So one of my great huge giant realizations I have had recently is that I need to be more honest with myself.
I like to avoid things.
A lot.

While I have known that I am always looking for right and wrong, it has recently been creeping up on me why it is so hard for me to find it.
I put so much into what the people I love think, that I often get confused as to the source of right and wrong. Sometimes I attribute it to their approval of me.

One of the thoughts I never let myself fully explore was my odd tendency to, whenever I was picturing myself doing something good or noble or whatever, I would picture my mom's side of the family all seeing me do it. They were proud.
I let myself think on that recently
I have never felt exactly part of my moms side of the family. I love them and I know we are a family,
but I have always noticed how very different I am from them. I have always been (and so has my family to some extent) the outcast I guess.
This would never be verbalized and they try very hard to pretend it is not there,
but really we have nothing in common.
I feel like everything I do seems silly to them.
Not just bad decision silly, but like... frivolous and like I have no real idea about anything.
I don't know why this bothers me so much except perhaps that I feel that they are a source of right and wrong. I know they are not
but I think I have been putting a lot of stock into it. If they would only accept what I am doing then it must be right.
I am fighting for approval where I am sure they are not aware they have been withholding it. I am the disinterested child that they never bonded with.
What I have been though, quite different from the part I play around them, is quite opposite from indifferent. I would like them to be proud of me. I don't know why.
Maybe because they are the only family members who don't glory in my successes. They in fact quite ignore me. When I do have the occasional chat with a family member, it is all in familial politeness and I can see that they really do not understand why I do anything I do.
Which makes me not understand either.
The thoughts which I think they think are what make me feel inferior
but maybe they are not even thinking them
I shouldn't put so much stock into what they think
especially when I have been acting a part around them for most of my life.
Why should I expect that they are being totally themselves when I certainly have not been.

Sigh.

Tonight was the debate.

I wish I would have been more organized

Well...
   I had a delightful conversation with my mother today. It is my dad's birthday but he was sleeping so I talked to my mom for a little while. We had the usual chat
"Finding any interesting boys?"

"Lots of them mom friends"
"Ah, well there is always next semester"
"Mom I've decided I am going to be an old maid"
"Why do you say that?"
"I think I would be good at it"
"Why is that?"
"Well I can easily picture myself being the weird lady at the end of the street but  like a second mom to all the neighborhood kids and all that jazz" (wayyyyy paraphrased)
"Ha ha, well that could work"
"Yeah, if I do get married I think it will be after everyone has given up hope of me getting married, and then I will just be like... oh yeah I am going to get married"
"Well... I didn't get married til I was 27. So... if you don't, what will you do until then?"
"I don't know yet, but it's going to be great"
"Well that is a very good time to be concentrating on the Lord's work"
"Yeah... I will definitely be working on that... I just don't know what specificially yet"
"Yes, it's just a change of focus"

In conclusion: all my relatives will now think I have no intention of getting married
and my mom thought that I had been out a husband hunting
It makes me laugh
It also makes me laugh a little bit that she takes me so seriously.
Right now my future is something I kind of joke about since I have no real clue. I like to inform my mom whenever a whim comes by and right now I am whimsically thinking of how nice it would be to be an old maid.
She thinks that is my real plan. I have no real plan. But I am glad at the same time that she does take me seriously, and is okay with whatever I decide I love my mother a lot.
I think if she would have laughed it off, quite like I am doing now, I would have been rather hurt.

I am a very blessed person.

Now onto the actual part of the conversation I was going to write about. The above just kind of came out of my fingers before I could tell them not to...
whoops
anyways... my mom was telling me about the new couch they bought.
Sounds exciting. Except for our living room is totally different now
"Yeah and we had to take your desk out of the playroom to get it in, now it is not even in the house anymore."
Ouch.
No more desk.
To be quite honest, I forgot I had a desk. But that is not the point!
The point is... I have no room anymore, the couches have been replaced by a new couch which I have never seen before, and now I have no desk either. All my belongings are in a box or drawer some where. And I didn't organize anything well enough to even have a prayer of finding it now.
I don't really belong there anymore.
That is actually more comforting than I thought it ever would be, but it is still incredibly sad.
When I go there, I shall be visiting, although my parents will think I live their still, but I just won't be able to feel like it. It will be where I used to live.
I am supposed to change, but home isn't. At least that is how I used to think.
Now...
well... I think I am growing again.
I have realized that I need to be honest with myself.
I didn't realize before how much I lied to myself, but I really do. I decided when I was younger that there were certain things I just couldn't admit to myself or they would be true, but now I NEED to admit them or I kind of turn into a crazy person.
Anyways
what I am about to admit to myself is:

I am glad home is changing.

Gasp!
What did I just say? No, that didn't come from me. No no no no no
Yes. Yes it did.
(I think I would make a good schizophrenic person also... but I don't think I will put that in my plans for the future)

I am glad home is changing, because it makes me realize that I can't put my identity in that home anymore. It allows me to allow myself to grow, and change.
Oh how I want to cry when I am honest with myself.

This morning at breakfast Emma said how she loves going home because she fits in so well when she goes there. It is like she never left.
That is kind of how I used to want it to always be.
And it is kind of, I mean, my parents still love me and will always want me to come back home.
But...
I don't fit in like I used to.
I didn't as much as I should have even before I left.
I grew up before I knew it.
I kind of miss it.
But I am glad things do change.
I realize that I need change.

    In being honest with myself, I realize how human I really am.
who would have thought?

Why is it that I am so black and white?

Someone tried to tell me recently that I wasn't   and it made me really mad. It wouldn't be so bad if I wasn't I guess...
but once I had the realization that I see everything that way
someone telling me I was wrong seemed extremely presumptuous and
a surge of anger and pride and a ton of other nasty things just kind of swept over me and I wanted them to immediately be gone... kind of like the angels in Emperor's New Groove.
I would have wanted them to come back you see
but at that moment I just wanted to wish them away

Anyways
right now
I am in the middle of a lot of things which are rather all or nothing
at least they seem that way to me.
But they aren't. They need a medium
and I can't find it.
And I just keep bouncing from black to white and white to black.
sigh

I have to go

"I bet it's dead somewhere."
-Kendra on the dear Dr. McNeil hit this morning but did not kill

"Man, she's going to turn
and just know.
And she does turn...
but she still doesn't know."
- Dr. Bell on "The Dead"

"When I was 17, I wanted to die for some girl. But I am really glad I didn't.
- Tyler