I find it odd that at the end of the year it's compelling to review, package up, and file it away. But I do it every year. Remember back in the days when xanga was the old facebook? Every year there are new years surveys that sweep the virtual world, asking vital and fascinating questions as to whether or not you have received a speeding ticket in the duration of the year or which of your friends or relatives have given birth. These were the questions that I thought would entice friends, to heighten my sagging personality, and make the blogging world do a double take on angsty me, Bri Suitt. I have always been this way. I'm more confident with my words than my skin. I feel bolder and wittier behind a computer screen or blank sheet of paper than I could ever be behind a class room desk or the counter of a coffee shop where the cute barista is waiting to be flirted with. I have found it to be rare to stumble upon such reviews by other desperately needy, like-minded survey filler-outers and find them intriguing. Or just bearable. My suspension of disbelief can only go so far until I start realizing these people really are not as enviable as they are making themselves seem. Obviously I believed my reviews were exempt from such eye rollers. I must get it off my chest that all those years of blogging my year review were really just an excuse to be noticed by someone. Even though that someone was usually just Eli, a big time gamer and pyromaniac from Atlanta with a voice resembling Kermit the frog and whose pants always suggested an impending flood. But still. At least Eli read my crappy thoughts. Plus, I could always reinvent him, which I usually did, pretending he wasn't unsettling and geeky but instead, beautiful and mysterious.
But why do I do this? Why must I crave attention so? I blame this fault on many things, middle child syndrome being the largest culprit. Really, I believe the desire to be known is one of those things that throbs out of the heart of every one, every where. But maybe not. Maybe I'm passing off owning up to my personal flaws to every single person on the planet. Even now, this very moment I'm suppressing the urge to talk about my year, about my adventures of living in Missouri, that I have a new cousin that was born a few hours ago, how I almost changed my major, or that I nannied a kid with asperger syndrome who gave me one of his drawings, how I landed a cool photography internship, how I was daring and caught a duck and let it loose in a dormitory or shaved my head, or that I got hit on by a junior higher, who wrongly pegged me as a cougar of sorts. But I'm not going to indulge that desire. Because not only have I realized that other people find rare entertainment out of it but they leave reading such indulgences thinking you're egotistical -and rightly so. Plus I'm above this. This time you're going to have to grovel about my year.
I'm already hating not telling you about my year. Part of me wants to show you the beautiful and mysterious parts of my year, like my imaginary Eli -the parts that if pieced together just so, make me seem effortlessly adventurous, adorable, independent, and intriguing. There's another part of me begging to just reveal how god awful I am -to confess to the empty blog world all this crap I'm dealing with all because it's my fault and no one else's. I have a raw desire to just spill a stream of nasty disappointment because well, that's me. But there's a middle ground that I'm teetering ever so carefully on right now. I think it's called the truth but I won't know until I read this a year from now and either roll my eyes or sigh confidently. But here it is.
Really, I'm just trying to figure out how to be content, to like the skin I'm in, love well the people in my life, to focus on my passions, to be a godly woman. Goodness, some days I'm just trying to figure out how to not disappoint. The whole attention thing is my band-aid to the gaping wound. God is showing me where I need to quit trying to impress myself with the barbie band-aid and just take it off and and take a big wow at the festered and seeping boo boo. How do you allow yourself to be okay with not being okay and trust God with the nuts and bolts of your dismembered self? That's where I am -at the intersection of 2009 and 2010. My prayer is next year I'll be past that. That there will be an unspoken confidence in my relationships with others, that when I spend time with God I will be less constrained to my flaws that keep me from kissing his feet, and that I will live with more intentionality. This sounds well in type but I know that I know it's going to be messy in reality. It always is. You want to know why? Because I'm a mess. That's what Eli said.
happy new year, friend.
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
[thoughts and sundry items pertaining to the last three hundred and sixty-three days]
Friday, December 11, 2009
raw eggs and death
I am convinced death is the most misunderstood part of life. My grandpa died when I was five, the memories surprisingly numerable and clearer than I would expect. I was told once I would see him again. Bubba's body would be made new, he wouldn't be in pain anymore, and there would be lots of cracking up and hugs all around. As a child this was easy to accept, unlike the benefits of daily teeth brushing. I remember my father holding back tears at the wake and I couldn't really understand why. I guess my comment to Aunt Diane that Bubba looked like he was napping well wasn't paid much attention and my first encounter with death was less like a blow and more like a pee in the pants. I miss that. The more aware I became of the brokenness and disappointment of life, the more I realized how much death hurts.
"Bubba died of lung cancer. That's why you don't smoke", "You should always wear your seatbelt!” "That's why you should never wade in the beach after sunset" I'm sure if we recorded all the various comments made to us on the subject of personal safety, there would be some golden ones. I remember a few years ago reading about an unfortunate zookeeper who suffocated in a massive pile of elephant feces upon giving the constipated beast a suppository. My sister and I actually talked about how tragically stupid he was not to have dodged its downpour. But between you and I, let me be frank: we're all going to die. Yeah, yeah everyone says that but who really means it? We strategize our whole life on how to escape death. Sit in a bathtub with your arms over your head, which should be tucked between your legs during a tornado. If dehydrating and in a desert, never drink urine -it only speeds the dehydration up. If floating aimlessly in the middle of the sea, tread lightly rotating between the use of the arms and legs so you will tire less quickly and therefore buying more rescue time. And these are the sensible ones. In middle school I went to a church where this sweet old couple told me they took colloidal silver to keep their health up. The idea of taking a pill with straight silver in it is quite unsettling to me. It's funny how we pad ourselves for death’s sting and then bam. We're stunned our feeble padding only made it worse.
Why do we keep doing this? I, more than any, am frustrated by my inability to wrap my mind around death. What if I've put all my eggs in one basket and it turns out there is no heaven and my body rots and little worms start poking out of me and that's, well, that's it? How did I get like this? I mean, now I'm preaching the blessings of daily teeth brushing and flossing but less sure about my new body and heavenly hugs.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on the day of his execution for conspiring to assassinate Adolf Hitler, referred to death as "the beginning of life". I read that once when I was in eighth grade. The confidence of that statement rattled me quite a bit and it's always been a phrase I've returned to, like a tongue to a mouth sore. I like it though. Death could just be the passageway to eternal bliss. Death has always seemed like such a daunting part of life. But Bonhoeffer stepped through it. That's the poignancy of his statement -he had faith in the unseen. I want a new body, a land of unending happiness; I want to crack up without the interruption of pain. I want to believe.
So I will. I'm banking on this even though I don't have any second hand accounts -just a Bible and barely a mustard seed of faith. I'm tired of the pressures of remembering what side of the road you jog on, in case I get creamed, or if I eat too much cookie dough and die of raw egg overload. My tongue instinctively mopped my teeth just thinking about a slow death by raw egg and realized I forgot to brush my teeth.
Wednesday, December 09, 2009
Saturday, December 05, 2009
hey Mister, why has my day been crappy?
Today was a hard day.
Today was similar when you were being parentally nudged into making the jump from 'little kid' to 'big kid' and ordering your meal at the restaurant all by yourself. Or taking a picture next to mickey mouse. With these analogies, I speak to the more reserved demographic, of course.
I'm annoyed I did the right thing. Will I really be happy in the end? I mean, I'll probably just forget about it and if that's the case, I should have just pouted and done what I wanted because I'll probably just forget that too. Who really looks beyond their weekend anyway? I would prefer pedestrian crosswalks to be more like dodging zones, cigarettes to be the fountain of youth, and class to be canceled every Friday. And Monday.
I wanted to be Little Kid today. It's technically tomorrow, but before I slip off into heavy weekend slumber, I can still curl up in my bed that hasn't been made all week and think about all the uncomfortable things that happened today; situations that coaxed my heart into wearing heavy boots and hanging out with friends who approvingly noted my unusual and (quite) compensated gleefulness. I can still whine to God about that and ask silly and redundant questions. Maybe I could manage a few crocodile tears in, too.
Man, kids get away with everything. 
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