Livin Young and Wild and Free

My heart got broken in the most unexpected place, by the most unexpected person, at the most unexpected and worst time a few months ago.  A normal girl would cry, get mad, and then get over it.  I, however, don't seem to have been blessed with normal coping mechanisms.  I get angry and snap at undeserving people. I get wreckless and do things I know I shouldn't do because I'm so hurt that I'm numb.  I push away the people that love me.  And this time, I pushed away any of the faith I still had in tact after my first semester of college.   

I thought that my college experience would bring me closer to God since I entered into the experience with a good relationship with Him, a confidence in who I was, and the stubborness to not turn into one of "those" girl.  Those girls who step onto campus and throw every moral they grew up with out of the window.  Instead, what I got was a fall and winter full of struggle followed by a whole awful lot of self-defeat as I stopped working on my relationship with God (acutally, I stopped really working on all of my relationships) and focused instead on making sure that I felt alive by doing whatever crazy thing crossed my path.

I didn't want to end up this way, I didn't expect to. Yet...here I am. I am thirty credits into my college career, I have no idea what I want to do with my life, and I have no solid faith in the one thing that has been a truth in my life for years and years. Luckily, my friends are kind and smart and here for me even when I disappear for weeks without a single text or skype call.

"Faith is funny that way.  Sometimes we don't even know why or how we have it. It's  just there, it's there to get us through things and to reassure us that anything is possible." --Vinz

"Maybe you are just turning into the person you were meant to be all along" -- Ali

Sometimes (a lot more often that not, actually), getting out of bed it too overwhelming for me in the morning and sometimes being nice and "okay" is an impossible task.  Right now I can't seem to focus on anything but myself, my own struggles, and the fact that I am nothing like the person I was seven months ago.  Of course, the core of who I am is still here; I still don't know how to think before I speak or get to class on time and I still love sitting down with a good book on a rainy weekday, but everything else feels different.  I am seeing the world so differently and I'm not so sure I like these new lenses or not.

So no, I don't want you to tell me it will be alright.  I don't want to listen to you preach or read about how awesome your God is, at least not right now.  It makes my heart sick and my thoughts negative to hear it.  I don't want to be reprimanded for doing "bad" things, or told that I'm different than who I was...I already know that I could get hurt, and lose control, and that I'm a little off-center.  I don't need your condolences or words of wisdom because no, you have no clue how I'm feeling or what is going on in my head. 

What I want is to ride this section of my life out.  I want to work on being feeling happy again, even if it starts by having fun late at night with my friends and I want to work on that without the knowledge that I'm disappointing anybody or scaring anybody or disgusting anybody.  I want more happy and okay days than I have sad, hard, and lonely days.  I know this will end, my heart will heal and my life will find some normalacy but right now I just want to do whatever it takes to feel even a shadow of happiness and belonging. 

So maybe Young, Wild, and Free is the perfect title for this little chapter in my life, maybe this chapter is what I need to become the fantastic person I'm sure to become.

you are who you are, and you can't change that.

If I've learned anything in the past eighteen years and 11-ish months it's that trying to get your opinion accepted by someone else who doesn't share your views is nearly impossible.  Pushing opinions on others causes fights, lost friendships, hurt feelings, and cross words.  Heck, unwanted opinion pushing is what starts wars.

People get really upset when they are told that something they hold true is wrong or is not what another person believes in.  People get so upset, in fact, that it can turn into a full-blown arguement and it doesn't matter if the difference of opinion is over something small (wrestling or basketball) or something large (starting a war, abortion, marijuana's health benefits or lack thereof). 

Throw a philisophical or religious topic up in the air and people go nuts.  It doesn't matter if they have never studied a single thing about the topic, everyone will jump in with opinions and beliefs that they hold true.  Sure, the debate may take place under the pretense of a friendly conversation or a group study-question...but when it comes down to it, it is a God-honest arguement and noone wants to back down.

Think about it; when someone's statement threatens what you hold as truth, don't you automatically bristle at the idea that you could have been believing in something that was wrong for X amount of years?  And when somebody pushes that "lie" of an idea onto you isn't it your first reaction to correct them and make sure that they are aware they are in fact wrong?

But, who are we to say what is right or wrong?  We are nobody...at least when it comes to deciding things like that.  And because we are nobody, we have taken to underhanded comments and passive-agressive behaviors so that our opinions get through in a more politically and socially correct manner...but either way, a person will believe what a person believes and what others say will very rarely change that.

In fact, I have recently come to a conclusion that people don't change.  I mean sure, a persons favorite band, food, color, hairstyle, the way he/she dresses, and all other superficial things can change in the blink of an eye.  But the moral compass built into a person doesn't change.  The beliefs that a person has held onto for as long as he/she can remember won't change.  The personality that a person was born with won't change.

This gets tricky because on the outside people do seem to be able to change, but I honestly believe that a persons core is unshakeable.  I will always be more of an introvert, a little too hard on myself, self-consious, forever working to feel loved, an avid reader, too quick to speak, a little snatchy and more confident in my opinions than I should be.  I have been this way for as long as I can remember, and through every stage of life and every so-called change in my personality, I am still the same person when it comes down to it. It doesn't matter if I have God in my life or if I go out and get drunk every weekend.  It doesn't matter if I start failing classes or graduate at the top of my class in three years.  It won't matter if I suddenly become a nudist because all of these things are exterior of my core being.  In the end, when I am stripped down to nothing and it is just me looking into a mirror, I will still see the same person I was when I was twelve, eight, and three. 

People who continually hurt others aren't going to be able to stop doing that.  People who are outrageously caring can't stop being caring.  They can thow a layer over who they really are, try to blend in and be more moderate in thier actions, but when you strip away any sort of wall and tear away their strength, it's going to be the orginal person, the same one they were for an entire lifetime.

And maybe that is offensive to you because it goes against your core beleif.  My friend preached the bible at me when I tried to explain this to her, telling me that I was wrong because Jesus says that we are wiped clean and get to start over when we accept Him into our hearts (which I've done).  But to me, this is just a prime example of a person's beliefs getting threatened and a full-out bristle.  We eventually just agreed to disagree, because a diffrerence of opinion that involves religion rarely ends any other way.

liar liar pants on fire

The application process for anything school/work related is tedious and full of generic questions that are meant to help the employer get to know the applicant.  Unfortunately for all involved, questions like "what is your biggest strength/weakness" or "how would you react to a customer if...."  don't serve to get to know a real person but instead a practiced and rehearsed version of him/her. 

Lately, the idea that we rarely get to actually know a person has kept popping up in my head and it's not just because of the applications I've had to fill out lately or the interview questions I've had to answer.

Think about it.  How many people actually know you.   How many people know why you get sad when you hear a certain song, the reasons behind the walls you put up, or the real reason you don't like to be in big crowds?  My guess is not very many;  it's become a part of our culture (at least in my experience) to keep the beauty of our exterior lives unblemished by anything that is less than sunshine-y.  God forbid we let our real feelings out in the open and cause conflict.

My econ professor said that he doesn't believe in the idea of "Minnesota nice", because Minnesotans are actually the most passive-aggressive people he's ever met (he's not from this state).  I tend to believe him, because I see it in my own life and in myself.  It's not okay to be anything less than a good christian, a happy kid, a college student (students get a free ticket to mess up because it's the "best time of our lives"), or a hard-working adult so we all makes sure that the exterior matches some sort of image and whatever we stuff inside is kept fairly secret. 

So,  who are you really?  What do you care about and what do you hate?  If you could wear anything and not worry about being judged, what would it be?  Are you really filled with God's grace and love, or do you just go to church because that's how you grew up? Is coffee pleasing to your palette or do you drink it because it's the hip thing to do?

And beyond who you are, who are you willing to share your real-self with? I  double dog-dare you to tell the truth next time someone asks you what your biggest weakness is.  Maybe I'll try "Well, I have a problem biting my tongue and tend to speak before I think.  It's a weakness because it can occasionally offend people who are important to my future." I probably won't be hired but at least I'd be honest with myself and my almost-boss.