Always, Whitney

It doesn't matter how many times you grow up, sometimes you still find yourself crying because you are scared of the dark. It doesn't matter how many rationals otherwise there are, you cry your big, thick, humid drops of tears because when it comes down to it, you are scared.

And so I sat on the futon yesterday, having just gotten through a sniffly conversation with my mom, where after listening to me talk faster than a used car salesman about everything I have been thinking about lately she asked me, "Are you sad?" I was struck, because yes, I was, and yes, I am. And I have resigned to my sadness. I have chalked it up to grief and graduating, but I have let it sit in me like a still lake and the days are getting hotter. I am still learning what it means to be an adult. What those reactions look like, and as someone who is just leaving behind her green, I so badly want to do well. It is my lack of grace for my own self which turns against me.

Yesterday, I got home from work, laid on the couch and read. I so happened to glance up only to see that there was a daddy long leg the size of a coaster on the wall. I jumped up and screamed. And then stood there next to it, trying to guess if I should kill it, catch and release it, or just try to ignore it.

I feel exhausted with all of my thoughts and opinions and my stacks of books grow larger by the day. I find myself longing for community, and yet reading instead. I have only hung out with my roommate all summer, really. There have been a few exceptions, but most days that is the most that I get and I can't help but to feel a bit crazy as well as all right.

My humid tears fell last night, like a slow breaking of a lake to a stream, that someday might grow into a river that flows right into the ocean. Until then, though, I sit most days, like a child squeezing her eyes shut so tight in hopes that she can shut out all of the dark around her, only to realize, now she has to see the dark within her.

And yet, I remember who I belong to. And sometimes I think this is what Jesus meant when He oh so mysteriously said we should be like children, or at least, this is part of it. That we should know so much who we belong to that it shapes all of what we do, who we turn to, what we say, why even our name.

So, really, I prefer to think of it less as an identity crisis and more as an identity refinement. I'm at the cusp of something. It's hard to push into the last part of those choices, but I am trying.

By God, I am trying.

And the cycles and rhythms of each day, they fight against each other like waves, and it seems like it would be all to easy to get lost in them, and not even be sure where you started and where you ended. So, in this case, I'll stretch for the moon and melt into the water. I'll be wave pulled my moon, instead of driftwood tossed about. And when I come upon some driftwood, I will not try to pull them under. I will try to murmur the tongues of the moon.

You belong.