Mom and I had a talk tonight. She said she felt worried that I was depressed because my blog sounded so down. As we continued to talk further, however, she suggested an interesting idea: blogs happen when I feel strong emotions. Interesting, and true I think. When I’m feeling sad or depressed, what’s the first thing I want to do? Vent or somehow release the pressure. I used to do it by cutting myself, starving myself. Those ideas are still there in the back of my mind, but here’s a better idea: write it out. No harm in writing (unless you alarm concerned Moms or MiL’s), and it’s very cathartic: similar to poetry, Mom suggested. Reading many peoples’ poems you’d be surprised they didn’t blow their brains out at age 20. What you don’t know is that they actually lived pretty good lives and only composed poems when they felt very strongly about something – sad, upset, elated, joyous. In the same way, a journal like this shows the major spikes in emotion when in reality life travels on a fairly even keel with a few blips. The blips are what strike me and need writing about.

Also, Mom reminded me that Christianity is for people who are failures. I can’t save anybody or be what they expect me to be: I am who God made me. He designs every person just as He wants them to be for a reason – that includes me and Ian and Jess and all my acquaintances. Everybody. Then since God designed us for a reason, why don’t we stop fitzing around and start actually seeking that? …I wish Jess would let me talk to her about God and actually take me seriously. I feel like everybody around me just nods and smiles and says “OK, that’s nice,” to my small growing faith and my explorations therein, just to make me shut up. Why won’t they actually listen and take me seriously? This is serious stuff here – especially when you’re depressed and life isn’t going so well. It’s then that nobody will listen because “If God is so good, why should He do this to me?” I have one thought: because God really, truly does have a plan (a perfect and good one) that includes you JUST HOW YOU ARE. If we were perfect, who would need God? And who would want to be perfect anyway?

So you can think of a blog as a sine wave, and all you see are the top of the peak and the bottom of the trough, but nothing of the slopes in between which are life.

– KF –