jagged little pill

hm.

perhaps in a few days or weeks or months i will read this again and laugh at myself. maybe maybe. it is technically still lent, so i am not going to allow myself to sink down into the mudbath of worry. but my body hurts and my stomach is shaking and i want to curl up into a tight ball of panic and just cry.

i would like very much to move far away by myself and start completely over. build a neat and spiny wall around myself. i'm imagining the wall made out of twigs stacked like lincoln logs into a tidy square around me, and i'm smearing concrete in between them from the inside. i will wear my twig cage like a suit of armour in my new life and not get close to anyone. just go about the business of doing helpful things and being thoughtful and getting my work done. i can still pray from my twig armour. i can still help people. but no one will get in. and not so much of me can get out.

i will run long distances by myself and come home and make delicious food and write and make things. my home will be clean except for the little crumbs of mud concrete that break off from my twig armour and i'll sweep them up when i feel like it. i think i could still go kayaking in my armour. i'll live like that for a while, in a strange town where i don't know anyone and i'm not trying to make any friends. when the cast is ready to come off, when i don't feel everything (or anything), i will be able to start fresh! yes! that's it. a new reservoir of love with all the painful bits healed up and scarred over on my heart. i won't even remember the leavings and the movings and the dyings and the never-seeing-agains. i'll leave my photos and my journals in chicago when i disappear.

in my sane moments i realize that this is pathetic and dumb. God is good all the time. He is good right now. He loves me. yeah i know. i don't doubt that actually. nowhere in my twig armour scenario do i leave my faith in a bundle of journals and polaroids. but there is something so sharp about this ache for stability and this determination to cut myself free from this naieve notion that i can build calm and peace around myself if i just have the right people around me. as though their lives and deaths are all part of the grand scheme for MY life and not their own.

its just babbling now. babbling when i should be working. working.
if i could pay off all my loans and save up some cash, i would just move away. far far away. i want to be the one to get to leave dammit! yes. that's it. that's what it finally boils down to. i guess that year of grief counseling didn't quite knead out all the kinks of that. it's not like i was abandoned or something. it's not like i have ever been left to the wolves, even for one second. but maybe i could do well as a hermit on the beach. loving everyone and no one at the same time. sounds zen. sounds good.