i'll let you breathe your own air

http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/dangeroussummer/warpaint.html

I'm not usually sad. I don't think I'm ever really sad either to be honest, but I think it's in the times that I drive at night and listen to really good songs or turn on the turn signal in a parking lot when absolutely no one is around or I think of things that I can't and couldn't have and probably actually wouldn't change that I try and convince myself that I'm sad.

In the past 24 hours I have managed to make two important people in my life really upset. This is a pretty common pattern in my life, unfortunately. I continually am trying to put band-aids on friendships that should've ended months or even years ago but somehow I hold on.

Selfishly? Maybe.

For a good reason? Maybe.

But are these relationships that I want to salvage again? This isn't the first time I have found myself at a crossroads, not knowing if I want to keep hurting these people as well as putting myself through the pain of caring for these people the way I have been.

It is in these times, and many more, that I find myself staring back at my own imperfection and God's grace. Sometimes I find it disheartening - because as a perfectionist you kind of find your own glaring failure as less-than-encouraging - but today I choose to see it the way it actually is: as freedom.

I like to act like I'm free. I have always rebelled and toed the line. My name in Hebrew means "little rebellion". Go figure. I wore torn-up jeans and flip flops in middle school and got detention for it (as well as getting suspended...); I ate during church services on Sundays (a cardinal sin to Catholics); I never study unless it's finals week; I never listen to my friends when they tell me something's dangerous or stupid; I skateboard even though my ballet teacher has forbidden me to do so (and I'm pretty sure my grade reflects that, actually); I bike on the sidewalk; I act like a 6 year-old boy; my shorts are too short: in other words, I follow rules when they're convenient.

I don't practice what I preach. I like to think that I know that I'm free and all the while God is up there shaking his head at me. I ask to be freed from things all the time without really even knowing what that means. Being freed from something difficult doesn't mean it's out of my life, it just means I'm free. That it no longer hangs over me and freaks me out.

So does that mean I have to walk away? I don't know.

I really don't.

The amount of truth that I do know definitely outweighs the uncertainty and that's enough for me right now.

Love,

Always,

Mere