We Should See Other Blogs

I am not sure what to put here; it is a quiet night, and I am quite alone. The people I want to talk to are not online, and I am out of cigars. I have no media to watch, and no books to read. Besides, I already watched Pirates of the Carribean 2 and was distinctly underwhelmed.

I think I understand how to do this thing now. The oddest smile on my face. And I am writing because I have nothing else to do.

The future scares me, it always has. I have ambitions and goals right now, but I’m afraid that I will, like always, let them slide; but fear of that happening has never stopped it before. You see, dear readers and dear self, I am what they call a royal screwup. Or as Laura would say, a huge AHEM. Don’t come along and tell me that I’m not, there’s no play for sympathy here. I don’t need sympathy. I don’t need catharsis either. What I need is to be naked and ashamed.

Let me tell you about me in words that may frighten you: I’m a lying, cheating, manipulative, lazy, all-too-clever son of a bitch. Say what you may about the strong language. I won’t apologise for it, because it’s true, and you all should know it. This is my natural inclination – to cover up everything I am with layers of dishonesty, whether that be talking like a good Christian or acting differently than I really am, or drawing lines between different segments of my life and only letting people see different bits of me depending on how I think they’ll react. To some, I’m the good child. I can even play the part of a person being honest; and now that I’ve said that, how to make you all understand this is not a game face? This is me being honest. I ask you to believe that this once, if never again.

How did I get here? I had a good childhood, and so far a damn good life. I can’t blame my parents, or blame their parents, or blame my schooling, or blame my assorted churches. Where the people I have wronged have at least the luxury of choosing between being bitter and getting better, I haven’t that option: there is no one to blame but myself. For instance, I sucked my thumb until I was twelve, and it’s still painful for me to admit that. I just stopped one day, out of the blue. I still don’t know why. But I hid it from people, and when others called me out on it, I got angry at them. Another: I don’t like taking off my shirt in front of people because my body looks nothing like what a half-decent male body should look like – I am pudgy and hairy. I hate my body. But I’m too lazy and apathetic (until recently) to do anything about it. And even when I’m doing something about it, it’s usually not for very good reasons. Another: you never saw my bare feet, not because I have a sock fetish, but because I have a wierd toenail that embarasses me. How petty, yet indicative of something. But you get the idea – and these are just a few addictions and embarassments I have hidden as best I could. There are – and I hesitate to understate this point – so many more others that no one has any idea about.

But I don’t want to be that person; not now at least. The irony is that I’m scared this will pass like all those other good intentions, that my apathy in doing anything about it will gradually give way to dishonesty again and I will be more concerned with people liking my masks than people liking the real me.

One last thing in all the grief I’ve cause this year. Someone once insinuated that I wouldn’t be a good spiritual leader of a household. He was – and this is probably the third-hardest thing I’ve ever admitted – so much more right than anyone can imagine. I struggle – not against my internal logic leading me to believe otherwise – to believe in God, much less Christianity, much less Calvinistic Christianity, much less Dutch Reformed Calvinistic Christianity. I struggle against my own inclination that to not believe is simple easier than to believe. And even though I am convinced – on paper – that God is true and he is the Lord of my life, I am not always functional in that. Even when I am convinced, I struggle again to believe that God is love. In one of my poems I said that it feels like he’s throwing knives blindfolded, and I meant that literally. His grace is hard, much harder when it seems reciprocal to my own failings: I screw up, I drop the ball, and God gives me back what I have done twice over. That’s hard. Like when my faithlessness comes home to roost in the faithlessness of another: that’s grace telling me something. But it’s hard. It’s like a punch in the face.

Now, if you’ll excuse this spilling of guts, or (you may call it) public emotional masturbation, I’m going to go work out some of those ambitions before they leave me again.