For You, Not Me

What if my life has nothing to do with me? 

I mean, I'm this arbitrary mass of blood and bones and tissue, with a spirit that doesn't quite fit inside and a heart that doesn't claim just one single home.

So, I don't want to live for just myself. I'm far, far too flighty for that. 

But, dedicated.

Dedication is a beautiful, rich phenomenon. My hands have never moved with more finesse, my feet have never pounded the Earth with more intensity, my arms and my heart have never opened so wide for myself, but for all of you. Dedicated to you, I'm limitless.

And during this season of life where my existence is a wonderful shade of chaos and strain and stretch, the bombs are falling around me; not on me. But, I can see where they are landing, right on top of you, and I've signed up for the disaster relief. I want to ease your burns. Rebuild you. Renew you. Be your bandaid.

And on the day-to-day, I can't dive in so deeply...but I can dedicate. So on Friday, I'll know the ins and outs of harmonic oscillators for Lawrenzo. Dear friend, you are everywhere to me, just like Michelle Branch said and I decided to E/B/F# my own chord progression into a 3,000 mile drive and I feel so much better and so much like the wind, and the ocean behind my eyes, and I've spent so much graphite while reaching for the solutions to our universe. And Lawrenzo, the one of the two of us who could really understand it, couldn't carry the whole, wide world and now the whole, wide world weeps for him. But he's everywhere. He'll be with me on Friday. He's with me now. He always was, and always will be.

And for the rest of you, use me. My life was orchestrated for your benefit; I exist for you, I ache for you. And eventually, I'll heal for you. We'll heal together.

Because My Brain Isn't

Staring at the ceiling, all I see are the black dots that cover my field of view after I've taken in too much coffee. It's an anxiety symptom, it's a dehydration symptom, it's perfectly explainable from a biochemical perspective.

Let's pretend for a moment that we can chalk it up to a bad week. A bad semester, even, but maybe that's going too far already. What am I doing here? I thought I knew. I was built for academia. But, I would also like to stop feeling powerless in every aspect of my life. Academia is not the place for that.

Now let's pretend that it's just because I have that (un)fortunate case of wanderlust that prevents me from being content where I am, regardless of where I am. There's no cure for that, besides incessant travel. And I incessantly travel.

Now let's pretend that I've placed myself inside of a seemingly perfect situation, and that it's somehow wrong, or I'm wrong, or it's too much.

It's too much.

I won't get a therapist. Don't believe me when I say that I will. I should, but I won't. I know myself enough to know that much. I'm closer to getting a double mastectomy than I am to getting a therapist. It's not easier, but it's...easier.

And in general, things are wonderful.

It's just that my brain isn't.

That Was Unexpected

If you would've asked me which traumatic event in my life would've been capable of sending me busting out of a Starbucks in tears, panicking and shaken and unsafe, I would've guessed, you know, that whole sexual assault thing. I mean...obviously.

But that would've made way too much sense to be a scene from my life. Because in actuality, I was minding my own business and studying Classical Mechanics at the Starbucks in Anderson, when the worst anxiety trigger in the whole world walked through the door.

Church people.

(and the crowd gasped in horror)

It was my own fault. South Carolina is lousy with Christians, and it was Sunday afternoon. But the thing about these church people is not just that they're Christian; I'm Christian. I've just spent the past year of my life completely and utterly embarrassed by that fact, because I can't handle the baggage that comes with the label. My relationship with God became extremely personal this year; so much so that a once harmonious topic of conversation now has the power to disintegrate my voice into a symphony of atonal shakes and sounds. I can't talk about Jesus anymore. He is profoundly inside of me, and that is where He shall remain. Buried deeply. A constant companion, and a great comforter and friend. But this is for me to experience, and for you to mind your distance.

So, these church people. I recognized them. There was such familiarity there, almost tangible, glaringly obvious; aggressive, even. Aggressive because they all arrived at the same time, wearing blinding highlighter green t-shirts with their new service times in giant font on the back like some glorified heavenly billboard meant to litter the streets of gold upstairs; and their smiles and high-fives and "do you think the sound was extra loud today" and their iced teas and cappuccinos and their laughter and camaraderie and community and "let me tell you about Jesus, bro!" 

I can't.

I realized that it was too late. I had thoughtlessly chosen the one seat at Starbucks that was literally in the corner of the wall; I had cornered myself, with no hope of escape. I shuffled my papers. Everything about normal mode theory seemed unimportant and distant, and the Hillsong album pumping into my ears seemed almost woefully ironic. 

Pitifully, I scampered into the bathroom and let fall the developing tears. Because I can't help but grieve for my lost community that they are so blessed to have. And I couldn't imagine that I'd ever be welcome in a group like theirs ever again.

Anyway, I managed to escape. And I cried all the way home, furious at the Great I Am for being "so mean" as to let this happen, the day before a big exam for His sake, and furious at myself for having a bad anxiety day; I had been doing so well.

So, why had I reacted like a serious PTSD victim? It surprised me, too. But I think it's because I invested the majority of my life involved in what I believed to be (and what very well may have been, for a while) a healthy, inspiring church environment with a church family who loved and accepted me just the way I was. But the more I reflect on this belief, the more diluted I find it to be. Yes, I have some deep, genuine, grace-filled, Christ-centered friendships that still exist from my years at Trinity, but there is a devastating flip-side to this coin. I've realized that nobody has made me feel worse about myself than some of my church "family." I mean, besides my own self. But, really? A church family is supposed to stand behind its members in trying times, not kick them while they're down or fire relentless accusations out of context, standing on dated scriptures and peering through narrow perspectives, spitting venom yet speaking of love. That's dysfunctional.

And dysfunctional it was. I backed away from church. And almost a year later, clearly, I'm still in an excessive amount of grief over the loss of such a deep foundation to which I had held fast. I am happy for the lovely, smiling green-shirted church people that came to Starbucks...all at the same time. I am also green, with envy. I'm tired of feeling like an outsider. It's a giant blow to anyone with a relationship with Jesus when one feels unwelcome in God's own home. It makes it difficult to establish trust, or believe in grace from what proclaims to be a gracious community.

But, I digress. I feel no better about the situation, so I'll probably go to the damn church. Otherwise, these things will keep happening. I will keep feeling terrible. Little by little, I'll start attending; I know when the new service times are, after all, thanks to the green shirts. And who knows? Maybe it'll blossom into one of those genuine communities that I crave so heavily, and I will grow because I love to do that. I will find other people like me. I will have the opportunity to share my gifts and my grace.

Or, the green-shirted people could start an exaggerated rumor that I'm a Godless lesbian with an alcohol problem.

Either way.

Hello Operator

I would say that a bottle of wine will convince you to love Quantum physics, but the truth is, it will convince you all by itself. We love things that we can understand; but more importantly, we love things that we cannot understand. Quantum mechanics is both, neither, and some star-crossed state in between. It's everything.

It's literally the reason I crawl out of bed every other day after sleeping far, far too little. It's captivating. It's my one saving grace in graduate school; the passion for the fundamentals, the moment when I realize that I'm ready to go back to basics in order to understand the basis. Genuinely, this time, and with great relish.

And now, for Quantum and everything else:

"The work will teach you how to do it."
-Estonian Proverb