Perfectly Normal

He laughed lightly at her analysis: “Depth is just one of those beautiful, rare things I guess.” His friend’s eyes grew a bit more intense as she looked away, to a dragonfly skimming the tops of the roses.

“I mean… I suppose.”

“You don’t agree, then?”

“No, it’s not that. I guess that depth just isn’t inherently good. I mean, if you can’t swim, then all that ‘depth’ means is that you’re going to drown.”

We often fear in others what we see in ourselves.

Do you ever hear a song and as you listen it is as if you are listening to the embodiment of a person you know?

That’s the whole point, isn’t it? The point is that people can break your heart but they can never break you.

It needs to hurt, because it needs to matter. But it needs to stop hurting, because you have to heal.

People tend to make one of two mistakes:

They either think everyone is like them…

Or no one is.

Maybe sometimes when we can’t verbalize it, it’s because we *do* understand (even more than when we *can* verbalize it…) and we can’t bear to limit or reduce it to a language so insufficient. 

We finally were watching family videos that we got burned onto cds, and it’s interesting to me- how everything changes and nothing does.

How the boy’s voices are so thin and high and their faces are so round and innocent. Or how awkward I was. Bennett looked like I imagine King David might have looked when he was young…a cherub. And Garrett, the most sensitive of the three of us, had internalized a little less than he has now. And watching how Garrett handled feeling victimized (videos making fun of the perpetrator) was rather funny, frankly. 

I was so loud and so quiet…and the only thing I ever asked for on birthdays and such was books…I kept watching us all open our presents and I would unwrap book after book after book. I remembered the year I asked for dog books even though we didn’t own a dog. And my voice was strained like I had to yell to be heard. And I was oddly dramatic when I wasn’t being sarcastic.

And the boys were still so loud… one of the first things you notice even then. Mom calls them sons of thunder and they really are. But the funny thing is that although they were loud Bennett was so sensitive to noise. One of the videos showed the staff of T.G.I. Friday’s singing Happy Birthday to him while he laughed and plugged his ears. I still don’t quite get that paradox. 

But I do wonder… years from now what will have changed and what will be the same.

I have a daddy who knows every part of my heart. He could answer every question about me- every layer of “why,” and can explain every behind-the-scenes explanation. He knows every symbol. He has seen every. single. tear. that I have cried from the beginning of my existence and He has heard every laugh, too.

He sometimes laughs at me when I am melodramatic, but He understands.

He can find me when I get lost in my own head and He can bring me to quiet places inside His love when the world is so very loud. He’s always there, and when I don’t feel Him I still know he’s right beside me. He protects me from those who don’t care but are curious.

He always, *always* holds my hand when He is showing me something that might upset me.

I know He hears all of my questions, even when *I* don’t hear all of His answers. And my questions aren’t too much for Him. He doesn’t think they’re weird, or that there are too many, or that I need to change. He thinks my questions are beautiful- He MADE me to ask them…

He dances with me sometimes. And sometimes He tells me what to sing when I am confused.

We have an understanding, Him and I: neither of us will leave. And I will mess up. I will lose my place when I read my own story and He will have to turn it to the right page again. He will tape back together the pages I accidentally tear. And when I forget and steal a pen to try to write my own story, He will gently mark it out and/or direct the plot back to its purpose. He knows me, He knows my story, He never backs down or gives up or forgets or thinks I’m too much for Him.

He’s bigger than me. I can’t push Him away because He will never leave (and I don’t want Him to). I can’t scare Him away because He isn’t intimidated by me. I can’t laugh Him off because He sees me too deeply. I can’t pull the wool over His eyes because He never falls for it. He never falls for anything. And did I mention He died for us?

I really should get more sleep. I know what happens when I don’t- because of how intuitional/sensitive I am, I end up feeling like I’m walking into a big wave. Like I can’t block anything, or everything is a weird daze I can’t shut off. Sometimes I daze off into my head or sometimes I get restless and feel unsettled. I know this, but I hate going to sleep… So, V…you should sleep. -.-

I’m a different kind of different…………

With different kinds of homes………………….

Turns out we’re two of a kind……………………………

But funny thing-…………………………………………………………

You’ll never know…………………………………………………………………..

She glanced away again, her hand fleeing to her heart as her head bent over. “Oh…I remember why now. I forgot that.”

“We said never to forget!” Her own voice reprimanded her sharply.

“But I will…I will forget sometimes.” Her head sunk lower into her chest, using everything she could to hide her heart in as many layers as possible. She wanted to bury it. She didn’t know where. She didn’t need to. It just needed to be hidden far away from her forgetful mind.

“Yes. It’s an unfortunate side effect of your humanity. We are working on that.”

“Sometimes…only sometimes…maybe it’s good to forget. Maybe you can protect it better when you forget it’s there.”

“Is that the truth?”

“I really don’t know. You always ask these questions that I don’t know how to answer. But I think maybe hidden rooms are supposed to stay hidden.”

“Hidden things are dangerous because they tend to hide from redemptive light. There is a difference between mystery and secrecy. It’s a very fine line, darling.”

“I guess when you remember, maybe your mind is trying to tell you something. I will try to remember though. It helps me know.”

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Remember everything so that it doesn’t *have* to tell you because you already know.”

“Well yes, but sometimes you miss the best answer when you see all the answers at once.”

“So it’s a choice, isn’t it?”

They stared together up at the high brick walls, thinking. 

“I mean… there’s always a window, right?”

“That’s what they say. I don’t believe them.”

“But there has to be… wouldn’t you lose your breath? Wouldn’t you be suffocated?”

“There’s the sky…”

“Different kind of suffocating.” She turned to her companion, inner eyebrows raised and eyes very big and sad. “I used to be like that. Isn’t that weird? And I didn’t even know it. So you’d think I’d be able to empathize…but I can’t. I can’t understand it at all. Why wouldn’t you have made a window by now?”

“Do you have windows?” She asked, surprised. She didn’t remember that on the schematic.

“Let’s just say my walls can breath,” she replied quietly. “This is why this is always so very frustrating, you know. Do you try to scale the walls, do you look for a door camoflouged as a wall (a personal favorite of hers), do you knock, do you wait? What do you do? It’s always completely different, and they don’t even know why it matters.”

Her companion scoffed ever so slightly, not in disdain but in melancholy agreement. Why does it matter? 

Because that’s what everyone says. And sometimes when everyone says it, it is just impossible to believe. 

I’ve decided cemeteries annoy me. Not because they are full of corpses, or because they are a sobering manifestation of the reality of earthly death, or even because they are laid out in neat, abandoned rows as if death wasn’t messy or hard or regretted. They annoy me because of the fake flowers, sitting like perfect little trophies beside the headstone. Fake flowers- plastic, rain-proof… I can’t even berate them with the word “dead” because they were never even alive! So they sit, never to be harmed, in disgusting perfection and irking lonileness. And all I can think is why aren’t these flowers alive? And so here’s what I think: I think a *real* plant should be planted. It should be taken care of, but not pruned, not trimmed, not perfected; it should be allowed to spread and claim the grounds. And then all the growing plants will mingle and mix and intertwine. Now, perhaps this idea with some temperance isn’t practical, but hear me out- because that is how people are. We are never on our perfect little island. We can be hurt, trampled, drowned because we are alive. And after we die, our memory isn’t sealed and perfected like a plastic plant. Our legacy intertwines with the legacies of those before us, with us, after us until we all make a garden- until together we weave a messy yet beautiful tapestry because that is how God *made* us. Even in death, even after death, our souls and our legacy are alive. The soundwaves we put forth when we spoke are still beaming somewhere through space. The lives we touched touch other lives and it goes on and on and on in ways we never planned, even as we carry forward the legacy of someone *behind* us. So no. No, we are not straight-stemmed plastic flowers. We are alive, tumbling across the earth trying to reach our roots deeper. We are intertwined, all our colors together forming something wholly different as a group than as individuals. And after death, the only difference is that we aren’t moving on this particular sphere. Our legacy, our memory, our children still are. Legacies morph as different people adopt them. Memory changes. Children grow up. And that’s why I hate those plastic plants. They are a dishonest metaphor.

I don’t buy the idea that if you are healthy then people can’t hurt you. I just don’t. I mean, how numb would we have to be to be “healthy?” No… being hurt means that your nerves are working, your neurons are firing. It means you are alive. It means you’ve loved in your life and it means that something matters to you. Being free means that you overcome that pain but never stop loving deeply.

“Well, I know you,” she said, tilting her head back as she laughed. Her silver eyes opened just widely enough to catch her friend’s blossom-pink smile wither slightly. “What?”

“Yes…I suppose you do. But not. I mean, you don’t know my language.” She regarded her more closely. 

“But didn’t I translate your eyes just then?” She queried. Her brow wrinkled like the fabric of space-time had suddenly been crumpled into a ball; she shifted, unsettled (as if the thing that was unsettling her had been unsettling her for some time now). 

“I speak…a lot of languages. I guess people just don’t solve people as quickly as puzzles. I mean, I can read Sarah’s eyes, and know she is saying something more than what she is saying. But I never know what it is. And when you don’t know what it is… well, the pieces just don’t fit together sometimes. I want them to. But they don’t. And I think maybe that’s true of a lot of people… We learn to read eyes, or symbols, or body language, and we think we are done. But that’s the thing… is people talk in eyes AND symbols AND body language, not just one. And all the little languages make a whole new one and I guess that’s why I’m sad. Because we miss it.”

I was looking over quotes from Fahrenheit 451 (amazing book) and one of my favorites is:

 “The girl? She was a time bomb … She didn’t want to know how a thing was done, but why. That can be embarrassing. You ask why to a lot of things and you wind up very unhappy indeed, if you keep at it. The poor girl’s better off dead.”

“Why” is the forbidden question…we can talk for hours about what we do, and how, and with whom, but the moment we question *why* we do these things, we are socially inept. We have asked the one question that pierces through masks and games, the one question that pierces to the heart of a person. Why do you do what you do? Do *you* even know? Heaven forbid the questions we ask delve to places where answers exist. Heaven forbid they startle, or challenge, or awaken. No, we’d much rather be numb. We’d much rather protect our beautifully crafted facade while our spirits melt inside us. We’d much rather laugh than face the possibility that we have reasons to cry. We’d much rather people love our lie than risk losing what wasn’t love in the first place, and we’d much rather lose ourselves in motion.

And then there are those people. Those people who stare at every person around them, asking why with their eyes but never speaking, because the moment they do, the earth quakes. And heaven forbid we rock that boat. How dare we look for the truth, we who have been told over and over again to wear our mask and join the masquerade. So the only ones who wouldn’t rather…are silent.

1. THE WAY UP: On the way up we made food puns. I do not mean a *few* food puns. I mean outsiders would have questioned our sanity. But that’s okay because they would have been right. But in all honesty, I was riding with Michael and Jonathan almost the whole way, and in case I have not established this already, those guys are *fantastic.* We also had to laugh when Alex and Mitchell’s “military maneuvers” got them lost in Memphis (I’d just like you to picture this… two white guys listening to veggie tales get lost in Tennessee after trying to race the girls…too good). Also hilarious was Liana and Charlotte’s running narration of Becoming Jane, a movie that was made slightly less depressing by their reactions. Though I hafta say, if I ever want to be demoralized right before a tournament, I may *definitely* watch that movie. -.-

2. THERE: I have to say, watching the bro code get broken definitely deserves to make this list. As does psychologically intense staring contests with Alex. I also have to say, having your TP partner from last year reassuring you through your hardest event is pretty nice, too. 

3. Frankly, when we entered the town I was slightly despairing. Last year was in Colorado, and what was this? A tiny little broken down town in Arkansas. But it surprised me. Because those abandoned little streets had original, adorable coffee shops that boasted all sorts of unexpected things (gluten free bread for my curried chicken salad? Yes please). And the campus was beautiful… though more dangerous than I expected. I mean, who expects the guys in your group to ram into/block your car with a THREE PERSON BIKE OF ALL THINGS?? 

4. I didn’t particularly plan on the tornado, either. Frankly, I think I would’ve rather faced the tornado than the crowded and overheated halls into which we were crammed like tiny little sardines. 

5. Abi goes without saying. ;) Naturally talking and eating nutella and generally being in the same location is just a happy thing.

6. I discovered P.O.D.

7. We all know that guys wonder one question fairly consistently: Why do girls go to the bathroom together? Abi and I were trying to explain this to Alex, who, characteristically, was making fun of us. “No, no, you meet people! Like, you can strike up good conversations and socialize in the bathroom!” But our efforts were in vain and we went ahead to the bathroom (together, of course). And just as we said, we struck up a conversation with someone we hadn’t met. It starts with a compliment on her outfit, and then we launch into a discussion. It ends, she leaves, and Abi and I immediately turn to each other and say in sinc: “SEE????!!!!”

Now, I am all for pranks, but the guys definitely outdid themselves. You see, mom had gotten Jon and Michael a tub of chopped liver as a harmless little joke. However, this was blown greatly out of proportion after they decided to keep it (let’s face it, we all know they were plotting revenge) but forgot that meat WILL spoil after about four days at room temperature. -.- In fact, it spoiled so badly that the fumes popped the lid off, turning their once nice hotel room into… something I wouldn’t wish on the maid. Inviting the others to smell, Jon and Michael brought a crowd of guys into their room- a crowd that quickly flew back out in various doubled-over positions and faces expressing the whole gamut of human disgust. Personally, I think this was entirely their fault. But that logic was clearly not shared when they decided to destroy our hotel room. Finally retreating to my “safe haven” I found out that it was NOT so safe. Twine traversed the room like spiderwebs of death (mostly because it was wrapped around the lamps and every other conceivable thing that could fall and cause unprecedented damage and/or costs). Toilet paper hung like ornaments from basically everywhere and foil was randomly wrapped around various objects, all adding the trailer effect that I am sure they were going for. Checking the shower head, I noticed something sticking out as if one of our sabautours had lost a thumb or something; it was cool-aid. Thank God that one, at least, failed. And also, we all know that no shower cap smells like synthetic cherries, guys. I was pretty proud, actually, having spotted most of the tricks that weren’t obvious. However, approximately four in the morning I found out that they had stuck poppers and a partially opened packet of mayanaise under the toilet seat. That part was especially lovely. That was the point in which I sent the text: “Jonathan Pickman and Michael freaking Tant, my room is a minefield, and next tournament you are going DOWN.” Btw, I intent to keep that promise. 

If I think of more I will add it, of course.