soul on fire.

i think i'm going to coin the phrase mental hypothermia. here's how it goes...

in a healthy mental state, there are many things that acquire differing ranges of awareness, the basic thoughts being the foundation of the more complex thoughts. knowing your school is paid for allows for more concentration on homework. knowing God loves you allows for more concentration on how to grow and walk with Him. knowing you are healthy and alive allows for concentration on the daily tasks that accumulate a life.

mental hypothermia would be the case when one or more of those simple thoughts or truths falls through or shifts, leading to concentration more on the simple thoughts than the complex and detailed thoughts. the more this happens, the less mental activity is evenly distributed. eventually you are mentally immobile from the founding thoughts of what is true or what is real. it is all you have the capacity to think about. it is mental survival mode.

yeah, welcome. if my brain were a body, my fingers and toes would be way past numb at this point and my limbs are on their way as well. i contract all of my thoughts into my core to keep the little warmth i have left, the truth that is my only comfort and anchor. little else is possible to focus on. little else matters. my mind is in the fetal position and the deafness of bloodless ears is setting in. everything drowns out. all my blood, all my focus, is in the core.

and that's not a great place to be in as a student, an employee, a daughter, a sister, a girlfriend, and a leader of a major club all at once. not a great place at all.

i don't want to live in survival mode. survival is not life. i want to face the cold of this world and be warmed from within...enough to withstand and outlast these blizzards. i want a soul on fire.

i pray hard for a spark.

"because the struggles of this world are blistering."

the title of this blog is the chorus of a song by Dead Poetic...a band among others that never ceases to keep me anchored to memories. and days like today will add to those memories.

it reminds me of the concept of a heart with a sunburn...a blistering sunburn, thanks to life. it's a cry to God for some relief, some rebirth, some revolution.

i am so tired.

i am SO tired.

of so many things.

i would love to have zero connections in this world and keep all of my pain and flaws and potential destruction to myself. and selfishly, also so that others' problems don't effect me either. because i am so incredibly tired.

that's not just figuratively, either. i'm prone to anemia and was anemic for awhile until my mom realized i was sleeping ten hours a night and also taking naps during the day. i take a vitamin with iron everyday for it, but still...i'm never quite as energized as those around me.

that may seem like a random fact to share, but it really hasn't helped with everything happening in my life right now. i see and hear and feel walls crashing all around me...all i want to do is sleep. in a world of pain and hard times, my bed is soft. in a life that has conflicting needs and wants and desires, i am allowed to need and want sleep.

left and right i feel like holding people close, screaming at them, firing them from my life, feeling so grateful for them and then hating them. HATING them. and hate is not a healthy feeling. i'm just all over the place. my relationships keep me lifted up and weighed down all at once.

i hope no one takes this blog personally. this is clearly an issue of mine and not yours. and it's time to hang out with God and talk about it a little more.

love you all. really.

"bleed one more time for me

because my heart is filled with loneliness

and this world is filled with loneliness

bleed one more time for me

because the struggles of this world are blistering"

bits and pieces of progress.

i guess there's a lot i could write for an update in here!

first of all...it finally happened people...i got a job. :) i now work with my roommate Blair in a cardiologist's office. she and two other girls do medical billing and my main job is filing...sounds easy, but when you're dealing with around 45 different types of documents [which differ in format depending on who/when they are from], the job gets tedious and slow. but i honestly love it so far! it's amazing not being in retail anymore...no customers, no rushes, no weekends, no SALES...it's just me and my job that i'm allowed to do with my iPod and coffee. yes. thank you God for the best job i could've asked for at this point in my life.

as many of you already know, my parents are getting divorced. the process began during my spring break [haha] and is just doing its thing still. don't tell me you're sorry...because i'm honestly not. i don't think anyone who knows the situation is. there's a lot that goes into it, so i also ask you not to look at the situation as a stranger and decide what you think about it. would you believe me if i told you God set it up to be possible?

i'm definitely changing my major from Bachelor's in Science to Bachelor's in Arts for Psychology. i know i will never want to do research and that's what the science degree is for...if i do anything with Psych, it would be counseling. so yeah that will hopefully help me like school again and feel like i'm actually learning something for what i'm interested in doing. i'm fine with doing hard work as long as it's leading toward the goal i want in the long run. now i just have to meet with an advisor...

i need to clean my room. it's making me sad right now.

enjoy the day!

"Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt"

seems like i either have twenty people read a post of mine or no one at all. odd.

this one may not make sense. i feel like expressing a few things that i don't feel like actually explaining. love me through it.

five or six years ago marks the era in which my spirit and soul felt hospitalized, like i couldn't move without pain or overwhelming weakness. it was all i could do to push and pull air through my lungs over and over. i had no external drive to live except for the natural instincts of my body to survive. sometimes i even prayed that if God had some sort of quota to meet for giving people cancer, let it be me since i wouldn't miss a world like this anyway. i didn't want to fight the sensation that i was slowly and inevitibly drowning. depression? if we're being overly simple and vague, sure i was depressed.

then it was as if God gave me pure oxygen to breathe, in the form of His warmth and love and company. everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. love burned inside of me and the walls of my heart were etched with words and truth that remain there today, a few embers refusing to die. my "morphine" was an adventure that consumed my thoughts and time and energy and took my mind off the pain and the indifference i felt if i was left alone with my thoughts. i felt alive. so incredibly alive. and so incredibly sure of myself as well. i was healing.

but as time went by i was less and less effected by the [figurative] drug. it didn't feel real. it felt stagnant and supressing. i felt like it was holding me down from a real life. a better life. so i quit cold turkey. i was discharged from the hospital my soul was in and was sent out into the unknown. and for awhile i was excited and at peace.

for awhile. for a year.

then i started realizing how mediocre the mixture of gases i breathed felt. i missed the pure oxygen. and i also started realizing how uneventful my body's natural balance of chemicals in my body felt. i missed the morphine, even when there was no pain like before. all on my own, even with Him by my side, i felt like less of a person than i did when my heart was in that hospital room. my black and white had faded to grey...darkening so many whites in my life. my fluttering heart flatlined...seeming to be utterly useless and faulty. words can't describe how incomprehensibly remorseful and stupid and arrogant i felt for ever leaving that hospital bed or giving up on that adventure. i may as well have internally died. i was now a walking shell with nothing inside. where before i felt so much pain, i now felt nothing.

but a few things here and there brought about a heartbeat inside of me. not all was lost. different adventures offered themselves and i explored a few and thoroughly enjoyed them. i still am. i am still pushing and pulling air through my lungs...i am still alive. and i have found ways to make myself useful while i'm here.

is it wrong to be dissatisfied with a healthy and steady heartbeat? is it pretentious to look past the warm blessings right in front of me in the sunlight and lose myself in the fire that burned me so much deeper when i was in the cold and dark? can there be no fire where there is also sun?

can i not be healthiest and happiest i could ever imagine being simultaneously? do i need the hospital for the happiness? do i need the mediocrity for the health?

maybe i'm asking to have my cake and eat it too. maybe i'm asking for ice cream in a world that also requires some bitter tastes in my mouth for health. maybe i really can't have both.

maybe i dream of Heaven already.

all i know is that the air keeps coming. i must keep breathing.

and for now, i must also sleep.

sweet dreams.