it's the holiday season

There are so many things that could come up, so many questions that I have the wrong answers to.  I know that they're not the wrong answers, don't get too concerned here, because I'm learning about myself and what I think and the world and people and how to do life and be a person and I don't have anything figured out at all but I think that's probably a good sign, but my answers will be wrong to them.  And I don't want to cause a scene.  I don't want people to be hurt.  I don't want to have to defend the things I say or the way I act or the beliefs I do or do not hold.  I just want to be able to be me, to be the screwed up, anxiety-ridden, scared, doubtful, uncertain little person that I am every day, and have them say that that's ok, and that they'll still love me.  Because I don't need rules.  I don't need to hear what's right and wrong about my relationships or my future or my faith or my views.  I just need you to love me.  Because that's what family is for, isn't it?  I'm so scared of judgment.  Maybe because I know that so many things, so many of these wrong answers will lead to so much disappointment from all of them, over on that side, on that team.  How have I fallen so far?  How can they bring me back into the light, back into the fold?  Where did I go so wrong?

I don't feel wrong.  I'm not a disappointment.  So please don't be disappointed in me.  Christmas isn't supposed to be scary.  But I can't get away from the scenes that play themselves out in my head of shouting matches, of interrogations, of everything wrong.  Dread.  Fear.  Shaking.  I don't know what to do other than be me.

i'm probably procrastinating

Sometimes I wonder what I could do with all the space in my brain that's taken up with lyrics to worship songs.

Sometimes I don't know the difference between profanity and prayer.

Dance

Because there is one color here and that's brown, or sepia if we must be specific, which we must because when you are stuck for words, get specific -- details, details!  There's the life in your words -- and it's where the light falls that matters.  You see skin and legs and muscle and pointed feet.  In the darkness, clothing and hair bleeds into background, into nothingness.  But it's in those midtones, the in-betweens that don't have names, but it's probably ok not to put a label on everything, that things get a little fuzzy.  Hands blur together, fingers touching or not touching, faces obscured, out of focus; shouldn't they be the focus?

No.  Body becomes movement becomes shape becomes art.  Take a picture.  Snap a memory of something you wouldn't remember without film and a lens because it'd be lost in the storm of moving limbs and thrown bodies.  Because we're all moving too quickly to be seen.  And you take a day, a moment, a class, and say explain it to me.  But you're can't -- you can't -- because the moment the words leave your lips they are sour with age, expiration.  And the subject is spinning away, blindly, like a top from a string, crashing into everything, speeding instead of slowing.  Never stopping.  Never still.

billboard broadcast excerpts

She is lovely and wonderful and very capable of loving people and I just want to broadcast that on a fucking billboard that takes up the sky to people. But that wouldn’t make her believe it.

I don’t know how to say any more clearly that, “I love you so much and you are not a burden. I want to know you and I want to hear about your life and listen and hold you whenever and however much you need."

You feel so much. That means you’re alive. That means you’re a person.

I need you to be you, and that’s the only thing, and you are fantastic at that.

if we could just talk about me for a second

So, this blog goes through seasons of Anna-sometimes-has-artistically-vague-writing-spurts-and-needs-somewhere-to-word-vomit-here! type writing, and this may or may not have been one of those.

Sorry.

Anyway, I thought I'd take a second to update those of you who care at all a little bit about my life and what's happening right now (literally, right this second):

• I'm drinking tea.  Decaf Earl Grey, of course.  Without milk, because I'm out.  It's really a pity.
• I'm turning 22 next week.  That sounds a lot older than 21 in my head and it's a little scary.
• I'm graduating from college in five weeks.  That's a lot less scary.
• I live in a house with ten other women.
• The only reason this is ok:
• I have my own room.
• Also, I love them.
• I'm dating Joel.
• I like him a lot.
• I'm doing Nano again this year.  Current wc: 12,022/50,000.  I'm right on schedule.
• I'm kicking my sister's ass at scrabble.
• I'm listening to a playlist called "songs to throw yourself at."
• I'd rather be sleeping almost all of the time.
• I have almost nothing that looks like faith or God left in my life at this point.
• I am utterly and completely content with the above statement.
• My mug is now empty.

Weirdly egotistical post is weirdly egotistical.  I'm finished.

that time of year

he came to a fork in the road.  he picked it up and kept walking.

typical

because there are a few moments while I’m breathing that I think just for a second it would be nice to not have to be an introvert all the time, it would be nice not to be exhausted by all the noise and bustle and life that’s always happening.  but I’m so stuck inside my head, I don’t think you understand how that is.  because we all have our own ideas of what’s good and what’s best and what we need right now and it makes perfect sense (not always) to us and why can’t other people just understand that but I’m so tired and so tired and so tired and sometimes I just want to crawl into my bed and not get out for a really long time and no I don’t want company and no I don’t really want to talk about it.  and I have no idea why I have so much to give when it comes to some people but others are just the most draining.  and sometimes I don’t want to be a person any more.  I don’t want to think.  let me be Scarecrow before the trip to Oz.  Or Tinman.  Or Dorothy when she still thought there was no place like home but before she actually got there.  Because maybe the longing is better than the disappointment.

there are so many things I can’t think about because I feel the wrong things.