4-Poster Bed

As I was luxuriating in a brand-spankin’ new pair of sweatpants and a ridiculously oversized football jersey in the memory-foam-covered 4-poster bed in my grandmother’s house this morning (rolling back and forth across six feet of bed space in gleeful defiance of my two-foot-wide dorm-style bed back in Azusa), lyrics quite randomly popped into my head:

“It’s funny how we feel so much, but cannot say a word; no, we are screaming inside, but cannot be heard.”

Sarah MacLaughlin is one of my favorite lyricists. Anywho, the words struck me, especially in light of a flood of recent events in my life which remain secondary to the point of the lyrics themselves.

I begin a lot of my blog sentences this way, but as it was a major turning point in my life, I guess it makes sense: After my parents divorce, I shut down. I’d just watched the movie Spanglish and took to heart the line, “You only get one tear. Just one.” I’ve discovered since then that I actually cannot cry, even when I want to. But that’s a tangent—the highlight of that was my complete emotional barricading thenceforth.

It was then that I decided I didn’t want children, didn’t want a husband, didn’t want to be found weak in any way: emotionally, physically, academically. I was on Honor Roll, I was student body president, I was involved in so many extracurricular activities I would often get sick for weeks because of stress and lack of sleep. I became interested in learning to fire guns, I started carrying knives. Boots became my favorite footwear, and for the most part, these quirks remain with me to this day, perhaps even more deeply a part of me than they were before.

If I got angry, I would shut up. The best analogy I can think of is shaking a capped bottle of soda—periodically, probably once or twice a year, I would simply explode. And these explosions would be followed by an even deeper silence.

Since coming to college, and especially going to a Christian university, I have been able to coast along without making any real decisions about how I’m going to react to the rest of the human race. I can be disdainful of emotion while being cushioned by it on every front.

“It’s funny how we feel so much, but cannot say a word.”

It has become apparent to me that I am about to be annihilated. In two short years, I graduate. Once that happens, I don’t have APU to hold my hand, I won’t have my friends around me constantly to help me de-stress. So….

It seems that the shell I’ve spent the last five years hardening to a dull perfection needs to come down. I’m attempting, for the first time since I can remember, to legitimately communicate with people. It sort of feels like the step in AA where you have to go around apologizing to anyone you may have hurt, except in my case I’m simply trying to be honest to the people that I constantly emotionally avoid.

I’m 20 years old. I feel old. I’ve always felt old. Like time is racing away from me and there’s this massive timer counting down the rapidly depleting days and I’m Hook hearing the constant tick of the crocodile’s clock following him everywhere. I don’t want to waste whatever I have left, whether it’s 50 years or 50 minutes.

It’s poetic to be depressed. It’s romantic to be a tortured soul. But it gets kinda old when you see other people laughing and growing up and being whole, full people.

So this is me getting off the Emo Train. Stretching awake, so to speak, in a new, huge bed.

Here’s to moving on.