oh help.

Well. It's been rough since I last posted. Turns out the whole Portland thing makes my parents think I'm foolish. Yeah. Foolish. I just love how much they support and encourage me. So there goes that, Portland, I mean. Reading A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is good though. It's a good book.

So I have a question. And I'm not being rhetorical. Is it foolish to think that a conference is what you need to be inspired to make necessary changes in your life? According to my dear old dad, it is. According to him, I already have everything I need to know inside me- everything I need to make changes, right in there hiding behind all the junk in the way. I think he's come to believe that because he's pretty much a recluse. In that kind of lifestyle, you HAVE to believe you have it all in there somewhere, because you don't give yourself another option, another place to find it.

This year has been especially hard for me. It took a retreat in the spring to jolt my heart back to life again- to spark enough clarity that I could really see the truth instead of blindly trying to hope for it. I honestly believe that I wouldn't have gotten out of the whole atheism thing if I hadn't gone to that retreat. I guess I'm worried that I'm in a similar state now, for different reasons- though the reasons feel the same as the other ones. I have the kind of mind that can only be interrupted by physical changes- things that physically happen- things that aren't the norm- things that are supposed to be special- things that are supposed to change you. Without them, I continue on in a haphazard kind of stumble. I need something to stop me. Because I'm almost incapable of stopping myself- when my emotions overtake me- when I reach my breaking point...it's all over. It only goes downhill from there, and usually it's the kind of downhill that you don't get skis for- the kind of downhill that is so sheer you can hardly keep your footing- the kind of downhill that has jagged rocks jutting up right where you have to put down your foot.

It's one thing to fall apart during school. It's another thing to fall apart in the "real world" where making excuses could cost you your job, and then your credit, and then your life. I thought there was pressure in school, but there's more out here. It's lonelier too. I don't know what I'm doing. Why I thought it would be better to leave. It seems that it isn't just school I can't handle, but life in general, too.

This is getting old. No one wants to hear me go on and on complaining about my life no matter how I try to change it. It isn't doing anyone else any good to read this. I don't know why I feel like I can't be one of those people who rise despite their adversity. So much of me either just wants to quit completely or do something amazing. All or nothing, apparently.

I asked God today why there couldn't be good things that are easy. If He could give me just one good thing I didn't have to kill myself to have. I don't think that's how it works though. I just wish everything wasn't a struggle. The fact that I struggle so much more than my friends makes me feel like a failure. Defective. Broken from birth. I don't want to see another counselor, even though I've been considering it. I don't want to try prescription drugs, even though I've been considering it.

I don't know what to do.



"Misery, though seemingly ridiculous, indicates life itself has the potential of meaning, and therefore pain itself must also have meaning." -Don Miller (paraphrase of Victor Frankl)