red and white flags

Oh if things could be what there were then. I know it's never a good thing to look back in longing, but sometimes I do. I miss who I was then. I have not become more innocent with time. I think of my friends and of the way I was vulnerable, and I feel a sense of loss. Vulnerability has never been my strong suit, but now it's even less so. I forget how to trust people, forget how to just let go and have fun. Community has become a foreign thing to me, being more than a year out of school, and I have forgotten what it means to be in fellowship. Now, attempts at those things give me massive headaches and a general disappointment in myself- that I cannot easily talk to people, even if they are well-meaning and friendly. I was freer once.

I feel like it's very cruel that I am so painfully self-aware. What a shame that the safest place I feel like I have to say what I need to say is on some stupid website. What little courage I have. What, speak up, you say? I don't think I can, in so many words. What a strange thing that I both struggle with and am comforted by my sense of aloneness. I long to tell you what I think so badly, and yet that longing suffocates me- because at the end of the day I am so glad that it's just me in here and you don't get to see it.

I struggle so much feeling like there has to be a meaning. I have to mean something. My life has to mean something. My talent, my imperfections...they have to MEAN something. Even if that meaning isn't necessarily good or beneficial. I hate this in-between, where there are no solid answers- where the people who have solid answers are just arrogant and make themselves believe something just so they can believe it- so there isn't a strange, nebulous kind of unknowing. You know that nebulous unknowing? The kind that keeps you up at night? Makes the darkness seem like a warm mirror, seem like a breathing room that is listening because your soul is speaking? That's when truth waves a red flag and I wave a white one.

I'm never going to figure it all out. I guess that's okay. Just let it MEAN something, okay? Please.