from the old blog...

This is an entry from my old blog that I wrote over the summer shortly after my 22nd birthday. I really like it, despite the fact that it is abundantly clear I was not in a good place when I wrote it. It is the truth although stretched some extent, I suppose the catharsis was in writing everything down, even the exaggerated thoughts. At this point I'd only add: hope springs eternal, and thank the good Lord I am no longer in that place.
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Tuesday, July 26, 2005


I look at my forearm. I see my skin, marked with the flaws and scars of a life lived. I can explain most of them away through lies about accidents or clumsiness, but the truth is that even the most innocent scars are self inflicted.

My two most prominent scars are marks from the steering wheel of my old car. The official explanation is that I was trying to change lanes and I didn't see that traffic had stopped in front of me. I drove into another car going over 45 miles per hour. I remember looking ahead at the last second and seeing the rear of the car in front of me approaching quickly. I meant to hit the brakes, but instead I accelerated into the mini-van. I don't know why I did this, I know where the break is and I don't think that I could have missed it on accident. I've read that people view pain as a healing agent and a purifier and I find some truth in that. Did I seek out my salvation in the back of a mint green Chrysler Town & Country? Did I want that pain?

I wanted the pain last week when I stood in the Rocky mountains, well over 12,000 feet in the air. I asked my family to leave me there for a few hours. I laid on the ground feeling the rocks irritate my back, I let my nose crack and bleed, I let the sun blister my skin and I let the thinness of the air make me sick and cold. I never felt the blood flowing in my veins more acutely. I never felt my head so clear. I never was more aware of myself. When I reunited with my family, I could read the uneasiness in their faces and I don't blame them, my blood soaked shirt and scrapped exterior couldn't have been easy for them to understand. What was probably harder for them to understand was the smile on my face.

I thought a lot while I was laying up there, mostly my failures at love and the most startling self actualization that like the pain I was seeking out, the salvation and distraction that love offers is fleeting and unsatisfying. Or at least it can be, because the reality of loving someone is that it is conditional. I thought back to my days when I was a much more spiritual person than I am now. I used to seek my salvation in Jesus and despite understanding that he was sent for that purpose, I don't know anymore if I can believe in it. God tells us that his love is unconditional, but my experiences with love tell me that it has to be otherwise. This grappling with my faith is difficult. I see it come easily to my parents and I almost resent them for it. Perhaps, seeking out God's love for yourself allows you to love someone else a lot easier?

I wonder it all comes down to some Henry David Thoreau bullshit about self-reliance. How ultimately your salvation has to come from yourself? And what you make of your short time on earth is living in your wilderness and forging your own path? Though I can't believe in the gospel of Thoreau either, since Walden Pond was a stone's throw away from his mother's home where he dined each night and collected his mail.

Despite my own quandaries about salvation the scars remain constants for everyone. Whether we inject ink or shove metal through them or like myself, inflict our own, they are marks that indicate that we aren't happy with who we think we are. I'm learning rapidly though that marking your skin is as empty a change as switching socks and what worries me most is the marks that I've made on the inside of myself that I can't change.