hope/fear

A message exchange regarding my Facebook status change to “Rachel is HOPE NOT FEAR HOPE NOT FEAR HOPE NOT FEAR.

J: “your status is the same as the phrase of my mantra over the last year or so….i really do have to repeat it to myself out loud sometimes. one time, in a particularly freaky freak-out, i wrote ‘unafraid’ on the inside of my wrist with a permanent marker…

everything ok?”

ME: “Yes, okay. We’re always broke, which wears on a person and keeps stalling us in weird and frustrating spots. It wears on us and I can’t help but feel like it’s a burden on our families and the people around us.

People, like people I love and am friends with, are doing things like calling a decent politician with a good hopeful message (who happens to be a believer) a terrorist in order to try to elect someone who is pro-life/is Republican/plays on their fears. That wears on me. Those are two things. Hope, not Fear, is sort of Obama-esque (Obamian?), I think, it’s part of the zeitgeist of the times, but I have to remind myself that nothing changes for us, that message is the message of Jesus really, and is why it resonates so much, I just have to keep going as if the road is going to be under my feet. So it goes.”

prayer

Okay, so the internet is a wild and wondrous place. I wrote this a couple days ago, and somehow accidentally navigated away from the page, and, with a little high-pitched animal sound, realized I had lost it. Looked around, tried to get it back, to no avail. Gone. Gone gone.

So, today, one minute ago, actually, I go to update my journal, and what should appear but the journal I wrote a couple days ago…but not in the form I left it. It was a feedback loop of my journal ten times or so, messed up as hell, as well as a first draft of the same journal (much longer and more clichéd and self-aggrandizing) long since deleted. Weird, dudes. So here it is.

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I’m having a hard time even asking for what I need. I’m not even sure what I’m asking for, really. It takes so much time to wade through the guilts, like different-colored wires, to wind them up secure them with velcro tapes and sort them in their proper boxes. I’m having a hard time even asking.

I guess the main thing is that I feel trapped, which is the worst lie, and that I feel like I can never go anywhere else, and I’m starting to even feel that if I stay that my welcome and my ruse will quickly wear out.

I don’t know where to begin. I’m so tired of feeling bad for not being happy where I’m at. It’s a damn sinking ship, and I’m tired of hanging on.

I know what you’re doing. I just don’t know what it looks like, and I’m so scared, I can’t even tell you, and there’s one of those guilts again.

Okay, I’m going to try and ask, and I’m going to try and not feel bad while I do it, and I’m going to try and do it without crying:
will you help me? Will you help me build a life where I can write a little and do some community work a little and not feel so trapped? Will you bring me people to help me? Will you help me to be braver? Will you show me the path? Will you give me the strength to work, to write my best and work my best regardless, and to take my paths when I see them?

I think feel a little better now. Thanks.

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