Hey guys. You know something I really, really love?
Dancing.
Not break-dancing, or ballet, or that disgusting stuff they do at homecoming. Those are all very well and good in their own venues, don't get me wrong.
But I'm talking about the old fashioned kind. A guy and a girl. Not the arms-around-the-neck kind they do at dances. The kind Cinderella danced with Prince Charming to.
Ugh. I sound so horribly cheesy and female.
But I literally daydream about that. All the time.
And I love it more than anything when, once in a blue moon, someone will randomly start dancing with me.
Some people already know this about me, but I love walking by myself. (Usually it's only on those rare nights that I get out of dish duty by oh-so-kindly offering to walk the dog, but it's still the best thing ever.)
I always select a playlist that matches my desired mood and just look at things around me.
And sometimes, I'll have these very brief moments, where....
where....
It's weird. I can't actually explain.
But for example, this one afternoon, I was just taking the dog for a brief stroll to the corner of my street and back. I had this song playing:
(Don't watch the video; the words of the song are irrelevant. Just listen while reading.)
It was the peak of brilliant fall. The trees were exploding with orange and the air was sunny and faintly cool. I was wearing, for the first time all year, my beat-up black Converse. My jeans were my loosest ones and the denim was slightly thicker. For some reason, those jeans feel the most like real jeans to me; they're not tight and stretchy and thin. My shirt was just a loose plaid flannel. My hair was, for once, down and falling around my shoulders in all its wavy thickness.
I glanced down at my loose jeans and my faded, dirty shoes and realized how much I didn't look like a typical teenage girl.
And all of a sudden, I was okay with myself.
Not that I am constantly hating my appearance. But in that moment, I knew that my hair was tangled and my skin wasn't at its best and my clothes were rather plain. And for some reason, I loved it. I was comfortable and breathing deeply and I was a teenage girl who, for a moment, didn't care about any of the things teenage girls are supposed to care about. For some unfathomable reason, I couldn't care less about anything. I was just happy and comfortable in my own skin.
Then I looked up at the tree branches draping over the sidewalk. I could reach up and touch the green-and-yellow leaves that were about to detach from their stems and float to the ground. I thought for a flashing, time-traveling nanosecond about all the processes that were running in my body all at once. It came to me in this revelation that allowed me to see behind its simple facade and almost fathom the depth of the universe that existed behind it:
I was a living, breathing, human being.
And for these few seconds, I was just so glad that I was alive and me.
I know I sound like such a transcendentalist. But like I said, it's almost impossible to explain the feelings themselves. They only come for a few seconds and then leave, but in those few moments, everything just kind of rushes into me and I feel...something.
So I just thought I'd try to put it into words. For myself, mostly.
I've acted since grade school, so obviously I've been on a few different stages in my day.
But the transition from Okinawa's to Virginia's stage was massive.
Backstage, they were all preparing to do their pre-show energy-boosting rituals, as all performers do, when I suddenly realized the absence of the Energy Ball routine, the one I'd always done with fellow cast members before every high school show I'd ever performed. Someone just kind of looked at me, said it would create the wrong type of mood for our show, and then they all proceeded to start a different ritual than I was used to.
And like a cannonball right to the gut, the fact that for the first time, I was performing with a different family than my own, struck me full force.
Not gonna lie. Until moving here at least, I hardly ever cry. But my eyes welled up right there and then.
No matter how comfortable I had become with these kids, they weren't my family. They couldn't be.
Back in the dressing room, I was trying to sniffle my now freely flowing tears back in when a kind soul entered to give me a hug. He said how supportive everyone still was of me, and how they all would grow to be as close with me as I used to be with my Okinawa family, and it was so, so calming.
So even though you don't read this, kind soul, thank you.
And then, of course, I went onstage and dominated with everyone like we actors do.
I can with confidence say that missing homecoming for this weekend was one of the better decisions of my life.
It wasn't just the fact that the place was like an overload of the most perfect-looking, brilliantly-colored, trance-inducing trees and mountains and air EVER.
Or the zipline going at car-speeds into a freezing lake.
Or the hugest sky you've ever seen completely and utterly filled with stars, just for staring at for twenty minutes at night while you bask in God.
Or the hot, sweaty, energy-filled, screaming worship sessions that literally cost you your vocal chords by the end of 3 days.
Or the laughing, smiling, most amazing and connectable people you've ever met and can't believe you haven't met before.
It was all of it together.
I loved every minute.
The pounding on the tables as the food was brought out at every meal. The jumping up and down as we belted Bon Jovi whether or not we knew all the words, and then clinging to each other's shoulders and swaying back and forth to Tenth Avenue North the next moment.
The hysteric screaming as we plunged into the freezing lake at midnight, only to dash madly right back to the hot tub to thaw and start a dance circle right there and then.
The masses of people who stood up to receive Jesus, and the completely unexpected tears that came when I heard all my new friends profess that they had turned a corner.
Everything.
I'm sad it's over.
But summer camp will be epic.
Please don't fight these hands that are holding you....
I can't say any more than that, even though I know there's no chance you're out there.
But you know how you said that sometimes someone just strikes some perfect chord in you, and you don't know why, but you're drawn in?
Something like that must have happened.
Granted, with one three-letter word, a word that seems to have been implanted 2 or 3 months prior, you had the ability to drop me from the celestial height to which I'd already floated.
But for some reason, it didn't stop that perfect chord from ringing in my ears.
But my soul was all in tangled knots worse than you get in earbud strings, and my heart had this awful, open wound on it...
...and you were the closest thing I could find to a Band-Aid.
So I grabbed for it, but your arm snatched back, and instead of letting myself fall and just scrape my knees, I kept reaching, and now I'm afraid I'm going to fall into that thorn bush.
You are that thorn bush, I'm afraid.
I realized this morning that though I mentally nod with agreement when the old man in the western movie says it's better to fight with words than fists, for some reason, you leave me lost for acceptable, heavy-hitting words, and my deep desires to hit things and look tough just come out. Sorry.
But anything I can think of to say that might pack the same punch as my tiny fist just sounds weak. And I don't want to look weak around you.
Ironically, it makes me look weaker. And now you see this pathetic side of me that's just grasping at straws. Instead of turning over smoothly, I feel like all the pebbles of my sanity are just slipping through my fingers, and they're all hitting you, and instead of catching them, you're just letting them hit you, and then I've just given you a headache.
This isn't my essence, I promise...
...but there's one too many bruises on your head, so you're afraid to look for it.
Grrrr. I wish I could have something cognitive and relevant and acceptable to say.
I wonder if anyone even reads this anymore.
Wouldn't that be depressing if I thought I had all these readers and it turns out it's just my mom.
Well. In any case.
I wish I was less awkward.
My life would just go so much more smoothly. People would probably like me a lot more. I'd like myself more instead of having all these hundreds of daily moments where I can't believe my own stupidity and want to stab myself.
*colossal sigh*
I'd be even more boring than I already am, though. So I guess this is my best bet.
Seeing all these heart-wrenching pictures of my Okinawa friends going to homecoming makes me wonder about myself.
Why do I like dances so much, anyway?
It isn't because I always have a date to go with.
And it can't be all the club music and awkward sections of the dance floor.
So what?
I think it's a combination of girly motivations, the highest one being I just love having some excuse to feel pretty.
There's just something about a girl in a dress that makes people treat her just a little differently.
Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe it's just my stupid imagination that says that. But something about it makes me feel pretty for a couple hours. And as corny as it is, I adore oohing and ahhing over other people's dresses too. So when I gush "You look so pretty!" with everyone else, I really do mean it.
And of course there is always the faint, distant, ray of hope that some random boy will pay attention to me.
Maybe it's the dress, maybe it's just that I'm a cool person, but somewhere amongst the pounding pop songs there is one slow R&B song, and they pluck up the courage to ask me to dance.
Lemme tell you. When the right guy asks that, it makes a girl feel like she's the most special darn thing in the world.
I would give anything to have any and all of those feelings today...in Okinawa.
Sigh.
I guess it was probably a good call to spend the weekend rock-climbing in the mountains than trying to recreate it with a bunch of kids I have no personal connection to yet.
(Never mind the fact that I forgot my ipod this morning, a fact that had steam coming out of my ears for literally the next 3 hours.)
But still. I'm excited. About my different, hipster, slightly indie, alternative music. That I and I alone discovered.
As I should be.
And then someone goes and announces their own finding of one of my new songs, even BEFORE I DID. And worse yet, describes how much they love it in horrible teen slang.
YES.
I hope it's obvious that I would not care at all about this minute detail if I didn't find it so hard not to hate this particular person's guts at the moment.
The feeling of the truth being MY weapon to wield, and then successfully wielding it, hence proving a point, is the most satisfying thing in the world to me. Not in a "IN YOUR FACE!" way, but just in the way that I've done the universe (and God) justice somehow.
...Yeah. Like that.
Well, except for those whose only arguments are "You can't prove God exists, so he doesn't!" You know what I want to say to those people?
Because, in all truth, if I went deep enough, I could.
Thankfully though, the intellectual soul I encountered today was not one of those dogmatic, simpleminded people.
Thank heavens.
My appreciation for those that at least have well-thought out, logical reasons for their beliefs, true or otherwise, goes beyond reason. I can sink my teeth into intellectual thinkers. It's the mindless, chattering idiots that I.....I just...
You get it.
Anyways, it's time for some C.S. Lewis and Bill Jack, I believe. I need to beef up on wisdom, because my Spidey Sense tells me this won't be the last of these gloriously thought-provoking conversations.
Ever had that moment where suddenly, you don't know what to do with yourself anymore?
All of a sudden, your very existence seems a bit pointless.
Why on earth am I here?
You don't know what to make of anything at this point.
So you just sit there. You cry a little. Maybe chuck a lamp at the wall. Maybe do something drastic and dangerous, not because you're mentally screwed up, but because there's nothing else to do with your life anymore.
I've never been the violent type, but...
Yeah. Throwing a lamp sounds awesome right about now.
