Many of you already know the story behind the picture and poem that I'm going to post on here. For those of you who don't you'll have to ask me in a more private venue because I don't really feel like sharing on here yet.
Here is my poem, based on the picture, with some help from the fabulous Mayeken Kehr.
It doesn't really have a title so if you have any suggestions let me know.
As the darkness still
Surrounds, I wait
Clinging
Hoping
that one day, its power
will diminish,
that I will break forth and bloom.
Spreading light
Expanding,
to reach for the sunlight with my petals
to extend and spread beauty,
to show the world my joy.
But the darkness will return.
And my trunk will grow gray
dull as the poison
the darkness spreads, reaching
Smothering,
pervades into everything,
Invading every inch of me
Searching for a spark.
I fold my petals, retracting deep
Down, beyond the reach of darkness
to the inner
Spark that never goes
Out. Waiting
to be met
with fresh air and
Burst into flame.
That spark, stays alive.
Through all the darkness
That seeks to destroy.
But where does this evil
this malice this destruction
reside? From where does it
come? It is one
with the spark, one
with the same dear essence
it seeks to destroy.
They came together created as one,
made for balance and harmony but
create separation and
fear.
Darkness seeks to pervade
the spark, to twist
it to its purposes and extinguish
that hope, but how can one
abolish
what was created
To be?
How can darkness
Survive free of the being
out of which it came?
It cannot.
There is no total destruction
There is no desecration of being,
There is no death.
Only hope.
Since my last post several weeks ago there has been a great sense of relief in my life. I no longer carry this burden that no one knows about, I share these emotions and feelings more freely and I don’t feel as alone. But in spite of all of this, I still struggle. I still cannot tell people how I am truly feeling. If someone asks me how I am doing I still always say “fine” or “ok” or “good” and everyone believes me. No one holds me to a real answer, asking why I’m fine or what’s going on or if I’m REALLY fine. I thought about this yesterday and even discussed it with a couple of people and we decided that a) we don’t really want most people to know how we really are, the aspects of our lives that they really care about really are fine, and b) most people don’t really want to know, they ask out of courtesy and don’t expect more than a one word answer. I mean, if I would have explained to Marjorie Krause that, “I’m alive, and that’s good enough for today,” she probably wouldn’t have known what to say. And why should she know, is it really that important for people outside of our families and close friends to know how we really are? I would make the case that it is, at least for most people, because even though they don’t expect a real answer, they would be willing to listen to one. If they care enough to ask then I would say that they deserve a real answer, even though I never really give one.
Now that I’m done with that random rant, the main purpose of this post is to explain my last week or so. Last week was rough for me. Starting on Sunday, things didn’t really go like I wanted them to. One specific incident sticks out but it’s not important, you can ask if you want to know, and I was feeling alone again. The meds didn’t feel like they were working, I was easily irritated, especially when playing basketball (out of character for something that was supposed to be a release for me) and I was feeling overwhelmed by classes.
Within all this madness, there were four times that I felt comfort, and three of them came from one person. First, at the start of the week, I had a meeting that, to be honest, I didn’t really want to go to, but this friend offered a reflection at the beginning that stood out to me. She said that she had been fasting that day and during that time she thought about the mistakes we make and how we always come back to the same things. At first she felt disheartened but after thinking about it more she realized that even though we make the same mistakes, they aren’t quite the same and each time we get a little closer to where we want to be. This really resonated with me because I feel as though I keep making the same mistakes time after time, but I now I know to look for where they are getting smaller and I’m getting closer to where I want to be.
Second, on Friday I had another meeting that started off with another reflection by the same friend. This time she talked about how we can get in a rut and like I talked about earlier, when telling others how we are we don’t always tell the truth. At this point I can’t remember exactly what she said but it was something that I needed to hear that day.
Third, this same friend just read my blog post Friday night and Saturday morning she delivered a handwritten seven page letter, offering words of comfort, reassurance, and understanding. Several things from this letter stuck out to me. She encouraged me to take my struggles to God, but not in the way of prayer. She told me that sometimes you have to yell at God before you can pray to God. She gave me two passages from the Psalms that are angry and lamenting and I was surprised at the emotion,
“I am weary with mourning;
every night I flood my bed with tears;
I drench my couch with my weeping.
My eyes waste away because of grief” Psalm 6:6-7
Finally, she offered me these words “There can still be so much beauty in the broken.” I don’t really have a reflection on this phrase because I don’t know where to begin when processing it, but I know that it stood out to me the most.
The final event of the week was by far the most powerful and is really the reason for this post, sorry it took so long to get here. Sunday I went to Lorraine for church, excited to see the Harders but still feeling a little off, not quite right. I didn’t know that anything special was going to happen during the service, but I was wrong. It felt just like any other service, I wasn’t paying too close of attention, kind of in my own little world, lost in thought, until Lois got up for her sermon. I tuned in for the first bit but after she finished talking about Tiger Woods I couldn’t help myself and I began to slip back into my own thoughts. But something she said caught my attention. She talked of a friend who was anxious and not content with his life. How he experienced “deep darkness and doubts” and how “These are horrible, frightening storms for him.” I listened more carefully throughout the rest of the sermon, wondering if I had heard right. The person she described sounded an awful lot like me. She went on to say how we have painful and trying times in our lives, and than Lent is a reminded or those times, the most difficult and painful, and how those times can also be the times when we can give ourselves to “the most humbly and completely to the mission of God’s love.” By the time she was done, I was completely numb. Never before had a sermon spoken such a powerful message to me. I didn’t know how to react. We sang a hymn and then the choir sang a song, to invite us to communion, and I lost control. The tears began to flow and I didn’t want them to stop. I wasn’t crying as much when I got up to take communion but then Lois looked me in the eye and said, “Receive the sheltering love of God.” I made it back to my seat and leaned forward and I cried for the rest of the service. Every time I heard Tom and Lois say those words I felt safe. It was at this point in the service that I felt something that I have never even come close to before. I am a very skeptical person when it comes to people claiming that they encountered God. Saying that they could hear God or feel God’s presence, so it might surprise some of you who know me better to hear this. I felt God there, holding me, I could feel God’s arms around me, holding me in a way that was gentle and protective, reassuring me that I was love and safe. I felt the sheltering love of God in a way that I did not know was possible. I have never felt so safe and loved in my entire life. There is no doubt in my mind that if things hadn’t been exactly as they were the past several months I would not have had this experience. If I had not been as vulnerable, stretched, desperate, I would not have been open enough to feel that presence there with me, holding me.
To wrap up this post I’d like to talk about a song that I’ve been listening to a lot the past couple of weeks. It has kind of become my theme song and it speaks to what I feel. The song is “Dear God” by FM Static. It starts off, “Dear God I wrote this letter, to put my thoughts on paper.” It feels like I’ve been writing my thoughts and feelings down more lately because I thought it would help me to understand what I was going through. The song really gets to the point the first time through the chorus when the lyrics read, “I don't know, but i got this feeling,
that today's gonna be my turning point, Everyday I get a little bit closer, it feels so good to finally be over I don't know, but I think I'm learning, This type of thing’s, never been my calling card, sometimes you just gotta look closer, instead of searchin' so hard.”
There has been at least one point every day for the past two weeks that I’ve listened to this song and felt like it was true. Even if I had a terrible day, I would listen to this song at the end of the day and I would believe it. I don’t know when the actual turning point was, maybe it hasn’t come yet, but I also think that it could have been the first time I heard the song, and that it has happened so slowly that I couldn’t tell that it happened. Whatever it was, this song has helped me get there.
Finally, I have received so many responses from family and close friends to my last post, all of them unique and individual in their own way, but there was one thing that was common to several, the phrase “With hope.” I don’t know where this came from or what possessed you all to say it, but thank-you from the bottom of my heart, thank-you for hoping for me, when I couldn’t hope myself.
Since my blog readership is limited, I will be getting rather personal here and discussing some issues with which I have been struggling lately. I know that this is a very long post but it is something that I needed to do. I won’t be offended if you don’t read it all.
You may or may not know that I have been dealing with some very serious depression. About a month and a half ago things began to pile up, stress was really getting to me, and I had some other personal problems that I won’t get into here. One day I was in Wichita, and one of the afore mentioned factors just set me off. I drove five blocks before I stopped the car and could not move. My body was racked with sobs and I couldn’t control my crying. All I could think about was how much I wanted things to be over. I was tired of trying, tired feeling alone and lost, tired of feeling worthless. I sat in the car for 20 or 30 minutes, crying, thinking about where the best place to wreck my car was and where I would have the least chance of surviving without endangering anyone else. I contemplated writing a note to leave in my pocket, explaining what was going on, that it was no one’s fault but my own and that I didn’t want anyone to feel guilty. I just felt that it would be easier this way, to not have to worry about anything. I didn’t know if God would forgive me for doing this, but at that point death and hell was better than life.
After a while, I don’t know how long, I tried to call my mom, several times, but she didn’t answer. I didn’t leave any messages because I thought it would be easier if I just didn’t. Finally, I felt that I had calmed down enough that I felt I could drive again. When I set out I didn’t know where I would go. If I should try to drive back to Newton and shrug this off, not talking about it like I had done in the past, or if I should go to the Harder’s and try to talk to someone, hoping that I would figure things out. I didn’t decide for most of the trip, not really caring, beginning to drive recklessly for a minute before calming down. Eventually I made it to the Harder’s and as soon as I got there, I was showered in hugs and love, but they knew something was wrong. Lois asked if I wanted to talk and I could barely say yes, so we headed over to the church. I knew that this was critical and that if I didn’t tell her everything I would probably not be alive for very much longer. We talked for what felt like a long time. I cried most of it. I told her everything that I could, which was not everything. (I don’t know if I will ever be able to talk to someone about certain things.) When I had settled down we headed back to their house and the evening got better.
The next day I sought out the professional help that I needed. I talked to Chad Childs, the VP for Student Life here at Bethel, and he connected me with the counseling service that the college provides with Prairie View. That Friday I went and had my first counseling session. I explained my situation and what was going, my history with depression and how I had dealt with it in the past, and the route that we wanted to take for treatment of this illness. By this time I was feeling better and was unable to articulate very well why I my self-esteem was so low and why I hated myself so much. We decided that it would be best for me to enter long-term therapy and also begin medication. From this point on the story begins to become less intense and thing began to level out.
I know that parts of this paragraph are out of order but it doesn’t fit anywhere. That day I felt as though I was the most selfish person in the entire world. I knew how killing myself would affect others. That everyone who loved me would feel the pain that I had escaped. I knew that it was the easy way out but at the same time, it would be the hardest thing that I could ever do. I didn’t know if I would have the courage to follow through with what I felt was best, but I knew that it would be incredibly selfish. Most people think that committing suicide is a cowardly way out; that it is something that a weak, crazy, disturbed person would do. I beg to differ. Suicide is incredibly hard. Please believe me when I say that committing suicide is not cowardly, but courageous and that it takes a very brave person to be able to go through with it. I am not a very brave person. I am a coward who was too weak to do the one thing that I truly wanted at that point. At this point I am still unsure how glad I am that I am such a coward. When you read this please understand that this is a realization that I have just come to. I am not currently thinking about committing suicide but I still think about how much easier it would be if I had followed through that day.
What exactly prompted this incredibly long post? Why am I baring parts of my soul that I have told so very few people to you readers? I don’t really know. This evening was a bit of a roller coaster ride for me so I suppose that this could have been the trigger. I played some basketball tonight and was out of control. Is it normal to lose almost all emotional control when playing basketball? Is it normal to not care what people were thinking about? Specifically how their image of me was changing the longer we played as I became more and more frustrated? One of the sources of my self-hatred that my therapist worked on with me was anger and controlling my anger. These strategies have worked relatively well since we have talked about them. In ordinary situations I have been more able to maintain control of my temper and be more respectful and confrontational with people rather than being passive aggressive as is my nature. However, there are exceptions to this, the prime one being the basketball court. No matter how hard I try to not care, to control my emotions, to not let me performance or the actions of other get to me, it does. And once that happens I cannot stop what has been set in motion. This is the primary trigger today. The reason that I am writing. But now that I have explained everything, I’m going to go even deeper. I’m going to write about some things that I have been thinking about a lot lately. I plan to write about aspects of me that I don’t like, or know what to think of, so please offer your suggestions and thoughts. None of these questions are rhetorical.
To begin this section of the post, what is your favorite style of music? Is it classical or rock or country or pop or whatever? How does it sound and feel? How does it make you feel? To fully understand me you must know that my favorite music crosses all genres and styles. It does not inspire or bring about awe, it is not necessarily upbeat and fast, or all slow for that matter. The music that I love the most is depressing. It make me sad, it makes me cry, it makes me want to be able to express what I think and feel in songs that make someone else feel the same way. Why do you love the music that you do? I believe that I love this music so much because it makes me feel sad and depressed and it makes me cry. It makes me feel vulnerable and small and weak and unimportant. So if it makes me feel all these things why do I like it? Why do I put myself through these feelings? They can’t be good for me, can they? I believe that I like these songs so much because I like feeling sad, depressed, sad, yes I know I said sad twice. I like crying. I don’t know why I like these things so much but I do. I played two of these songs for my mom recently, the ones that I had just discovered, and she asked why I liked them so much. I didn’t have an answer for her at that point. Mom, here is your answer. I like them because I can relate to them, or I want to believe that I can relate to them. I feel broken, just as one of them says, although it is a different type of broken. It also could be that I just want to relate to them. I want to be broken. I want to have an excuse to fail or something like that, this is a thought that I cannot yet articulate but I want to express it as best I can at this point. I will try to include the songs or links to them if I can. Even as I write this I am listening to the playlist titled “Today.” I don’t know exactly why I titled it this way but I think that it might be related to my depression and the potential for me to feel depressed or down each and every day. This is my favorite combination of songs ever, if you’re reading, sorry Jason.
Now that you have read my musical insight, I will try to explain several other things that I have been thinking about, not just lately, but really, all the time. I struggle to live in the present. No, that is putting it too lightly. I rarely ever live completely in the present. I am constantly thinking about what I want to do tomorrow or the next day or in a year or five years or 50 years. I think about the future and the life that I want to have and what I want to do in that life and how I am probably never going to have that life. I am also constantly thinking about the past and what I have done, both the good and the bad. Things that I am happy with and look back on with fond memories and things that I hate and wish I had never done. Most of these memories have to do with girls. But either way, I do not live in the present. I don’t really think about today. This is another source of my self-hatred; one that I have not worked on and have no idea how to begin. I have no idea how to live in the present. Period. There is a significant part of me that can’t wait until I graduate and get a job. I have this perception that it will be easier socially. Things won’t all be based around people. It will be so much easier to find time and space to be alone. Completely alone. It seems like it would be more consistent and I could spend time with friends when I wanted but it wouldn’t be every night. I want to feel worth something and maybe when I am no longer being a burden on others I can experience that.
Along with my future gazing I think constantly about teaching. At this point in my life it is my only real passion. Sure I like playing guitar and mandolin, reading and taking pictures, but I don’t have the dedication to those things that I do to teaching. I want to be a better guitar player and there are times that I have moments of inspiration and I say that I’m going to start playing more, stretching myself and getting better, but then 10 minutes later I have forgotten about it. Teaching is the only thing that I haven’t done that with and while you might think that this is a good thing since it is the field that I will be entering shortly, it isn’t. I am scared to death of teaching. I love it so much but I am scared to death that I will be a horrible teacher, that the students will hate me and I will not be able to teach them anything. I know that all of you are saying to yourselves, “You will be a great teacher, what are you talking about?” But there is absolutely no way that you could know that. Have you seen me teach anything? Have you talked to anyone who has? What makes you an expert who know what makes a good teacher? These are the things I think about and worry about almost all the time. The thoughts that I cannot get out of my head.
Finally, yes this is the last thing that I want to talk about this entry, the juicy part. At this point in my life I am single, and I am happy with life this way. I feel free, I don’t have to hang out with anyone or do anything. But at the same time, I want to be in a relationship. I want to have someone I can spend time with when I feel upset or angry or happy or whatever. I want someone to “make” me watch chick flicks. I want someone to hold me when I feel alone. I want all of these things and yet I don’t want them. What the hell! Another thought about my romantic interests, or lack there of, is that there is so much that I want from this person. I’m pretty sure that I will never find a person who will be everything that I am expecting and more which presents a problem that I struggle with. My solution to this issue is to think about any number of others who all together would have all the pieces that I am looking for but I can find flaws in each individually. I read something this summer in my study of family systems theory and birth order that really caught my eye. It said that the youngest minority male often times has problems being “satisfied” with one female because for so long they have had older sister and a mother taking care of them. I fit into this mold quite well and am currently wondering whether this might be a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I know that to you this all might seem quite random but there is a connection in my mind and this has been a therapeutic process for me. Thank-you to everyone who cares enough to suffer through my ramblings and I hope that you now feel as though you know me better through these writings. I would welcome anyone who wants to talk about what I’ve written here. I love you all because love is more powerful than anything I know, even though I may not know what love is.
Love and peace,
Daniel
Here are the links to the two songs I played for my mom.
Just an idea of what I've been doing this interterm when I haven't been making prints or watching youtube videos for class. My favorites are mixed in with some others.
Friday was Gala night.
For those of you who don't know, Gala is our big Christmas banquet here at Bethel.
Enjoy the pictures
Mod, minus one member
plus one extra.
Some of my best friends in the whole world.
These young ladies were my dates......ALL of them ;)
So there is a story to the number of dates that I had. One night, about a week before Gala, several of my modmates decided that I needed a Gala date so they sent out an email stating that they were accepting applications to take me to Gala. These ladies applied as a mod, complete with character reference letters and they were the most qualified applicants so I wrote them a formal response and we went to Gala together.
Every year there is a Jazz concert as part of the Gala tradition. Modmates in Jazz Ensemble I are Evan far left sax and Kyle second from left trumpet.
Finally, the Wine and Cheeser, another wonderful Gala tradition and apparently it is tradition to sing 606 each year. So we did.
It is finally really winter and really Christmas time. It snowed!!!!
There was snow in the forecast scheduled to begin yesterday evening at 11 so I expected there to be snow when I left my final wiffleball game, but when I left the Agape House (I'll probably post about this soon) it was beginning to snow. This morning I had to get up early for a meeting so I took my camera along to capture the magic of the snow covered Bethel campus.
I decided today that I might be more likely to post more often if I make this more of a photo blog so now you all can share in the magic of Snowy Bethel, including Ultimate Frisbee in the snow!
Just an idea of what I've been doing this interterm when I haven't been making prints or watching youtube videos for class. My favorites are mixed in with some others.
