8:40 p.m. - 01/19/03
but I tell you ::life is sweet:: in spite of the misery; there's so much more. be grateful.
I think one of the more offensive churces nearby is under new management. It has a different name, and the quotes on the marquee have grown significantly less disturbing, until tonight I actually *liked* what it said (very disturbing)- though in a context other than the one they intended it. It read, "Life is what is coming, not what was." That's a really beautiful articulation of what I keep reminding myself, that letting old habits loose is not a way of putting myself back in middle school. It's a way of gaining life like I've never known it before. I'm going to challenge myself simiarly to when I bought the infamous CD a few weeks ago, and put the quote in nourish. It's a challenge because all the religious bullsh*t in Neverland has left me with a great distaste for Christianity (even though I logically accept it and love many, many Christians.) I just need to move past feeling the need to apologize for liking a Christian idea when I'd never feel the need if it were Buddhist, Wiccan, Jewish.
As for the CD, I think I've gotten past beating myself up for owning it. I feel much better about that, and I've come to realize that it didn't taint me. I do still struggle with all of the wrongs done in that CD beyond the handful of songs I like: the controversy of the video (which I don't judge fully, as I haven't seen it), the call for actors, the hypocrisy between song lyrics, and the semi-pornographic inlet book. I can't handle any of that. But "Beautiful" is Beautiful. Soar and Cruz are decent. And I needed to know that I wouldn't be dismembered in the night if I bought a non-folk/alt CD.
Speaking of bands I'm not supposed to like, that Creed song "Arms Wide Open" played on the radio tonight, while we were driving home. For the record, I have grown to not feel the love toward them so much, mostly because they have an amazing ability to make the same single over and over again. Still, that song has a place in my liddle heart from the day Paul created a scene with the middle school kiddles using the track. So I heard it, and I thought of them, but what I really thought of was a year or two ago, when I was spending so much time driving to doctors and not getting any better, and how that song played nearly nonstop on the radio. And suddenly lines like "tears of joy streamed down my face" and "now everything has changed" meant so much more to me. Because things *have* changed. The work I'm doing now...the frustrating, overwhelming, too-small-and-too-large work-simultaneously work I am doing now- means everything. It's work like this that has brought me to where I am, and it's so far from where I was, and I'm scared out of my heart for all the pain we're still in, and still fighting, and still dying over, but I'm so grateful for the progress I've made. It's one of those, "oh, my God, I almost didn't make it, and I'm *going to now*" sorts of nights that just break and repair this heart again and again and again.
Today's habit-breaking went well, though I'm not sure it was as impressive as yesterday's. (Dancing and leaving during a depressive isolationary phase is huge for me.) And I proved to myself that I will bend my own ethics occasionally, on my own terms. I didn't break them for the best possible reason today, but it was to have something that I've wanted for years so maybe that isn't the worst thing in the world. I bought knee-high black combat boots, that are generally eighty dollars for...eight. Yes, eight. and they're beautiful, even though I can't walk in them yet. (These boots aren't made for walking.) And they make it even better that I wear kneesocks almost exclusively. And I forgive myself for the fact that they're leather because I've wanted them since before I'd really developed a sense of animal-products as evil. and because they look like Daria and Daria's worse about sticking to her ethics than I am, and finally because I actually pass the 5'5" mark while wearing them, and that is damn amazing to a girl who barely passes the 5' mark in general.
I'm slowly learning how to budget and spend money, as I am, for the first time in my life, receiving a consistent allowance. And I think I screwed my system up a little today, with some impulsiveness, but it's nothing I can't learn to keep from happening in the future. I've generally been spending half (at the used CD store, mostly) and saving half (for goodness knows what.) I've also made a deal with myself to only buy things that fulfill two goals: a) help me prepare to leave and b) help me survive presently. So generally music that I've put off buying for one reason or another and clothes that fit who I am better than they fit who I was. Mostly the music part. It's how I ended up with "Willing to Wait" and how I almost ended up with a copy of "Tidal" for the first time since my tape quit playing, but it had already been bought by the time I went in today. Damn. In the meantime, though, it's exciting. I'm building me and my world. In a lighter way than, say, dismantling phobias.
And nobody is going to mess with me now that I'm nearer to six feet than I am to five. Ok. I'm on a bit of a shoe-high; I admit.
And atomgirl is actually working now, as opposed to earlier when I said it was working, but was informed (by my dearling Britt) that it wasn't. Tonight was mostly good. I have an awful migraine made somewhat better by Excedrin which will make sure I actually take the new meds, and I know now why I didn't want to take them, and I took another day off from school that I didn't plan to take, but I don't even care, and Cracker Jack Kid is playing right now, and I've come so far, and I have so far to go, but my heart is bittersweet and happy for the moment, and that feels good. I think I'll go live for awhile, in one way or another.
love
chord
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