"Thinking of The Master Plan..."

Here’s the thing. I desire to be better and the only way that desire has the chance to come to pass is if I make some serious changes. One of those changes includes my relationship with social media. Don’t get me wrong, Social media applications and websites can be a wonderful thing to experience. With just a click of a finger, a scroll of a thumb, and a touch of a screen, you are looking through a person’s point of view of how awesome their lives are… and honestly, that makes me happy. I love that people feel beautiful, that they are accomplished and well-traveled, but if I’m being honest, it also pushes me to compare myself to the “accomplishments” of others.

I am not traveling the world, I am not a model, I am not employed at the job of my dreams, I cannot afford to make weekend trips to nowhere, I am not engaged, nor will I be any time soon, I do not have a little person growing inside of me, I may not have five degrees and full scholarships to the university of my choosing—half of the time I know not what I want to do with myself on a day to day basis. My “not doings” are magnified under the microscope of Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

I am a 24 year old female with no job (yet), a busted 1995 orange geo prism (whose tire is always flat, side view mirror is always falling off [I reattach it with tape, glue and string] and air condition decides not to work even on the coolest days of the summer), who lives in her mother’s home. It took me 6 years to graduate with one degree, and if I’m being honest, that can really feel like nothing when watching the timelines on my feed.

But it’s all a lie.

People put their most successful accomplishments on the feed. And if you ask around, you may find that those same people you admire and aspire to be like struggle with feelings of inadequacy as well. No one is perfect. No filter on Instagram can make a person whole. When I really think on it, I don’t want engagement or baby announcements. I don’t need a new car or home. The problem isn’t that I’m not as beautiful as the next person on my timeline… I desire to be whole.

I was created with purpose. I was created to do wonderful things. Social media is only a concentrated version of things seen and said every day to add to feelings of inadequacies that already lie within me. Those insecurities were always there, it’s just that now I can feed them with constant access from my phone and computer.

Something has to change. So, I unplug. I’m unplugging from every worldly opinion of what beauty is—of what success looks like for a woman my age in America. I am unique. There is no one in the world like me. This isn’t a one size fits all.

We were not meant to fit into molds, but to mold into our own fit—our very own custom made, designed by the one who called you for this time to be who He created you to be. Don’t be a cookie cut out version of what the world believes is beauty, success, and all of these other words that have no true meaning in any mouth but God’s.

You’re a masterpiece. I’m a masterpiece… the pieces to our mosaic are already there. It’s just a matter of putting them together correctly. It’s time to ask the Master for directions. 

Staying is Optional

Here’s the confession: I care way too much about what people think of me. It’s a hideous character trait that I’ve developed over the twenty-some-odd years of my life. Growing up, I was taught that being the “favorite” was the most important thing in my family.

Honestly, it turned out to be the worst advice anyone has ever given me.

People would smile at me, “Oh, Alecia is so sweet, just like her Mom.”

They loved me because I did what they wanted me to do. I was easily manipulated and they knew it. With the very stroke of a finger, I would break down and restructure myself to be anything anyone needed. Pliable, I would easily take form of any hands that dared to try and mold me.

I thought those hands meant that I was loved and cared for. They only said and did these things because they wanted the best fit for me, right?

Wear this.

Do this.

Say this.

Walk like this.

Look like this.

Behave like this…

Any deviation from lines set for me resulted in disapproval, disappointment and ultimately abandonment.

I hate feeling like people are “giving up on” me. I often feel like I have invested so much into other people and maintaining their happiness, that when I do something that they don’t agree with, they walk away like I’m nothing but a total disappointment.

I was there for you through the worst of it all, and because I do one thing that you don’t agree with, I’m automatically the worst person in the world.

Wow.

People are so fickle.

This devastated me. With people walking away and leaving for my imperfections and differences, I lost my value. My value was not found in anything but the approving nods and applause of others.

Being under the influence of many hands except One has left me lopsided, empty, fragile, and inconsistent in my nature. I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself. I see little to know value because I know not who and whose I am. So many fingerprints left on me—so many IDs, I can’t seem to find my own. It’s like a crime scene; my death from willingly being strangled and smothered… all to be loved.

So without it, who am I?

“Unidentified female…”

There are mysteries to be solved, keys to be used to unlock the answer… but first I must be crushed and kneaded.

This isn’t starting over. This is giving me over to the Potter to begin anew, again.

Staying Away From the Scissors

I’m hot. I can’t sleep. I took a nap which resulted in a case of insomnia. I got my bathing suit from Amazon sometime today while I was at my internship and when I got home I opened it and my excitement left when I realized that my breasts are way too big to fit into this bikini. See, I’m trying to be more beautiful, this summer, and so far my plans have been falling through. What does it mean to be more beautiful? I’m not sure what that means, myself. Is it in a bathing suit? Probably not but that didn’t stop me from crying. I got my ear pierced two weeks ago and my ear is still so sore. Every time I brush my ear with head phones, or when I forget, I want to cry like a baby… I also got another tattoo on my ribs, yesterday. I couldn’t tell you why… but I hate it. I hate it and I want to be more beautiful. I want to be more beautiful than I’ve ever been before.

I’m listening to Corinne Bailey Rae. I love how effortless her voice is—simple it is. It’s beautiful. She’s beautiful. I want to feel like what “Another Rainy Day” makes me feel. I almost cried taking my senior portraits yesterday, and I don’t know why. I can’t tell if it was because I feel helpless, or if it was from excitement of graduating. It rained yesterday. I love the rain. It also snowed. I happen to enjoy the snow, as well. But yesterday was strange. Yesterday was a very strange day.

I want to cry, now. I have no idea why, though. I’m not sleepy. Sometimes I cry when I’m tired. It’s something that got worse with age. I love sleep. I also hate sleep. While I sleep time goes by really quickly. I have no idea why I’m crying and I want to know why I cry at 11:48 pm EST. I came home at four and slept until seven. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.

I know that something is wrong and I am mad that something always has to be wrong. I’m angry that I’m crying when I should be asleep. I’m angry that people are upset that I’m upset. I’m angry when people think something is wrong with me. I’m angry that I have these times where people can see me sobbing driving down 202, when I’m crying out to God begging him to take this away from me.

I don’t like that I’m entertaining people because I feel bad. I don’t like the feeling of being used or being lied to about intentions. It makes me feel like I’m being followed closely or cornered. And I hate the feeling of both.

I am missing someone I’m afraid of and that doesn’t make any sense, but it makes all of the sense in the world. I don’t like always having to be the positive one when I have my own fears—worries. When I deviate from my role of the happy, positive, self-medicated one I end up staying up past my bedtime… when the monsters come out to play with my mind.

Monsters wrapped in packages from Amazon telling me how beautiful I won’t be this summer. It makes no sense, but it makes all of the sense in the world. I’m not always this way; confused and sad. Just in the night and on paper, I don’t have to explain myself. 

This Is My Truth

My truth is that I definitely want to experience more of God. I want to be so in love with Him and to be able to feel His hand on mine leading me along the way and guiding me through every obstacle. I want to know and believe whole-heartedly that He has my best interests in mind and that I can do all things through Him. I want to believe that He loves me more than I can stand and understand. I want to believe that He has a plan for my life, that somehow He will get glory from this vapor, which I am.

The problem is that I don’t believe.

I told myself that if I started this, I was going to be 100% honest with God and myself. And honestly, I’m not so strong in my faith, right now. Don’t get me wrong. I love God. I know with everything in me that Christ is the Savior… (Insert confessional here), I just can’t feel it to believe it.

I’ve lost touch with everything around me and I have no idea where to start. I sit at the piano, tips placed on keys, blindly fingering notes that flood the room in a noisy cluttered fashion. I feel like I can’t make music anymore. I open my mouth to sing and because my heart doesn’t believe the words that swim by my heart nothing comes out. I can’t remember how to sing. I reach out to hug others with my words and kind gestures, but I can’t love, because I don’t love myself, right now. Instead of reaching out in love, I cower in fear that you will see me and love me less than I love myself.

I don’t believe in anything.

I feel like my life is a lie. I go about my normal routine in a monotonous fashion and numbness wraps its suffocating arms around everything I feel, love and believe. I can’t remember what life feels like, and I fear that no amount of prayer or reading that can resurrect me. I don’t want anymore “experiences” where I leave on a high and cry in the corners of the night.

So, I seek to feel alive in so many different forms and I care not if it toxic or detrimental. All I know and care about is the fact that I feel. For thirty minutes I can be important to someone costing me little to nothing, for an hour or so, I can feel giddy and loose under the influence of a drink or two costing me 4 dollars. It takes four dollars to feel awake—alive. I miss music and singing, and believing, and dreaming and writing, and loving…

I’m sure a big God made me in His image and loves me; I’m just not sure if this big God can fix me. I’ve actually made peace with the fact that I’ll never be whole—that I’ll never experience sustained joy and that this depression will be a thorn in my side. I hear people sing about their breakthroughs and speak about it and I believe it for them and I celebrate with them. However, I’m not so sure if I believe it for myself.

I’m not asking for sympathy or to be lectured about how I’m a horrible person, or how faithless and downtrodden I seem to have become. No one asked you and the truth is, I already know. I have no idea how to go about fixing this or if it will be fixed.

All I have is right now, and all I know is that I’m here.

Dethroning a god Day 1: Clean

                                I’m coming clean.

Feet overlapping on cold linoleum floors, toeing the filthy, ripped and tattered clothing that lay.

                                I’m coming clean.

Scalding hot water rises in tubs bubbling with promises of clarity and composure.

                                I’m coming clean.

Black and blue bruises splashed on thighs disappear under the foaming truth.

                                I’m coming clean.

Bloody fingertips fingering silvered faucets alternate between the temperatures of glacial and disintegration.

                                I’m coming clean.

…whispering silences laughing subsides underneath…

                                …clean.

"The Disconnect"

I stand on cracks in broken concrete,

The colors of eggshell and cracked pepper,

Swollen hands, rounded and clay red at knuckles,

 balled into fists of fire in my pockets

Dusted by burning red and browning, contorted leaves

 caught in the shushing of the careless wind,

Gusts of cold and thoughtless breath dry the oceans

Forming at the bottoms of my swimming eyes,

Crying at the blue blackened sky reflecting my heart;

Beaten and ashamed

And I want nothing more

Than to be a constellation

Pieces of me scattered, on display

On purpose.

Forming something as brilliant as Ursa Major or

As faithful as Sirius.

I wonder how many tears Orion’s belt has seen,

How many times Andromeda touched down to kiss the swollen tear ducts of the hopeless

I wonder who else is staring up at the winking sky, feeling

So hopeless, so small, so envious,

Thinking of me, as I am crying for them.

I stand atop these cracks, wishing for nothing

More than to break through the sky and be your constellation

Too gassy and hot and unstable to be admired from more than a twinkling distance,

Never fulfilled or conquered,

Pieces of me scattered across the home of the moon held so dear,

Moonlit, seemingly lovely, white, bright, full and half,

Realizing that I do not merely reflect the light,

I am no mirrored swollen image,

But I, my light,

Emit

Atop these cracks.

"Press Play"

I feel so full, tonight. I couldn’t tell you what exactly it is that I’m full of, but I feel like I’m going to burst. I haven’t really been sure of anything, lately and I kind of like it… 

Is that terrible?

I am not sure about what’s my next move or what I feel and I’m not emotionally tied to anything or anyone and I feel good because anything can happen. All I know is that my eyes itch, “Open Your Eyes” by Bobby Caldwell is on repeat and the stars winking at me from the dark depths of the sky are my lovers.

They sing down to me, somehow luring me with their tinkering melodies– much like how the ocean swells at the thought of her moon. 

The night envelops me in it’s dark and sends me away into the cool of it’s bosom. I sob. It’s beautiful. I am alive. I feel like a mirror to that star winking and kissing me. 

I have nothing to say, just a forever and dark to get lost in and feel my way through.

As cool as the tree-combed breeze that dances around my chilled cheek.

Swollen.

Burst.

.