Validation

I am trying really, really hard to come up with some kind of meaning here, some kind of message, some kind of philosophy, some kind of deep thought. Nothing is coming.

All I can see is the surface of life; I'm skating along it, crossing things off my To Do list, worrying about social engagements, gifts to be given, and errands to be run. There are things to be cleaned up, picked up, put away. There are seams to be fixed, buttons to be sewn back on. There are things to be baked. I don't have time to stop and ponder. That or I don't want to, who knows?

Part of me wants to have something to share, but is that just my own desire to validate myself by writing something big and beautiful? Something worthy of praise?
Some days I write because it's real, and I write just because this truth just has to come out. But on days when I'm struggling to find that truth, I start to panic a little bit. I start to wonder if I'm any good, and I'm sure everyone is going to stop reading because it's pretty clear things are going to be downhill from here... Sometimes I do wonder about my own motivations for lots of things. Not just the writing. Sometimes I ask myself why I want the things I want, and I don't always have a good answer for myself. Sometimes I wonder why I, why people, insist on tying their own self-worth to things we think we can measure: things like the grades we've gotten, the mountains we've climbed, and the people we've managed to impress. Because I don't think that's what it's really about. I hope it's not. I told a friend that there is more to you than these things we focus on so much.
What's left after you take all those other things away? That is what I'm looking for. Only sometimes it's hard to get past the surface of life.

Insanity continues as Christmas grows closer. I have concluded that I will not be able to relax until Christmas day itself. But I am grateful for the friends I have still with me. I've realized lately that it can be difficult sometimes to keep people in your life, no matter how much you liked each other. Family is also, in both comforting and difficult ways, always there. I think I'm grateful for that too.

And so the days meander forward at a pace I can't abide. I want them to slow down. Give me more time, I say. Slow me down, and fill me up.

Well, I Can't Say I Didn't Enjoy Myself...

And so this marks the end of the semester. I have just finished my last final, and now I am free, free, free from school until January tenth. I feel that I should take some reflection upon the past few months, just to remind myself of how much I managed to cram into them, if anything. I managed an A in all my classes except (yes) mathematics. I earned I a respectable B there. Which is really nice, considering that I can't claim to have been in an actual, honest-to-God classroom before the beginning of this semester...

What else did I do? I worked part-time all semester, got nervous, got excited, got sick, got better, had a crush, got better (ish), made a friend, and realized that I love English, (and being in school, for that matter) even more than I thought.

Now, Christmas. Christmas, and cookies, and decorations, and lights, and parties. Then New Years, and I'll be looking back on how much I manged to cram into the last year...

What I Want

Life, it seems, has descended into a barely controlled chaos. I think the state of my physical surroundings reflects this more accurately than anything... my room is in a state of mess that is bad even for me. Books are stacked on the floor, laundry spills out of my dresser drawers, a layer of old papers, older receipts, and sticky notes scribbled with various to-do's coats my desk (I mean it, I can't see the top of my desk). Makeup is strewn across the top my dresser, shoes lie in the middle of the floor, unmoved despite the fact that I keep tripping over them. Everything is a mess, but do I stop to pick anything up? No. Things get hurled around the room, pushed off the bed onto the floor at night when I want to sleep, tossed here and there as I rush to get out the door. All ignored as I study (Oh, finals! How I wish you were over and done with!) or choose to steal some hours of sleep in the afternoon. (Why can't I control the urge to lie down?)
There is so much to do. Even my lists aren't making me feel better. I just keep thinking that if I can just get through my exams, then I will be able to pull things together. Or let things go, maybe, because at that point it will be okay to do that. I think.

I keep hearing holiday music, and looking at the calendar, but it doesn't feel like the holidays to me. I'm busy, my family is busy. We haven't even put up our Christmas tree yet. I was feeling tired and sad, wondering where that holiday spirit that usually infects me has gone. I keep waiting for it to come, but I realized today that I have to go out and stir some up. I keep thinking about slowing down, but I can't without feeling guilty. School calls, the future is begging to be planned, people have been acting... oddly. But once these exams are out of the way, I promise to myself that I will summon some cheer. I will give away cookies, and spend time with my family. I will laugh and make others laugh with me, I will get in touch with friends, I will be young. Mostly I want to loosen up and be grateful, and not worry about what might or might not happen tomorrow.

That is what I want for Christmas, even more than the entire boxed set of Gilmore Girls.

An Acceptable Melancholy

I love winter passionately, despite my runny, sneezing nose and the itchy dry skin on the backs of my hands. I love to stare up at the pale, sharp winter sky and see bared tree branches etch dark lines against the blue; twisting and marvelously intricate. I can't think of anything more stately and dignified than a bare tree. I love the quiet bleakness of winter, the peacefulness, the acceptable melancholy that comes with some winter days. I love how warm and brightly lit my kitchen becomes when I am baking cookies for Christmas.

I am yearning to take a step back. I want time to be alone, but I am also wishing and waiting for certain old friends to migrate back to this city, as they do during the holidays. I miss them, and I want those comfortable friendships during the holidays. I am too tired to deal with these people who end up complicating my life instead of easing it.

But first comes finals. I am sitting here with various Anthropological terms running through my head. That is, I am writing this when I should be studying for a test. I am both very ready for this semester to be over, and slightly sad at it's passing. It went so fast... How quickly the weeks pass, and all of a sudden those days and weeks have added up to another whole year. And how quickly some people can pass through your life! Easy come, but hard to let go of all the same.

Once again I find myself praying to make it through the week. Every week I think it's going to be different, and that I won't have to send up that prayer. I always do, though. Things aren't bad, just overwhelming. As usual. I don't know that I would have it any other way... (Well, I might wave a magic wand to disspell this cold if I could.) But I suppose you have to take the good with the bad. How else is the good going to mean anything?

As a last thought, this has been floating around in my head lately, for I feel that it must be very true:

We have already had to rethink so many of our concepts of motion, we will also gradually learn to realize that that which we call destiny goes forth from within people, not from without into them.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

The Empty Chair

The other day, I sat alone at a table for two at the coffee shop. I spent a lot of time staring at the empty chair across from me, and I wondered what it would be like to have someone sitting there. With me. Sometimes sitting alone at a table drives me crazy. For some reason that day I didn't wish that seat was occupied. I liked the way the sun slanted over it, and I liked being quiet and on my own.

Actually, I enjoyed being alone almost all day. I like the feeling of independence you get when you're out on your own and haven't got anywhere to be. You can just go wherever, and watch other people, and think your thoughts. It's nice. I have to say that it's also nice to go somewhere because someone else promised to be there, just to see you. I need that sometimes.

Being alone isn't so bad though. I find that after a certain time, I crave it. I can feel myself turning inwards. It happens to me in the Winter. I know that this is surely a season for friends and family, but I can feel my strange inner solitude creeping up on me. The unbreakable solitude that comes from knowing that there is part of me (just as there is in everyone) that know one will ever really know. It doesn't depress me. In fact, it gives me a comfortingly un-shakable sense of identity.

---

November as a month was like running around with weights on my ankles. Now I feel like the weights have been taken off, and the race seems so much easier... I'm proud of what I managed last month. Like writing a novel despite all odds, and all the voices in my head that told me to give up and sleep instead. (To those who are interested, I am setting my novel aside for now. It was so hard to write, and I just need some space from it. What I might do is go back to the novel I wrote last year for NaNo. I feel that it has the most potential out of anything I've done as a result of the novel-in-a-month thing.)

What would be really marvelous is if December made me feel like there was no race at all. I would like to relax, and maybe get back to some leisure reading.

But the craziness of December is creeping up on me. Christmas is coming. The holiday music has begun to play, the stores have started to get more frighteningly crowded. We lit an Advent candle yesterday. Each year I try desperately to make Christmas as simple as it was when I was little. It gets a little more difficult each year. I still try to hold onto Christmas the way I remember it, because I think it's worth it. I try not to fall into the cynicism, and anger, and depression, and anxiety that grips some people during this time of the year. To me, Christmas is about spending time with people you love, baking them cookies, taking a time out, and lighting up those long, long nights that come as we approach the solstice. (Oh, and Jesus too.) What I'm saying is that I want Christmas to continue to mean more than stress, and commercials.

Today I had a conversation with a friend in a blustery parking lot that got me thinking about hearts. I see so much happening around me; people fighting, and loving, and trying, and wanting. Yes, there are people on the other side of the world who are suffering, but I think that if we looked a little closer to home we might realize that you don't always have to look that far to find people who are hurting. Sometimes I feel helpless in the face of that, and it makes me want to write out the truth every day of my life.