Livin la vida lonely

My parents decided that the family needed to go on vacation this year, so they booked a house on a lake for a week. I, however, being the workaholic that I am, decided to only go for the weekend, wanting to get as many as hours as possible that week. That left me at home alone for several nights. T
here's something about being home alone that makes everything seem that much more nefarious.

Did the house just settle and let out a nearly indiscernible creak? It's the killer standing right outside my bedroom. He's about to burst in and stab me til I'm dead.

Did the air conditioner just start blowing through the vent? Someone somewhere somehow broke in and is leeching poison gas through the vents; I'm going to wake up dead.

Did a car door slam outside? It's a gang of very unprofessional killers, about to burst through my front door, guns blazing.

Did the phone just ring? The sniper is in a tree in my backyard, calling my phone to get me to move in front of the window so he can shoot me.

When you're home alone, every little sound can be translated into something terrible. It probably didn't help that I watched Numb3rs a lot before going to bed, and that I saw every episode of Criminal Minds last semester, or that I had just finished reading "The Shining." After watching that many shows about murders both deserved and not, every action I perform, from parking the car in the garage to walking upstairs while talking on the phone to a friend to locking the bedroom door so I'll feel safer while I sleep, brought to mind a murder scene. Pulling into the garage: there's a killer hiding next to the door, about to shoot me; walking upstairs on the phone: he's hiding just inside the bathroom, waiting for me to hang up so he can pounce; locking the bedroom door: he's hiding under the bed, cackling because I just locked myself in with him.

By the third and last night I spent alone, I was lying curled up in bed, a few more creaks away from sticking my thumb in my mouth and screaming "Mommy!" I was a car-door slam or two away from finding myself on the floor, arms clasped around my knees, rocking back and forth and moaning. It took me an hour to fall asleep, because every time I got close, I'd come up with another way I could get brutally murdered in my own bed. And even worse than the noise was the silence. The house was just as silent at midnight that Tuesday night as it was the Saturday before, when my parents were home with me; the difference was that when I was alone, the silence oppressed. It weighed down on me, until every thought pulsed against my brain with thunderous volume. I was torn between abject terror at every sound, and begging for noise just so the silence would cease.

Needless to say, by the time the next morning rolled around I was pumped and ready for vacation. The moral of the story is: staying at home alone is scary as heck, no matter what anyone might say to you. All those people you see running around, boasting about not being afraid of the dark? They're either idiots or liars. (Unless they're Macaulay Culkin in "Home Alone." He was pretty awesome).

True story.

17 Spectacular Feelings

Maybe it's the latent "Daily Routine" blogger in me, but sometimes I just feel the need to make a list of all the seemingly stupid things that make me ridiculously happy. I mean, I spend most of my time ignoring the little things and keeping my focus on the "big picture," but at the end of the day as I'm getting ready for bed I measure the success of my day by how many tiny, beautiful things happened to make it sparkle. So here is the beginning of what I hope to make a regular post: several things that make me giddy with joy.

1. There's this one stretch on a road I travel rather often where the speed limit goes from 30 mph to 45 mph. There's something about pressing down on the gas pedal and acceleration 15 mph that makes me feel like I'm king of the universe, or at least like I'm going way faster than I really am.

2. On a really hot summer day, after I've spent at least 30 minutes sitting on the beach with the heat from the sun wrapping around me, diving headfirst into the water; it feels so cold to my sun-baked body and is honestly one of the best feelings in the world.

3. After you've applied to at least twenty different stores and swear that if you have to fill out another application with the words "washed dishes, swept floors, wiped tables" you will tear every last hair out of your head...when the phone rings and you pick it up and it's someone telling you to come in for an interview, they got your application and liked it so much they're thinking of hiring you. It's like the world is finally realigned along its axis and the future makes sense again.

4. You know what it's like: you're 18, starting your freshman year of college, and you've never gotten a paycheck before. So that second Friday of the school year you make your way to the Cashier's office, stand in line with a dozen other not-so-excited people and say "I'm here to pick up my paycheck!" And then when you deposit it in the bank, knowing that it's money you worked hard for...you feel like if you can do this, you can do anything.

5. The last hundred meters of any run, when you see your goal ahead of you and let loose in a final sprint; suddenly all the tiredness of the past 30 minutes dissipates and you're free, you're a cheetah, you feel light and airy and fast and so good and you remember "this is why I run."

6. After a long day at school or work, 8 hours of incessant brain exercise, when you sit down in your desk chair and log on to Facebook, and there it is: that little red flag that signals you have some notifications...but wait, there's more! That other little flat, the one for messages, is also up! It's pathetic, but you suddenly feel like maybe your life has purpose after all, because...you have Facebook notifications!

7. As lovely as getting a Facebook message is, there's still nothing quite like going to CPO, peering through the little crack and seeing something there; your heart starts pounding and you try to calm yourself down, you mutter "it's probably just another stupid flier," but you open it up anyway and it's not a flier, it's a real, honest-to-goodness letter from a high school friend. Now you know that life really is good.

8. There's almost no place I love better than a library: all those shelves of books, endless rows of reading material, make me feel like a kid on Halloween, coming home and counting up his candy. And the best part of the library is the opportunity to find new and incredible books. There is literally no feeling that can be compared to reading a book you've never read before, turning the pages and not knowing what's coming next, staying up til 3 am because you need to know what happens...and at the end, you close your eyes and wish you could rewind time so you could read it all over again without knowing what's going to happen.

9. All the same, there's also something so special about rewatching a show or movie you've seen thousands of times before. You start laughing five minutes before the funny scene, because you know it's coming and the anticipation is just so exquisite. And if you watch it with a friend, you're always scanning their face for their reaction to the part that has you clutching your gut with laughter, or wiping the tears from your eyes.

Something about diamonds: a pseudo children's story

Among the lined-up diamonds was one that did not sparkle.

While all her friends gleamed and shone and emitted rainbows of light,

she stood in her corner and looked up at the ceiling

and mourned that she was coated in a dull gray sheen.

Now whether she had never had any sparkle,

or had lost it all through the trials of diamond life,

no one would know:

all anyone knew was that among the lined-up diamonds was one that did not sparkle.

And as time went by her companions started to disappear,

one chosen to be set into a beautiful engagement ring,

one to grace the elegant neck of a rich lady,

yet another pair to form sparkling earrings for fancy balls,

and all the while the diamond that did not sparkle remained;

and a whole new set of sparkling diamonds poured in,

but among them all was one that did not sparkle.

One day a master jeweler came to examine the sparkling diamonds,

and all the others started preening and trying to make the best of themselves:

they turned to catch the light, rolled over to hide a flaw,

positioned themselves so they would be the first to catch his eye;

but the one that did not sparkle sat forlornly in her corner,

knowing she would not be chosen,

for she was the diamond that did not sparkle.

The jeweler looked and looked among the sparkling diamonds, but could not decide

(for all the gems were perfect, you see, and how do you fix perfection?)

He had just about decided to give up and search somewhere else,

when something, a discernment of a shape in the darkness,

or a faint gleam shining forth through the grime,

called his eye to the corner,

where the diamond who did not sparkle hid.

He smiled, reached in and grabbed this diamond

(and immediately all the others were full of murmurs,

for they knew that this was a diamond that was never chosen)

but the jeweler ignored them all and turned to the counter:

“I want this one,” he said, with a smile so enigmatic the cashier didn’t even question him,

simply raised her eyebrows and murmured, “well if you want

the diamond that does not sparkle.”

The jeweler took the diamond home and set it on the table;

for a while he just smiled at it, turned it over to admire its delicate cut,

and she began to wonder if maybe she hadn’t been chosen by a crazy man.

Finally he set her back, sighed deeply, and pulled out his kit.

“You know,” he said, “this is going to be a painful process,

for me no less than for you. So I’m giving you a choice:

if you want to remain as you are, I shan’t touch you,

but if you choose, you can sparkle as brightly as your companions.”

The diamond had never heard words like these ones.

Without even a second thought, she exclaimed:

“Of course I choose to sparkle! I have always wanted to sparkle!”

The jeweler smiled and nodded his head, then set to work,

to bring a sparkle to the diamond who did not sparkle.

The time passed slowly, and with excruciating pain:

the diamond that did not sparkle felt as though her very insides were being burned out,

and indeed the jeweler quickly learned that her dull gray sheen was not just a sheen,

but a darkness that penetrated to her core;

but he was an expert, master jeweler,

and he knew how to take an imperfect diamond, and make it shine,

and he knew how to do that in such a way that would not damage,

the future sparkle of the diamond who did not sparkle.

There were so many times when she wanted to beg him to quit,

so many times when she felt she couldn’t take another instant of pain,

but she closed her eyes and said to herself “someday you, too, will sparkle,

and you will never again be called the diamond that does not sparkle.”

Finally, the jeweler’s work was finished:

he set his tools aside and turned the diamond over and over,

examining every facet, searching for a hint of the murky grayness:

he found nothing that could prevent her from sparkling,

and yet she still did not gleam or shine or emit a single rainbow of light.

The jeweler said to her, "I have given you the gift of the ability to sparkle,

but the choice is yours: whether or not you sparkle brighter than all other,

or always remain a diamond that does not sparkle."

The next morning the jeweler woke up and there,

on his worktable, lay the most brilliant diamond he had ever laid eyes on.

The diamond smiled up at him in delight.

“Thank you, dear sir. Thank you for saving me!”

He simply smiled and said,

“From now on you shall be known

as the diamond who sparkles eternally.”

The Value of the One

I think that sometimes, despite the very individualistic society in which we live, we manage to actually forget the individual. We forget the vast importance that one person's touch can have on one person's life, opting instead to strive to touch millions at once. That's why we all wish we could be famous singers and actors and writers, people who touch millions of lives every day. But when you think about it, it's really the individual that matters most.

There are some very important people that the world will never know. These are people that will never win a Nobel Peace Prize, never be on the front page of the newspaper signing over their billions to charity, never invent the cure for cancer or stop poverty. They are, however, the people that a certain percentage of the world would be destitute without.

I have so many people like that in my life, people who aren't famous and who don't have the ears of the governments, but people whose impact on my life has been profound. One such person, I just learned, passed away recently. Her name was Mari Ellen, and I knew her my sophomore and junior years at BFA. She was many different things to many different people, she was best friend and small group leader and sister and daughter, but to me she was my counselor. I met with Mari Ellen every week for a year and a half, and I honestly don't know what I would have done without her. I was at a place in my life where I just needed someone to talk to every week, someone who would listen to the word vomit that came out and not judge and not push. There was so much going on in my head that I needed to get out and process, and Mari Ellen was always there for me.

Until my sophomore year in high school, I told myself I would never ever go to a counselor, because I was convinced it was a sign of weakness. But it reached a point where I needed that, and Mari Ellen was the best person God could have put in my life at that time. She wasn't some shrink, some cold, detached person who listened to my problems and took notes and gave me formulas for change. She also wasn't my best friend, she didn't listen to me and then tell me what I wanted to hear. She was a combination friend and counselor, someone I could trust to tell my secrets to who would give me good solid feedback without pushing that I needed to "get better already." And by the time my junior year ended and she knew she wasn't going to be back the next year, she knew me well enough to not trust me to find a counselor on my own and instead forced me into it.

If it weren't for Mari Ellen, I wouldn't be where I am now. If it weren't for the two years I had with her I probably never would have been able to open up and share my problems and get help. She listened as I shared my deepest and darkest secrets; she was aware of the darkest side of me, and she showed me love unconditionally. That's a really powerful thing to do for a 16-year-old girl. To spend countless hours listening to her as she gives you all the reasons in the world to hate her, and love her instead, is an incredibly beautiful thing to do.

Mari Ellen wasn't famous; she didn't give millions of dollars to charity every year, she didn't preach the Gospel to hundreds of thousands every week, she didn't single-handedly bring Africa out of poverty. But she knew the power of the individual. I'm just one of the many people she's touched; I don't know how many other people out there today are thinking about how different their life would have been without her, but I do know that I can honestly say that her presence in my life was a gift from God, that she was a gift from God to me at a time when I really needed that. She was a good friend and a counselor all bundled up in one, and I don't think I can say enough how important she has been to me. And I didn't even know her that much; think of all the people she was closer to, the people who can call her "best friend" or "small group leader;" if her impact on me was that great, think of how immense it must have been on the ones she knew best.

I've always thought that to be successful I had to touch millions; but if knowing Mari Ellen has taught me one thing, it's that success isn't measured in how much you do or know, but how well you fulfill the calling God has given you. On those lines, Mari Ellen was one of the most successful people I know.

Testimonial

Lately I've been living in the dark. Not just living -- I've been setting down roots, getting myself used to a life lived perpetually in the darkness of fear and doubt and despair. After a couple of months, darkness became what I was about; when in doubt about how to act in a social situation, revert back to playing the character mired in darkness. Except it wasn't a character anymore, it was who I really was.

You see, I lost sight of the light. I entered the caves but forgot to bring my flashlight. And after a while my eyes adjusted; I could see pretty well, so I mistook that for seeing well, and decided that maybe the darkness was a good place to say, and no matter what God said to the contrary I closed off my ears.

But the time has come, He told me today. The time has come to turn my head toward the light and head toward it, no retreat. And that's one of the scariest things I've ever been told. You see, after a while, the darkness becomes a comfort. It becomes a safety blanket, and I know two things about it: if I can't see what's out there, what's out there can't see me, and there will be less in here because most creatures want to live in the light. So in any situation that scares me, I just pull back into the darkness and close my eyes, and wait for the monsters to fade away. What I've been failing to come to terms with is that this darkness is the monster. I cling to it because I think that it's part of my identity, and I don't know who I'll be when I'm not the girl with emotional problems who's depressed and hates herself; I'm scared of what I'll have to act like if I come out of my cave and have to take responsibility for my actions and can't just hide behind hating myself for them.

I'm scared of that. Scared of telling people who I really am. But here goes. Guys, this is who I am, who I really really am:

I am Karis. My name is Greek and it means Grace and I haven't been living up to it lately. I am a Christian, but a bad one. I believe that Jesus Christ died to save me but I haven't been living like I know that. In fact, it's been a long time since I've truly believed that God could really love me. You see, I know He created me and I know he loves what he creates, but I've convinced myself that I've ruined that beautiful creation of His and therefore He must hate me. In fact, if I'm going to be honest, I still believe that. It's so hard to convince myself that I haven't ruined my chances of having God love me -- as hard as pulling my own nails off would be.

I am Karis. Lately I have been living in the darkness, a creature of the night who is scared of the light. I cower away from any expression of love, and even go so far as to try and scare it away. I am scared of opening myself up to real human interaction, which is why I never tell anyone the whole story -- because I fear the power that would give them over me. But I'm done living like that. I'm tired of being ruled by fear, sick of being exhausted by the extent of my despair.

I am Karis. I'm still lost in the darkness, but I've finally accepted that I'm not without hope. There is a Friend by my side, and I know that if I just reach out to take His hand He will take me safely through the tunnels. I know it won't be easy, I know it will be as hard as pulling my own nails off, but I know that the end result, when I step out into the beauty of daylight, will be more delightful than the best feeling I could imagine. I am a Christian, and I'm finally going to step forward and act that out in my life.

I am a follower of Christ, and followers of Christ don't live in the darkness, they live in the light and embrace all the horrors and beauties that come with that. They make a public stand and don't back down. So this is my stand: I am coming out of the darkness and will never again turn my face back towards it.

Old Laws

I saw this picture on Pinterest a couple weeks ago, and it made me incredibly angry. Apparently someone decided to go through the Old Testament and find all the examples of strange allowances for marriage and then put them together and somehow use that to prove that gay marriage is okay. No, wait, I think maybe it was sarcastic: "Look, the Bible is crazy. It says a woman has to marry a rapist and that a man can also marry his wife's slave or just three random women, but a man can't marry a man? Crazy. Look how clever I am to find this."
Oh yes, you're brilliant. It's like you completely forgot about the New Testament. "The what?" The New Testament. The one that came after the Old Testament. Duh.

See, here's my theory. (Actually, I'm 90% sure that it's not just my theory, that it's actually written somewhere in the Bible, because I definitely didn't think this up on my own. I know I read it somewhere, just can't remember where). My theory is that God didn't necessarily want the people in the Old Testament to have multiple wives or have to marry a rapist, just like he didn't originally want them to get divorced. But, just like people nowadays, people in the Old Testament ran around trying to sin as much as possible (it has to do with the fact that they were still human and humans like sinning), so he had to make allowances. For instance, women who fornicated were supposed to die. But obviously he wasn't going to kill a woman for being raped. But he also couldn't have her running around single cause then all the other virgins would get jealous and nobody wants to have a stampede of jealous women on their hands (trust me). So he made it so that she would marry her rapist. And then this funny thing happened a couple thousand years later: He sent His Son to Earth and He spent a lot of time preaching and clearing things up, and one of things he cleared up was: one man, one woman. That's how marriage works.

So these people who run around citing the Old Testament where the Old Testament is no longer the final word on a subject make me angry. It's kind of like this: when I was little my brother and I used to play this game, where we cut up paper and put it in a trash can and pretended it was macaroni (yeah, we were real smart). And one time I leaned over the bucket right as Josh cut. So, snip, there goes a lock of hair, and little Karis is running around with a crazy spiky haircut for the next few weeks. So my mom made a new rule: every time I used the scissors I had to put my hair in a ponytail, so my brother's rogue scissors wouldn't give me another wacky cut. This lasted for a few years until I was old enough to use scissors responsibly, and the rule was gone.
And I think that sometimes the Old Testament was like that. The ancient Israelites were in a sense like children; they'd just been initiated into a whole new way of life and didn't know what to do with it. They were showered with a boatload of new rules and sometimes they couldn't keep them straight. So God was merciful and made some allowances (yes, you can divorce your wife. For now) because they were still struggling to adapt. A couple thousand years later, however, they were used to being God's people and being different from everyone else. So when Jesus came to Earth to save everyone's souls and die a gruesome death on the cross He made a few changes: one man, one woman. Not one man, three women; not one rapist, one woman; not one woman, one man, he dies, his brothers.

Sometimes the rules change. So if you're gonna try and make a clever statement and defend gay marriage by using crazy example from the Old Testament, don't. Those rules aren't in place anymore, and instead of looking all brilliant, you'll just look stupid and ignorant.

A Fairy Tale - Part 2

Days, weeks, months passed and still the girl woke up every morning and climbed out of bed and went about her business and despaired.

She sat in class and struggled to see the teacher’s notes through the darkness that clouded her vision; she ate lunch with her friends and worked to hear their words over the hateful whispers pouring constantly into her hears; she listened to great men and women speak in the chapel and tried to find joy to counter the tremendous weight of sorrow that was upon her shoulders.

And meanwhile, whenever she was alone she fell in bed and closed her eyes and had no recourse but to exhaustedly listen to the voices or else take the scissors and fight the only way she knew how – by hurting herself.

Every day that went by where all she saw was terror and darkness and despair was another small victory for the evil genius who hovered on the edge of her existence. Every tear she shed brought a malignant smile to his face, and every mark she drew on her arms was greeted by a tremendous cackle from that beast.

She looked around her and all she saw was darkness. She looked to the heavens but her view of the sun was clouded by the leering faces of the ghosts of her past. Somewhere in the depths of her heart she knew that her past was not all darkness; she had memories of laughter and sunshine and friendship and tears that were shed for joy. She knew that if she could just get a glimpse, just a fleeting, blurry, stop-motion glimpse of a smile or a sunny day or a friend’s face she would have the strength to carry on another day.

And a fleeting, blurry, stop-motion glimpse of a friend’s face came, and she carried on another day. But when she woke up the next morning the darkness was more intense than before and the whispering had turned into full-fledged screaming into her ears.

“I hate you. I hate you!” she screamed into her empty bedroom, and she didn’t know if she meant it more to the shadows torturing her or to herself.

At the edge of her consciousness each second was a picture of blood. Just an inch away from her grasp in every moment was the knife that had somehow become her best friend. And merely a fraction away from that was the thought of death, and as the days wore on that thought became more and more powerful and she became more and more convinced that not only would it be best for her to die, it would be best for anyone who’d ever come into contact with her if she were to simply erase herself from the earth.

And then it happened.

It was a cold, snowy night sometime in the winter. She found herself walking down the road, alone except for her constant companions, Doubt and Sorrow and Regret and Hatred and the shadows and the ghosts of her past. And they were all whispering in her ear about one thing.

“The tallest bridge in America is up ahead,” whispered one.

“Just think how great it would be to jump,” said another.

“A split second of blissful freedom,”

“And then instant death,”

“The best-case scenario for all parties involved!” finished the last one triumphantly.

She had just decided that they were right (and how stupid had she been for taking so long to understand) when she heard a different voice at her side.

This voice caressed her ears where the others grated; it filled her soul with warmth where the others made her wonder how it was possible to be so icy; the mere sound of it shot joy into her heart where the others sent only despair. And the words it chose? Simple and kind.

“Lies,” it said. “They are all lies.”

She stopped walking and turned all about, trying to see the speaker of the voice while the shadows scurried madly about her and tried to block her view.

“Don’t listen to the lies, beloved,” whispered the voice, and through a chink in the armor of her tormentors she saw the speaker.

She’d never seen a more beautiful man. The most beautiful part about him was the kindness in her eyes. She looked into them and something shifted in her heart, and she felt love for the first time.

“Who are you?”

“I am the Prince who has come to rescue his damsel in distress.”

“Take them away,” she begged.

He smiled. “Don’t believe the lies anymore,” he said before the cloud made him disappear again.

She turned and walked back the way she had come, ignoring the frantic hisses urging her to go towards the bridge.

“Not tonight.”

In the next few days, whenever the shadows spoke terror into her heart, she closed her eyes and remembered the stranger’s kind eyes and his words: “I am the Prince who has come to rescue his damsel in distress.”

Outside her room, the evil genius trembled with a mixture of fury and terror. He had been so close, had worked so hard to keep the Prince away, and now, in the moment of triumph, he had arrived to destroy everything!

The girl carried on each day, surrounded by her cloud of blackness, but things were better now: she could catch glimpses of sunlight in the darkest of hours, or hear snippets of joyful music when the hateful voices were at their loudest. She lived each day in the hopes of seeing the beautiful Prince again, of hearing his melodious voice and feeling that strange warmth in her heart again.

“Where is he?” she murmured to herself.

“I’m right next to you,” she heard the mellifluous voice speak next to her.

She sensed the shadows stir as they sought to drown him out, but the Prince said “Enough!” and they parted ways. And there he was, standing straight in front of her, and the path was clear. She could escape this cloud of blackness!

She took a step and felt the darkness move with her. The Prince smiled and reached out his hand. With trembling fingers, she reached out too and he took hold of her fingers.

“Will you take me away from them?” she begged, staring deep into his kind eyes.

He smiled sadly. “The shadows will always find you again unless you defeat them once and for all.”

She felt her heart drop and despair bite at her heart. “You’re not going to rescue me?”

“I will walk by your side and I will fight your ghosts for you. But you have to believe the truths I tell you or the lies will never go away.”

“I have been believing the truth this whole time.”

His eyes were dark when he looked at her. “What you have been believing are lies, beloved. What I say to you is the truth: you are worthy; you are loved; you are precious and beautiful in my sight and you have much to offer the world. If you defeat these liars with me you will be able to see sunlight again and walk freely again and you will reach out your hand and touch people and make their lives better. If you hold my hand and walk with me through the darkness you will emerge on the other side and you will give a precious gift to the world.”

She looked into his eyes and knew that he spoke the truth. “You will stay by my side?”

“I will never leave you and I will never abandon you. You will travel through the darkness, but I will be there to fight the terrors away. You will never be alone.”

“Why did you take so long to come to me?”

“I’ve been here this whole time. You just couldn’t see me because the shadows were too strong. But my light is stronger than the shadows and I will destroy them for you if you will only trust that I am with you, even if you can’t see me.”

She stared deeply into his eyes for a long moment, and then she knew.

“I will trust in you even when I can’t see you. I will know that you are by my side even when I can’t feel you. I will believe the truths you tell me even when I can’t hear them over the lies. You are my Prince, come to rescue this damsel in distress.”

“How’s that for a story?” I opened my eyes and looked over at Ella.

She nodded her head slowly.

“What happened to the evil genius?”

“He suffered a great loss that day. But he didn’t let it get him down.”

“Oh?”

“He’s still out there, searching for poor damsels to ruin.”

“The Prince doesn’t defeat him?”

“Someday, the Prince will destroy him completely. But today is not someday, Ella. Today the poor damsels have a chance to fight back before he ruins their lives completely.”

A Fairy Tale - Part 1

               “Tell me a story.”

                “A story?”

                “Tell me a story.”

                I leaned my head back and stared up at the ceiling above Ella’s bed.

                “A story?”

She sighed and looked over at me.

“Yeah, like you used to tell me. Back in high school, whenever we would have sleepovers, and you would make up fairy tales to tell me about your days.”

It had been so long since we’d been in high school, so long since we’d had a sleepover, so long since we’d said more than “I miss you” to each other on Facebook. So a story? Where to even begin?

“Come on, Jane. Tell me a story.”

I sighed. I suppose if she really wanted a story I could give her a story…

Let me tell you a fairy tale. It’s about a damsel in distress and the great Prince who came and rescued her.

Once upon a time a young girl lived in a country far far away. Far far away from what, you ask? She lived in a country far far away from home. You see, her home was a filled with shadows and ghosts and things that went ‘boo’ in the dark, and finally she decided to run away from it all. So one sad day she packed up all her bags and kissed her mother and her father good-bye and got in an old Buick and drove and drove and drove. She had to drive so far that she had to stop halfway there and spend the night in a hotel.

And the next morning she got up early and got back in that Buick and started driving. And the closer she got to her destination, the more her stomach clenched and the more her mouth became dry and the more she could see her fingers start to tremble as they clenched the steering wheel. She could tell she was driving somewhere beautiful, because she could faintly sense rolling green hills and picturesque white picket fences and elegant horses romping through the grass, but all she could really see was the road ahead, spotted as it was by terror.

And soon she was there. As she pulled up in front of her new home, she took a deep breath, crossed her fingers, and whispered “let this be the best year of my life.”

And for a while it was. For a while all her life consisted of was new friends and fun activities and going to classes (and learning and learning and learning), and exploring the lay of the land and learning which foods in the mess hall were edible and which really weren’t. There never seemed to be a dull or a sad moment in her life, and there definitely was never a moment when the shadows of her past fell upon the blossoming promise of her future.

As she went to bed one night, the young girl smiled to herself. She had friends and she was happy and, for the first time in a long time, she was content. She drifted to sleep thinking how happy she was that her wish had come true, and whispered to the sleeping form on the bed across the room “I’m so glad you’re here to enjoy with me the best year of my life.”

But somewhere there was someone who didn’t want her to be happy. An evil genius lay waiting at the periphery of her existence, waiting for her to be at the peak of her happiness so he could come and push her over the brink. This evil genius was a being skilled in all manner of dark arts, and as he watched her live her happy life he contemplated all maleficent tricks he could pull to destroy her.

It took him a while to figure it out, but one day as he sat at the edge of her existence he heard a voice speak to him.

“Let us back in.”

He turned and he saw them, in a great black cloud, the faces of the ghosts of her past and the shadows that had once haunted her.

“But I thought you had been defeated,” said the evil genius.

“We have been on a long journey,” hissed the ghosts. “She escaped us for a while, but we were never defeated. And we have caught up to her now, and are here to defeat her.”

The evil genius smiled. How perfect, he thought: a fool-proof way to destroy her, and he didn’t even have to get his hands dirty.

He stepped aside and waved his arm toward the young girl, who just happened to be traipsing up the hill to go watch some of her friends run a race. “Have at her,” he murmured, then vanished in a blaze of swirling blackness.

The black cloud of ghosts and shadows and horrors unspoken shot forward and wrapped themselves around the girl, who was immediately imprisoned in a darkness so intense that it could only be felt by her, not seen by any others. As she put one foot in front of the other, her steps faltered, and she felt a heaviness in her soul, a heaviness she had not experienced in many months.

She carried on and went and watched her friends, but she couldn’t find it in herself to rejoice for them: her heart was torn and her mind was being plagued with memories, and the sun that had been shining so much for her was covered by angry shadows.

Later that day she went back to her room and stretched herself out on the floor, and cried. She screamed and she raged and she banged her fists into the ground and she pleaded for the shadows to be taken away, and instead they simply grew thicker and more suffocating. She screamed herself hoarse and cried until she was exhausted, and when she was done, lying drained on the floor, the ghosts started talking to her.

“You’re worthless,” one of them hissed into her ear, sending shivers through her body.

“They don’t actually care about you,” whispered another one.

“You’re the cause of all the troubles in the world,” the first one hissed again, and as the tears began to slowly trail from her eyes it was as though they were feeding on them. The more she cried the more vicious they became.

“Your mother wishes she’d had an abortion.”

“Your roommate wishes you were dead. Then at least she would have free tuition.”

“Your brother is so ashamed of you. He only wishes you had never been born.”

“Ever wondered why we’re the only part of your past that comes back? Because we’re the only ones who ever really cared about you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut. “Please, just – just stop it,” she whispered.

The first shadow laughed. “We’re all you have. And we’re never going away.”

“No. Please, no.”

“You know how to make us stop.”

Slowly, she stood up and walked to her desk. She sat heavily down in her chair and looked at the green scissors sitting in the mug with all her pens.

“Will you go away if I do it?”

“Oh, yes.”

It only took a second – just a second to press the tip of the scissors into the skin of her forearm and drag them up; just a second for the blood to slowly bubble to the surface and sit there, each drop like an tiny ruby, so beautiful and yet so horrifying. And just a second for the intensity of the black cloud to triple in horror, until it covered her so that she couldn’t scream, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe.

The shadows started laughing, and each individual chuckle sent shafts of terror down her spine. The first one leaned down to her ear.

“You will never defeat us. You were put under pressure, and you broke. You will never escape this darkness.”

Outside the window, the evil genius watched the girl put her head down on the table, watched her shoulders start to shake and her fingers tighten on the handle of the scissors. The game had almost been won, he knew, and as he laughed silently to himself he shook his fist and whispered “I will win this one, my friend. I have already won this one.”

The next morning the sun rose just as always, and it shone just as brightly as ever. The girl’s roommate woke up and went about her business as cheerily as any other day, and the girl herself climbed out of bed as though today were yesterday and her past were still a thousand miles away.

But around her lurked the black cloud, and no matter how hard she tried to look into the future, all she saw was blackness.

In another life

In another life I woke up in the mornings and found myself lying in a bunk bed, enveloped by purple sheets and closed in by a Naked Green Man and Charlie the Elephante. In another life I looked out my window into the long street leading away from Marzell, and in springtime watched the cows munch on their grass and in wintertime watched the snow fall from the heavens. In another life I sometimes woke up at midnight, convinced that my roommate was sitting at her desk, painting away like there's no tomorrow.

In another life I got on a bus every day and rode down a mountain to school, and came back eight hours later to a dorm full of girls. The lights in the dining room were yellow instead of white and the most we could fit at our table was thirty, not over a thousand. There was almost always someone sitting at a piano, playing the soundtrack to our movie, and there were other girls curled up on a couch, snuggling and giggling and sharing secrets about their day (and whispering and making up nicknames for cute boys), becoming more like sisters every day. And just like sisters sometimes we fought--sometimes the peace of the morning was interrupted by yelling, sometimes there was a direct line between two people, a line spelling out clearly "tension"--and we always made up in the end and were closer than ever.

In another life every night of the weekend nine or ten girls piled into a small room and gathered around a TV and watched movies and swooned over Lucas Till or argued over whether or not Justin Bieber deserves Selena Gomez. Sometimes we went into the kitchen and turned Rihanna on really loud and danced like madwomen, and others we chose to listen to Ingrid Michaelson and sway pensively, dreaming about the future. And when people celebrated their birthdays we dragged them outside and threw water on them and ran screaming from them when they tried to give us a hug.

In another life there was a day when all the staff members left and the Seniors were in charge and we ran all over town and had a water fight. There was a day when we all locked ourselves up in the TV room and sprayed hairspray and put on make-up and watched Disney movies until when we walked out we had been transformed from simple girls into beauties fit for a Banquet. There was a weekend when we traipsed up to Switzerland and danced and screamed "Body Body!" and "Party in a Swiss Chalet" and fried bacon for an hour. There were long walks in the woods to visit Karcia, sledding trips down the hill and Hieber's picnics in Malsburg. There were countless other times when we lived together and laughed together and grew together and loved life together.

In this life sometimes I forget that life. Sometimes I look at it and all I see are the fights, the days of sickness, the boring weekends when everyone was off on some trip or another. Sometimes all I remember is being stressed out because of school; I forget all the girls who distracted me from it when I needed a break. I only remember that I had to clean the bathrooms every day, and not that I got to do it with Ami. I remember only that the winter was bitterly cold, not that I had precious friends to snuggle under a blanket with. I remember that the nights were dark but forget that they were also filled with beautiful stars under which we sat on blankets and shared dreams about our future husbands.

In this life sometimes I go days without thinking of that life. And then there are days when I wake up and look out the window and instead of seeing the streets of Marzell I see the Asbury campus. And instead of seeing Angela I see Rebeca. And I eat my meals under white lights in a room with a thousand other people. My small group is made up of people from TAG and iTAG, not the Witty Home Babes. And most days I see that this is good, but there are other days when I want to go back to bed and keep dreaming. I want to dream that I am sitting on one of those yellow couches, the ones that used to sit next to the aquarium before all the fish died, and all around me are my Blauen Babes. I want to dream that we are sitting under blankets sharing prayer requests and praises, and that outside, though we can't see it because the sun has gone down, the snow is falling and maybe, just maybe, we'll go out and carol in a few minutes. I want to dream that I am back in that life and that this life is still just a hope for the future.

I want to dream all this, but I know that it can't be true because that life is gone. That life lives on only in my memories now, and when I think this I feel the urge to cry. But then I realize that that is good, too. That life was good, and this life will also be good, and someday, in yet another life, I'll look back on both of them and shed a tear because I want to dream that I am back in one of them. That life is gone. But I have the pictures and I have the John Mayer and Ingrid Michaelson songs running through my head as a soundtrack to the memories. Maybe someday I'll go back to that place, and walk through the dorm, and in each room I'll remember something beautiful or tragic that happened. And instead of shedding a tear because it's over, I'll smile because it happened.

In this life, I sometimes smile because I remember that you were in that life.

twentytwelve: something greener?

the thing about twentyeleven is that it was a year of major change. more than that: it was the year that i bid my childhood good-bye and embarked on the train to adulthood, and responsibility. it was the year that i said good-bye to high school and hello to college. and the thing about going off to college is that it means your life is going to change. completely. i mean, you go from living in your parents' (or your dorm parents', for you other boarding school kids) home to a dorm room. you go from being dependent on your parents for everything, from your meals to your clothes to your rides to school, to having to decide for yourself where to eat and what to spend your money on. and of course there's the whole matter of go-to-college-become-instantly-poor that's affecting every financial decision you make. the summer between your senior year of high school and your freshman year of college is your last chance to be a kid. it's the last time you'll be able to just be carefree with life; after that, you're in charge, you have to make the decisions: you're an adult.

so i think it's safe to say that for those of us who graduated high school in twentyeleven it became a year of change. there's no way to get around the fact that last year was one in which everything changed. and it's also safe to say that most people don't like change. oh, we might like to sit around at home and dream of a time, maybe ten or fifteen years down the road, when everything will be different. we like to close our eyes and picture ourselves at age thirty, wildly successful in our highly lucrative career, with an adoring husband (wife if you happen to be a boy) who lives to serve us, and two or three adorable children who are perfect angels. or maybe you're the starving artist type, who pictures yourself living in some drafty garret somewhere lost in the middle of new york or london or paris, plying your craft and living on stale crackers and lofty dreams. either way, we all like to imagine what life will be like when it all changes. but when it actually comes down to the nitty gritty of change, it kind of sucks. it's much less glamorous and much more...tiresome. it has less to do with success being handed to you on a silver platter than it does with hard work and slowly improving until you reach the point you've dreamed of. (we all just wish we could skip the work and jump ahead to when we're "thirty, flirty, and thriving"). but it doesn't work that way. someday we wake up and realize that we'll never reach that point unless we go through the slow process of change, and it's more like being skinned alive than it is ripping off a band-aid.
all this to say, twentyeleven, for me at least, was the year that the slow process of being skinned alive began. and i will be the first to sit in my room and tell myself how much i like change and how i can't wait to be "all grown up." i'll also be the first to run screaming back to bed at my first glimpse of what growing up really looks like.

that said, it doesn't seem like i should be holding onto twentyeleven at all, does it? i should have been leaping forward into twentytwelve, screaming "hallelujah, the year of the torturous beginnings of change is behind me, let's move forward into the glorious new dawn of beauty!", all while sprinkling daisies behind me, possibly into a field of shining green grass underneath a sky as blue as the sea, accompanied by the sweet sweet trilling of birds. and yet, oddly enough, that's not what happened. instead i found myself clinging to the tree at the edge of the meadow, the one with "2011" carved into it, holding on for dear life while the great winds of change pulled at me and sought to toss me unceremoniously into twentytwelve. needless to say, the winds succeeded in tearing me away from twentyeleven, so here i sit, firmly planted at the beginning of twentytwelve. and you see, the reason i didn't want to leave twentyeleven is because, while the latter part of it was a year of change, the beginning still held the last shreds of my childhood. and as soon as i dipped my first toe into the waters of almost-adulthood, i realized two things: that i was undeniably excited about growing up and having a future, and that i was irrevocably tied to my childhood and terrified of leaving it behind. confusing, right?

so while i should be looking forward to twentytwelve with great hopefulness to the future, i'm still looking back at twentyeleven and twentyten and all the years before that, years that are filled with pictures of my childhood. because this year, i'm  not just growing up. i'm not just stepping into the world of adulthood, i'm actually leaving my childhood behind, in another country. almost all of my memories and lessons are housed in that other country, and i have to leave it and walk into another one. and that scares me so much that i'm tempted to turn and jump into bed and hold on for dear life and swear i'll never leave. but i can't really do that, now can i? i have to be mature and grow up, because while my past is in that country, my future, for the moment, lies somewhere else, and how will i ever meet it if i don't step forward now and grasp it?

they say the grass is always greener on the other side. i don't think that's the problem, though. i think the problem is just that we can't be on both sides at once. the grass isn't greener on either side; it's just a different shade, and we want both shades because they're both good, but we're only allowed to have one at once. and that, my friends, is why i think we hate change so much, and why i am so reluctant to blaze forward into twentytwelve. but then i know that i'll never get anything accomplished if i keep looking backward. i have to move forward, eyes on the horizon, and every once in a while i can glance back at where i've come from, just to make sure i'm still going in a straight line.