away from fear :: away from failure

the summer days slowly pile up on top of each other. i go, doing the next thing, but sometimes trembling on the inside. last week i told someone that fear was my greatest enemy. i fear so many things. rejection, loss, failure.

but a little voice welled up inside me, flooding my soul, and it whispered to me, what would you do if you knew you could not fail?


what would i do? fear holds me back from living my dreams. that's the sum of it. it holds me back. causes me to bide my time. to walk slowly, wondering what to do with my life. but what if i could not fail? what if i knew that, deep down into my core?

so many things. i would finish my psychology degree and then go back to school to get my deaf interpreting degree, because that's my newest dream, and i feel strongly about it. i would move in with my girlfriend and we would move towards our own happily ever after. i would go confidently in the direction of all my dreams.

i wouldn't care that someone at work just told my friend that he hates me, because that has nothing to do with me and says everything about the lowness of his character. i wouldn't think that somehow i failed.

i would like to think that i'm not speaking in abstract "what if" terms. i want this for myself right now. the truth is that sometimes i do fail and things don't go the way i wish. but the truth also is that more often than not, the worst thing does not happen, and i can't live my entire life acting as if that worst thing is a given.

because a lot of the time, i do.

i want to change this pattern of living. instead of fearing the worst, i want to act as if i cannot fail. if i do fail, then i want to keep trying. and keep trying. and keep trying. and never give up. i can say and write all these great things, but doing them is way harder.

but this is how people change the world. this is what those people are doing everyday. living as if nothing is holding them back. i want to join in that throng.

again

i want to write again. you know, the way i used to. when i felt inspiration flowing out of my heart right through my fingertips, my eyes agreeing with the words that i pound out on the keyboard. for so long i've felt barrenness inside, and the flow of inspiration has run dry. maybe i can stir it up again. maybe i can live it again. the role of writer.

"in returning and rest shall be you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength." -isaiah 30:15

rest. quietness. confidence. again returning. i knew these before. i feel i have left them behind.

i knew no rest and quietness last night as my mind flooded with thoughts and raced around in circles that made my brain feel as if it was on a nightmarish carousel. sleep was stolen. i began to breathe, and my mind returned to what i had learned about relaxation meditation. in my mind's eye i saw waves of an ocean. going on to the beach. coming back. rushing forward. pulling back. i quieted my mind. i rested.

rest and quietness :: elusive, but worth fighting for. i get caught up in this madness that "life" sometimes is, but there is no life there. it drains, and sucked dry and empty, i feel no life. so i turn back. to rest. to quietness.

confidence.
as i have existed these past several weeks in a half-life of stress and fear, i have deserted confidence. and it has made me week. quiet confidence shall be my strength, and without it, i cannot carry on.

i find confidence in bolstering my belief that there is a purpose and a reason for everything. a Divine order. no just plain luck. nothing random. if everything happened at random, i would be shrouded in fear, because what if i only had bad luck and could not control that?

we have a destiny, and as i follow a good path, goodness and mercy shall follow me. not that "bad" and hard and sad and painful things won't happen, but some goodness and beauty can be found in everything, and through it all; there is the mercy of the good and Divine God.

there is hope in my future, and even if things seem lost to me, all will end well. my God says to me, "fear not", and why do i rail and fight? all will be well. it seems scary, so scary, right now. fear prickles up and down my spine, and i have no answers; it's dark. but i will do the next thing. and i will believe. with quiet confidence.

this time of hardness, discouragement, loneliness, lack of direction--this is time to practice these things. like a muscle, strengthening my faith and courage. and so i return. again. to quietness, rest, and confidence. pursuing whatever that looks like for me in this place of life.

because this is one thing i have learned: when the madness and stress and loudness are within, it crowds out all creativity, inspiration, and wonder; it steals the writer me. and i want it back.

letter to my mother

dear mutti,

first things first. sexual orientation is not a choice. it's a part of my ontological reality. being gay is not a lifestyle. it's a part of my nature, my very being, and i cannot separate it from myself. the sooner you realize this the better. the sooner you come to grips with this the happier i will become. if you can start to see that maybe this is the person that God created me to be, then i could come out to you. because i do want to. i do. but not while your nonacceptance will shatter me.

i wish i could tell you how much your comments to me yesterday hurt me. we were talking about discrimination and rights, and you said that if you privately owned an apartment building, you would want to be able to deny a unit to same-sex couples. you wouldn't allow them to live there. can't you see how much that hurt me? how disgusted would you be if you knew i had a girlfriend? that we've been intimate with each other? how infuriated would you be if you knew that we wish to move in together?

i never wanted to disappoint you. in fact, i've only ever wanted to make you proud. i feel that that is impossible now. forever, possibly. maybe in a million years you would accept me. but not in a million years would you accept my relationship. that how it seems right now. anticipating your devastation is more painful than anticipating any wrath you might have. to see you cry will break my heart.

every time you make a comment about sin and homosexuals and "the wrath of God", a little piece inside of me withers. i wish that you would be contented only with knowing that i'm happy. i wish that would be enough. but no, your religious beliefs will not allow that. there's no arguing with you. you will not even try to see the other side. i know you don't want me to go to "hell", and i know that thought grieves you. but i just hope and pray that someday somehow your mind and heart will become more open.

shouldn't mothers be the biggest fan of their children? i need you. coming out will bring such a huge negative backlash from people at church and elsewhere, and i wish i could count on you to stand by my side. i wish i could have your support. i wish you could see that my heart desires only love and peace. i don't want to fight. sometimes i feel like you turn everything that we disagree about into a huge debate, and you usually end up shouting. i don't like that. that crushes me.

i just want to say: here i am. love me. love all of me. that includes the ontological part that encompasses my sexual orientation. i can't change my being. sometimes i wish i could, if that would make you love me. but i can't. please see me. see that i'm the same person. your daughter. i love you. i always will.

liebe,

Rachel

progressing :: regressing

she's teaching me how to cry again.

my girlfriend, that is. in the past two weeks, i've probably cried more than i have in months. like, sobbing kind of crying. where your shoulders heave and you can't speak. this is very much a rarity for me. i'm not a crier. except in movies (does that count?) and this might sound odd, but this is actually a good thing.

no, she's not the source of my tears. definitely not. she's showing me it's okay to cry. she's a source of healing to me.

you see, i learned that crying wasn't okay. crying meant weakness and selfishness. if you bust your chin open and have to get four stitches, then it's probably okay to cry then, but if it's not some kind of legit, serious, blood all over the place kind of physical pain, then you probably shouldn't be crying at all.

that's not true though. i've learned that now. i've worked on reframing. i know crying is healthy and normal and often very good for you. but sometimes knowledge doesn't translate into practice. and for me, it didn't. hasn't. hadn't. until recently.

my poor girlfriend. . .she's such a dear. she's seen all sides of me. meltdowns and all.

i spent the night at her place a few nights ago because i was there helping her pack up for her move back home, and i had a complete sobbing meltdown because there was a glowing green light reflecting in the mirror that kept me from going to sleep. no, i'm not kidding. looking back on it, it was absolutely mortifying.

there were other factors in play; exhaustion, stress, being upset about her leaving, etc. but the light put me over the edge. after a brief moment of her not understanding what the big deal was (she's new to dealing with an aspie, after all), she put a sticky note on the mirror to cover up the light and then came over and held my hand while i was sobbing into my pillow.

i was quite the sight, i assure you. but this girl. . .she's a gem. she consoled me, was incredibly patient, soothed me when i apologized for my ridiculousness (and subsequently started crying all over again), and said she loved me and it was okay to cry.

so she's helping me learn to cry again. she's showing me it's okay and that it's good and normal and guess what? it sometimes actually makes you feel better! shock of all shocks. hah. it's a natural way of expressing emotions. even Jesus wept.

but now. . .now i'm home and she's gone. and to start the summer off with a bang, i get sent a blog post that  the pastor of my family's church wrote. homosexuals are sinners, of course. and "in danger of the wrath of God". maybe i should be used to it by now, but it still hurts my soul. because this is what my family believes. this wounded me today. a lot. but what do i have to do? act like nothing's wrong. smile. put on the brave face. repress. repress.

and i feel myself closing up all over again. this is my summer. this is my life. and repressing makes me feel better in the interim, but in the long run it doesn't heal me. it wounds more. but where is my outlet? yes, i'm here, i'm writing. but my tears are drying up and all the old ways of feeling and coping are sneaking back in. and it's barely May 6th.

"but You, O GOD the Lord, deal with me for Your name's sake; because Your mercy is good, deliver me. for i am poor and needy, and my heart is wounded within me." -psalm 109:21-22

and then comes summer

i have never not been excited for summer. never. so these feelings are strange and foreign and i'm unsure how to navigate them. it'll take some time, i'm sure.

you know i hate change. i get settled comfortably, and then things shift abruptly and there's no time and no way to ease into things. i guess that's one downside about school. every three or four months you settle into a new routine, become established, get comfortable, and then the rug is slid out from under you and you have to do it all over again. it's actually becoming quite painful.

the shift from fall to spring semester usually isn't as bad. there's less time between the two and of course there's Christmas and all that wonderfulness. but from spring to fall? you have all these months between now and August. it feels agonizingly long. and the change is going to be agonizingly painful. i'm trying not to dread it, but i am. in fact, i'm dreading it so much that i could curl up into a ball and cry right now. i'm scared.

the reasons for my fear:

1. my girlfriend is going to be gone the whole summer. i've gotten very accustomed to spending hours and hours with her every week and usually i see her every other day. we've gotten so close and she is in my heart. she makes me so happy, and i feel so contented and at peace when she's in my arms. now she'll be away from me for more than three months and coping will be very hard. long-distance is hard. the loss with be hard to handle.

2. i'll be away from school, my friends, and my support group. i like school. the walls and buildings and sidewalks are familiar to me. i'm accustomed to them. i will miss those daily morning trips to Starbucks, meeting up with friends over a latte and a scone. i will miss my friends. they make me feel comfy. they know me. i'm out to them. they listen to me and i don't have to hide. i will miss my weekly lgbt support group and all those people who have become family. i rely on them. they uphold me.

3. i'll be stuck at the movie theater all summer, unless i can find another job (which up to this point hasn't worked out so well). i hate that job. i hate how it makes me feel. being around all those people all the time makes me want to cry some days. sometimes it's almost more than i can bear. no one really understands this. yeah, sometimes my coworkers are obnoxious, but it's the environment itself with all the customers and everything that i can't handle. and it's so loud! so, so loud. plus, my boss is a tool. i hate him (and i am not a hateful person!). so the idea of being there four or five days a week makes me want to die. literally.

4. i'll be with my family most of the time. everyone keeps saying, "can't you stay at your apartment?" technically, yes. but my parent's house is so much closer to the theater that it would be very foolish to use twice as much gas going to and from work. i can't afford that kind of waste. i still will have this place to use as a haven every now and then as needed, but without my friends and girlfriend close by, it will become very quiet and lonely here. and the problem with my family? well, i think you know about that. "hello, closet. time to walk back in. i haven't missed you!" the pain that comes with leading a double life is excruciating, but right now being open would be much worse. the choice is between bad and worse.

so not only do have have to deal with and adjust to a completely new schedule, i have to do it in a different environment without the people that make up my support system. so whilst adjusting to a completely new schedule, i'll be adjusting to a completely new everything else. a new way of living, after what i've become very used to and comfortable with.

and i'm scared. i haven't been very scared in a while. actually, i've grown so much more confident and self-assured, especially since i got into this relationship, but i'm so afraid of regressing over the summer. i'm fucking terrified. i haven't admitted this to anyone else. not this vehemently or detailed. i know it'll be okay in the end because it always is, but it's so dark and daunting, and i'm just very very scared.

feels a lot like love

greetings one and all.

i have keenly felt my absence here, and i venture to hope that perhaps i have been missed by you all as well. as you know, to say this semester has been an insane one would be to put it only mildly. my drama with German has settled down considerably, but it has just been so busy in every other way as well.

a couple months ago i said to someone, "you know, it's actually a good thing i don't have a girlfriend right now. i don't have time for one." but life has a way of throwing curve balls at you sometimes, and this time i couldn't complain. a while ago i met and subsequently starting talking to a beautiful girl  named Krissy who goes to a school in the city right next to mine. twenty-four minutes away, to be exact.

i don't know what i was thinking or expecting. she seemed really neat, really nice, we have a ton in common, she's smart, she loves writing, she's creative, she's artistic and musical, she's organized and structured, she's patient and kind, and i quietly started becoming very interested in her. so we started "going out", but i didn't tell anyone because i didn't know where it was going to lead, and if it ended up being something that quickly fizzled out, i didn't want to explain that.

long story short: it's not fizzling out. in fact, it's doing the opposite, and we're now officially in a relationship. was i looking for this? nope. do i have time for this? not really. but does she make me so happy i can scarcely breathe sometimes? yes. is that what really matters? maybe so.

i'm having to really readjust my schedule. i still need to keep up with schoolwork, but in order to have time for her, something has to give! the two main things that have "given" are blogging time and TV time. both of those i was a bit reticent to part with (even TV, because it's a good calming distraction), but my girl is more important.

i was talking to a friend last night about Krissy and i said, "i think i'm totally going to fall in love with her." my friend said, "i think you already have." i paused for a moment. it's quite possibly true. nothing has ever felt so right before. this same friend told me that Krissy and i are like two peas. we fit so nicely together. we share joys, we share sadness, and we communicate brilliantly. brilliantly.

but the sad thing is that her family lives up north, and she will be spending the summer with them. and i'll be down here. we have one month left together and in that month, we are trying to spend as much time together as we possibly can. that being said, i'm going to pretty much be absent from the online world for the next month. i will still be reading your posts as much as possible, but i doubt i will comment very often. you, my bloggy friends, are always and forever dear to my heart (you know who you are), and please know that i am loving you and hearing you from afar. i will be back over the summer, a regular reader, poster, and commenter.

there are so many other things that are on my heart that i'm longing to tell you and talk about on here, but time does not permit. i miss this space. if i have blips of time, i might come to and fro. you never know.

i am so happy right now, though. so incredibly stressed still, so very tired still, and there has been some other things that have recently happened that have even been quite traumatic, but i'm still holding together. i'm happy. and this happiness feels a lot like love.

sometimes love just happens even when you're not looking.
and it's kind of a beautiful thing.

inspiration and Rainer Maria Rilke

i'm trying to take the advice of a seasoned learner of languages and professor of languages. after probably going overboard on expressing my frustration and distress ('cause there's a lot of it), she recommended that i try to find a why to make the language "fun" in a personal way that i can attach myself to.

try to cease making German all about that horrible class where i'm just trying to slog through learning infinitives and conjugations and prepositions and vocab and everything that makes me want to scream and/or cry. so yesterday i decided i was going to explore the German world of arts and literature. and right now i am relishing the discovery of Bohemian-Austrian lyrical poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who wrote in German.

currently i am exploring his Sonnets to Orpheus. since my German is lacking in many, many ways, i'm armed with some good English translations to help me out in time of need. last night on my Facebook status i posted the first two lines of  poem XXI in Part One of said sonnets. "Frühling ist wiedergekommen. Die Erde ist wie ein Kind, daß Gedichte weiß." German is not known for being a particularly lyrical language. but Rilke wrote amazing sonnets that flow so smoothly and have fabulous end rhymes. those lines translate as such: "Spring has come again. The earth is like a child that knows poems." i can hardly get over the beauty of those lines. they spoke to my soul. if you scroll down to the middle of the page, you'll find the full text and translation of this sonnet.

so know that i'm discovering some beautiful things about German, i'm hoping i won't loathe my class so much and that i'll be able to get through the next five weeks relatively unscathed. here's to hoping, at least. it's still agonizingly difficult and i'll be so relieved when it's over.

="font-family: inherit;">lastly, i want to leave you with an excerpt from the first of Rilke's "Letters to a Young Poet". there was a young Austrian man who was undecided about joining the army or pursuing a vocation as a poet and writer. he sent Rilke some of his poems and wanted Rilke to critique them and give him his advice. here's part of his response to this young poet (translated into English):

You ask whether your verses are any good. You ask me. You have asked others before this. You send them to magazines. You compare them with other poems, and you are upset when certain editors reject your work. Now (since you have said you want my advice) I beg you to stop doing that sort of thing. You are looking outside, and that is what you should most avoid right now. No one can advise or help you - no one. There is only one thing you should do. 

Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. This most of all: ask yourself in the most silent hour of your night: must I write? Dig into yourself for a deep answer. And if this answer rings out in assent, if you meet this solemn question with a strong, simple "I must", then build your life in accordance with this necessity; your whole life, even into its humblest and most indifferent hour, must become a sign and witness to this impulse. -Rainer Maria Rilke 

that was so inspiring to me as a budding poet / writer. i know that the answer for me is i must write and i would die if i could not, and i have been reminded afresh that i want to always live my life in accordance with this necessity, writing about what i see and feel and love and lose and never stopping. because to me, writing is breath.

p.s. i so encourage all writers to read the full text of that letter. i promise you will not be disappointed.