the in-between

It hit me tonight somewhere between Samoset Street and brushing my teeth that i don't think i'm very happy.

I have happy moments. Even happy days. I've struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide in the past, so i know what that's like, and this isn't that. I'm not that kind of unhappy.

It's more of a haze, a disorientation i guess.

After three years of riding an emotional roller coaster on heavy doses of confusion and naievete, my marriage completely failed. I have yet to make it to college, if in fact that's in the master plan. I serve coffee for a living. I still reside with my parents. I'm facing life decisions that at times feel so daunting i just want to pull my sheets over my head and sleep until the opportunity to make them passes. And up until recently, i've been able to accept all these facts and go about my daily business still feeling pretty okay about myself. I stubbornly refused to let it all get to me.

But i'm lost. Can i just admit that? Between long days at work that leave me smelling like coffee grinds and needing to spend several hours kneading my feet back to normalcy and long nights during which i can't sleep because my nine-year-old self has made a habit of standing by my bedside for hours and weeping, i'm floating around in the void. I get up because i have to, not because i want to. I go to work because i need money, i just don't know what for. I hold onto hope that my life will eventually have more meaning, because what else is there? If i can't trust that God has a plan for me that will someday unfold and make sense and contribute positively to the world, then what am i living for?

Right now i'm caught up in the in-between, and it's the worst place on earth to be. One of them, anyway. I know when things are bad, and i know when things are good, but that gray zone in the middle has got me throwing cupcakes in my mind's eye.

I want a Bible. A small, leather-bound Bible with no frills or added commentary. I want the pages to crinkle when i turn them, but i want the whole thing to be so durable that i could throw it at the wall if i wanted to.

I'm not sure why that seems so important to me in the middle of this rant, but i think i'd better get one quick.

My pastor had suggested i take this time for some self-discovery. There are certainly many things i've learned about who i am and who i want to be, but the rest is kind of unclear. I couldn't nail down a specific if it handed me a hammer. I want to be good, i want to be kind, i want to love and be loved, i want to serve, i want to find peace and contentment, i want to laugh, i want to play, and i want to have a home.

I don't know where home is anymore. Is it still my parents' house, even when i'm 22 and really just taking up space and using up resources? I think a good definition for home is anyplace where you're welcome. And i know i'm welcome here, but at this stage of my life...the in-between stage, that is...everything feels different. I'm no longer young enough to need them for my survival necessarily, but i'm not old enough for them to need me, either. I just kind of exist.

Is home Colombia? Am i supposed to pack up and leave the smoldering remains of my old life behind and set up a new camp somewhere so far away? Am i to wake at 4am each day and make breakfast and trudge through the streets of Cali with thirty orphaned kids on their way to school, help them with their homework and chores, serve them their meals, tuck them into bed, and hope that at some point along the way i'll find the time and a miraculous way to raise my own family as well?

Will i ever have a family?

Will i ever come to find balance between work and play and love and God? I didn't even put God first in that lineup. Which only proves my point.

I don't want to be a waste of life. I don't want to feel anxious anymore. I don't want to live on a day-to-day basis as if there's a possibility that i'll wake up one morning to find a note on my bed that reads, "Yeah, so this is kind of it. This is all there is to you, all there is to your life. I just thought you should know, in case you were waiting for things to change. Sorry."

I need a Bible.