Clarifying Imperfection

I've always wanted this blog to be a place where I can speak entirely candidly, brutally honestly, and completely in the stream of the moment.  And that is what I have done.  But I think I'm starting to wonder if maybe at times I've spoken too plainly, been too blunt, and failed to explain things with enough clarity.

I'm a deeply scarred and broken person.  I don't have it all together (AND THAT'S OK!!!).  That very notion, the first time I heard it, out of the mouth of the amazing and dearly missed Carol Riebock, began me down a course that I remain on today.  This journey has involved switching so many painfully-held notions that made me believe that I had to act a certain way, constantly scrutinize my every thought and action in light of what everyone else thought.  I constantly had to worry, not just about how people viewed me, but often far more painfully, how they viewed my family in light of my actions.  Since I finally embraced the concept that it's ok to not be perfect, to make mistakes, and to not have it all together, I've held onto it with a brutally hard grip, constantly afraid that the moment I turn my attention back towards how I'm viewed by others, I will once again lose control and begin to spiral downward into the dark, into the blackness, into the nothingness and hopelessness that existed for me when I faked everything about myself in order to please those around me.

Will letting go of this fierce grip mean taking a step backward?  Will it mean losing parts of myself?  Will curbing my bluntness, repressing some of my honesty, and worrying about clarifying more fully mean putting a mask back over who I am, who I've become?

I don't know the answers to these questions.  I simply don't.  For more than four years now, I've defined a huge part of myself by the mantra, "It's o.k. to not have it all together."  I've broadcast my imperfections, and been perhaps far too willing to shine an imperfect light on the imperfections of others.  That's never been my intention.  But I don't know how to change back, and perhaps far more importantly, I don't think I want to.  I'm stuck at this impasse where I know that I can't keep hurting others by being overly blunt, too curt, and failing to fully explain myself, but at the same time, I know that I can't go back to living a life as someone other than myself.  I can't pretend to be perfect, and I most definitely don't want anyone else to think that I am.  And, to once again be blunt, I don't really want people to think that my family is perfect either.  But I don't want my vented frustrations about the inner-workings of my family life to cause undue concerns and problems.

All I know how to do at this point is to clarify, at least in person.  I'm not sure how much clarification is owed to this blog.  It was designed as a place where my most brutally honest, imperfect, and flawed thoughts could be processed and shared.  I never made any promises about the utter clarity or perfection of these thoughts.  Quite the opposite in fact.

I don't know what is owed in this forum.  What I do know is that my most recent blog post caused people that I love dearly to question and feel concern for my family.  That wasn't necessarily my intention.  So please, if you have questions, or want me to explain something, whether about this most recent post, one further in the past, or any of my future musings, please never hesitate to ask, whether in a comment in this forum or through FB,, email or my cell.

I'm not perfect.  I've never claimed to be.  Sometimes I get into a place where the only non-self-destructive method I know how to vent my frustrations is to put my faltering, imperfect, and incomplete thoughts on this blog.  But please never take my posts as a picture-perfect representation of my life, or even of my thoughts on my life, my family, or anything else.  This is a stream of conscious production, and when I'm in a place where I am frustrated, upset, and, frankly, not very stable, this forum may in fact reflect a quite distorted image of the truth.

I won't apologize for posting this inarticulate and perhaps innaccurate representation, because this was never supposed to be a novel or a news report.  Instead I will simply ask you to inquire for more clarification, and, above all, to take what I say, especially if it sounds frustrated, upset, and even angry, with a significant grain of salt.

I'm not perfect.  I will never claim to be.  So all I can do is attempt to clarify my imperfection.

Longing for More than Glimpses

I hate that the only way my family knows how to spend time together is by using gimmicks to keep us occupied. The very prospect of just sitting there and talking to each other is utterly unfathomable to them. We have to be playing a game or watching a movie or eating food (and then the moment the food is gone we all disperse). Mostly, we focus on playing games, but if there aren't enough people or we can't all agree on which card or board game to play or one of us simply doesnt want to play, we can't hang out. And because most of us are more or less competitive people, these card games inevitably lead to bickering, whining or arguments. In other words, not really the ideal way to hang out and talk. That's the reason why every once and a while I get utterly sick of playing games and refuse to participate. I always say that I utterly adore hanging out with my family. But what I really mean is that I like the idea of it. I long to hang out with my family beyond the confines of these gimmicks. I want to get to know them. I want them to get to know me. I've changed so much since before I left for college, which was the last time all of us were under the same roof, and I know that my brothers and parents have changed too. I long for more than the glimpses into these changes that these gimmicks offer. I wish we could just sit in the family room, no tv, no games, no obnoxiously planned-out conversations or confrontational discussions. Just talking. Like I spent the past three and a half years doing with my friends. Back in D.C. I can count on one hand the number of times my friends and I played games. And there were never any planned out discussions (outside the confines of bible studies and the like). Yes, there was food, but there was no rush to get up, no hurry to put the dishes away, wipe the table and then rush off in our separate directions. Instead, we simply enjoyed one another's company, asking questions, telling stories and jokes, and getting to genuinely know each other. Why is that very concept so foreign to my family? I cannot fathom why anyone would scoff at the idea of just sitting around and talking to the very people in your life to whom you claim to be closest. I just long for more than glimpses. I don't want any more gimmicks. I'm sick of them. It seems so simple: the desire to just hang out with one's family. But the truth is, the absence of any such desire or longing in my family has made me feel more depressed and long to self-injure more than anything else in this past year. So give me more than glimpses.

Questioning in the Shadow

As I sat in my room doing one last read-through of my senior capstone, my final paper in my undergraduate career, there was a young man across town, a 17 year old boy whose life should have just been starting, walking into his basement, picking up his father's hunting rifle and contemplating ending it all.

Austin Hills was a boy who I wouldn't have even recognized if he passed me on the street, and yet I know him. Not just just because his mom was my A.W.A.N.A. Olympic Games coach, his dad helped re-roof my house, and I shared countless picnics with him and dozens of other church members in his backyard.  I know him because four years ago, this same time of year, I wrestled with those very same thoughts, I struggled with that very same choice.

My weapon of choice was a bottle of pills and a razor blade.  And I struggled with it day in and day out the majority of my senior year of high school.  I took that blade to my wrist more times than I can count (although God healed all but three of my scars).  I stared at that bottle of narcotics hidden in my mother's nightstand (leftover from her ankle surgery), or that bottle of tylenol in plain view on the kitchen table, trying desperately to see a way out of the black hole beyond that knife and those bottles.

I remember it like it was yesterday.  That moment, sitting in sixth period, Concert Choir practice.  We were rehearsing a Latin song praising God for his magnificent mysteriousness.  That was the moment that I gave up on God.  I didn't believe that he could see me in this hole.  Or perhaps more accurately, I believed he saw, but just didn't care.  I knew and believed that he was all-knowing and all-powerful, so I couldn't for the life (or death) of me figure out why he wasn't doing anything to show me that he cared.

It was that same night, over at a friend's house, that I wrote a letter for my parents telling them about my struggle, and above all, insisting that I needed help.  Not help in the form of a hug and a prayer, thinking that that will make everything better, but professional help.

I didn't write that letter on my own.  In fact, I had no desire or intention to write that letter. It was by far the hardest thing that I have ever written in my life (and this coming from someone who just finished a 40 page Honors Capstone), and I wrote it practically kicking and screaming (though far more accurately, moaning and sobbing).  The single reason why I penned that letter was because my best friend sat me down, told me that I needed help, that she couldn't give it to me, and that I had to tell my parents so that they could get it for me.

Minutes after I heard the news about Austin Hills suicide, I texted my best friend, thanking her for forcing me to do the hardest thing in my life, insisting that I could not leave, I could not do a single thing else until I wrote that letter.

The entire reason I am writing all of this is because at 12 noon CST today, I will be attending the funeral of Austin Hills, and I know that one of the hardest things that I will be struggling with is asking God why He didn't put someone in Austin's life who would do that one specific thing (whatever it might have been) that would have kept Austin alive.

I know for a fact that the only reason that I am alive today is because of my best friend forcing me to write that letter.  A year and a half earlier, a barely would have said "hello" to her in the halls.  Yet God practically forced us to become friends, two people who couldn't be more dissimilar, somehow finding ourselves to be kindred spirits in some of the most desperate times in both of our lives.  A time in our lives when neither of us had any one else to turn to.  So God forced us together, and I am alive today because of it.

I am alive; I will officially be a college graduate one week from today; I will be graduating in 2015 from the Chicago-Kent College of Law with my Juris Doctor; and while I still struggle with undulating bouts of depression, because of God forcing my best friend into my life, I can now be entirely confident in the knowledge of every family member and friend who loves and cares for me and will continually fight to make sure I'm aware of everything I have to live for.  Furthermore, they will make sure that if (and when) I get to that incredibly low place of contemplating specific suicidal plans again, they will (once again) force me to get help.

So why, four years from now, won't Austin Hills be able to say all of those same things from the preceding paragraph about his life (with obvious variations in lifestyle and college/career choices)?  That same question that I wrestled with four years ago in that choir room still nags me today: Why, when God is so almighty and so omniscient, didn't he do something?!?

Now I'm not close enough to Austin or the Hills family to know the specifics of what was happening in his life, so all I can do tomorrow is love and pray for and show my support for Austin's family and friends.  I can't answer any of the inevitable questions that the aforementioned individuals will have.  I simply can't know.  Not just because I don't know those specifics.  But because some of those answer just can't be known (this side of the after-life, at least).  But that won't stop me or anyone else from asking them, so I can only beg of God, once again, to show Himself powerful, to show Himself wise.  To do something.

Five months ago, I got a new tattoo on my left thigh depicting the verse that inspires the title of this blog:

Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.  He will cover you with his feathers and under his wings you will find refuge.

The tattoo depicts a young woman (representing me) being sheltered from the world by a large, angelic figure (representing God) with magnificent and powerful wings.

This tattoo is private, just for me.  It serves as a constant reminder that no matter what this world or anything else can throw at me, I am always protected by God's powerful wingspan.  Even if I can't always see it or feel it, He is always there.

I share this personal information, about a tattoo that I don't really want to publicize, because in times of tragedy and grief, I'm not the only one that needs that reminder.  I needed to be told that in that choir room, and Austin needed to be told that in that basement.  Neither of us were, and though the outcomes turned out differently, I do know that everyone else touched by this tragedy (or any other) needs to be told that same promise.

God is ever-present, all-knowing, and all-powerful.  And while you may not always be able to feel it, he will always protect you and give your refuge from the storm.