The Meaning of Tears

Do you ever feel like the one thing you need most in the world is just to cry, just to break down, but you can't? Your face is frozen into a frown and it will go no further in expression than stoney silence. Is it shock that makes us this way, or just a defensive mechanism so practiced and attuned that it's second nature to say STOP. Don't cry. Do. not. cry.

Then, other times, the tears pour out of you like some unstoppable spring, no matter how much you just want this onslaught of emotion and hot saltwater to STOP. Everything you didn't want before, every ounce of will and iron that stopped you from even feeling, has completely degraded at the worst time and you are a wreck.

For me, tears come at the most incorrect times. They come when I am out in front of the world, unprepared with a private place or a tissue. They happen for others and they happen for the movies. They are just...wrong. When I need to cry, when a release is the only thing that will suffice, my face is as dry as a pristine sheet of paper. Pale, smooth, blank, and completely unable to get wet without destruction. Destruction of my facade. The ironic thing is, the more that I cannot and will not cry, the more I am destroyed inside.

I scream OUT for my chance to let it all come out of me. I scream on the inside. I am so full, full of other's pain and my own struggles. I am a vessel with limits, and those limits are being pushed upon to their threshold.

I often wonder, is the uniquely human capacity to feel deeply and truly, is it really a gift? A characteristic to point to, and comfort ourselves that our savage behaviors and base nature has some separation from the beasts? Humans are more primitive and savage than any animal, because of our ability to feel and be hurt on a level that these other species cannot even be a part of. We heal from physical hurt. We may never heal from emotional pain. We are the only creatures that can love, that can care and comfort. We are the only creatures who are able to lose the ability to love, to hate even ourselves. How is this a gift, really? Only if we are given the chance to love and be loved is any of the pain we go through even remotely worth it. When we stop trying just to survive and start trying to feel, is when we are vulnerable to death: death of our amorphous feelings, death to the thoughts and emotions that make us who we are, death to our humanity.

Yesterday, I said that our generation has the most to fear and worry about, and someone asked me why. I stated physical reasons: the threat of nuclear attack, the degradation of the planet, the loss of a sense of community. Underlying these immediate reasons, however, I think we are at most, fearful because our humanity is easier to lose now than ever before. The world is as big and as small as it will ever be. We have unending pressure on us to achieve, to be the best, to get by, whatever it is. Do we really have a moment of true, pure, unadulterated bliss, free from any worry? Probably...never. With our 5 second attention span and culture of speed and convenience, we are at constant risk of losing ourselves, if we haven't been trained to hold fast to our freak flags. You must be attractive, you must have money, you must indulge, you must have willpower, you must perform, you must be knowledgeable, you must be ambitious, you must be passionate, you must not care at all, you must conform as you strive for uniqueness....it is all, entirely, too much. Were we really designed to prosper like this? How can I really stay uniquely Sarah when the entire world is violently pushing me in every direction? And who am I, if not a reflection of my immediate culture? And so, we are the generation of anxiety. Anxiety that who we are is never enough, and that we don't even know who we are. What does that even mean, really? Who we are. It's nonsensical. What are we made of? I can't answer that.

My final rhetorical is this: Will we stand for it all? Will we wait for the pressure and the push to just form us and change us, without resistance? Have we completely lost our innocence and curiosity to a time in which information is everywhere and we are told what to know and when? I don't pretend to understand myself completely, but I know one thing: I want to hold on to the innocence I still have. I want to believe that we are not just products of culture, but real individuals with real feelings and experiences and pain and joy that make us who we are.

We are fiercely human. We mustn't let anyone, anything, take that from us.

Cham-O-Mile

I really only post when I need to expel my feelings. Or dispel a myth. Or cast a spell. That's just a near-rhyme joke, people. No worries.

This time, though, I am writing because I am drinking tea and listening to the Decemberists, and what other choice do I have on this Saturday night but to release my thoughts and hopes and dreams and innards onto this slightly public page. And to think, I so often rebel against our lack of yearning for privacy, and I am making the problem extend just a little further.

All digressions aside, I really don't have much of substance to say. I am overwhelmed, taken in by the tide of school work and life work and my utter and complete fear. I hate that, my fear, my anxiety. My future...well, I have faith that it will work out, but I am still in the stage of unknowing AND of fearing those shadows. I am waiting to hear about my summer and about my next year and about beyond...it's the beyond that comforts me, strangely enough. The beyond is still full of hope and promise and life and my own ability to do what I need.

Oh boy. Sleepy tea is kicking in.

Instant SnapShot

I really wonder about my generation sometimes.

I hate parties. Let me make that stipulation before I may proceed. They really just make me tired, and by the time I have enough personal space to look around, everyone in proximity is being insanely inappropriate, and then I gag a bit.

So that's my deal.

It surprises no one when I say that I don't like big parties. No one with an ounce of intuition, anyways.

And yes, I completely understand that I can't find the person I want to be lazy with, a beau, without putting myself out in the world to find them first. My confidence problems, which don't manifest themselves in the way that most girls' my age, but in a quieter and more withdrawn way, don't help me any. I'm the biggest mess, and most people would never guess that.

But, really. My generation. Our need for instant gratification and our culture of "hit and run" socialization...are these results of short attention spans, overstimulation of dopaminergic receptors, or an upbringing in a world full of too many choices and not enough security? We seek what we can surely grasp, fleeting as that grasp may be. It worries me, this apparent piece of our souls that is missing. I guess my own desires color my outlook, but doesn't it sort of...suck? To live this life of getting what you can, because genuity is clearly too much to ask? I don't think that it is too much to ask. I think it is just enough. But, oh, our cultural pressure! What are we supposed to expect from ourselves when, often, the world expects everything and nothing from us? It's a quandary that is hard to grasp and harder to conquer. It's a matter of courage, I believe, to have the courage to closely examine your life and decide what you ACTUALLY want, not what you think you should want. As we bypass truth in the race to satisfaction, we also let ourselves fall to the wayside, in a combination of things too complex yet too fleeting. We want to feel as if we belong, above all things; we want to feel warm touch and deep concern and a blanket of constancy. This is normal, but the way we go about it, with desperation but a short lived need, produces this culture we see now. It is a culture that lacks any privacy in intimacy and any need to respect oneself enough to give that privacy. We have a culture of blurred morality, or perhaps, morality has been quietly redefined into a whole 'nother monster.

I don't have the answers, the explanation. All I can say is that...I don't like it. I just don't like it, and I insist on being myself, and if that means a slower curve of "socialization", then that's that.

A baby

There's something incredible about new life.

It's like the concrete proof and the irrefutable evidence of hope. Of possibility. Of potential, in this world full of cynics.

I am a full blown quasi-aunt to a beautiful baby girl. I usually think newborns are kind of funny looking and not my kind of company, but I have fallen in love with her already, just from photos. She knows nothing of this world, a true blank canvas and a whole new life waiting to be formed.

We never get that chance in life, that much is true. No matter how new we might feel, we are never completely fresh, completely without a past. The past colors who we are to the extent that we allow. I think, I believe, that you can choose your past, though. You can choose what you allow to influence you. Usually. With all of these things I say, all of my beliefs, I also know that there are some things that I do not want to influence my life that...do. They really do. And those are my own demons, I suppose.

I'm rambling. I wanted to write a post that conveys my warm fuzzies over this pink baby girl, but instead, I am rambling. What can I say? This baby just mushed my brains.

I got really sick. I got humbled by people of great accomplishment.

I got my perspective back.

Thank you, Lord. I need to not lose that so gosh darn easily.

Purposeful regression

I've been having some issues.
I'm letting things get to me at a much deeper level than I should. It's not like this is new, I do it all the time, but now even little things are starting to dig dig dig.
And it's not like everything sucks. Some great things are happening. I figured out my passion, what I want to do with my life, my freaking PURPOSE. That feeling..it's unmatchable. I can't turn back to cluelessness, and I can't be a lost soul anymore. I have something I'm moving towards.
I guess, the problem is, now that I have this big purpose...everything else seems inherently discordant. How can I have figured out what I truly want, but still not be getting...what I want? As in, the little things, the things that are so "normal" for people my age and place in life, I don't have. At all. It's been making me into some sort of mess as of late, this discordance, this cognitive dissonance. How can I be so right and so wrong, at the same time? Does it mean that the right things are out of luck, or am I a victim of the wrong?
I think I need to stop looking for the huge end goal, the big pieces. I found my purpose, this thing I was questing for all along. I need to focus now on my happiness, the happiness I was so able to see when I wasn't trying to kill myself over my future. I feel like I lost control over my future when I have really gained more control over the one thing I actually can control: my efforts in it all. I know what I'm doing.
That's a lie. I have no idea what I'm doing. But I can at least know that I am working, and it will work out. My future is there for the taking. I am going to embrace it, and meanwhile, I need to come back to the present.