Searching

  It’s thundering outside.  How fitting…  Darkness and turmoil within…  Darkness and turmoil without.  Sometimes, as I’m out in public, I speak an inner narrative to myself, almost to no one in particular, about my life or my feelings…  Yet I know that someone is always listening, even if it’s only God and I don’t get to share my feelings and thoughts with someone else.  But I always like to share my thoughts with other people, if I can.  Sometimes, I feel as though I’m writing a novel in my mind - a serious yet strange narrative, consisting of smaller stories that seem to have no connection the previous or next.  A narrative that I write, almost as though they were my memoirs…  Except that I have no thought that many people would read it.  In fact, I would be surprised if even one person took the time to comb through it all - perhaps Abby; she might be the only person.  But why would she?  She knows all that this narrative might hold…  She would because she cares, and she will always care.  This is why she is my best friend.  Maybe David would read it.  And probably my mother, if she were still alive.  But this narrative I speak of is not this written one.  Rather, it is the one engraved upon my heart.

I keep hoping, in my heart of hearts, that some man will see it.  I don’t know how it would be possible, but I still hope it, anyway.  Maybe the reason I’m such a cynic about love is that I want someone to tell me it’s possible.  I want a man to prove me wrong…  To prove to me that true love IS possible.  And maybe it still is.  After all, I’m still young and have many years left…  But it’s hard to believe, when all I’ve gotten is…  Well…  Nothing.  A whole lot of it.  It’s all I’ve ever known - a world where men Don’t know what love is, and don’t know how to love a woman.  This is reality.  The painful reality that saddens me each time I look at a child.  I think to myself, ‘they don’t even know how much it’s going to hurt…’  Life has only taught me painful things about love.  If God is love, then…  where is God, in the world of men?
Which leads me to question - Should I believe in love?  Should I want to get married, want to have that intimate love relationship with someone?  It feels like wanting something I can’t have…  Like wanting the impossible.  Is it possible for two people to get married, and really be happy together?  Ha!  Yeah…  When neither of them are anything like me.  I mean, maybe I’m not cut out for marriage.  I have no patience, and I can be grumpy, negative, and complaining a lot more of the time than is probably acceptable.  I’m irritable.  EASILY.  Irritable.  A Lot of things irritate me.  And I like to have things my way.  All of this makes me a bad candidate for marriage.  I can’t deal with the presence of others in close proximity.  Of course, the less I trust them, then the harder it is.  And then there's the fact that I don't want kids; people ask me why I want to get married if I don't want kids (and then I face the 'you're selfish' charges).  But marriage?  In my scope?  Yeah right.  Maybe if I changed my whole freaking personality…

I’ve always felt like I had a ‘head in the clouds’ sort of vagueness about life.  Like I knew what all the older people said about life and love, but I somehow believed it could be different for me…  Because I was…  Me?  As though being me would change everything.  As though… being me would change Anything.  It was youth, I suppose.  I Feel as though what I’m saying is jaded, cynical.  I Feel the cynicism, in my bones.  And to be honest, I don’t know how to Stop feeling that way.  God is the answer.  I know that.  I don’t know How He is the solution; I just know that He is.  But I wish I didn’t live in such a heartbreaking life.  At the end of every day, that is what I wish.

But this life cannot be changed by wishing; sometimes I think it cannot even be changed by doing.  I feel myself searching for answers.  What should I do with my life?  What is possible to do, with a life?  What is a worthy enough cause to devote myself to?  How can I do something that is significant, and not just to me?  It is not enough to just ‘work’ and ‘earn a living’ and ‘pay the bills’.  It is not even enough to be passionate about what I do.  What is passion, if it is self-centered?  I somehow cannot bear to live an insignificant life - one that has no meaning or bearing on the lives of others.

This whole, practicing and performing thing…  My gift to the world is beauty.  In a bad economy beauty isn’t ‘necessary’.  It’s bad enough I’m searching for significance - worse that the world (and the job market) is telling me I’m not really all that vital.  To a certain point, I guess I do buy into it.  I mean, what difference does beauty Really make…?  What do I change in this world, from having lived in it, from having given my music to it?  Have I made a mark?  Have I made an impression on the hearts of others that will outlive me?  What is so incredibly important is not that I was involved in it - but that it made a difference.  Some people are gifted - with a vision and a purpose, from an early age.  But I have always been searching.  It’s not enough to simply have a job or even a purpose.  I must have Significance.  The only problem is…  I don’t know what that means yet.