:: normal ::
There's nothing wrong with my life. I am healthy (except for a broken tooth... more on that trauma some other day when I'm ready to talk about it), have a refrigerator full of food, got plenty of sleep last night, have a list of things I could and should be doing, and am loved. I have friends to talk to, a bright future, journals and photo albums filled with the vibrant back-story. There's nothing wrong with my life.
So why are there still longings, stirred sometimes by something as simple as a song? I used to think that if I felt alive when I was on stage singing that I must then be made to sing. Other people are quick to agree -- you should be doing this, Mandy. The same is true of writing. Putting words in order, the best words in the best order (poetry), reaches places in me that otherwise are unstirred. Am I then made to write? Should I wake up every morning and fill pages up with me?
I realized recently that I have a hard time being honest about my life. I have no trouble telling you, if you are in front of me and we are talking, just exactly what I think and how I made an idiot of myself in this way or that. Or perhaps I will demonstrate on the spot by saying something no one ought to in such a place or time. I do things like that.
But it's harder for me to talk about waking up in the morning, the complete lack of motivation I have in the moments of my life that add up most. The fundamental ways I fail by letting things like an empty toilet paper roll frustrate me. Love keeps no record of wrongs.
I always wanted to be a shooting star, and I think I finally figured out why. Because it's easy, in one brilliant moment, to be perfect and beautiful and important. It is much, much harder, on the other hand, to maintain my regal posture whilst doing the laundry and stirring together my third curry of the week, or sitting quietly writing answers to a Bible study that no one will ever even read. It is so much harder to be good when you know everyone has stopped watching.
I think it is possible to die of boredom, or monotony. We wait all day to watch the sun set. I guess I want to stop waiting, to find quiet nobility in being normal.
So why are there still longings, stirred sometimes by something as simple as a song? I used to think that if I felt alive when I was on stage singing that I must then be made to sing. Other people are quick to agree -- you should be doing this, Mandy. The same is true of writing. Putting words in order, the best words in the best order (poetry), reaches places in me that otherwise are unstirred. Am I then made to write? Should I wake up every morning and fill pages up with me?
I realized recently that I have a hard time being honest about my life. I have no trouble telling you, if you are in front of me and we are talking, just exactly what I think and how I made an idiot of myself in this way or that. Or perhaps I will demonstrate on the spot by saying something no one ought to in such a place or time. I do things like that.
But it's harder for me to talk about waking up in the morning, the complete lack of motivation I have in the moments of my life that add up most. The fundamental ways I fail by letting things like an empty toilet paper roll frustrate me. Love keeps no record of wrongs.
I always wanted to be a shooting star, and I think I finally figured out why. Because it's easy, in one brilliant moment, to be perfect and beautiful and important. It is much, much harder, on the other hand, to maintain my regal posture whilst doing the laundry and stirring together my third curry of the week, or sitting quietly writing answers to a Bible study that no one will ever even read. It is so much harder to be good when you know everyone has stopped watching.
I think it is possible to die of boredom, or monotony. We wait all day to watch the sun set. I guess I want to stop waiting, to find quiet nobility in being normal.
posted by :: mandy :: at
12:27 PM
8 Comments
