Friday, June 16, 2006 // 6:37 PM

clarity 1

there is a lot i can and can't bring myself to believe, given the place, time, change of mind. you can spend weeks months years having the same thing said to you, or even saying it to yourself, without really realizing that that voice, those words, are directed at you or you too, and without really realizing what they mean, as a truth as well as to your life. and then one day you hear the words out loud, something about it snags you like a hook and things that maybe you've half realized all come tumbling out, clarity like freedom.

i feel sane today, clear, for the first time in 5 days, despite how i am aching to crawl into my bed and stay there for the next few hours. i don't know what about church camp made me feel so messed up, or maybe i already felt like that, when i went there. the return of the voices in my head, voices that might have been mine, but that i couldn't shut up or stop listening to. i don't want to hear you ever again, i. really do think i should find myself in frequent company, to keep myself sane.

things that people have said to me that i really do need to think about
1) taking a stand about the little things, the liberation of simplification, the necessity of the artificial barriers
2) just because someone has a reason for thinking/acting/being in a certain way, it doesn't make it right
3) respect, being capable and worthy of it
4) restraint, self control, and how i have none of it

i'm not having this major issue with the whole premarital sex thing, i've just been raising it because it is the more obvious example. but i really am thankful for the people who have bothered to talk things over with me, me and my amorality. i'm touched and thankful for charmaine, who really went out of her way in giving me a book about it, and i'm really thankful that there are older ones in yf, at least a few, who bother to listen and talk to me and give advice. my concerns have started to shift, and i really would like to chuck some very teen-age angst out the window, because more and more i feel like they are overstaying their visit, more and more i find that i don't really believe in the things that cause those problems, anymore. and the things i care about, the things i want and the way i want them, have changed, or need to change, so that i can grow, and stop feeling so very claustrophobic in my own skin.

i'm thankful, right now, for the friends that i have, in whatever capacity - i have a sneaking suspicion i don't lack love, despite how i feel that way so very much of the time. when liew said then maybe you should stay in Singapore, i heard it for the first time, and the idea that i might not be able to take the disjoint from all these things that keep me sane and grounded (emotionally and spiritually and etc) makes me consider it seriously for the first time. i'm not sure if my faith can survive university, i'm not sure if my sanity and stability can survive university or another country, i guess it's futile and a matter of pride, really, this trying to hold on to this belief that i might be able to make it, that i am strong enough, i really don't think i am strong at all.

i've sorta decided to be a nicer person. i've sorta decided to be a nicer person, which involves not being so completely self-centered, all the time. it's a difficult thing to abolish, really, this self-obsession, this i me mine.

i really do want honesty. i feel claustrophobic when i know that there is something else i have to be, something i have to choke back. i'm frustrated sometimes by how little honesty we all have to go around, and how guarded we seem to force ourselves to be. i'm realizing something i knew about myself a long long time ago, and that's that i'm very much a one-to-one person, that's where i really am the happiest. i haven't been a one-to-one person lately i think, i've just been strange and force-fed, and right now i do want to give in to empathy and the things that really are natural to me. (to me? to God in me? i think there are things about me that God can use, or inspire, or bring out. and that's His choice, and He knows me better than i know myself, anyway.)

and i really do need therapeutic things. i honestly think that if there had been a decent piano at the hotel that i might have had free access to, i really would not have 1) drank so much coffee 2) eaten so little, as i do when i'm upset 3) generally felt so very shitty, even while talking and laughing and doing other things. and i really do think i should go learn another more mobile instrument because if i do go overseas next year, i really don't think i am going to be able to survive without music, which is my most frequent fix right now. listening to music isn't really enough, when there's something on the inside that's just dying to get out of the building.

emotionally i'm just about drained dry. leading worship last night took a lot out of me, or it usually does, because i'm just so afraid of choking out words that i don't mean, because God can tell, even if no one else can, even if i myself can't. being messed up and alone and in company and caffeinated in the past week has exhausted me. but i'm thankful, somehow, unexpectedly, to stand where i stand now, i'm thankful for the thankfulness, which is not comes naturally to me. and i'm thankful for marcus, i'm thankful for sarah, i'm thankful for terence and julia being nice to me.

this post is dedicated to jeannette, who might or might not read this, who has borne patiently with me and my weirdness in a kind of lostness for the past five days. and to fong, who has borne patiently with me the past five years, through shit and un-shit, and who lobs chocolate and other assorted goodies at me everytime she doesn't know how she can cheer me up. muchos love :)

and to kevin who has this time gotten the brunt of my neediness.