a canary.
I want to get out and go, go, go, I want to break free of everything holding me down right now. I don't even know where I want to go or what I want to do when I get there, but I've got to go somewhere. It's blinding me to every other thought or dream or practical idea that comes up, I just feel the heat of the building burning down around me and I want to jump through a window, though I have no idea what might be at the bottom.
And I think the worst that could happen is not that I won't ever get what I so desperately want, it's that eventually I'll just stop wanting it.