Part two: Change is mean.

Change is so uncertain. Change is so final. Change is so impertinent and imposing.

Change is mean.

You have to reorganize your whole understanding of the world and its systems each and every time. You convince yourself the world is upside down and then change comes to tell you after that whole process that you are wrong. So much energy.

The voices in your head won’t be quieted down. The inner city is an uproar looking to you for such clarity; and then suddenly you don’t know who you are anymore. It still happens.

You obeyed your parents and went to a single girl’s school. You consoled yourself with the fact that you were in a somewhat prestigious girl’s school. You had gotten in on merit. You were proud of yourself. You had beaten those kids that sneered and called you the rejects. But the rejects weren’t together anymore. Most of you had made it to good schools anyway. You were in a different context and had to adapt. It was change’s fault.

You look around for most of the beginning identifying and getting used to the culture. In the end the easier thing to do at that moment is to go with the flow. You don’t know what you are after all. What was in vogue was in vogue for you as well. The pressure of being different was hard because you had no one to be different with. You also figured that trying alone marks you for life in the eyes of them all.

You went for fellowships because everyone did. You knew the verses because you were the pastor’s kid. You went to the dances because that’s what everyone did on the weekends. You listened to the same music that everyone did because everyone listened to that music. You were tired of fighting the tide and you knew how hard it got trying.

Soon enough you never really belonged anywhere because you were everywhere.

You were the fellowship girl. You were the rebellious girl. You were the academic girl. You were the party girl. The fellowship people got confused when you went for parties and the rebellious friends got confused when you studied.  You just went with it until you got so lost.

Home was very difficult because you couldn’t be their little girl anymore. You were all of these people instead.

Eventually it caught up with you. You had to choose. You had to choose which voices were important to listen to; which voice would be worth it in the end.

I chose the voice I knew understood me completely. That voice helped me understand myself. I chose what I knew I was called to be. It fit so perfectly- too perfectly. It’s the only place that felt like home. It still is.

I had done a lot of things with a lot of people that had gotten so used to me doing those things with them.  Suddenly wrong and right were relevant and articulately spelt out by a book that helped me see why.

 Many people say it is hard changing and letting go of a life so different, to choose the “Christian one” so full of rules and hardships. For me it wasn’t. That’s what showed me especially that it was the right thing to do. Not because it was easy by the way, but because it’s the only thing that remained making sense even when I tried other things.  It made sense because it was so hard. It still is. It will always be and shall only get harder. But I feel bound to that truth because it is true.

Just because someone says the red cup is blue and manages to convince themselves and everyone around them that it is blue, it still remains red. Truth is still true even when it isn’t.

I had to be one thing that I was so bad at. The more I understood God, the more I realized I was so bad at being his child. I hated myself for it so much. I hated myself for every wrong decision I made. I hated myself for still listening to the other voices. It revealed how partial I was. I was the weakest I had ever been. I still am. The more I grew in that knowledge, the more I understood how complicated I was. I used to say that to sound cool but I eventually realized that I was in an unfortunate way.

 I felt it was only my mind that understood what we went through. All the people around me never struggled with what I did. They never wanted to go on tours and be musicians, they never struggled staying the top of their classes and most of all they never struggled waking up on time. They still don’t. My heart had come to mature and finally catch up with the rest of the world and when it did it over compensated for the time it had been missing in action. I felt everything. Every shred of every tapestry weaved that is imaginable as an emotion. It was so inconvenient.

I was always over emotional about something until my emotions started drowning me. I was like a desperate person needing help all the time. I was always needing to let out; to journal my trivialities on paper while others were sober minded enough to study in class. I drove myself to shutting my mind and heart up because they had become their own people too. They led mutinies in me every single day. I read every novel I found until I saw that some novels made my mind and heart worse, and I always paid in full for it.

Life became the struggle I couldn’t face because I just couldn’t face life. I played the piano for hours to forget. I learnt the guitar. I obsessed myself with vampire sequels.

I journalled like an addict whose crack was emotion.

Starting this new journey had begun to end me. I saw myself ebbing away. I felt everything else had won. I was the stereo type definition of the overly depressed teenager that listened to metallica and wears black for legit messed up reasons. Mainstream had won. I wasn’t controlling anything anymore but everything was controlling me. In that mayhem I just went deeper and deeper.

No one understood how deep I was. They tried but couldn’t. Most didn’t want to. My parents simply complained about my moods. My friends were weighed down with my inevitable complacency. I found reason in nothing. It was all because God had told me the truth about myself. He was the one who had subjected me to futility after all.

So I went into the darkness and told myself to get used to being on the outside; to never belonging. My independence was my funeral and death. I was independent not by choice, but by nature. I was destined to always be the one misunderstood. It followed me ever where. It somehow still does.

I was the seemingly really cool girl that you in ten minutes, realized was like every other. I was the shiny toy that everyone wanted to play with but got tired of so fast. I was so used to being left out even among people that independence was my coping mechanism. I had to detach myself from people because they weren’t going to be there for me. Not because they didn’t want to but because they never could be. I decided everything was to be shut out. I had to protect me.

Did I get out of that haze? Yes and No. The blackness never leaves. The light always remains. Such is the universe. Such is life. I learn my lessons and have the scars that remind me of His mercy. What I’m saying is it only gets better when you decide to believe that the cup is red even when it’s easier and so convincing to say that its blue. You just have to trust the truth. The truth sets you free. And whoever is set free is free indeed. I just always have to remember that.

I am on the outside. I figure I always will be.

I am the sojourner in that way.

I just have to keep on seeing that it is freedom and not pain not belonging anywhere.

I have gotten too used to being by myself and expecting such; not being understood and not explaining myself for it. I have tried to learn to be content with not being understood.

This independence is the evidence of my futility and paradoxically my perfection.

The futility is that I am selfish and I am naturally attracted to people that are. The reason is that we just chill and talk about whatever while everyone else pretends they talk intellectual. We play our own kind of tag with people and have our version of rock paper scissors with their hearts. We have our hilarious and nonsensical inside jokes. We don’t talk about our feelings because it isn’t right, even though we have them and feel them, even for each other, we just don’t. We don’t hold hands or hug because it’s mushy and touchy-feely. We don’t do what all the other kids do because caring and dependence is too main stream. We are us. We are loyal to us. We don’t talk behind people’s backs about each other because the rule is we don’t care, especially when we do. We are individually different because that’s what we want people to see and that’s what we tell ourselves. We are the same.

 We think we are real, and that’s what we aren’t. It’s in knowing that that we strive to be apart from ourselves. We strive to be perfected and by his sacrifice we are. 

There’s a new way to be human now.