the art of survival

7/22/24

(An excerpt from my journal)

I do it all.

I was scared to write again just because of how i would feel, or what it would cause. 

I'm brave now.

Who's ever going to see these words, is anyone ever going to see these words? Is this going to have any purpose at all, ever?

Everything I've been through?

Everyone moves, breathes, and I'm floating above it all. Maybe that's the goal.

To feel nothing. To float.

To wonder what would happen if i stayed, even if it meant the further destruction of myself. I'm decomposing anyway.

To think about the girl who staffed me and listened to my problems and then helped me escape, living the life i once lived.

remembering how much that life suited me.

friends coming and going, staying just long enough so i wouldn't get tired of them and then seeing them off to another country, feeling nothing.

and now i'm here. i feel like this is me, that this is just is.

no friends, no people, awkward interactions, work, school, home.

a beautiful cycle. until i die.

not living. just surviving. karma police.

how could the life i always wanted just have been a facade? why would God just do that to me?

i lost everything.

drugs. screaming.

for a minute there, i lost myself.

 9/26/24

So. It has definitely been a while. And the feeling of the keyboard under my fingertips never gets old. It's scary, coming back to this. Last time I was writing here I was going through so many life-altering events it was suffocating my mind, tearing its hinges and breaking beyond the mental capacity that I thought I contained.  

Beautiful, beautiful life and beautiful, beautiful world. All this that happened and I'm still just beginning. 

I sit here, in my now-temporary house with my roommate, realizing that I can't settle down. I can't get a house and a job and a car, not just yet. All of this that I bought and earned isn't mine, it was never mine. I don't want a place to rest my head, I need to go. I need to go, and God is calling me to go. 

So during this next year where I am tied down to my lease I will be diligent and work and save and pray, learn and listen and be quiet and grow. And once my time is up, once I am healed and ready, I will go. Back into the world, into the beautiful break of day, back to my venture towards the small city on a hill that I long for. 

My epiphany called me.

"My help comes from the Lord."

My epiphany is calling, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Yes, my body may be failing me, but it will continue to do so every single day, along with everyone else's. Yes, I am a woman and small and by myself with just a pen in hand and pepper spray. But I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. And if anybody, anybody in the world tells me differently, I can be still and know that those words do not and never have aligned with God's will, God's logic. 

If God wants to make it work, it will work. If God tells a mountain to jump, it will sure as hell jump. 

10:48 AM 9/27/24

Isn't it amazing that we as Christians are going to struggle more than anyone else? The firey walls will always be up against us if we choose to follow God.

"Remember what I told you: 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also." - John 15:20 NIV

Jesus was crucified on a cross. People spit on his face, tore his skin open, and a whole ceremonial gathering was created just to mock him and watch him bleed out on a tree.

If Jesus, God's son, was created to suffer that, how much more are we as Christians?

That's why I like to think God is sparing us, even through trials and tribulations. If we are going to follow through and walk in Jesus' footsteps then we have to remember what exactly Jesus was walking through. The stories, the testimonials, the healing.

And even though at the end he suffered horribly, that wasn't even the end. He saved so many people before then and then afterwards he saved every single one of the generations to come, billions of people who weren't even born yet. 

So if Jesus could die on the cross to save every single one of us from immediate hellfire, how much more can we as Christians do?

We were called to walk, to struggle and walk, to praise in the midst of it.

Yes, this is what we are to do. There is never an easy route. That's why the path is so narrow. And that is why there is always more to come, even until the day we die. But the end goal is Jesus. The end goal is heaven. And that is a beautiful end goal to look towards while living out your purpose on this temporary earth, Amen.

20:00

I venture to new places, to new cities, and what is wrong, yet what is wrong?

My feet are still stuck on the ground. I haven't moved at all.

Stupid, stupid brain. Stupid, stupid mind, thinking that it could get anywhere. I'm just a log on the ground. foreshadowing my future, and my past.

has anyone ever really seen me? separate ways, separate paths. 

Why did i do that if i can't ever go back.

take me to the mountain, to the small little room in the house in spain. the house with a balcony and doors that weren't there and the living room was so open to the sky and the sky was open to the air and the universe beyond it. to the pool chairs you could sit and feel the sun beating and melting into your skin and the green green green green, vibrations and hues and colors turned up to 100. breathe in the air, the carbon dioxide or whatever it is that the trees produce. eat simple bread and simple cheese and simple chocolates. rest in the feeling. take a shower and sink into your bed with its white sheets. feel its sweaty frame and stay up restless, writing, then sleep in until you wake up in the morning with bright sunlight shining and a view of the door open and the unused playstation in the corner.

breathe deep, the basketball hoop and the curbed sidewalk and the concrete you slip and balance and break your skin upon from having energy, energy, too much excitement. an overflowing of energy, lungs breathing perfectly and an un-feelable heart. 

world, bring it back to me. let me go. before everything, and when everything fades. give me spain.