You know what I like about reading about the French Revolution? I really liked reading about Little Red Riding Hood eating her grandma, then getting naked, crawling into a bed with a wolf, then being murdered by him. That's it. There was no happily ever after to the French story. I ate it up.
I promise I'm not sadistic, at least I am pretty sure I am not; I don't go around imagining scantily clad little girls being ripped to shreds. (although I do sometimes creep my roommates out with my possession acting skills, and I like to bite sometimes, but that's beside the point)
I am not disgusting, definitely delusional, but not disgusting. (At least that's what I think)
Here is an article that totally led me to see why I have been shaking my fists at the sky for a while now. I am a yippy (or I guess it's a yuppy, but I like yippy better). Please read, so I can continue my discussion.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wait-but-why/generation-y-unhappy_b_3930620.html
Insert my name in for Lucy, make the unicorn a bit more shiny (because I'm more special! Thanks Richard for pointing that out. Even when I'm trying to humble myself, I try to make myself special), and you understand what I have been thinking my whole life. I am glad about one thing though. After reading the article, I wanted to go learn more. I wanted to go away for a while from the comparisons and the flowers and unicorns and get my hands into the dirt and work. That would not have been the case 3 years ago, and I am grateful to God for that. It hasn't been easy or fun getting here, but I think I'm on a better path for it. I am lucky that God loves me enough to let me hurt for a little while.
But I digress, back to cannibalism and nudity. I loved it. The French people were human. They were raw and dirty and laughed at cats being mutilated, but they were humans, just like I am. Why did I love reading about them (I asked myself)? I didn't quite understand as I was reading, but I think I do now. I am craving dirt and blood and sweat, and the French people in the mid-1700s knew all about that.
I have lived in the trees and forests with the spirits of the wood and have been to Masquerade balls and won an academy award. I really did. It was in my mind, but I created that world for myself, and I loved it there. Until I was about 19, I honestly thought I was perfect. I could not think of a mistake I had made, one regret I had; my life was a movie that someone was just waiting to film. I loved it there, but everything I did well, I did out of fear of not keeping perfection up. It sucked (although I didn't know it). I was full of anxiety and competition. I didn't love people or let them in because they didn't belong in my world. I was ecstatic, but not happy; I wasn't at peace and I was lonely, even though I didn't know it yet. God did.
Finally, when the time came (however that time is configured with God), I was let down. Hard. God didn't answer my tantrums, no matter how loud I yelled or cried. I had a crisis of faith. Was God real? Was I a liar? Who am I? What am I doing? What is the point? I felt very much alone and in so much pain that I could not understand. I went to church for a year without feeling the spirit. I went to parties and with friends with a pasted smile on my face, but inside I felt dead. I finally went to see the doctor after I couldn't function in class. It took breaching my place of security and pride for me to ask for help; this was 6 months after the onset of my internal battle. He put me on medication. I felt like a failure.
I tried to find myself in love, in school, in Rhode Island; nothing helped. I felt abandoned. By God. By everybody. I was miserable and alone and felt no purpose in life. Occasionally I would see a spark of life in others and I would try to cling onto it, but it would slip away. I had lost my spark. I was dead. I begged God, who I was still praying to though I had long forgotten who I thought he was, for a friend. I prayed for some way to get through that hell of self-doubt and fear I felt he had banished me to. God sent me a friend. He sent me Richard. I don't know how we got through a whole year together. It was rough. But we didn't know any different, so we did it.
It was a year full of symbols and stories, discovery and a lot of smiles and tears. We were two hopeless romantic and rose-spectacled souls that had had a harsh bout with our expectations vs. realities. We saw each other on the quad the week before school started. The sun was fresh and full of late-summer promise as we embraced and talked for hours. That first week of conversations and promise culminated in the institute dance. This next example shows exactly where we were at that point. At the end of the dance, it was raining. Richard laid himself down in the middle of the parking lot just feeling the rain. I wanted him to give me attention, so I tried to join, but he sat 2 feet away from me in the opposite direction to talk with me. After 30 minutes of beating around the bush, he finally spat out "all I'm trying to say is that if you didn't invite other people on the hike tomorrow, I'd be okay with that" to ask me on our first "date". Our history has way to much detail to go over, and it is not important.
What is important is that I was lonely and afraid and I clung onto him like he was my salvation, because he was to me. I worshipped him and sought out his approval like he was my God because I didn't have anyone else. Well, what happens when you rely that heavily on an imperfect person? You get angry at them when they disappoint you and you look for and create what isn't there. Richard is a good man, a very intelligent man with a huge heart, but he is very fallible. He is human. Why he endured my whiplash emotions, I don't think I'll ever understand completely, but he did. He stuck around. And I thank God for that. I don't know what I would have done without that small ray of light in my life. He is not perfect. I was his first love and he had a lot of growing to do, too. Neither of us knew how to trust or love.
We clung onto every moment, every detail, trying to make sense of it all and desperate for it to not disappear. I wanted to do everything right so that God would not take the love away. I lived in constant fear that God hated me and wanted to take away my happiness because I had displeased him. That high-energy clinging could not keep up forever. I was starting to feel some light in me again from faith and from God towards the end of the school year and it felt good. Richard wasn't ready to move on. I needed to to survive; I was being drained by the constant internal fighting and I could not afford to go back into the dark. Things fell apart. I went to Germany.
I started opening up little bit by bit to God. I started seeing some good in people again. I began painting my life the way I wanted it to be. I chose to live in the present with the people I love & choose instead of trying to find the "perfect people and things to do". I came back and moved into my new apartment, which I began to create as my home, my own space. I had the desire to bake and get my hands in a garden. I bought things that made me happy. Where those things were too petty for my time before, I then found feelings of security and simple love. I felt happy.
Through a strange course of events, Richard and I are now trying our hand at learning about each other again(We have grown so much. I am in awe of how much after writing this. God knows what He's doing with us.)I am at school again and am excited about my classes. It is like the beginning of last year in a lot of ways, but now I feel I can do it this year. That I can learn and grow. I have learned much about trust and faith, love and letting go.
So, where am I getting with this? I think through the last two years, I got sick of chasing the elusive unicorn through the clouds. I have begun to see that I am not "special" yet, but that I want and need dirt under my fingernails. I need to do something hard and fulfilling. I am not expected to be spectacular because of who I am, but because I am a human and have the capability of doing hard things with lots of work and diligence, with faith and hope that I am creating something worthwhile and beautiful. Before I had a pretty house of cards, now I want to make a house of stone, built on experience, work, listening, and growth. Right now I have only laid a few stones, but I am so excited to keep going. I'm a little on the low side of the despair-pooping butterflies pendulum, I sometimes struggle finding hope, but I will get there. The French didn't know it all, but they knew about something I don't yet: work. Others will know other things. God always wants to teach.
I will have periods in my life of unicorns and flowers again, high on the cycle. I will have other lows making sure I learn how to work and keep me grounded. It gave me a concussion for a while, but that period of daze and depression have given way to a period, however brief, of a desire build something solid and sturdy and secure. I am so going to forget all of this. I am going to keep overextending, but I am going to keep practicing. Because I believe that after a lifetime of practice, I will be a little bit better at recognizing what I need to do and building foundations. And that is why I like studying about the French Revolution.
