in pursuit of pursuit

"One sees clearly only with the heart. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

I can't decide whether or not I like recurring themes. They're helpful because they are themes and are therefore easy to interpret and deal with, yet the fact that they are recurring is freaking annoying. Someone I very much respect said to me yesterday, "people always complain to me that the same troubles/sins/problems always seem to come up and those same people get frustrated because they're always the sametroubles/sins/problems." Well, I mean, at least it's not a different one every time, right?

I also have been getting to know my roommate a lot better in recent weeks. To say the least, I thought we had little in common aside from Jesus - she dresses well, I dress like a hobo/hippie/punk; she can sing, I can hum loudly and whistle off-key; she gets clear words, I get fuzzy pictures; she is the laugher, I am the joker; she's Latina, and I'm pretty convinced I'm secretly Asian (more on this later). Funny thing though, even though we have a lot of these superficial differences, we have a lot of deep-seated similarities and issues.

If you know me, I think you would say that I don't have a problem being vulnerable. I lay out what's going on in my life rather readily and will be honest in most of the things that I say. And those details are enough for you.
If you REALLY know me, you know that I suck at it. You know that I have no problem throwing out fact after fact, sketching the outline of my heart, but not filling in the ambiguous places or correcting assumptions about shading and colors, not claiming any sort of emotion, letting people think what they will, not owning anything. And that is often enough for you.

And that sucks on my part, and some of y'alls. Not that this is besides the point, it's just part one. Moving on.

Part of the reason that I won't give my emotion or how I'm doing - often my answers are "I'm tired," or "it's hard," when pressed for a more involved answer - is because I'm never really sure. I was talking to a friend today about a mutual friend of ours and how he had to learn what the different emotions were because he didn't actually know them. Further: when pressed for how he's feeling about certain events in his life, it takes him a long time to figure out what his heart is feeling.

Crap. That's me.

I joke that I don't have emotions - and I think I may have been slightly less joking than I thought I was. I have always struggled with knowing how I'm feeling in a certain moment (my mom always sits me down and does the "are you Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired?"[HALT] test) and sometimes, when certain emotions or feelings come, I freak out because I can't identify them. I kind of know what sad is like in its most conventional form, and happiness is pretty easy because I have an optimistic nature, but anger, sorrow, and joy - in their more concentrated or even mixed forms - are confusing.

I think it might be because until college, I was never allowed to not be OK. When I was growing up, I was the oldest, the strong one, the one who kept my family together while my mom was at work and my dad was being my dad: if I was notOK, no one was. I was not allowed to have a bad day, I was not allowed to fail, I was not allowed to show vulnerability: that was weakness, that was what could break my family apart. Also - vulnerability is freaking scary. Always being OK has almost made me permanently OK in that I don't know what it's like to be otherwise - or I think that I've convinced myself that every emotion equates to OK. And if you're always OK, then you don't really need God, do you? I don't know how many times I've felt like I needed God, but I can say that almost every time I thought that I needed God, it could have simply been a logical accord.

And I think since becoming a Christian I've had this weird idea that vulnerability is all about sharing deep, dark secrets and stuff - but I think I figured out today is that it's just sharing a little bit of yourself - the Real Stuff, your Real Life (ha).

___

Even now, I don't know what's going on in my heart. I feel like I'm about to cry - something that's new to me and I'm not exactly fond of it - but I also really just want to go to bed because I'm extremely frustrated at all of my thoughts and this new "failure" that I've found in myself; I also just feel agitated and like I can't stay in one place (which I will end up having to do because my legs hurt haha). But there is also this weird relief.

So, reader, this may just have confused you more - but I promise I probably am the more confused. I feel the need to confess all of the above and that I have probably kept you at arm's length at some point in our friendship. And that sucks. I will try and do/love you better by once again gettin' my lazy butt off of my complacent couch and putting on those dreaded running shoes laced with vulnerability and start chasing after Christ once more.

Cheesy, I know.

Love,

Always,

Meredith