The Me I Love, The Me I Hate

I was happy, until i realized i was. Then i was upset. It's funny and perhaps it highlights how emotionally unstable i am but it's not as odd as it sounds.

Despite how long we've been friends, i don't see Laura often. It was a really good evening though; i ran around with enthusiasm, climbing on things, dancing as i walked, talking and making friends with whomever i came in contact with. Despite the stress of the day, i found a loveably naive, enthusiastic side of me coming out.

It's been a while since i've seen this side.

Driving away from her house, i realized i was happy. Not just with how the evening had been but with how i had been. That's when it hit me. Suddenly, i was struck by the sight and contrast of two sides of me.

The first is the bright eyed boy; naive, enthusiastic, charming, optimistic to a fault, believing the best in everyone, ever ready to meet old friends and new. People feel welcome and free around him. This is the Dallas most people meet, and although this side is also foolish and overbearing at times, my heart is happy with him.

The other is more complex and harder to describe. He's colder, calculating,  political. This doesn't come out of malice or selfish ambition but out of a deep desire to see goodness achieved in the world, the systems of living reformed, and for those around him to step into the truth that will lead them into the fullness of their glory, beauty and potential. He'll sacrifice whatever is necessary to see these things come about. The difference he sees between the potential of what could be and the world that is is maddening, stealing his joy. His enthusiasm is twisted to become a cold drive. The apparent lack of interest on the part of those he aims to help only furthers to alienate him from them. He perceives his inability to bring about his vision as personal weakness, putting on him a sense of failure that drives him deeper into isolation. His friends, though loving, usually don't know what they can do to help, for there is little they can do. They feel a growing wall between them and the man they love. That is him at his worst.

Yet, this side of Dallas had been responsible for much good. It was this drive that created and sustained many groups and movements; Ekklesia, Kingdom Come, and the Healing Rooms being just a few. Many friendships were made, old wounds were healed, many were encouraged, gained wisdom, and stepped further into their potential. Heck, whole social groups exist now because of his efforts. It's good like this that validates his actions and drives him to continue down a path that he hates the feeling of.

So i drive home, thoughts and memories swirling through my head and through my heart. I realize how much i miss my bright eyed self. Yet it seems so hard to just go back, like i'd somehow have to give up some important key i was entrusted with that might just unlock the life i'm desperate for us all. All the worse, i feel awful that most days i'm so reserved and distant from friends that i know mean well.

A flash of anger goes through me. Ignorance is bliss. Why am i condemned to see things so few others do? It seems to be this vision of mine that keeps me from going back to the me i feel i should be, the me i want to be.

Soon i'm home and i don't have any answers than when i started driving, just questions and conflicting desires. Do i become the me i like or do i sacrifice my joy to fight for the greater good? If i take the second path, how long can i maintain it until i become so bitter from disappointment and anger that i stop being any good at all? And for those who would suggest a third path, i know it should exist, but i never can seem to find the balance. I'm a man of extremes with a single track mind. The balance, if ever reached, is so short lived as to be hard to even spot.

I can just hope one day i'll have the wisdom and strength to find this balance for good.

Haunted

I listen as the engine starts then fades and they drive away. I sink back into my chair and open the browser back to where i left it. My eyes skim picture after picture of bizarre shirts as i scroll down the page. A randomly shuffled song in iTunes drones on in the background.

This is, essentially, what i've spent my day doing. Wasting time. It's mind numbingly boring but that's the point. If yesterday left me paralyzed by passion, today i'll avoid that by, well, doing nothing. I know, it's dumb and self defeating. But this numbness is better than what engulfed me yesterday. At least this way there's no pain of guilt or regret or failed hopes.

I continue scrolling then skip to another page. Images of retro jackets appear and a double breasted military coat catches my eye. Wow, i think, who knew Korean fashion was so interesting?

Yes, it's pathetic that i'm still here, hoping that if i avoid the thoughts and emotions for long enough, they'll stay dormant. Yet even as i write of them a pain stabs at my heart as though suddenly they remember their task to torment me.

My mind flashes back 24 hours.

My workout was quickly falling apart. I don't know if it was the lyrics that played on my workout playlist or if my core desires had finally just caught up with me. Unable to finish the push up, i collapse to the floor. I curl into a ball as if that will somehow protect me from the thoughts that flood through my mind.

"Don't wanna waste my life, life, life. Don't wanna waste my life..."

Lecrae continues to play from my computer. It's as though he's calling me out for having sunk so low, for having given up the fight.

"Yeah, well how the hell do i do that?" i shout back to Lecrae, to my thoughts, to everything. "I tried everything i could but i still failed. I failed, okay? Now let me just stay here."

But if anything, they intensify.

I realize that i'm now on my bed and my chair has been thrown across the room. I guess i must have done that. Songs continue to play and each one seems to bring with it a snapshot of the world as it should be. They're all different, some large, some small, but each so personal and important.

I think of my friends, my beautiful friends whose lives i was able to do so little for. I see the systems which trap them and the lies they believe. I so badly wanted to see them fully alive, to see them free from the dead, unquestioning mindset which seems to entomb so many of them.

I think of everything Ekklesia could have become but didn't. Was it my fault or theirs that it ended as little more than a social club? We had started so brilliantly. No one who showed up had ever encountered anything like it. I truly thought we could change our city, that we could free ourselves.

I think of the few glimpses of community which i've seen and the stories i've heard, yet was unable to create for myself and those around me. We all said it was a better way of life, but we were all to young and immature and selfish for it to be sustained.

I think of the society in which i live, so unimaginatively obsessed with one set way of doing life: stress and work to get good grades in high school, so You can stress and work and get into a good college, so You can stress and work and get an okay job, so you can get a house that's bigger than You need so You can buy lots of things to insulate Yourself from the fact that You've wasted Your life. Maybe if You're lucky, You can retire and have a few years to vacation and buy cheap souvenirs before You die.

And still the thoughts come.

"Damn it! What do You want? I fought for those things. I gave everything i had but i still failed. I was too weak, people were lazy and selfish, no one cared about my ideas, it didn't matter in the end. I failed! I get it!"

Yet they keep whispering, like they're trying to wake up my heart with visions i once loved, but i can't let that part of me wake. To have such ambition but to always feel so helpless to see it manifest is agony. Yes, i've been living within my bounds but at least my heart was safe.

Eventually, at long last, i get busy and distract myself. I push the down thoughts and fill my mind with a hundred different things. Anything to numb that dangerous part of me. The day flows by...

Today, Two friends invited me to hang out and i turned them both down. It's not that i was busy but i couldn't help but wonder what's the point? Go and make small talk, waste time, as the world around us dies. I know that's how we all act, we poor, blind, selfish souls, and i know i can't convince anyone to do otherwise. We have our ways. Why rock the boat? True, perhaps life is unchangingly this way, but don't expect to see me taking part in its emptiness.

I'm too busy searching for some solace from these damned beautiful visions.