too much 'burban calls for self-assertion

Good morrow m'darlings,

I haven't written in such a grievously long time because I've been consumed with all the little tasks and concerns that go along with relocating. I've moved into a house with two of my friends, and we're slowly but surely settling into life in the straight-up 'burbs.

My internal compass has been slow to adjust to my new northwestern orientation, and sometimes I feel as though my personality is also taking its merry time catching up with me; it's hard to write when you don't feel like yourself. I sit and look around my room and wonder when its rightful owner will show up to oust me from my roost on her eggplant-and-robin's-egg bed. My essence has been supplanted somehow; I feel young, aimless, naive, boring... these are not good things to feel when in truth you are a passionate, interesting person who has recently celebrated a birthday. The worst thing is that I am unable to pinpoint the cause of this feeling. Even decor-wise, I can't solve the mystery of my missing person. Is she hiding in a different colour scheme? Would she feel more comfortable in a messy, haphazard living space? Has all my uncharacteristic laundering and organizing and cleaning caused her to fear that she too might be scrubbed away or hidden at the bottom of a deep drawer? I'm thinking yes to all of the above.

I've been watching a lot of Ally McBeal lately, and let me just say, I wish they still made shows like it. Fantastic! But here's my point: in an episode I watched this morning, Ally turns 29 and delivers a great closing argument in court that revolves around her recurring birthday sentiment of being an underachiever, and how her hopes for life and the actual life she is living never quite reach alignment. Maybe this is what I'm feeling. Maybe I have the extended birthday blues. After all, here I am sitting alone in a big house, wondering why I haven't yet found a job or love or friends who stick around or the strength of will to shed all the things I find embarrassing about myself. For the majority of the past year, I have been blessed to feel like my soul has got it together; that makes it all the more unfortunate that the rest of me hasn't caught up.

Just because I think this entry could benefit from further disjointedness, I'm going to transition to another topic right now. Thanks for your cooperation.

It was exactly a year ago that my life changed. I still can't quite assemble the proper words to describe what happened in any way that doesn't sound like a wheel of cheese, but I will say that when my heart and priorities got all shook up by the Almighty, I took hold of a magnitude of freedom that had previously been unattainable to me. Sometimes it's hard to remember that I am free, hard to accept that I have accepted myself. Sometimes kicking at the darkness takes more energy than I think I can spare. But it's been a year. A year. As the world remembers the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 that brought destruction and grief and terror, I simultaneously remember the first anniversary of the 9/11 that brought repair and joy and hope, albeit to but one person. So when I think of my birthday blues, of my rejection from the world of the outwardly admirable, of my rejection by the male population, of my restlessness in face of the future, of my unadorned walls, of my well-made bed, of my recently-laundered wardrobe, and all the numerous unnamed things that make me feel not at all like I am used to feeling, and not at all like I would hope to feel, I find I must also think of of the baptism and temptation of Christ. One year ago I was baptised by the Spirit. In February the Spirit sent me out to wander in the wilderness to be tempted with hatred and disgust and fear and faithlessness and lack of compassion. In May I felt the renewed presence of the firey Spirit at Pentecost on Mount Zion. And now, in September, I look around me and find that I am in the wilderness again, although I am painfully far from Judea. But what is necessary in the wild is to remember the water and the flame. To be reminded of fulfillment's reality. To be reminded that fulfillment is always beneath the surface, waiting to be claimed like an inheritance.

And so, there could be no better time for me to reach down, take hold of what is still mine, and fling it across my bare walls with reckless abandon. A Jackson Pollock painted instead by asserted freedom.

To quote Anne Sexton,
"Darling, the composer has stepped into fire"-
again.