I really don't have anything important to say.

I wish someone would explain to me why it appears that the majority of the world makes such a big deal about being scared? It is almost as if it is a taboo to be afraid, or abnormal to have doubts. I do not comprehend why hardly anyone (especially of the people I know) can not actually "practice what they preach." We teach others that fear is normal, and that on many occasions, the credibility of one's own heart is questionable. Often, I find people quoting Ambrose Redmoon, and stating that "Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear."

Yet (and here is were I am dumbfounded), appraisal and pride is accredited in those that seemingly lack fear. People without hesitation seem to be the one's recognized. Because one is able to accomplish a task before another, does that make them more couragious?

I don't think so.

Courage is being frightened more thank anything in the world, but having the heart to continue on anyways. It's being able to put aside what quickens your pulse, draws sweat to your forehead, your throat to close, and your thoughts to become sour, so that you can accomplish something monumentally impossible to you as an individual.

Why have we made it into a race? Why has courage become defined by who is less afraid, or accomplishes it faster.

If one is able to stand up and fight their own dark, why should it matter if another did the same with less doubt, or at a faster rate. If light is turned on in a dark place, does it matter who turned it on, or how, for for then it is no longer dark.

Shinning when you believe your flame to be dim is courage.

Courage is courage is courage. Don't tell someone they are not as brave, or as capable because it took them a little longer, or a little more, to finally realize that they can be a light in the darkest of nights.

Do you point out the quality of their fire to illuminate yours that is diminishing?

Like Thomas I refused to believe until I could see,

And when you showed me your hand,

I ran in fear from your blood on me (It’s all over me).

I know I can’t change the truth,

But after all these years I’ve had time to practice my deceitful performance.

I hate to disappoint,

But that’s all I’m really good for.

I betrayed myself for a couple of coins,

Knowing I couldn’t save anything (especially myself).

And while you were dieing,

Taking your last,

I wasn’t the one asking to go with you.

Because I was scared (I’m really scared).

Forgive me, for I know what I do to you.

I’m a tragic metaphor to death,

Just not to myself, or anything that rescues.

It took three days for the dust to settle,

But I still can’t see where I’m going,

And this bondage has started to feel good.

I mean, it’s what I deserve.

So hand me my millstone, and I’ll be one my way to the nearest lake (You should’ve let me drown).

What an amazing grace I should have been left out of.

My eyes were opened, and I soon wondered back to the dark.

The crow has crowed three times,

But I’ve already denied you seven.

And I am no rock to build anything on.

So why won’t your blood wash off?

Because really, I am not one you can depend on.

And when the darkness surrounds as I am down and out,

With two minutes to go until my heart implodes from weakness,

I can’t say I’ll stay and let you be my strength.

I’m not at all easy to hold onto,

So why fool ourselves into believing I’m worth anything to all…

All these candles have gone out around me,

And I know my light is too insignificant to stand up this monumental dark.

I can’t see past this Goliath of a problem,

And I’m lost on the frontlines of this battle.

An enemy behind private lines; dressed in your colors.

But I’ve forgotten what I’m fighting for, and will be just another casualty.

 

My heart is no place for someone like you to live.

All I have are these arteries clogged from all I’ve done (and I’ve done it all).

I’m weary and am in need of rest,

But I’m afraid my burdens are just a little too heavy for you to carry.

And I know I am good at running,

But it feels so bad to be alone.

And if you promise to save, then please save.

Because I do not wish to be the bearer of any such mark (I am not the keeper of myself).

And we both know I’m scared of everything you have given me,

But I’m scared of giving up…

Cause I’ve given up and it hurts.

So if you let me, I’ll take it back and wait to be found.

 

For a while now, by dad has been very sick.

Actually, for longer than two years, trips have been made back and forth between house and hospital. I don't know anymore.Receantly, just these past couple of months, he has only progressively gotten worse. I for sure thought my dad would get better. I prayed about it. Those I needed and cared about the most prayed, too.

Countless precedures have been made. My dad is tired. He can barely keep down his meals, has had surgery, blood transfusions, proscribed medicines whose names I can't even begin to pronounce. Fear and exhaustion has become permantely etched into his face, creasing his forhead and giving him the appearance of someone much older than he is. His complection is a gray color. He is waisting away before my eyes. I'm scared, and I can't fight back this awful feeling that this is not going to be the happy ending I imagined. Im terrified that he's not going to become well again, and instead, continue to decline until...

I pray that is not what will happen.

 

I can't help but be completely terrified that the man who has been my father for 17 years- my protector, provider, and friend, could leave me. I'm not ready to let him go. Not now. And that's just it. I have to be. His tomorrow is not gauranteed. Not like mine. So I have to be ready. I am being forced to grow up, suck it up, get over it... become numb. Because if I don't, I mean, try to surpress this feeling, then I could feel, and that, right now, would be the worst thing possible. So I am trying... I mean honestly trying to ignore this sad inclination. Denial has become my best friend. Keep smiling and pretend that him leaving is no possibility at all. Keep running away, Ari. Keep running.

But lately, what I've been running from seems to keep on catching up to me, and I don't think my legs can hold out for that much longer.

 

I don't think my heart can either.

I can't handle this. Not on my own. God, what is this? Why? I can't see your idea in this. Your plan is lost to me.

The other day, a friend said that it might be in God's plan that my dad does not become well again. I'm trying to cope with that. I'm trying to understand. But I can't. It's to hard. I'm not ready to lose him. 

 

 I hurt.

 and I feel as if I should share it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkPq0SMWG5o

I wrote this as a free write assignment for Ap English. Random.

               I want to be able to forget all aspects of time. I want to lose myself. I want to exist. I want to embody love. I want so much. All my dreams, memories, and experiences occupy my time, always yelling at me and demanding for attention. It is at concerts, through music, that one can completely forget everything and loose themselves in a melody of truth. As each cord of the bass guitar is plucked, my senses are heightened, my feet itching to increase their mileage, and I'm taking deep breaths. I'm ready to run.

            A chorus of people pushes up towards the stage, body touching body. The crowd is one big wave of heat, colliding and crashing into me. I’m standing in a crowded room, seeing faces that will soon blur into colors when I look back and try to remember the event. I’m intimately close with people I don’t know, allowing them into my personal bubble- a space not even some of my closest friends are allowed to enter. Everything about concerts is one big contradiction. Though the tickets have been sold, and space has been maxed out, the lights go on, the drummer starts smashing wood unto plastic, and I am alone.

            Blood is replaced by beats, and music starts pumping through my veins. The speakers lie to the left of my ear, two inches of air separating me from them. My insides begin to vibrate. The chorus is causing my stomach to shake and tremble as the reverberating harmony pushes at my rib cage, rattling my mind and causing my peripheral line of vision to blur. With each loud crash of symbols, and angst ridden line of the song is sung, thoughts are one by one replaced with the lead singer’s voice. This continues until I can no longer decipher my own memory from a poetic line.

            The ground is wavering from the impact of thousands of feet swaying and stepping, making it appear the ground might fall from under my very feet. At this moment, I take flight. It’s not an illusion, oh no. It is truth. My mind defies gravity as it soars through thought after though, memory after memory and emotion after emotion until I can no longer tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Did that really happen? Does it matter? Times stops, the once seemingly importance of having life figured out leaves. I’m replaced with reassurance and hope whilst watching hand attack cord, lips open and close, and sweat bead down the bodies of those around me.

            Music is not a form of entertainment. Music is a therapy. It is not about the genre, or who is singing it, but fairly, how it moves you. Music is meant to make you feel everything at once, and yet, nothing at all. It is like George Orwell’s interesting idea of doublethink. Doublethink is the talent of holding two contradictory thoughts in one’s mind at the same time. At concerts, through music, this is achieved. The stress of doing life right and being perfect melts away until I simply exist. Just exist. All expectation is gone and I am.

 

Words could not express all that I experienced on my amazing trip to Costa Rica. It was like fairy dust was sprinkles on me, and I took flight to never land. I never expected I would be given what I have recieved.

I should have wrote all these feelings down sooner. It's hard to pull such memories from my own mind now.

I'm sitting in my photography class at the moment. I sould be looking up black and white portfolios, but I can't. I can't think right now. Can't process anything. I am just here. Just here, taking up space, unable to think. It's like my mind is void of any vaild thoughts and I have lost a part of me that I used to charish. Or maybe that little girl inside of me is just sleeping. I'm not sure anymore.

I guess, right now, all I can say is that I was deathly afriad that once I returned back to California from my mission trip, I would be no different- just the same ari that plagued the earth and had no purpose, or rather, a purpose she refused to fufill. It's hard to admitt that I am desperately clinging onto what I learned and went through this summer so I don't lose myself in familiarity and lies.

I regret to say that I am not moving forward. Nor am I even moving backwords. Time has stopped and I am at a stand still.

I need to break free.

I need healing.

I found my way back home today.

15 years each way,

I think I feel safe.

And when they find I have something to say,

I hope they see straight through me, to what I really mean.

And, yes I feel it in my heart.

And nothing else can make me feel this way...

Here I am, here I am.

I am home.

I think I lost my way somehow, and now I know they way to go.

I thought about it so many times,

But here I am... and I feel fine.

And yes, I feel it in my heart.

And nothing else could make me feel this way.

Oh, here I am. Oh, here I am.

I am home, atlast.

here I am. Oh, here I am.

This barricade, of baracade, it's falling down.

It's falling down.

And nothing can compare to the way that,

to the way that I feel when I am here...

 

I know, It's been a while since I have last blogged... but.. I don't know. I've been in such a funk. I have found it unexplainabley harder and harder for me to express myself. Everytime I open my mouth, I feel stupid. Everything I write seems insufficient. I feel like anything I say and write is only a pathetic attempt to depict the world in which I live... And I am failing miserabley at it. It is truely like I am swimming in my own thoughts. I feel so much, but I can't define what it is I am feeling. I can't pick out one thought from another.

I feel like things are attacking me from all sides. Bullets are pelting me from the right, and as I nurse my new wounds, an unseen bullet strikes from behind. How do I deal? Maybe I'm just being over dramatic. No, I am being over dramatic. I just... argh.

I went to the beach today with Kels. It was amazingly euphoric. I sprawled out on the beach, determined to melt into the sand and be washed away by the emerald colored waves. Insane? Ohh, I am completely aware of my loosing my mind. I sat in the sunlight lightly giggeling to random bits of conversation, and my rythmatic breathing copied that of the loud crashing of the waves. As I layed upside down on a dune, sand sprinkled all over my clothes and hair, I just stared... stared out. I was there. But I wasn't.

I want to be able to forget all aspects of time. I want to lose myself. I want to exist. I want to embody love. I want to... I want too much.

After dropping Kelsey off at home, I started on my way home. my tank was nearing empty, and at that moment, I wanted nothing more then to continue driving. I wanted to drive as far away as my car would allow, until the tank was devoid of all gas and my car died.

It was freezing out, but I didn't care. I turned on the heat full blast, rolled down all my windows, and screamed. I guess that would've looked weird to any cars passing by, but that didn't cross my mind. I don't know why I screamed. It was such a strange impulse, and I did it.

My senses are heightened, my feet iching to increase their milage, and I'm taking deep breaths. I'm so ready to run. The real question... what do I want to run away from?

I decided I am not capable of doing anything involving working at a desk. Nope, no way, can't do it. I nearly went insane typing up an auction booklet for a silent auction Kels and I are doing to fundraise for our missions trip this summer. After a 5 hour meeting involving book keeping and sorting, there came a 3 hour period of logging the information into the computer. Ari does not approve. I think I shall never become anything that involves a desk job. I can't handle it. I nearly went nutz... no, I did.

 

I uhm.. this is... this makes me want to cry.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_aDpmfAzxI

I don't think I could fully describe the feeling I get when I am driving by myself; payvment lying miles and miles ahead of me, and the blazing sun riding high in the sky. That emotion... that euphoric sensation that takes over my body and allows my past to melt away and my dreams to take flight in the beatific clouds means more then I can probably say. After loosing my car for a three days due to some really awful tires, I threw myself a huge party when I picked it up and drove it down the mountain into forever. Windy roads became straight, and my troubles began to fly away into the horizon. My window down, and my hand catching air, I could feel the goosebumps caressing my skin and dance across my body. So many words said, yet no sound made. My hopes and thoughts became reality as I raced time against the sunset. Vivacious colors splashed across eternity, creating an intense pallet of colors. Already, a vilant picture of striking beauty began to form in the sky. Fields of yellow daisies laid to my right, beckoning me to swim amungst the the tall weeds and drown in the nautral exquisiteness we so often take for granted. To my left lay the mysterious ocean... the waves crashing down, eating away at my sorrows in monsterous bites that left me light headed and free. It's in those moments, with my hand hanging out my window, everything becomes clear. My questions become answered in the silence and things I could not make sense of become clearer. My goals and aspriations seem so easy, and my confidence rises as I have full faith that I can achieve anything. It is in that moment that I am invincible... that I can fly.

This morning, I woke up to the sound of the fog horn silently beeping in the distance. I shook out the coldness that stiffened my body and sat up in bed thinking. What a change these last couple of days has made in my life. Is it possible for a person to change so significantly in such a short span of time? In God... all things are possible.

When I signed up to go to Hume, I was going in the hopes of running; running from myself. As I hastily ran from the problems and follies I had caused, I ran straight into God. This past year... these past couple of years, have been a huge trial. I made the decision to accept Christ into my heart a year ago, but I never followed through with my vow. Such betrayal is sickening. God has continually showed me love, forgiveness, and grace, yet I flirted with temptation and kissed death right on the lips, throwing everything God gave me right back in his face.

Yes, this past week I escaped- escaped from all the lies I allowed the world to feed me, and was forced to truely see myself. God gave me this week to reflect of who I have been and who I should be... what I am capable of achieving. As I sat in the small coffee shop, Hume Bean, with God's glory surrounding me, I jumped off the cliff I was trapped on and fell through my sick mind. Spiraling through my thoughts, I was able to truely see who I was and what a fake I have been.

This whole time, I have been playing at a masquerade ball, dancing with deception and hiding behind a captivating dress of falseness. All this time, I allowed myself to believe that the mask I was wearing could hide my troubles and mess ups.

I was drowning in the ocean of my own mendacity. The waves came crashing down, and I was to tired to continue to swim under the crashing waves of my falsehood. I was chocking on my own dishonesty.

The clock struck twelve, and Cinderella was expossed as the soiled maid she truely was. As my mask fell from my face and shattered on the door, the waves stopped tossing and the storm calmed.

How is it that something that appears to be so easy is incredibly difficult? All God was asking me to do was admitt to my denial and trust Him.. He just wanted to see me as I truely am... no more lies. I had gotten so used to watching history repeat itself. I was so used to allowing myself to get hurt that I could not see the true beauty that was stairing me in the face.

Up at Hume, I met God face to face... without my mask to hide the true repulsiveness that I am. In his eyes, I found the back door to the universe, and saw truth in the constellation of His heart.

All God wanted was me... He wanted me. Even with all my filth, sins, and confusion, God wanted to love me. So God, I come. Take me. All of me. I want to be Yours... and only yours. I come empty handed and broken. But Father God, I trust You. I want Your love to be enough. Jesus... You are enough. You are.

Down a ways from existence, a left turn on eternity, there is a cliff I like to run away to and watch the sunset. I drown in the melodic sound of water hitting rock and melt into the floor of my conscience. I was there the other night, lost in my own world.

I feel enclosed. Trapped. Betrayed? No, that's not the right word. I need to get out of here. I'm going insane. I'm ready for life to happen. I'm ready to be on my own. I hate being dependent on people. I'm ready to blossom, but there is something blocking my sun. I feel like my family has me encaged. Is it bad that I wish to be completely independent from my family right now? Oh my, don't get me wrong. I love them all very much. I just feel like they're holding me back. Hm, that sounds a little harsh, as well.

I'm tired of having to play mom to everyone. I'm tired of being the peace keeper. My parents are continually trying to make me there little scholar. They expect intellectual greatness out of me. I can't give them what they desire. I can't be the kind of greatness they want. I'm just not that intelligent. I can't handle the stress, and I'm nearly at my breaking point. Is it possible that I am just being a drama queen? yeah... probably. I just feel like I am capable of doing so much more, so why can't my parents see that. My life isn't in books. I'm not a failure. Or atleast, I don't think I am. Voices and voices swirl around my head yelling to me who I am and what I can do. So much confusion. So much loudness, I'm going to go deaf. Would that be a bad thing?

Maybe they're right. Maybe I can't take on the world...

but I want to try.

I'm waiting for the calm to come after the storm. I'm waiting for clearity. I know they are wrong. I know I am worth more then they say I am. So why do I constantly give into their insults and slander? It's hard not to believe them. They make a convincing argument. I've tried to please them for to long. It sucks... having this feeling that no matter what you do, you will never be quiet what they wanted. Inadequacy. I'm chocking. I need air.

I want them to know me. Truely know me. Maybe that's to much to ask? After all, it's not like I know my parents all that well, either. I don't want to feel like I have to hide myself when I am around them. I want to get away, be on my own. I want to fly.

I'm here for a reason. This emotion, these family problems- they're happening for a reason. Maybe that's all I am sure of at the moment. Maybe all I know is that I'm here, feeling the way I am feeling. But that's a start. I need to be patient.

How funny. Patience seems to be the underlying theme of my life at the moment.

Today I went to a local gallery to speak with this really amazing photographer, (though the guys name escapes me now. how ironic!) with my photography class. It was rather interesting, conversing with him about all the different qualities of photography and arguining over what made a good picture. Gosh, I love it. When I get behind a camera, how can it be that such a small thing as the lens forces me to truely look at what I am seeing? Taking pictures allows me to view things in a different way. It's an eye opener. Suddenly, it feels as if I can look into the soul of another and figuire out what makes them tick. With each flash and click of the camera, I drfit closer and closer to the person, or object I am photographing, and escape my own world and dance across theirs. It's insane.

I'm insane...