Takes my pain away

"Anyone can see my every flaw
It isn't hard.
Anyone can say they're above this all.
but it takes my pain away."

Yup. But it isn't as bad as I thought.

I think I'm glad I don't have to watch my own back all the time, after all. It's kind of hard. It's kind of impossible.

"I don't feel the way I've ever felt.
I know.
I'm gonna smile and not get worried.
I try but it shows."

God's pretty amazing. That's all.

But now I see -

"but maybe you have more grace in you than I gave you credit for." Yup. I'm glad.

The Hairy Eyeball

I don't know if this is original to my family or not, but my dad has a unique expression for the squinty-eyed glare people get sometimes when they're angry or suspicious. You know, the "you're going to pay for that" look. Kinda like what Clint Eastwood does sometimes in his movies, though maybe that was just all that dust in his eyes.

Yeah, my dad calls that the hairy eyeball. (You know--'cos of your eyelashes.)

I have fairly long lashes, but they go from brown to blond pretty quick, so about half of them aren't visible without mascara. Even when I put mascara on, I rarely like to darken them all the way.

Today I did, for fun, and you know what? The only thing scarier than the hairy eyeball is the mascarily hairy eyeball.

The Right and Wrong of It

The inside of my head--in all its 'right and wrong -hood glory'--is as valuable as all the outside I've been ignoring or misunderstanding all these years. (As if I've got it all straight now.) I don't mean that it is true because I believed it; that 'my' truth is not 'your' truth, though maybe not everyone has meant what I thought they meant by that phrase. I mean it was truly a part of my mind...therefore it had a real effect on me. It is truly who I was. Truly a part of me.

...And always will be. (Though I trust/intend the wrong-hood part to continue more and more in a 'how NOT to think' vein...You know the whole "I serve as an example to society of what NOT to do" joke? Yeah.)

Denying all that--all that I've thought and been and did--is as stupid as denying the history and minds and lives outside my own, which is what I've been doing, unconsciously and otherwise...for quite a while now...in some ways, I think, my whole life. Like trying to deny World War I to the world. It's just stupid. And means coming up with some pretty ridiculous and far-fetched theories to explain all that war...stuff.

We all do stupid things. The point is when we learn better to get up and do what we can to do better. I have finally understood what my mom and dad have been trying to tell me for years (well, one thing): There is no shame in being wrong. The shame is in refusing to live by what you really think. [edit] --To live honestly is a better way to put it, I think--mind, heart, will, body--the whole package. Doing the best you can with what you've got.

I'm not claiming total ignorance (or innocence) for all my mistakes, but I am starting to believe that things done in honest ignorance are still at least...honest. If you're doing the best you can, what more can you do?

I mean, really? What else is there?

What's left?

More and more I think I'm starting to get what Jesus was talking about when he said, "If you were blind, you would not be guilty of sin; but now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains." (John 9:41)

My Difference

There is a wasteland of difference between where I am now and where I was back then. Even if I see now that things really are the same, that I am still who I always was and so is everybody else--that we really are all still people and this really is all still the real world-- even if all this is so, I can't deny the difference. I can't deny the wasteland.

And why have to? Why pretend none of this in-between never happened? Because it did, too--just as real in its way (even in its 'abnormal' and distorted thinking, forcing the world into distorted shapes and wrong thinking) as all the 'outside' reality of the outside world and other people's minds and thoughts--the shared 'collective' thinking of a whole race of humanity whose strength is not just in our individual thinking but in our willingness to share our thinking, and lean on each others' now and then, when our own gets tired or is showing itself faulty or just, yeah...tired. They're not that different, really.

And after all what's the point of a blind spot if you can...see it? Duh. That's what other humans are for, right?

*sigh.* Okay...

Big Head

The needle hurts, but it drains the pus and the swelling will go down in a few days. Good thing I'm not a balloon!

*little stars*

I just had a brilliant thought. I am okay.

That "am" needs little stars, but on the other hand it would look stupid. Oh well.



I *am*...!

Wow...

Thank God

Thank God for people in the world who think like me. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I mean, I am just glad to know there are some.

:)

*Sigh*

My head hurts. Urg.

I've got homework to do, but I also ought to go eat something; now, before class.

Funness With My Brain

[look at the post below this one if you are confused]

Although, now that I think about it, I think a lot of those different "sometime" views of the universe (me, the world, etc) are actually true; I'm just not seeing the whole of any of them and most I see more like quick, dramatic sketches which really means exaggerated; caricatures. Which means they sometimes seem to contradict each other, even though it's really that I just haven't had/taken the time to let them sift down into my brain, or tried to see them better--both, really. And the thing about letting things sift down--both trying to ink the bold and general and sketchy and also giving yourself time (life; classes; work; cafeteria food; ad "boring," "mundane" life; ad whatever) to let it sift down and shift around and make more sense; give yourself time to understand it better (even just get more comfortable with it)--is that...uh...what was the beginning of this sentence? Heh; hang on...The thing about letting things sift down is that...they sift down. And stuff. I guess I meant the apparent contradictions eventually un-contradict themselves. Yeah.

I talk in run-ons. You don't have to read. :)

I thought I had one more thing to say but I've forgotten it since. Oh, well. This was fun.

"sometimes"

Sometimes when I write, and sometimes when I talk, and sometimes when I think, and sometimes, a little bit, when I listen (I don't do that one much)--and sometimes, when I sit outside in the evening air and rising dark, my life seems to make sense, or almost does. Most of the rest of the time it tends to be muddled--or get that way really fast. Yeah, I feel like I've got mud on the inside of my head.

...Although now that I think about it, those sometimes are maybe a...lot of the time? I'm not sure. I just tend to feel so widely different even from one type of sometimes to the next, that it makes me very confused and the muddled times a lot stronger. I think I've got about maybe ten too many different "sometimes" going around in my head. (Okay, maybe 20 million.)

Did that make sense to anybody else?

.
.
Okay, probably not.

Big Day

I started this yesterday. That's why it says "today" when it really means yesterday. [edit: Well, okay, Blogger insists today really is yesterday (aka I'm posting this on Thursday but it says Wednesday). Confusing... Shut up.]

Today was a big day for me. There are things in me I haven't dealt with--really "handled" in a long time. Well, maybe--ever. Not with any authenticity--the tough "grace" of being who you are and nothing more, or less, for that matter. Being ordinary.

I am still learning--some of it I used to know, some of it I can't remember one way or the other, some of it is brand new for me--I never really engaged the first time; never made the effort, both to think it through, or especially even actually try it out; experiment. Never really "engaged". If there's one thing I've learned from my sister's cat, it's that you learn faster by experimenting than by being cautious. (Yeah; jus--don't ask... :) ) 'Course, using your head saves a lot of time, too...

I don't know if I will continue to write this here or not. I don't know much of anything right now. [edit: Whoops, I repeated myself.] I am just going to try to tell the truth today, and each day, and not just to myself anymore. Until I see something better. So far this is the best thing I have ever seen. I wish I could be more, but maybe you have more grace in you than I gave you credit for.

To those of you who know me, there are things I want to say I can't say on here. Please don't think this is the last word on the subject. Come talk to me.