if i were a betting woman...

...i'd have probably lost a lot of money, by this point in the game.

you know, people kind of amaze me, sometimes, and not always in the best ways. i think there are moments when it's hard for me to cut people slack. it's not that i mind cutting people slack, it's that i mind cutting them slack over things that are their own faults. i don't like paying for other people's mistakes, or greed, or lack of foresight, or lack of respect for themselves. it pisses me off. it's hard to give slack with a full and loving heart, when you are confronted with poor behaviour, bad instructions, etc. but i know that i need grace and mercy because of my own blindness, my own bad behaviour, my mumbled and garbled instructions, my stuff, my head, my heart, blah blah blah. and so i cut slack, and sometimes i have to ask for some to be cut for me. and i have hard conversations. i do this because i need for it to be done for me, from time to time. this is what it means to live in community. this is what Jesus asks us to do, and what He does for us every. single. day. it also means that i have the right to say no, to walk away, to love unhealthy people from a healthy distance. i'm done living in the mess and the drama and the angst, at least as much as i can distance myself from those things. there is an element of mess, drama, and angst that is just part and parcel of living in a broken and dying world...but we can determine, most of the time, the levels at which mess, drama, and angst get to swing us around by the tail...thank G-d...

some of the things i find myself repeating over and over again in my head are the following mantras: big picture; i live here; don't just live intentionally--live deeply; own your own life; it's happening around you, not to you--big difference; i live in this body, but i am not this body; G-d is not fickle; i am on a need-to-know basis with G-d...and there is apparently a whole laundry list of shit i am not supposed to know, right now...

when the mantras don't work, i usually cry and turn the radio up louder and sign along until i can't sing anymore, or i arrive at my back door. and last night, when none of those things worked, i sketched with my charcoal pencils from san francisco for two solid hours. i felt better. i have felt better. i will feel better. this is not a phase. this is just a readjustment.

i live HERE, in my real life, and sometimes that means that i am lonlier than i would like to be. i don't have all the answers...not because i don't want to know them, but because there is no way i can ever think of all the right questions to ask. i do know some things, and i know a lot about the things that i do know. and i know i don't want to go back to being afraid that i was crazy; to believing that i am a bumbler; to believe that my selfworth is in anyway related to the fan- or hate-mail i'm getting; that who i am, at the very center of myself is not in any way related to buzz about me, in any sphere of operations. i came to play, and i brought my best game. and in all honesty, i've worked really hard to get this good, and i know that i am still an amateur, at best. but i'm effing here...i live HERE, into all the corners and weird parts of my life. it's not really mine, anyway. i gave it to Jesus a long time ago. and every day, i just want to have the integrity to live it that way, not in a way that's about me or my ego or what i think i need to be happy in this life. i'm not even guaranteed my next breath. i am totally and completely replaceable. what i have to give is what has been given to me...it's not of my own doing or my own making. i don't know how to say that any differently, and it just sounds so trite and bumper-stickery that i kind of want to barf, just looking at it...

it's funny...the last nine months have been so full and lifechanging, but nothing really has happened. i just woke up one day, and everything was the same, but it was all different, too. and the last two days have been very difficult, out of the blue, in very suprising ways. i've found myself just feeling very irritated and have had to remind myself not to be reactive. you know those moments when the words bubble just behind your lips, and you remember to clip them off before they come flying out? ...thank G-d for those moments. and then there are those moments when you say something, and you try to say it in the best way possible, and it comes out sounding like shit anyway? i mean, those are G-d's moments, too...but they are difficult and heavy.

i just want to be responsible for my own self. i want to own all the things about me, even the things that i actively try to change and do different every single day. in the end, they are mine to own, to own up to, to live up to or try and live down. it's not a shocker to me to look out on my classroom and have to fully acknowledge that i am the only adult in the room. it's another kind of feeling altogether to look out on the room of my life and realize that there are some people who will never act their age, never wield the wisdom they have accrued, never think of other people first, never put on someone else's shoes or see things from another person's point of view...and that feeling is mostly one of sadness. because we are all missing out, when that happens. all of us. and that is worth being a little bothered about.

additionally, it's cold as balls. it's been a weird start to 2011, and i'm hoping that february can convince me not to run for the hills, and hunker down until the weird passes. i can't really do that, anyway. i live here.

if i were going to have a crush, i'd have the perfect playlist for creating sheepish smiles and thoughtful car rides...and today, that needs to feel like an accomplishment, on multiple levels.

mil besos,
rmg

mil besos,
rmg