A Reason to Cry

OK, so I wasn't sure when or if to post this, but this evening's fireside at the Matises' home got me thinking, along with a really good conversation with a fellow I drove home, and I'm just feeling the desire to share it. It was a time when I had a rough night and ended up regaining a little perspective on life in general and, most importantly, learning to simplify my thoughts a little. It's a journal entry I wrote a few months ago:

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13 June 2007 (a little after midnight)

I'm sitting--laying, rather, in the grass outside a church building near the condo, trying to calm down and use up some energy. A roommate invited some friends over to watch a horrific movie full of violence and terror. I couldn't go to sleep with that wretchedness seeping through the door, the graphic noises of death with women and children screaming. I abhor senseless violence and cannot abide it. My other roommate seems to have slept through the terrible noises but woke up when I turned on some quiet, soothing music to mask the noise and gruffly asked me to turn it off. This is when my own room would be nice.

So now I'm left to think alone in the darkness. Dangerous.

I just saw a meteorite. It was beautiful.

Reflecting on what's next. Something has to give. [Here I named some projects I was working on, work, educational goals, people in my life.] What am I doing? Nothing I want fully works. No job works. No school works. I have no money, no prospects, no home. Surrounded by friends who know me but don't stay, family who are permanent but don't know me like they used to. I don't practice my hobbies anymore. No passion left. The passion I discovered had to be extinguished for the gospel's sake.

Is life sucking me dry? Or am I doing something to myself? Am I killing myself slowly again? I'm bored with life. And yet unmotivated to make it harder on myself again and therefore more interesting or challenging. So now what?

Two meteorites. How do people make it through life without ever seeing one?

[At this point, I stopped writing and just laid on my back, looking up at the stars, with my hands behind my head. I wrote about it afterwards:]

Laying in the grass, I just felt like I needed to cry. I thought about all I have to cry about. It seemed like it should be enough to get the tears flowing, to let it all out. But that didn't cut it.

I thought about a co-worker and the difficulty of her life, and her low self-esteem, linked to her years of neglect and abuse by those who should have nurtured her. I thought of victims of cruelty. Children without love in their lives. Friends who are struggling far more than I with the conflict between their attractions and desires and their beliefs. The hatred and violence in the world. The deceit and dishonesty.

I found something to cry about.