so, last night I cried on the floor of my best friend's dorm hallway for roughly 30 minutes. mostly for the fact that love isn't perfect, and that people can live lives that seem great and be dying on the inside. that two people who've always served as an example to me of how it is possible to have a career and a marriage and be happy in both, of how I can be a doctor and still have a life and kids and a family, just completely destroyed that ideal. and whether marriage is actually forever; if you can actually be in love forever.

I've been thinking about it a lot today. Whether it's possible to be 80 and still in love, even though the definition of love changes. that's fine. sure, you don't want to be in love the same way when you're 20 and when you're 80. but whether you can be in love, not just mutually find each other tolerable and comfortable.

and then after church, josh sent me 1 corinthians 13 and told me to read the whole thing, not just the oft-quoted 4th verse. and so I did.

and I realized that love is perfect. that love is wonderful and incredible and perfect, and that sometimes we don't have it when we think we do, and not in the right form.

how we find the right form I haven't figured out yet. but I know that it's out there. and I want to believe you can keep it forever.

some people do, anyway. and that's what I want to have. like neruda does, in XVII.

topsy-turvy

my aunt carol walked out on my uncle joe this morning. like, he came back from a run or something and she had her bags packed and told him she was leaving. that it wasn't another guy, but that she was just unhappy, and after 25 years, apparently it had come to fruition.

how does this make any sense? you know? they were always the couple that my parents would use as examples of how it was possible to go to med school and be a doctor and still have a spouse and a family, that you just had to find someone with some of their own interests and who wouldn't wait around. apparently carol took that to the extreme.

it's not okay. marriage is for effing forever.

what the hell.

-closes eyes-

hey ya, hey ya

I have a habit of picking little flowers that I find pretty and giving them to people around me.

It's funny how people pick up on things you don't even realize you do. But he likes that, he said.

Come, Come Whoever You Are

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.
-Rumi

I think it is legitimately possible that I'm falling in love.

That is terrifying to write out.

so I tickle up your backbone.

I love the way Jenn Grant says "tickle" in the song "Dreamer." It just makes me really happy.

This week has been crazy already, but the thing is, I'm getting everything done, and I love that. I love that I feel rejuvenated when I go to prayer, and that I spent time today looking at med schools.

Did you know you only get the first summer off? Neither did I. Weird. It makes me realize how little of a life I'm going to have, and how much I'm going to value those christmases. And... I dunno. For some reason, and it's probably Nicole and how she and Tom are figuring out when and how they're going to schedule getting married and having babies into her residency, my first thought was "when could I get married?"

weird, hmm?

maybe I'm amazed.

so, here's the thing. I really, really still like you all. Really, I do. but I'm only here for... sunday evening-thursday morning. Like, four days. And I came home to be with my family, whom I really, really wanted to spend time with because I miss(ed) them a lot. So how is it okay to get super upset with me for not calling you, not hanging out, etc, when I was only here for FOUR DAYS, which is basically half of what you are, and those days are really intended for my family?

Gah. It's frustrating because, well, I feel like they've become my priority, not my friends. Sure, there are a choice few, but when it comes down to reading for Joe's 5th grade class or visiting Grandma Aud, I'm going to go with my surrogate grandmother over splash lagoon.

I'm sorry if that's awful. I don't mean it to be. But there have to be priorities. And I get that ours aren't equal. It's not fair to gang up on me over it.

beauty.

I realized today that I am incredibly blessed. That yeah, sure, school is hard right now. But it's going to get better. Life moves on.

I think what I needed was perspective.

I also think that, quite possibly, one of the most beautiful things I've ever witnessed was the look on Josh's face on saturday night in the dark. I didn't have my contacts in and couldn't quite see him, but I caught, albeit blurrily, the look in his eyes when he held my stare and said "I was just thinking that I never want to make you feel dirty."

Wow. I immediately flashed back to a prayer for that, one time. For someone who'd say stop when I didn't. For someone who'd value my modesty.

Josh said that he heard once, from his pastor, I think, that you should treat your girlfriend as you would want someone to treat your wife, because you recognize that she will be someone's wife, too, eventually, and they'll appreciate you having respected her. That floored me.

People surprise you, I think. I love it when God answers prayer with a chuckle. -grins-

POSSIBLE SCHEDULE

photography
Tues 1-4pm

biochem
MWF 12:50-1:40

human phys
MWF 8:30-9:20

physics
10:40-11:30 MWF

spanish 450S
hot and cold

she said we were a sweet couple, once.

Sometimes my head is like a slideshow.
When you least expect it
suddenly you're back in the backseat of the minivan
trying desperately to keep your clothes on,
looking up at the ceiling and grimacing.
Or driving home from church sobbing
and pulling over so you don't crash
wondering if you're still fit to sing
about God's wonder and beauty.
Is it sacreligious if that comes out of the mouth of
someone so broken?

The tears in your eyes
and the way your gripped my hand
indicate that you felt the same.

Sometimes what scarred us makes us more beautiful.
I think we've both always hoped so.

It must be hard to be God,
watching us make these mistakes, wishing we wouldn't
and knowing all the while that tomorrow morning, next week, two years from now
we'd still be haunted by the choice, the pictures,
the feeling of fake leather under our backs, clothes discarded.
-3/10/08

faith means seeing God as more real than anything I've ever encountered.

when are you a man?
is it when you can form chairs out of wood,
lift 200 lbs,
or cry with racking sobs, head in
your hands, face
to the ground?

are high schoolers men?

what you think
separates you now
will some day let you relate to
the 17 year old boy, falling to his knees
gun in his hands,
the 17 year old girl, waking up dirty and
standing under a scalding shower
to burn away the shame and the filth,
the 16 year old boy,
who can't keep hating himself,
and the 13 year old girl who
wanted her pants left on.

(Sometimes I drive by the Jewish cemetery and wonder
what it must be like to
still be in the ground.
Al término, paz.)

You'll grow up but you won't
lose the pictures in your head that
hurt to see; the shower faucet, her pants on the floor,
the silent dinner conversations that never made you
feel loved. (Do you now?)

How long until loving won't hurt?
How long until you'll stop seeing hand prints all over your body
when you stare naked in the mirror?
How long until God forgives?

When does the saving grace kick in?
Am I still eligible?
-3/10/08