Reckless Abandon

Those words have been haunting me since the day I left home. They were one the last words of comfort that I heard when I set foot on this journey. They were God's words, said through the beautiful and smart Alicia. And I have been trying to find the right place to put them.

It's been raining all night here, and I absolutely love it. It's a beautiful noise. But of all the sleepless nights here, this is the only one that makes any sense. So I'm up at 4:30 in the morning, writing.

I guess I should apologize to those closest to me for a few things. 1, for complaining. 2, for being so vague. 3, for thinking that maybe you don't care when you actually do.

I'm like an ostrich, except instead of my head in the sand, it's my heart that I bury. I think that one of the truest measures of how much you love and follow God is whether or not you can love people who have hurt you. I talk a lot about loving. I talk a lot about forgiveness. My heart doesn't.

I've been thinking a lot about my life and who I want to be. All I want is to be able to love as deeply and purely as I can, with reckless abandon.

There are two people that have caused this revelation. To the first, and you are smart enough to know who you are, I am so sorry. For everything. I am sorry for being angry and bitter and for apologizing when I didn't really mean it. (Although, the last time I apologized, I really meant it). I feel like I am standing here, holding this broken friendship in my hands and I feel terrible. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to mess everything up. And as much as I try to hate you, I feel kind of the opposite. And I want you to know that I do miss you. So much. I miss our friendship. I miss being able to talk with you about stupid stuff and laugh with you about other stupid stuff. I'm not sure if you will even read this. I'm not sure how you feel about anything. Still. But I need to say this because I need to not be angry with myself about what happened anymore. So I'll apologize one more time. And then I'm going to try for the umpteenth time to move on. I am so, so, so sorry.

To the second person, and you may or may not get the chance to read this, I am sorry. I am sorry for dwelling on the past. I am sorry for blaming you for everything that is wrong with my life. I am sorry that I can't seem to get past this. And I am sorry that I can't let myself talk to you. I am sorry that I complained for years and years and years about how much I wanted you in my life, and then when you finally show up, I can't deal with it. I bury my heart in the sand and I run away from you. I wish I could say that I want you around, because that would not be true. It's not because I don't want you in my life, it's because it's too difficult. But I believe, with everything in me, that this stuff is happening to me right now because God wants me to deal with it. So I'm dealing with it. It's going to take a whole lot of time. And I am going to walk slowly and tread lightly. But I'm moving forward. Maybe someday I will love you the way that you deserve to be loved by a daughter.

It probably seems really stupid to be typing this here, to throw my heart onto the keyboard with reckless abandon in an attempt to make any sense of this. But I'm not really great with talking. And the two people that I reference in this note probably wouldn't talk to me anyway, at the rate I'm going. So I'm writing. And I hope that they read this. And I hope that they don't hate me.

I need some hope. I feel like if I am going to be teaching these kids about hope, I need some for myself. I would like to keep some spare hope and some spare love and some spare forgiveness in my pockets to hand out at will because it's needed here. Desperately. And I figure if I have those things in my heart, then there's enough to go around.

I would also like to say, on a lighter note, that as I was typing this, I got four new mosquito bites on my legs. AWESOME.

Be well, my friends. I love you all. Thank you for caring. Riss