On Memory.

There are a lot of things I wish I could forget.

In that I'm not alone, I imagine. I'm sure a lot of people would say that they wish they could forget X or Y. But what is unusual in my case is that sometimes, only when I'm in a bad mood, I want to forget many of the good things I've experienced in life.

Occasionally I will look people up on the internet that I used to know. Just to see if they're alive, see if they look happy. I would sincerely like to know if joy always comes with the missing afterwards. I wonder if I can ever love someone without eventually having to face the reality that I will never see or talk to them again.

It can make you question whether it is worth meeting people at all.

These days, most of my friendships I have to admit are not very intense, intimate friendships. I might even say that I don't have very many friends anymore at all. It is a lot different than my life, say, a year or so ago. I am starting to become a very solitary creature. For some reason, I don't feel bad about this at all.

But every once in a while it makes me wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Because I used to have such close relationships with other people that I could never imagine living without them. But here I am. I have no friends now that I don't think I could live without.

Is there no golden mean here? Will I always have to have intense feelings toward other people to have good relationships with them? Because I'm all out of intense feelings these days.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to forget.

Let it be what it is.

Just recently I went on a nearly-week-long trip to Kentucky for the fourth and last time. I think this trip has been one of the best things to happen to me in a while.

It's like a fresh hypo of grace has been injected into my life. My head is clear for the first time in perhaps a year, and now I can look at my life with new eyes.

I think my most recent life lesson is that relationships need to be what they are. What I mean by this is that I have been so afraid of not having relationships or having poor ones...or simply not having the kind of relationship I want with a particular person has caused me to attempt to control them by means of a desperate system of mass invitations to be a part of my life that left me often exhausted and/or disappointed at the results.

With a little time I think I've realized that perhaps my last post was tipped to the opposite end of the scale. I've needed to find my balance, and I think I know what it is now. This week, there were only four other guys in a group of 24 (?) who went to Kentucky. I was literally forced to break my vow of only investing in male friendships. I did rather aggressively bond with my fellow men, but there were also several women that God figuratively dropped in on me that I was meant to be with. God needed me to fill a role, so I did. As always, God has the better idea. So I let those friendships be what they are.

I still have no plans in the near future to engage in any sort of romantic relationship, but I think I want to be more open to God intervening anyway. Which is really no different than what I said in my last post - only God himself will stop me.

Now, though, I am going to strike a balance and let my relationships be what they are. So much stress is taken on by myself and others who attempt to make relationships something when it doesn't matter (and never has mattered) what we have done. Relationships will always be what they are meant to be. Always. It is only up to us to let them be what they are. Is this a friendship? Then be a friend. That's it. No further questions nor actions necessary.

Thank you to everyone who helped me really cut loose and clear my mind. It's been great. I love you all.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream that was what it was.

Bipolar? And other questions...

So, I think I'm bipolar.

I have proof. How many people do you know go from in tears all day one day and the next, feel completely fine? Every time I go through these phases of depression and happiness I notice something: I can't understand why I was in the other state.

When I'm depressed, I am completely convince that I have no reason to be happy. My mind is completely focused on misery, and I can't feel happy. When people are nice to me, I don't know how to respond. I can't motivate myself to do anything. I am convinced I'm worthless.

When I'm happy, like I am now, I can't understand why I was ever down. The problems I was upset about seem distant...like a dream, or like it was long ago, or happening to someone else. I love everyone. I find joy in the tiniest of things...I have a good self-esteem, I feel invincible.

It's like I'm two separate people. I don't get it.

I also think I might be done discerning the priesthood. I'm not 100% sure yet, but for a while I've been rolling the question around in my head...since last summer, actually. What is God calling me to? Marriage or Priesthood? Or something else? Well, the original reason for discerning wasn't a really good one, in my opinion. The sheer multitude of rejections by women I liked made me feel like it could be a clear message that I'm not supposed to be married - since there are really no coincidences.

Now I feel different. I have felt for a long time a great desire to give of myself to a woman, for life. That's not really a priest thing...and it's not going away, even in the face of prayers about being a priest and the continued "bad luck" with women. I think the whole women issue might be a nice post for another time, though.

The other question I'm faced with (throughout the day, in prayer, etc.) is what I'm doing after I graduate from college. I'm an English major with a Journalism minor. There is a possibility I can get a job, but I feel called to stay where I am. Work for my church as a minister. Since I wasted so much of my college life on stupid things, I feel like it would be poetic justice for me to stay here for the same amount of time I wasted: doing it right this time. But that's also a long story for another entry.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was that there could be balance and certainty.