I can't write well.
I can't speak.
I can't see or touch anything without wanting it to burst into flames.
I can't walk straight.
I can't hold myself back or control my hate.
I can't stop my bile.
Get out of my way, world. I want to punch you in the heart and tear out your kidneys and eat them. I want to rip my eyes out so I don't have to look at you anymore. I want to go to every person I hate and say the most horrible thing I can think of and ruin their life because that phrase will haunt them until they day they die, shriveled and alone and all-too-aware of their own inadequacy because of what Robby Van Arsdale said to them. I want to make someone suffer.
And there Olivia sits, happier than sun on daisies, wind through rainy woods, fresh-cut grass, baskets of puppies, the sound of plates on an empty table, the creak of your grandmother's front door, the smell of brownies, and the first star in the sky on the night you fall in love.
I am a bad person, because even the happiest person in the world only makes me angrier.
Sometimes you have to out-stubborn the anger.
ReplyDeleteYeah. . . I think I should say I'm not angry AT Olivia. She's fine. I'm happy for her, and for Dustin.
ReplyDeleteI'm not angry AT anything, really. Just seriously peeved at everything.
Thanks for the sentiment about stubbornness, but I think I just want to be angry for a while. Just . . . really, really mad.
I'll get over it and go back to writing sad things again.
I understand.
ReplyDeleteTo me, it seems like the following: It's the difference between being jealous of PEOPLE or of their SITUATIONS in this particular topic. It's wanting something for oneself that someone else has, but not wanting to take it away from that someone.
So I understand. That's all I could have said, but I figured I would add to it. Why should I just give you two words when I just listened to a delicious concert?
I don't know if this will contribute to or begin to dissolve your madness, but . . . as education is the part of your life I see the most, I have a quote for you!
ReplyDelete"Educators write like marshmallows--a thin layer of sugar filled with unnecessary (and rather disgusting) fluff."
UGH.
ReplyDeleteEducators unlike my aunt, who is actually pretty good. I just hope she rubs off on the current generation a little more.
This is probably like, the worst thing to say, but you don't have to stop your anger. You don't. You can't, and God does not ask that of you.
ReplyDeleteWhat you do with your anger is a different thing. Anger can drive people into action. Positive action.
Being angry shakes me up and reminds me not to just float through life. It helps me get stuff done. You're angry already; do something with it. Write something (check?). Tell someone you've been afraid to be honest with the truth. Climb a mountain. I don't know. Direct it somewhere and wield it.
Also: You are too harsh with yourself. There's nothing wrong with being angry. It's what you do with it that counts. You talk about wanting to do terrible things-- but you haven't, so just . . . give that away. Also: you ARE a good writer and a good speaker. Really. Quite possibly the best I know, and that's not flattery.
You're not Olivia, and life would be weird if you were. I can understand being jealous and whatnot, but haven't you figured out that God's already working stuff out perfectly for you, and when it happens, the timing will be right, and you'll have all the puppies and sun-daisies and woods-wind and brownie-smells and first-stars that you need?
Yeah. All that is probably all wrong, but I believe it to be true, and I'm working on the whole frankness thing. So . . . there.
Janelle, how in the world would that be the worst thing to say?
ReplyDelete(to Robby: Maybe I should rephrase it to say Educators who want to make money?)
YAY FRANKNESS
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks, Janelle. I will have to compliment you back someday, but I don't think it should be knee-jerk. It should be heartfelt. So let me stop being angry and then do it right.
I used your advice. I turned my anger into action. I think it worked? Time will tell.
Brooke: I'm not sure; I guess it's a byproduct of the not-used-to-being-frank thing?
ReplyDeleteRobby: Honestly, you really don't have to do that. I don't trade compliments; I give them. Congratulations, by the way! That makes me proud of you and just generally glad. I knew you could. :-)
So I've been thinking about this pretty much all day, and I thought new things that I just have to share right now or I'll explode.
ReplyDeleteIn Dante's "Inferno," there is a special place in hell for people who don't feel. They are whipped and stung by flies and chased with banners and forever chasing banners and whatnot because if they didn't feel in this life, divine providence must MAKE them feel.
Physical pain isn't pleasant, but it tells you when you're hurt. The father of a friend of mine was diabetic and lost feeling in his toes, and he once stepped on a nail and it got infected because he didn't realize he'd hurt it and so he didn't take care of it.
Emotions tell you the state of your heart in much the same way. You can't trust them completely, but they are gifts from God for a reason. They tell you things about yourself that you never would have known, and they help you stay in touch with God, and they help you monitor your relationships with other people. They even help you make decisions.
So . . . if you're still angry, BE angry. Be alive. Experience it fully and honestly and let it tell you things. And then do something with those things and make it really MEAN something.
**Diving off makeshift soapbox now; thanks you for your time.**
Hm.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Dante. And not Dante Gabriel Rosetti. Him, I can do without.
This is a good thing, I suppose, but it is still never pleasant to be angry and not know why.
No, not pleasant. I'm sorry. (But that doesn't mean it's not . . . uhm . . . good?)
ReplyDeleteWait, are you saying I'm Dante, now (no, you're not)? Because I can think of at least one major similarity between me and Durante degli Alighieri. Sadly, it's not the flair for description.
Seriously, that dude could write.
Oh, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti really wasn't so bad of a guy. He liked Keats. I like this one think Keats did one time.
Dante Rossetti was an aesthete. Which means that he was a retard and also a butt. No. Double no.
ReplyDeleteOkay, well, this is a thing that seriously bothers me. Hence, I am commencing an intense and long riff, and it's probably not worth your time, but this is one of the things that bothers me most.
ReplyDeleteYour comment is really harsh (funny but harsh). I really think that if you looked you could find something to like about him. You can't (well, actually you can, but I still think it's wrong) just dismiss a person because he or she does not think like you do or act like you do or have as much brainpower as you do.
There are always things to despise in a person. Abraham Lincoln said that if you look for the bad in the hearts of mankind, you will surely find it. He's right. If you look at Lincoln, you can see a guy who didn't care enough about slavery and seriously doubted God and had major depression issues and did some stupid things sometimes. But you can also look at him and see a great man who tried to save his country as best he knew how and cared deeply about abolition and did a pretty good job of raising his kids.
Whichever thing you've focused on, you've lost half the person.
Some people annoy me because they seem arrogant or talk too much or never listen when I have something to say to them. I could easily just dismiss them as people not worth my time, but then I'd miss out on all the truly excellent things they do. When I met you, I thought you were a total jerk and didn't want to have anything to do with you, but I decided not to reject you as a person, and you turned out to have some really excellent qualities.
Life is not black and white. We have color spectrums for a reason. Black and white pictures are beautiful and simple, but they don't tell the whole story. Photographs (even in color) are lovely, but again, they don't tell the whole truth. There are so many layers to experience and so many layers to people that you can examine them for hours and not get bored.
ReplyDeletePeople can always surprise you. They are complicated, and they are all mixtures of good and bad. I'm not saying that they are equal mixtures by any means, but everyone has both in them. No one should be put on a pedestal, but no one should become some sort of ladder that you climb on to make you feel better about yourself or whatever it is people do to make them dismiss an entire person as "No."
I'm not saying you shouldn't be judicious in your choice of friends, but you should treat everyone with dignity and respect that they deserve as children of God and as photographs of that God (however faint they are). God made each of us and gave us good and bad qualities together.
I read stories to understand other people's experience, and the thing that bothers me most about Haluska is that he oversimplifies everything. He defines people as "friends" or "enemies," and most people become enemies. His method has some truth to it, but it doesn't tell the whole story because he dismisses people based on the first or second thing he finds about them that he doesn't like.
But most people are just lost. They are trying to make sense out of life the best they know how with whatever tools they have. Not all of them are as enlightened as you are, and you cannot judge them by the same standard by which you judge yourself-- what's more, you really cannot judge them at all.
Haluska originally dismissed Gilgamesh as a guy totally obsessed with strength and sex, and because of that, he completely missed the entire point of "The Epic of Gilgamesh"-- a point that brought up a much deeper and more important issue: "the gods don't care about us, and it doesn't matter what you do because nothing lasts, anyway."
That's the thing. We exist to find out about God and tell others what we know about Him, yes? We exist to make a choice between God and, well, not God. God has trusted us to make that decision, and He treats all of us with dignity, as people equipped and somehow worthy to make that choice. We aren't here do decide about the people. All we know about them is that they have experienced pain and are trying to figure life out.
I know this is a lot to respond to you just not liking Dante Rossetti, but you have to remember that the aesthete movement was meant to remind people to look for and appreciate beauty in the world. Sure, they took it to extremes, but beauty is worth appreciating. God made it. He designed many creatures to be attracted to beauty to preserve it for us to enjoy. Yes, the aesthetes got it somewhat wrong, but they also got it somewhat right, and they did their best with what they knew, and the fact that they had the courage to try to do what they thought was important is admirable.
Even people in whom there seems to be no beauty or worthwhile thing have something to offer, something to think about (you did read that nutzoid thing about Hitler, yes? I'm not saying we should emulate him, or anything, but if we can understand why he did what he did, maybe we can help other people facing similar things and prevent it from happening again and then maybe his life will not have been wasted). The very least we owe other people is a chance to be understood, to be respected. And really, we should never stop giving them chances (70x7, anyone?). Because that's what God does. If God sees worth in people and gives them chance after chance until they absolutely refuse another one, then isn't that what we should try to do?
Okay. Janelle has just inundated everyone with like, three times more stuff than usual. Sorry about that.
ReplyDeleteYou kind of hit a nerve. :-S
You're right.
ReplyDeleteStill, simplification is useful and important. It allows people to make snap decisions without having to overthink everything (most women overthink, most men underthink). In an effort to be more Greek, therefore, I think dudes could benefit from thinking more and chicks could benefit from thinking less.
Kayla (and other people, but first with her) couldn't understand how I could say that "West Virginia is better than Nebraska." She said "They're not comparable! They are totally different!" I returned that "The differences make West Virginia better." Perhaps I'm wrong for saying it, but it is a necessary skill, to make simplified decisions. If people couldn't make ridiculously oversimplified decisions, they would never be able to fight for the things they loved. We would all end up saying "But Hitler probably thought he was doing the right thing" and never ever see anything for what it is. Some things are wrong. Some things are right. Seeing the world in shades of gray is only appropriate sometimes, and I am sick of doing it so often. So I have tried to find the good in aestheticism and not found enough. Done. Now I can make oversimplified decisions. Like this: "Dante Rossetti was selfish and troubled." "Oscar Wilde was misled and misleading." "Christina Rossetti was depressing and disgusting." "Aesthetes are not worth agreeing with."
I don't want you to think that I made this snap decision without thinking about it. I don't want you to think "OH WELL THESE PEOPLE ARE EVIL JUST BECAUSE." They are evil because they take a piece of the truth and pervert it. They take the search for beauty, and make it an end of itself. That's the devil's trick. I don't want it.
I'm trying to find a world to live in and agree with that I can support. If I lend my support and emotional involvement to all of the things I read, I would collapse. So I will read and think about and be enlightened by things written by aesthetes and gothics and poseurs and communists, but I will not agree with any part of it that I don't want to.
I can appreciate looking for the worth in the detritus. Finding a positive message in Gilgamesh (or any work) is a gift. Don't throw that away. But don't look so hard for positivity that you pick out something that isn't good by accident.
"In an effort to be more Greek, therefore, I think dudes could benefit from thinking more and chicks could benefit from thinking less."
ReplyDelete^This.
"They are evil because they take a piece of the truth and pervert it."
^This.
"So I will read and think about and be enlightened by things written by aesthetes and gothics and poseurs and communists, but I will not agree with any part of it that I don't want to."
^This.
You see, this is what I love about conversations with you. You balance things.
Sometimes I worry that you make your decisions too hastily (like my dad and Haluska do). You do come what I think is right conclusion most of the time, but sometimes the reasoning isn't as solid as I'd like it to be (for instance, "The Epic of Gilgamesh" is still wrong, but it's even more wrong for far more serious reasons with much deeper repercussions than Haluska said, for he looked only at the surface).
Now, though, I can see that you've thought about it. And that makes everything better. I guess what I want to know is, had you thought about it before my insanity?
I tend to give everyone the benefit of the doubt, and I often take it too far. Some things are, as you said, absolutes.
I do, however, think that taking the time to understand something gives us our best chance of fighting it. ("Ender's Game," anyone?) It has dangers, though, which you so aptly named.
Still, I studied Hitler not because I agree with what he did but because no one with any power ever seemed to make the connection between how we treated Germany after WW1 and the way WW2 started, and that is a mistake we cannot afford to make again (we couldn't afford it last time). If we condemn Hitler out of hand, then I think we stand an even greater risk of becoming like him, as the Hutus and Tutsis did to each other in Rwanda.
So yes, I agree with you? Shall we agree to agree?
Also, thanks for indulging my insanity. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy these talks.
Hooray the internet!
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I really thought about it before I described it. What I do know is that even when I say something stupid, I usually at least have a stupid reason for it. I don't think I've said anything truly stupid stupid for a long time.
I'll toast to that. If I had any toast. :-)
ReplyDeleteGood for you. I wish I could say that.
I have finally read all of these long and wonderful comments. And I think you have said it all. I am glad to be friends with such thoughtful people.
ReplyDeleteWhoa, mega lots of comments!
ReplyDeleteThe mad post surprised me...but I enjoyed it quite well. Don't only go back to writing sad posts. I've felt that kind of anger over here, although usually it's because of unfair people who try to charge mzungus (white people) two or three times the amount they charge Africans. That makes me sooo mad!
Haha, sorry. Reading through back posts is probably like wading through a river of elephants.
ReplyDelete