Insides

"Doesn't it feel great out?" she asked, opening the windows to let the night in.
"Yeah, I suppose," he answered bluntly, looking at her in that way he always did when he missed her.
The answer didn't even come close to fulfilling her desires, but she was used to that by now. Weather-inspired emotions weren't his thing. His loss, she thought. It didn't really matter.
But it did. They were dating, after all. His loss was her’s too.
Of course, she'd never meant for it to be that way. Nobody ever does with these things, but they happen. They always happen, and people always walk into them. Life's love traps.
Girl meets Boy. They hit it off and become fast friends. Boy is struck by her independence, her kind spirit, her indifference to the world. Boy falls first, and fast. Asks Girl out. Girl doesn't want to date him. She is a free spirit, poetic to the core, and loves it. Boy asks again. Girl still thinks it is a bad idea. She's never had a relationship before, so can't speak from experience. Boy uses this against her, challenges her to take a chance. Girl knows her self, and knows it won't work, but decides to go for it anyhow. She can't resist a challenge.
Almost a year passes, Boy is in love more than ever and Girl realizes every day how captive her spirit has become. This was never what she wanted, but sometimes it really does feel an awful lot like love.
Maybe it even is.
Like a thousand times before, she pushes all of this from her mind and shuts the window.
"Why don't we just watch a movie then?"
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(thoughts)
"Have you ever read a story about a certain type of girl who would just up and cry? She sees a lost kitten, or a broken flower, or a lonely man on the street and can't help but feel their sorrow...and then begins to cry?"
"I want so badly to be that girl..” she thought, imagining what it would be like to actually tell him these things….
Isn't it heart breaking?
“It's like the dirt on this roof here" she sifted it through her hands…

Finally she spoke,
"Where did it come from? This dirt….the ground maybe...but now it is on this roof. Forever away from the ground. It will never be down there." As if to set some free, she threw the handful over her head, off the roof. Most only came back down onto her arm, but some kept falling.
"It's like the ground above the ground," he answered, totally missing the point.
At least he made an effort.
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I used to always think of myself as someone who is intrinsically sad. Intrinsic. I love that word. It's weird because most people mark me as happy and joyful, but more often than not I find it so much easier to be sad. More natural even. Is this some warped view of the human condition that has brainwashed my spirits? I don't know.
One of my favourite high-school teachers called me passionate. He said I don't feel or show anything halfway... in fact I hardly show any emotion at all. But when I do...when something really affects me, it happens all the way. When I am sad, I get so passionately sad. When I am happy, I get passionately happy. When I am joyful, it overflows.
I love that idea. Passionate.
I wish everyone could experience things passionately.
Then again, I want to hold onto it and share it only with those who know what it's like.
Am I also selfish then?
In high-school I loved to share that passion. Especially about God. God made me ridiculously happy, and those were the times when I felt most alive.
I learned how to not need the sadness.
I learned how to share my joy with other people, and how to love sharing it with other people.
He doesn't see God the way I do. He never will. So I stopped talking about it.
Sometimes, it makes me think I'll never be ridiculously happy ever again.
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Without my joy, it has been coming back again, the sadness. I feel like I need it again, like it is a vital part of me. The outer shell of smiles is getting more and more empty. The only way to fight it is to write it out. Before I found joy, I wrote constantly. I was also a cutter.
One of those is a bad thing.
I’m not that way anymore, but once again I am isolated from someone who is supposed to be helping me, and it is mostly my fault, but I am afraid to fix it. Deep down I know I should have never agreed to it, but part of me needs it.
He needs me too, he says.
Part of me is certain it will still work out.
Part of me is wrong.
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I’ve become dislocated.
Out of joint and place and time.
Drifting along to the current that is my schedule, my church, my world.
I let him be my lifeboat, and forgot how to swim.
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In high school, they said I’d change the word. I wanted to turn it upside-down for God. There’s a verse about it,
"These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also."—Acts 17:6.
It’s about the Apostles.
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The thing is, none of it is his fault. Sometimes, I try and pretend it is so I don’t have to blame myself.
Sometimes, he thinks it is and apologizes for not being what I want.
I don’t know that anyone can be. I just need to fix myself. No, I have to let God fix me. Lately I’ve stopped listening to God. First, I stopped talking to him. This is a terrible idea, but I got tired of doubting my relationship. And my life. Silly, to think I could run from it all.
It’s not that a relationship is keeping me from being who God made me, it is that I am letting the relationship take the blame. Maybe I shouldn’t be dating, maybe it is okay, but I should not avoid God.
That is where my problems are coming from.

Before I started dating, I was convinced God was all I’d ever need. God’s love is perfect you see, and once you feel it, there is nothing else that can compare. That’s why I was never in a rush to start a relationship. I knew love with a guy would never be as amazing as Love from God. God never disappoints because with him, you don’t expect anything on any terms, so you are never left wanting. Except for romance, and that is when you know you should be looking for that special someone.
I’ve never felt that though, that lack of romantic fulfillment. I started dating mostly because he wanted to so badly and thought sincerely that it was the right thing for us. We were getting too close physically. Physical attraction and emotional attraction are not the same thing for me. Neither even come close to spiritual attraction.
Swear I’m not a slut.
We broke up once, and I was instantly relieved. But he missed me, and we couldn’t be friends unless we were also dating, so I decided to try it out again. From then, everything got so much better. I really tried a lot harder to get used to having a boyfriend. I loved it actually, and I love him. But recently it has just been really tough.

I’d never realized the lack of romance in my life in a way that made me wish for it. Not until now. When you are romantically involved, you expect things. You compare one romance to another sometimes, without meaning to.
Never having had a relationship, I’ve replaced God’s love with romance love. I am never satisfied because nothing can ever compare to God. Well, that’s not completely true. I am satisfied when I don’t compare it to God’s love. When I don’t think about God, romance is enough.

If we could share God’s love, Love itself would be complete.
But I am not ready for that. Is he? Maybe. But I don’t know how to share God’s love with him. I rarely try because I assume it won’t work.

That’s probably an indication of something right there

Spiritual attraction. I’ve been waiting for that my entire life.
The man of my dreams has never had a face.
All he’s ever had, all I ever wanted was someone totally and completely on fire for God.

I don’t even know what that means any more. To be “on fire” for God. Once upon a time, it made perfect sense. Now, I doubt the phrase. Now, people tell me I can’t possibly know for sure what God is like, and how one could be on fire for Him.
Now, I have hardly any backbone to stand up for my God, because I’m far too worried about offending someone. I changed my God for them so much, I don’t know who He is to me. My faith has been reduced to the mumbling of a few churchy adjectives and phrases.

I can’t even begin to describe how attractive the man of my dreams is to me. It’s because I made him perfect, and therefore non-existent.

It’s not that I don’t love my boyfriend now.
I do, so so much.
It hurts me to realize everything I’m writing. But at the same time, I know it is true. And the shreds of faith that still remain in me fill me with assurance that no matter what happens, God will be with us both.

Maybe we need to be apart for a little while. Maybe forever. Maybe not at all. But I cannot hide any longer. I cannot remain in anyone but Christ.

It is said in the bible that to live is Christ, to die is gain. It means that dying to one’s own desires and living completely for Christ is the only way to truly gain anything worth having in this life. Salvation being the tip of that mountain.

That much, I Hope for.