Friday, March 19, 2010

Boy Meets Girl

Boy meets girl. Boy buys girl a drink, or two, or three. He has something more in mind than casual conversation and a few laughs at the bar. It's the thrill of the chase really, and he's hoping that it will end up at her apartment. Cuz he likes a good conquest. He likes feeling like he has won. And it's a symbiotic relationship because what she desires is to feel beautiful and precious and worthwhile. All the attention he's giving her and the way he's looking at her sure makes her feel desired. "He could be flirting with any girl here, and he chose me." Though both have been through this routine before, both have followed through before, and both have regretted it before, they still carry on with the game. He thinks that winning her affection will make him feel like a conqueror, strong and victorious. She thinks that winning his attention will make her feel beautiful. And it does. For tonight anyway.

I myself don't trust guys enough to sleep with them. At the discussion I was at last night at LVC, Pastor Ron said that the mechanics of it are pretty easy. It's the actual relationship part that is difficult. But I disagree, I always thought that the mechanics would be hard. Thus, I wouldn't trust a guy enough to be vulnerable like that. I don't trust that a guy won't be thinking that he assumed I'd look better naked than I actually do. I don't trust that a guy wouldn't make fun of me the next day with his friends. I would have to really know someone and really love someone to be that vulnerable. Can I trust that man enough to know that he isn't using me? That he sees me as more than an object to fulfill his needs? That takes time to find out. Does he find me beautiful and precious enough to love and care for me on a long term basis?

I realize that not every sexual relationship is the story of a one night stand in a bar. But I do know that getting someone to sleep with you doesn't actually make you much of a conqueror. Winning a woman's heart is a lot harder than winning her body for a night. And having someone want to sleep with you doesn't make you beautiful. When someone sees you as more than a hot body, when someone wants to know you and take care of you and live life with you, that's a man showing you that you are precious.

I dated a guy in high school who tried to push me further physically. And he did manage to push me slightly further than I meant to go. Which probably made him feel really good about himself. And I want to say that the joke's on him because it wasn't really that much of a feat... but I don't know how to say that without sounding like I was easy. So this poem kind of better explains what I mean. (I hope)

"You Win"

Do you feel a sense of accomplishment
now that you’ve stolen my innocence?
Do you feel better about yourself,
knowing you could charm me with your smile?
Did I keep you entertained for a few months
so you wouldn’t have to be alone?
Or was I even less of a person to you than that?

If you wanted to feel big and manly by stealing my innocence,
you should have known you’d never have succeeded.
But I know I didn’t make that clear enough.
And I take the blame for that completely.

If you wanted to feel better about yourself by tempting me,
you should know that enchanting a high school girl is not that hard.
Though I thought I was smarter than one of those girls,
as it turned out, I was nothing more and nothing less.

If I kept you entertained so you wouldn’t have to be alone,
you should know that perhaps I was using you for the same reason.
Although my reasons were purer than yours,
I admit that loneliness may have skewed my perceptions.

I don’t know how you viewed me or why you were with me.
I don’t know if your reasons had anything to do with me;
even considering these negative possibilities,
I question whether I was even that much of a person to you.

You should know that if you had wanted to break my innocence, you did.
If you had wanted to charm me momentarily, you did.
And if you had wanted to be entertained,
I suppose you took care of that yourself by playing your little games.
So if I was just a pawn in your game, you win.

But in the end, I will not allow any way you have made me feel
to dictate where I go or who I will become.
You will not haunt my past because I’m stronger than that
and I wouldn’t let you, of all people, get in the way of real love.

So if you want to look at this from your narrow vision,
where you are great and special because you conquered,
You win. Congratulations.
6/25/07

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Green Dress


For tradition’s sake and for tradition alone,
I wear green today.
I can play along with tradition’s silly rules.
In truth, it’s fun to be a fanatic, go all out,
And fancy everyone else apathetic
As I apply my green eyeliner with a smirk.
(I even wear green underwear,
though no one will see it.
Now THAT’S dedication.)
I never wanted to be one of those people
who wore blue or brown or yellow,
it just doesn’t make sense—
why would you NOT wear green today?

But I don’t even know what St. Patrick’s Day is.

I start to wonder
Why do people wear green?
Why NOT blue or brown or yellow?
What are we even celebrating?

The year I was grieving too much to get dressed that day,
Someone asked me where my green was.
I felt oddly ashamed for breaking tradition.
It was the one time that I just didn’t care,
And someone called me out on it.
I know my friends have a right to keep me accountable,
But why?
I’m not even Irish.

I don’t know why we’re wearing green
Or why we’re drinking beer,
But I can go along with it.
I like playing the fanatic,
even though it’s meaningless--
I mean there’s really no other way to describe it, is there?
It's just silly, empty, meaningless tradition
if I can’t even tell you who St. Patrick is.

The only thing I know is that I’m supposed to wear green,
And lucky for me, I look damn good in my green dress.

Monday, March 8, 2010

E is for Evaporation

I'm grateful that the snow has finally melted away. It's weird though how hard we have to work to dig our cars out after a snowstorm, and then a week later, the snow just melts anyway. What's up with that? You work so hard for something that just disappears.

My life has had a reoccurring theme of evaporation lately. For instance, the other day at work, I worked all day to edit a document and got so much progress done, and then the document just disappeared. I had forgotten to save it in a different location, and then it was gone. None of my work counted for anything because it was just gone. You can imagine my anger. It was pretty much a broken record of the f-word repeating in my head. A few weeks ago, my ipod just decided to delete everything on it. Sounds like no big deal, but you have no idea how long I have worked to organizing everything perfectly. Countless hours have been spent to organizing my music and videos just so. It's all gone now. I recognize that these situations do not matter much in the grand scheme of things. But they are like physical representations of why I'm actually angry.

The reason I've actually been angry is because my relationship with Ryan just evaporated into thin air. What does that mean about the 2.5 years of my life spent trying to make something work that wasn't ever really working in the first place? I am not consoled by the thought that it was a growing period and that sometimes relationships don't work out, blah blah blah. The whole thing just evaporated. Which makes me feel like, well, why did I bother?

Before snow evaporates, it gets really ugly from dirt and stones and all that road gunk. It gets pretty gross. By the time the snow is tainted by all that grossness, you just can't wait for it to disappear. But it evaporates and leaves all the junk behind. So did I really put all that work into shoveling for something that would just disappear in a week?

But it never really disappears I guess. The snow either seeps into the ground or goes back into the air. It's not gone. And it leaves behind the junk which kind of settles again on the road. It's the unseen aftermath that kills you. And part of the reason it kills you so much is because you can't see it. No one can see it except for you, so you kind of wonder if you're going crazy. What are you left with? The only proof that it even happened is that your back is really sore from the shoveling. It all melted away and left you standing there alone.

The snowstorms this year were pretty brutal, and I was digging my car out for hours sometimes. And when it's all done, you just stand there... numb and exhausted, not really sure where to go from there.I think snow is really beautiful when it's falling down from the sky. It's peaceful, and it's pure and untouched. I look forward to it. But at this point, I wonder whether that beauty worth the work you put into it or not.

But such is life. We work and toil, and for what? It's all going to evaporate. There is nothing new under the sun. I think that's supposed to be freeing, but why does it make me feel so trapped? I just wanted the work to count for something. I just wanted the time not to feel wasted.

And yet, such is grace, reaching down for me, telling me that I have nothing to work for--it is finished. There's still this pesky business of shoveling. Why do we bother? It's just going to disappear. As Mother Theresa said, "What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway." After all, "In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway." Grace says it isn't about the final product or the work, it's about moving and serving and having hope, no matter how many times things evaporate.