overcoming the alone

I question myself a lot. Much self-evaluation, motive-checking, etc. I try to get beneath the roots of my emotions to see why I'm experiencing them.
For example: for the millionth time yesterday, I went into work only to be told, "Wait, uhhhh, you're lesson isn't coming today." And for the millionth time, I repressed all the f-words and fiery retorts I've been choking back for several, several months.
I cried my mother in delirious tears as I drove down the road. I'm sure a lot of people passed me with one of those looks. You know those looks you get when you see someone crying while driving.
Well, my focus is on my need to call my mother. I call her about practical things--recipes, updates, and most of all, to vent.
I held it together for 5 minutes after leaving work, then I went crazy. I was listening to Brooke Fraser--I don't even remember which song--and suddenly, I started weeping. Like a mourning-weeping. I needed someone, you know?
Why do I do that? Because it's human nature. Much of the time, I absolutely do not mind being alone. I love people, but I love alone time, too.
But I'm winding up now. I'm (hopefully) winding up my stay in Kentucky, my undergrad career, both my jobs, and probably and sadly some friendships.
I needed my mother because she did not tell me how silly I was being, but she empathized without too much sympathy, and I like that about my mother.
She is practical when I am emotional.

Around 2-3-4-5-9 weeks ago (who even knows anymore?), my friend Lauren and I went to the altar at church--a rough week. I sat angled behind her and tried to pray--we all know where I stand with praying--and I just stared at her back, hoping that I could finally break this impenetrable prayer facade that I face without success. Then I reached out my hand to rest on her back--a maneuver many Christians do while praying-- and honestly, I'm not sure if it was for me or her. (I hope that doesn't sound creepy, I don't want it to sound creepy.) The thing is: I wanted her to know that I was praying for her, that I was there. But I reached out because I was unprepared to feel such an overwhelming surge of loneliness. I was in a large church at an altar where many people were praying.
And I felt like one unmoving boulder in the middle of a stream. I was around an environment that I have been around so much--the things of church were moving all around me, just as always--steady, constant--yet I couldn't feel things anymore.
I'm obsessed with numbness because half the time I feel that I cry out of pure habit--it's like my system has an alarm that says, "Attention Jamie--you are three months overdue for a good cry. Crying will start in t-minus two minutes."
But GOD-- I mean surely he uses loneliness, too. Essentially, I'm not alone, and I know this. And I don't have that "Oh my gosh I need a boy" mentality--my life needs fewer complications, not more--but sometimes I have that need for a community, I think.
The problem is that I think I have one, but I know that I"m about to move on. Find another one, I guess.
But even when I'm surrounded by a community, even when I'm supported, I'm still very alone.
Maybe it's a strength. Honestly, I can embrace and manipulate the "alone" of my life to write and be productive in those kinds of avenues.
So is the alone to be overcome? I'm not sure I should try to overcome it. I think maybe it's mostly mental, anyway.

I told you I had a disease

If you haven't read previous post, read now.

I'll just dive in sans-segue.
I will be an intern this summer for SportQuest Ministries and will again travel with them to Belgium from July 19-August 8/9-ish. (Three weeks total).
Yesterday, SQ president Kent called me in absolute, unvarnished excitement.
He wants my fellow intern Laura and I to ALSO go to Kenya with SQ this summer.
*pause, reflect*

AHHHHHHHH!
okay, now I'm retracting back into practical mode, because it's $4000 extra dollars, and let's face it, I've never even had $4000 at once, so that's a lot of money for me, who still feels like a kid, who is graduating in less than a month, and who has no real direction for her life (which is okay.)

The experience was good because I've felt nearly-spiritually-dead for a while, although I've felt somewhat on the uprise. But I've thought about it, prayed about it (in my own way="Hey God, ummmm dude, tell me what to do. I got nothin' but I'm obsessed with Africa and I wannnnnna gooooooooooooo!")
I met with a pastor about it, too, and he is very encouraging about it. I'm single, unattached, and want to take advantage of my spastic, energetic youthfulness. (Which is why I applied to the Peace Corps, remember?)

I know a lot of people don't read this, and I'm not trying to advertise for support. And I don't like asking for prayer that often, either.
But I really want to form some relationships with complete strangers this summer, and I would love to maintain relationships I've already built in Belgium.

If you have any advice or any spare money (because i KNOW we ALL have THAT, right?), please send a little my way. Apparently, I'm not aggressive enough with fund-raising. Well, I'm not. I don't like doing it, I don't like asking for money, and I'd rather supply the money myself. But I'm in love with this organization and the way God uses it. It's all about loving people, not about converting to increase "Saved!" tally marks. This is one of my humanitarian avenues, and I ask you to please--please help me with this--especially since my yard sale this weekend is canceled due to poopy weather. :(

Okaythankyouloveyoubunchesokaybye!

I Have a Disease

I've been suspecting this for a while. It's not a genetic thing, and I'm not sure if it's contagious or not. I mean most serious illnesses aren't really contagious, so probably not.
Maybe it's not a disease, though. Then again, alcoholism is a disease. Drug addiction, too.
I think I am a cultural junkie. I get so excited about ethnicity!
It was Saudi Day on campus, and I ate Saudi Food, got a beautiful Henna tattoo, spoke to girls about Muslim women, wore a hijab, and it was amazing!
Ohhhhh, the world. *sigh.* how I want to see it.

Letter to Sorority Girls on Blood Drives

Dear Girls of Greek,
I appreciate your actions of doing good in the world, and I like the idea that you people sponsor (or at least encourage) the Blood Drive at WKU. I'm glad you spread the word throughout campus for people to take action and share a part of themselves to improve the lives of others.
Okay, did you get that part? That was the "thank you" part. The "I respect you sans judgment" part.
However, for the second year in a row, I have quietly waited in line, filing through the make-shift cardboard cubicles and into the small booths of blood-giving. For the second year, I have been among dozens of girls wearing hoodies and t-shirts of colorful Greek letters. Girls who lay in their chairs with elevated legs as their sorority sisters hold hands and stick straws in the mouths of the sickly. These sickly sorority girls close their eyes and exhale with dramatic pain as the suck the Sprite from the wavering straw. Nurses tend to the sickly in quick care, assuring that the nausea will pass, the fullness in the ears will lessen, the heat will cool, the coolness will heat.
I also understand that sometimes, giving blood can cause such side-effects. I have not been one to feel faint-ish, mainly because both times I have eaten properly and fueled myself with juice.
This year, a girl in front of me was playing the typical sorority girl who undergoes such deep pain, "My arm is falling off," she would say, "Oh my God I'm so hot," "Ugh, I feel nauseous." "Oh no, I think I may pass out." "Ohhhhhhh, my stomach." "Ohhhhhhh, my arm hurts. My arm is falling off. Ouch. My arm hurts. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"
I couldn't help but stare. I started pumping my little ball to circulate the blood, the nurse came to me several times to check on me, and of course I said I was fine. I was fine. No big deal. I don't want to portray myself as the big hero, but clearly I felt mentally Schwarzeneggerian compared to the groans and cries of the sorority-girl-filled chairs around me.
As the nurse de-needled me, she said, "Okay, just relax now."
I said, "Okay, I can do that," and she said, "Oh, that's good. All day these sorority girls have been crying like no other." She paused. "Wait, are you in a sorority?"
"No, I said." She smiled at me as a man replaced her to patch up my tiny hole.

So here is my proposal:
I understand that shit happens during these things. Some bizarre cases happen, too, I understand. But don't dramatize this stuff. Save the nurses and volunteers the trouble--alleviate their day a little by staying as calm and un-attention-seeking as possible. After all, no one ultimately cares how many "points" you rack up or whatever. This blood goes to people who badly need it, it doesn't go to your sorority houses or social events. When you cry and make a dramatic scene, you focus the attention on yourself rather than the people you're supposed to be helping. Maybe you should include a letter to attach to your blood bag that says,
"Dear Blood Receiver,
I hope you like the blood, because I was in the donor center for two hours under painful nausea and severe cold sweats. I almost passed out to give you this blood. But my sorority got the most points, so it's not so bad."
Sorry for the slight bitterness, but if you want to be a humanitarian, take away the selfish bile of fake servitude. Divert the attention away from yourselves and use it for good in the world.

Also, if anyone in a sorority reads this, you're probably pissed at me right now. I know you people endure a lot of stereotypes, so sorry to fuel the fire, but two years in a row... yikes. Maybe that problem should be addressed. Thanks.

Funny Sunday...Sarcasm

In a nutshell and without pining for your pity,
my weekend has been a complete 72 hours of shit.
However, my mother has brought some comedic relief (kind of).

My Peace Corps recruiter sent me a package of information for the next step in the application process...kind of the "prep", mind you. There is a "Family and Friends" packet for... yeah, those, and so I gave my mom the packet to read. I explained what it was and she said, with speculation, "Oh, maybe this will give me some peace of mind."

The first thing she says while reading it, with a slight hint of spunk,
"Ohhhh, so they only accept 1/3 of the applicants?"

Even though it sounds somewhat terrible, it's pretty funny. :)

The Unwritten South: Part 2 (to be revised)

2. Fields (of Fury) (in original version, "of Fury" is crossed out)
I come from an explosive dud that buried itself in a cold French foxhole, beneath the anxiety of its unhurt Army cook who paused from the letter to his beloved in nervous death-preparation.
Tick, tick, click, nothing. Silence, heartbeat, thump, thump-thump-thumpmpmpmp.
Nothing.
The shell immerses itself in soil and disappoints its German dwellers with sterility.
My grandfather never killed a man, so the shell was justified in its roulette of choosing. He trained as a soldier and flourished as a cook—even more, a lover of food. Before and after the war, Papa was a farmer. After his three kids (the youngest, my mom), his farm expanded to hundreds of acres full of corn, tobacco, cows, barns, chickens, pigs, and enough fruits and vegetables to keep my grandmother elbow-deep in preserves, skinned animals, and fresh vegetables.
I always knew my love for cooking would come eventually. It’s a genetic trait of accomplishment in my family—the females never cease to amaze me with southern-style vegetables, perfectly-fried meat, pies like candy, and honest-to-goodness sweet tea.
But that’s about as southern as I get. I disinherited my mother’s multi-syballic “Haaiii-iiii!” and my father’s excessive use of double negatives and incorrect past tense, such as “You ain’t got no sense—I knowed it would happen!”
Then again, I can’t tell if my obsession with hills and fields is Wordsworthian or if I inherited from my own garden-growing father or my farm-tending Papa.
My goals are much different—I want to extend my home to the ironic dry and fertile African culture rather than arrive with the orders to relocate. Papa served in Europe for the Army where I want to serve in Africa for the Peace Corps.
I’ve been to Europe, I’ve walked the centuries-old cobblestone streets of Belgium and I’ve seen the waterways of Bruges. I’ve absorbed the smell and taste of history in an old, sturdy barn. And I’m still relocating. Because I remember the excitement of tasting food and the fun of adding recipes to my own southern repertoire. I remember the resemblance of a Belgian garden to my father’s.
Now I want contrast. I want Africa. I’m in search of a dry, golden field with strange animals and new customs where I’ll take silent refuge in a waterless hut when I need a moment’s privacy to regain my sanity. I will sit in my sandy fox-hole of a hut, maybe invite some new friends from the village, and tell them how I came from a hole in a boat and a dud of a shell. Then we’ll share recipes and stories because all stories are recipes, and all recipes can surely generate a great story.

The Unwritten South: Part 1 (to be revised)

1. A Diary from /Dixie/ D-Day (side-note: in the real version, Dixie is crossed out)
I come from a hole in a boat.
The boat fills with water, the boat turns back.
My grandfather was a leak away from becoming another statistic on the bloody shore of Normandy. Instead, he and his fellow 49th Engineers arrived three days late via the un-holey replacement boat. The beaches were still swollen with war remnants as the shore swayed with gun shells and soft, bubbling waves of American veins.
In my mind, Papa’s veins were shriveled in blue cruelty in his frail, double-stroked body. My only memory of him sans the wheelchair is at my grandmother’s dinner table when he unmercifully forked a meatball off my plate and plucked it into his wrinkly mouth.
In the wheelchair, he loved looking at picture albums and often cried, wiping his tears with the damp and fraying tissue in his left hand. And he loved my tiny-child hands adorned with my birthstone.
“It’s aq-ua-ma-rine,” I would say. “That’s for March, my birth-day.”
He would smile and pat my back with his only functioning limb.
By March of 1944, Papa had left North Africa for Europe.
He hunched in the cold earth of a French foxhole, ate bread and slept in a Belgian barn, and waited six months in post-war England to see his wife and newborn son.
He wrote letters to Mema, and very little about the war.
In Europe, I didn’t really think of Papa. I thought of history—the overwhelming amount of history in the little Belgian towns I browsed.
I didn’t think of Papa until I stepped in an old and well-kept Belgian barn.
“Hondreds of years old,” said the Belgian man, “it went t’rough many wars.”
I should have told him my grandfather’s story, to let the story-circle be complete. To give my grandfather a remembering presence. I wrote about it instead.

The Unwritten South: the introduction to a piece for Creative Nonfiction

I’m sitting in a very tall library, and I’m eye-level with the tops of very tall trees.
There is a white-ish skunk stripe in the sky between the two dreamy-toned pinks and blues of the post-sunset. The branches and fresh buds are black against the sky.
I’m surrounded by books. The eighth floor of the library is dedicated to literature and I feel at home against the back wall, stuck between the world of books and its sacrificial source.
For study breaks, I glance out the window; a large yellow house looks like a small cottage. The front yard is neatly trimmed, but the back is the jam-packed junk closet of a tidy house—like the box beneath the bed that hides the nudie magazines, or the eternally-closed garage that holds fifty years of hoarding.
It gets dark so I start gazing at the books. At first, I just see hues. Brown bookshelves, lighter carpet, blue chairs. I’m among rows of the crisp and the faded, the shelved and the disheveled. Hues of all sorts, sardined into organized little blocks of literature. I love being among literature; it’s like creating good karma for myself. Sometimes I lay my head on a book like a pillow, hoping for osmosis to seep brilliance into my brain.
"Fields of Fury" jumps out in a faded-embossed title. Then "A Diary from Dixie" and "Experiment in Rebellion."
Strange, I think.
Then the entire Confederate section of the Civil War attacks my computer-tired eyes in environmental confusion.
Confederacy! I look left.
Confederacy! I look right.
Confederacy!
I start feeling uncomfortable and attacked. Ashamed, even, that half of me doesn’t recognize the battles and generals in the titles, and half of me wants to reject this red, white and blue pseudo-persona that used to hang in the front window of an old house down the hill. History.
Confederate and Dixie and South leap into my mind with Scarlett O’Hara’s southern-sweet, manipulative voice.
"We Need Men" sits in big, blocky letters.
I think, "God, yes," and correct myself with feminist scrutiny.
Then I see it.
This book will not contain my history or have the essence of me within its old pages.
But its title does.
And my unwritten, southern self will remain unwritten no longer.
I'm taking the title, too.

Thoughts on a Peace Corps Future

I don't write about the Peace Corps a whole lot--I try not, anyway, because its an experience I violently wish for but have yet to encounter. I suppose I don't want to jinx myself, either.
For narrative purposes, I have applied for the PC. I have undergone the interview with positive feedback, and today, I found out that my recruiter, in fulfilling the next step of the process, has nominated me to teach ESL in Sub-Saharan Africa. If I am invited to whichever country, I will leave in November.

Let me pause in contemplative silence for a moment.

Okay I'm done--AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so freaking excited!

Okay I'm calm again so I don't jinx myself.

But this is where I wanted to be! I am willing to go anywhere, but Africa has been my goal--this just sounds so amazing to me! I could possibly be living in a hut with no water or bathrooms, and I'm fine with that... the adventure and experience and culural immersion I will get! I want to think positively here. I want to be confident. I want to just experience it!!!

The next step of the process is for me to undergo a very specific physical and other legal type things as my application is reviewed by PC people in DC. I should know by the end of summer/early fall where I stand in the competitive part of the process...

so

I am really really really ELATED! :D

A published poem

I submitted this poem to Zephyrus, WKU's literary journal that generally rejects almost any and everything it encounters.
Lucky me, I am no longer rejected by one of Western's many writing extravaganza's.
They accepted this poem:

Body Language of Christ

A boy in church found Jesus
at the altar a couple of years
after pulling a Trojan
out of his wallet in the wooden pew.

He found Jesus and cried
and stomped around the small church,
hugging everyone
as they cried and sang and shouted Amen!

I cringed with every sloppy tear
and every drop of spit that
flew like a gnat out of the preacher’s mouth,
and I cringed with every hug from condom boy;

he smelled like decades,
like green shag carpet
and musty, shit-brown recliners
with specks of orange

and green; he smelled like a yellow and white
crochet blanket with a big
brown cross knitted in the middle.
The kind of blanket you want

to hug for warmth, but then the smell
of decades envelopes your entire body
as the smelly crochet folds
between your legs.

At this point, in this hug of
smelly decades, condom boy begins to rock
back and forth, crying,
I love you, he says, I want you to be saved.

He squeezes so that my chest
sinks inward, my ribs enclosed,
And he rocks—
hump, rock, hump, rock.

I focus on my fingers against his back,
they flitter with pat-pats
of acknowledgement. Okay, pat-
pat, I understand, flitter flitter.
He leaves, I breathe
until he comes back minutes later
for round two—

Hump, rock,
Hump, rock,
A crochet blanket
Sneaking between my legs.

Outlets

I have a lot of static/electricity that sparks and builds and lightnings through my brain... after tonight's Bible study, I realized that I do have a pretty nice gift of being able to shut off my brain when I need to cool down, but I love discovering new outlets for expression and peace of mind.
Clearly, writing is pretty much my life. And reading. Music, of course, is important, too, and when in the mood, running.
I just started painting, and I like it. I've never been a hands-on, paint-and-such type, but I really wanted to apply myself in that way. I used to hate coloring as a kid because I could never stay inside the lines.
Now, I embrace that quality in myself. I never color inside the lines--I still struggle with it to this day. I'll color a little in Ella's little Dora coloring book, and I have to concentrate SUPER hard without distraction to perfectly fill in colors between the curvy black lines. It still doesn't work and I don't really enjoy it that much.
But on a canvas, there aren't really lines. There are restrictions to the size of the canvas, but the rest of the space is up to me to work with. So I can paint a girl's skirt with a tree trunk in stead of legs, and I can paint an eye using make-up products for my paint/color, and it's outside these pre-structured walls of black lines and caution tape of "Do Not Enter."
I have outlets, and I love them.

Another Mondover

Yesterday was a bit of a busy Easter...I was at church from 7-1, drove home for Easter lunch with the fam, drove back for Easter dinner with my surrogate family, and then drove to the apartment to roll around in stomach-agony of the repercussions of eating 3 incredibly southern, heavy meals. Yikes.
So I have a weekend, non-alcoholic hangover. I'm hung over from the surplus of fried, greasy foods, I'm hung over from lack of sleep, and I feel oddly desensitized.

I have celebrated Easter every year, but I rarely feel extra spiritual on Easter. I feel absolutely desensitized to the idea. I mean I guess it's like any other Christian holiday--sometimes the commercialism/consumerism detracts from the deep, spiritual meaning. I had a couple of moments singing in choir...one of those "Wow" moments, but I'm somewhat disappointed that Jesus' resurrection does not completely baffle me like it does other people.

At church yesterday, a man was surrounded by a fort of family and friends who huddled around him like front-line protection. They reached out to connect each other like a wall, and they reached out to touch him in prayer while he prayed. He was a big, burly man with a cut-off t-shirt, arm tattoos, and one of the kindest faces I've seen. He looked like one of those big Harley men who look completely bad-ass and probably are completely bad-ass but are also extremely nice/thoughtful. He looked like the 'good ol' boy' type. His face was a matriculated cherry bomb, and during prayer he shouted some--this guy was searching so hard for peace and for God. He raised up and that cherry bomb face was absolutely blooming. He looked liked a kid in relief--you know that moment when a little boy finally catches the ball his dad throws him? The man looked like that. That re-visitation of innocence.

I was happy for him, of course. And I suppose I got a little teary--especially because this man went directly to the altar without help. He knew what he needed, he knew where to get it, and he received it independently from God, not from words or the plantation of fear. He sought with a purpose.