On being overwhelmed.

I'm not sure that there is any other way to put it. I am overwhelmed.
And not in the good way. Not in the way where life is just wonderful and God is so good and I can't imagine life any different.
In the opposite way.
The way where I'm not sure what to do and I'm not sure how to get through every single day.
I've spent a year in this altered state of myself.
I've spent the last five months trying to feel normal, trying to remember what it is like to just wake up and feel ok.

I've tried a lot of things.
Obviously not the right things, or they would be working.

Right now work has taken over every aspect of my life. I'm either working, interning or thinking about work or my internship.
I want to leave work at work.
And have a life.

I want to spend a day in the sun and not worry that I'm going to get called in to switch shifts with someone or because I forgot to send an e-mail.

I am fully aware that all of this comes with growing up. But when everytime I turn on a computer, not even mine because mine refuses to turn on, all I can think about it the fact that I know I have at least two e-mails sitting in an inbox from a professor telling me he lost another of my projects, it takes everything inside of me not to explode.

A friend came in from out of town this week. And I forgot how to be myself. I forgot how to be regular and socialize because I haven't had any need to do so in so long.

This year has changed almost everything about who I am, and I'm not sure that I'm alright with that.

I'm not sure that I'm alright with not knowing how I'm going to feel everyday. Not knowing what I'm going to dream about.

I'm ready for even one day to feel underwhelmed.
Or just whelmed?

I'd love to feel like I just accomplished something. Like I just graduated college and am in a great time in my life. Instead I keep worrying about what is next. Worrying about when I can stop driving two hours a day to work at a job that gives me anxiety the whole time I'm there.

Last summer feels like a figment of my imagination.
I want to sit on a porch and drink Arnold Palmers.
I want to lay by a pool and get a sunburn.
I want to pick up my camera and see art.

I want to get out of this permanent funk.
I am not good with being overwhelmed.

On growing up in 37 days.

So I guess here is where I write down all of my anxieties and fears that come alongside graduating. And here they are: get me the hell out of here.

I am so ready to be done with this place. It isn’t that college has seemed abnormally long, just the average four years, it just has seemed abnormally tedious. This semester has been an absolute joke, in every way possible.

I have spent more time making fun of my teachers and fellow classmates than I have doing my assignments and projects. I have learned more about the awkwardities of homeschool kids than I have about the Bible in my whole 30 units. I have challenged myself more in my relationships than I have in my classes.

So, I think you get it, I am done with this time in my life.

I am done feeling like I can’t do anything that matters. I am done feeling like I can’t measure up.

In 37 days I am going to be a college graduate, Damnit. Does that change a thing?

No.

Well, maybe a few things.

In 37 days, I will be forced to be financially, and emotionally, independent. I will have to fend for myself and feed myself. I will have to wear high heels and make conversations about Chaucer. I will have to order wines at restaurants and sometimes pick up the tab for everyone. I will have to be careful to never go to the hospital, in case my job does not have health insurance. I will have to make grown-up decisions and not just eat chocolate whenever I get frustrated.

In 37 days I will have to figure out where the heck my life is going. I will have to work to meet people. I will have to be social again. I will have to stop admitting to people that I understand their “Family Guy” references. I will have to watch things like “Anderson Cooper 360” and stop pretending that I have read all of “Pride and Prejudice.” I will have to give up my fairytale dreams of the future and being to understand retirement and 401K.

In 37 days I have to just start doing life.

And yes, I can still have my fun, and be a twentysomething out in the world. But I have to be a twentysomething grown up now.

And I think a part of me assumed I could be like Peter Pan and stay a boy forever.

I think I’m glad I can’t, really.

I think I am halfway ready to be out in the world.

And now I have 37 days to become all-the-way ready. And in that time, I will turn 22, two of my very best friends will graduate college and I will begin an internship with Utterly Engaged, really very grown up things.

So, goodbye Homeschool Kevin, BPBS, Simba, Tall kid, Crutches and AFBs. Adios Red Beard, Awkward Freshman Girl, Great Mouse Dectective, Leather Hat and Moustache Max. It is time for me to learn your real names.

So, I think I can do this growing up thing, as long as I get to be a child for 37 more days.

[Also, my wonderful and incredibly talented friend took senior photos of me: thasmisssundy.wordpress.com

On being different.

In five-ish hours I need to be up and walking out the door to head to the Dominican Republic.
It's a weird feeling, leaving the country in the middle of the semester.
A part of me feels irresponsible, a part of me is nervous, the biggest part of me can't wait to run away.

For seven days (the same amount as it takes someone to die in "The Ring") I will be in a different country trying to remember my Spanish and hopefully stepping into the Atlantic Ocean.
I will be in a different time zone.
Nothing will be the same.

My Tia Nani used to always say "It's not weird, it's different" when we would talk about how weird all of Spanish culture was. I'm glad she accustomed me to that word.
Different.
A different country, different people than I'm used to, different customs, different food.
Different everything.

But I can't wait to feel something different.
For months I have been feeling the same thing day after day.

I have a good feeling that God is going to show up in the Dominican Republic, and he is going to help me feel something different.
But this kind of different isn't weird at all, it is incredible.
It will be a kind of different I will have never experienced, the best kind of different.

When I get there I will be the one who is different, the one who is weird.
I will be the foreigner, the stranger.

I'm so thankful for different.
I'm so thankful for getting away for a little while.

Plus, maybe I'll get a tan?

On beauty in the details.

It is a beauty in the details kind of day, because I needed to find it somewhere.











I was alone in my apartment for a good majority of the day.
I was supposed to pack for my trip to the Dominican Republic in three days.
I was supposed to go to a Good Friday service.

Instead I took a day off from everything.

I played with my new lens and ate baked goods and did a lot of thinking.
It wasn't nice enough to spend it outside.

So now I am quieting my heart to listen to what the Lord has for me in the DR.
I need a break from my regular.
I'm ready to feel something bigger than myself again.
I have been craving to go somewhere, anywhere.

So, today, I found beauty in the details, in the little things.
I found it in the light shining through the blinds, which I later opened.
I found it in the spices on a spice rack.
I found it.

I am thankful for this weekend, and the truth that comes with it.
I am thankful for the rest that i have been blessed with, and the burden that was carried for me.
So I think it is ok to find beauty in the little things, because I don't deserve them.

On Healing, eventually.

I have a heart that has been hurting.
It aches and it pains.
I don't understand its pain, I don't understand anything.

I understand the love of the sovereign Lord, or at least I accept it and want to know more.

Today, I saw a trailer for Spike Jonze's new short film "I'm Here." It is about robots in love.
Robots get to be in love. Robots get to figure out what the hell we humans are doing wrong.

I was jealous, for that entire minute, of a robot.

I am human and I get to love other humans and get to interact with God's most intricate creation, and I was jealous of something entirely man-made with thousands of glitches.

My heart is still hurting. And I am still angry.
And I still don't understand.
A lot can change in a month or two, but my heart has not.
Healing can happen in time, but hasn't happened yet.

My heart still feels the same. But it will heal, eventually.
I'm trying to be sure of that.

On Getting Hit by a Bus.

I imagine that getting hit by a bus is similar to this feeling.

I’d imagine that once you are hit by a bus, you forget.
When you wake up, you have to be reminded that you were hit by that bus, and for the rest of that day, you mourn. You mourn for what bodily functions you have lost and for what physically visible alterations the bus did to you. You are overwhelmed with pain and have to be given medication to get through your day.

But then, at the end of the day, whether you took pain medications or not, you fall asleep.
And in your dreams you forget about the pain, you forget about what you look like and most of all you forget what a bus even is. You dream great dreams and in all of them, your legs are fully functioning.
Then eventually, you wake up again. And someone has to tell you that the bus didn’t stop.

And since you didn’t see that the bus wasn’t stopping, you stepped into the crosswalk. And since you stepped into that crosswalk, you are strapped onto a hospital bed.
And you had forgot all of this.

So you have to mourn for your body all over again.

And guess what?

This keeps happening, day after day after day.

You become numb to the pain and you fall asleep, and then you wake up and have to be reminded over and over that your legs don’t work. That your heart is frail. That you are going to be in pain for a long time.

The doctors keep telling you that eventually you will heal, eventually you may walk again, eventually your heart won’t be so weak.

But that eventually is so far off. That eventually isn’t for a really long time.
And you have to keep taking your pain medication daily. You have to be reminded time and time again what happened.

Maybe you should have someone put signs up in your hospital room.
Because you did get hit by that bus, but something is not sticking with you that you cannot walk.
That you cannot dance.
And if you do start to dance, your legs won’t be familiar to you.
If you walk, you may wobble.

Every day you try to stand, but someone has to come help you.
They have to stand by you because they know that you will fall.

I imagine that getting hit by a bus is one of the most physically painful things anyone could ever experience. I imagine that getting hit by a bus shocks you, and makes you realize that things that you thought you were sure of, are not necessarily for sure.

Because nothing is, really.
So you remind yourself daily that you were hit by a bus.
And you wait to feel whole again.

In the hallway

I have never felt this way before.
It actually scares me.
I know that I am surrounded in prayer and love.
But I don't want to be strong.
I don't want to hear that I am strong.

I don't want to have to be.
I have spent the past year feeling secure and hopeful, and suddenly unbeknownst to me, everything is lost.
I had no idea that I wasn't happy.
It's an interesting thing, being told you are unhappy and something will fix it, when in fact the one thing that makes you happy is done with you.
It's an interesting feeling, knowing that there is nothing in the world that you can do to reverse the situation, but not knowing where to go from there.

My eyes have never hurt so bad.
I have never felt so emotionally exhausted.
I feel so broken and pitiful and alone.
I feel so desperate.

I hate writing things like this and posting it somewhere, but I don't know what else to do.
I don't know where to go.

This afternoon my sister prayed with me on the phone.
"We know that when you close a door, God, you open another one, but I pray you hold Emily between those doors, hold her in the hallway, God," she prayed as she cried for me over the phone.

So that's where I am.
In the hallway.
I don't want to walk toward the other door, I am pounding on the one that closed to let me back in.
I am screaming and yelling to whoever will hear to open the door.
I will miss every single thing about the first room.
But a decision has been made, and this decision won't be unmade.

That door is going to stay closed.
And I'm going to sit next to it and pray next to it and cry next to it.
I am going to keep trying to open that door.
But I am going to sit in the hallway in the mean time.

I can't imagine going into the next room.
I don't want to even think about it, ever.

That other room can't give me what the first one did.

But I was made for relationships.
God created me this way.
God created us all for relationships.

Maybe some more than others.

But this door didn't close for me.
It closed on its own.

There isn't a lot of peace in the hallway.