Clarity from Calamity

Hello again. I'm here because my fingers punch keys faster than they swivel pencils. There is a lot in my mind and my heart, this evening. 


This morning, on my way back to Provo, I was the at the forefront of a major car accident involving seven cars on I-15 between 500 S. and Pleasant Grove. 

Due to another accident a quarter mile ahead of the flow of traffic I was in, a sea of red ignited before me, queuing my braking reflexes and heightening my attention. The relief I felt in maneuvering my car to a halt before I hit the car in front of me was short lived. About a millisecond after coming to a full stop, mere feet behind another car, I felt an instantaneous surge of heat and metal crashing on my ears and powering through my body from behind. 

When I regained my vision and hearing, I realized I was facing the concrete wall on my left, and a kind man in front of me asking if I was alright. My doors were locked, his voice muffled, but I nodded that I was after a minute of regaining my sense of reality. I immediately call my mom, tell her I've been in a slight accident.

Looking to my left, I see the woman who had crashed into me from behind. I got out of the car, to ask if she was okay also. She had a baby in the back seat. She was a mess. She was on the phone. She was hysterical. I told her that everything would be alright. She kept saying sorry over and over again. I don't know why. I thought it was my fault. 

Through mutual apologies, I saw out of the corner of my eye a blue truck attempt to break but spin about 300 degrees and barely miss us. I ran back to my car, realizing I was still in the middle of the freeway with cars whizzing past, possibly holding up more people and putting more lives in danger. With the help of a couple on the side who had seen everything, I made my way over to the far left lane, wincing at the reluctance of my wheels being slashed by my back bumper.

I get out of my car again, seeing the scene from a different angle. The woman in the van is still crying but calming down. Then another van comes out of no where and slams into her while she is in the middle of the free way, on the phone, trying to dry her eyes.

I have never seen sheer terror from any human being than before that moment. Her back arched as if she had been stabbed from behind. Her fear looked like physical pain.

The couple who helped me get to the side of the freeway made their way over to the two vans in the middle. The girl helped the mom out of the car, got her baby, and led them to the side of the road.

With my hand to my mouth, I'm racking my brain on figuring out what could be done. There is nothing.

Suddenly, a PT Cruiser swerves around the woman's van and the man who crashed into her, and into my car at around 30 mph, though it was parked away from the flow of traffic. I will never forget that muffled screaming, close enough for me to hear as she barely missed my vulnerable body by a few feet. 

As she opened the car, she was even more hysterical than the woman in the van with the baby. I am a terrible comforter, but I held her arm and asked her if she was okay. She couldn't even get a sentence out. Just tears and screams and confusion emanating from her mouth and eyes, her black hair unruly. Then the couple who helped me get over to the side were there. The girl was a nurse. I have never been more grateful for nurses.

As the nurse and I were with the black haired woman another blue car smashed into the wall, then hitting the couple's car on the side of the road, along with another car with an elderly lady in breathing tubes and a skinny  20-yr-old in it, which I hadn't noticed before. The blue car was absolutely decimated. He wasn't moving. But the man from the couple checked to see if he was okay and told him not to move. He was alive. I've never been more grateful for a seatbelt.

I made my way over to the woman with the baby, who just kept crying and crying and crying and holding her baby named Knox, and then hugging me and apologizing. So I hugged her and Knox back and told her it was all alright. Then we laughed because life was surreal. I've never been more grateful for laughter.

Looking at everything. All of the metal all over the shiny street. Smelling smoke, heart eerily calm, every muscle in my body shivering from wet, coldness. It was the most submissive moment of my life. I could do nothing but give in to chaos. There was no control, no order, no breathing, no nothing. 

Then I heard sirens.

I have never been more grateful for sirens in my life.


Firefighters, Paramedics, Highway Patrol.

The firefighters made their rounds, making sure we were okay.
The paramedics got the man in the second van, and the man in the blue car, and the black-haired woman on yellow stretchers.
The highway patrol came last and made sure everyone was okay, too.









I don't know how to describe this morning at all. My life has been changed. I experienced, witnessed, and was the recipient of people at their very best in the midst of the very worst. 
Compassion. From everyone. The first man at the beginning, the nurse, the boyfriend of the nurse, the firefighters, the paramedics, the highway patrol, even the crying woman with her baby. All were true victims of calamity. And all exemplified the kind of person that is the right kind of person. Compassion. I have never been this close to losing my sanity or life. I have never been so eerily calm before. I have never seen so many adults regress to childhood. Or so many young people rise up to the call to action and forget themselves to aid others. Compassion.

On and off all day, today, I can't stop crying. Nor do I really want to. I am so blessed. I am SO blessed. I am determined. I have an answer to things I have been asking and praying about. I may have a little PTSD for the next few weeks, but I have faith in the Human Race, and will never lose that faith again.


For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. -2 Tim 1:7

Today, I thought I was just moving. I ended up surviving.
Today, I was unsure. Now I am set in stone.
Today, I gained clarity through something cataclysmal.
Today, I am alive, I am okay, and I am unafraid.

Stupid Human Moments

I'm not coming back to UT! I just decided.

JK. I could never do that. I miss the big ole state of hives and bees and honey and watermelon.

But Sometimes, world, I have an extreme human moment where All of my past lives show up on my doorstep at the MOST inconvenient times.

I am so sorry for that.

This blog is extremely good for me to try and be what I need to be- a venter.

And sometimes, I am constricted with what I have, so I can't talk to all of you.. sometimes any of you... about the truth of the matter.
But I do want you to know that you matter so much to me. In fact, it's the reason why I can't tell you somethings. It's the reason why sometimes I don't even make sense. Like right now, for instance.

But. Like all good tunnels of darkness, there's light at the end of it. And it is also that same light that illuminates some of the crevices (cruh-VA-ces, as Jane would say it) of my beautiful, dark tunnel. And like all things that wish to be kept hidden, sometimes it really, truthfully, hurts to have a light shined on it.
It's better that way.
It may hurt now, but it's always, always, always, always better to know the truth about your mind. And I'll be the first to tell you that it feels better to shrink away from what is true at the moment you see it. But the more things are not faced, the more your stomach begins to ache from all the emotional acid eroding your insides.
I've had a stomach ache for a long time. I'm really good at not throwing up. You can do the math at what that means for me... But I think It's time I threw up. Yes. I'm serious. Not literal, but serious.

So. I cannot wait to come back and see my friends. I cannot wait to see my beautiful, eternal family. I cannot wait to get back to real life and to see if all the things I've learned so far this summer will stick, or if it's a process, or if it's practice... or what. I don't know anything, really.
What I do know for sure is that happiness exists and love prevails and good triumphs over evil and I hope permeates all my thoughts no matter how much I would rather just sit and wallow. All the good stuff we learned in kindergarten IS the true stuff. It's harder to see it the older we get, but the older we get the harder it is for us to see anyway. So. There.

Don't read all of this. This just helps me freaking breathe sometimes.

PTSD

As it turns out, I'm not the strong one, after all.

I'm very, very weak.

Cat

Sometimes I cannot tell for sure if part of that is about me or someone else.

I can't tell for sure if you and I are in a conversation. But I choose to believe that some of it is true. That I am a part of you as much as you are a part of me.

And the parts of you that are not me are more beautiful than my life as a whole. The parts of you that are parts of me make me believe in anything, in everything.

I didn't know before how distances could make a heart grow stronger. But now I see it's because it is distance that stretches us like a rubberband. And the tension brings a sort of clarity to us. I'm pulled toward you like the day I met you, for the second time in life.

I'm in awe and love with the things that make you different, unique, brilliant, special. But it's the things that are the same that keep me grateful. Because you understand me. You understand reality. You understood more than you give yourself credit for, as usual. 

You've always understood.

What I'm trying to say is, we are genius. And I remember. 

Passed

I once ran into a girl I knew from another life.

In one confusing glance, 82 questions flashed in my brain and an unspoken hysteria of bewilderment danced between us.

I couldn't remember her name at the moment, but I knew everything she was and everything about her like it had only been a day since we'd spoken last. Names were a small matter compared to the person I knew her to be.

The funny thing was, I had just barely remembered this happened a couple minutes ago. I hadn't even remembered that I had stumbled upon a long lost life, sleeping in the crevices of my subconscious until now. But I never got to ask my questions to her, and I want to find her.

I wonder how she is. I wonder where she went. I wonder what she's thought through.
Has she had challenges? Has she had heartbreak? Has she found her dreams? How is her family? What is she doing with her life?


I mean, it's not a life/death situation, but I have a strong desire to find her, and reminisce with her. I want to remember how she was and in doing so find an younger version of myself.
I want to know how far I've come from then. To see how she has changed and how I have from each other and from ourselves.

Because, lately, that whole "past" thing seems too far away to return to, but too close to place in a dusty urn next to my baby dresses and popsicle stick projects in the back of my closet.

I think it's frightening that in that one moment, as we were rushing past each other, both frustrated that all we had time for was a "hello" and an interrupted reunion, I was able to feel every emotion and every memory from her and she, I.


No time has passed. Every last drop of time we have has passed.

All of it seems surreal when I look back on my life. There seems to be a ton of it.

Floodgate #73

Good Morning, world.

Oh, look at the time...

As usual, I only write in the dead of winter. AKA 3 in the morning.

Also, the big elephant in the room has decided to play dead. So we can just ignore this whole "Why was she gone for a buncha months.?" business and get back to work.

But if you insist, you can e-mail the elephant.

But I digress..

Good Morning, world.

Firstly, a few questions must be answered:

1. I am in New York City, the center of the Universe, until August. I have been here for a month.

2. I eventually will get a job. I think.

3. I'm staying with my Nana, Vivian, who is one of the most spectacular individuals I have had the pleasure of being family members with.

4. I turned 19, once.

5. I'm done with a year of college.

6. Yes, I still hate hair.

Secondly, a few questions must be posed.

As previously mentioned, I've been here in NY for a month. I haven't even written on this lovely bloggyblog of mine for a billion years. 

And so, as usual, my brain has imploded upon itself with endless questions about life, love, the pursuit of sanity, and other incessant pests to my peace and quiet.

It's incredibly eye-opening being in this place for multiple reasons.

1. People. Are. Crazy.

2. My Family. Is. Crazy.

And I don't mean crazy in the "aww-shucks-we-have-our-disagreements-but-we-all-get-along-in-the-end" mushy type crazy. I mean the "how-are-any-of-you-still-living-in-this-world-without-any-therapist-bankruptcy" type crazy.

What I have now come to realize is that nobody is an adult.

I at first was angry with this notion. No. I was irate.

People aren't responsible with their emotions. People do not do what they say they are going to do. People are mean to each other, even when they say that they wish the world were a better place. They don't use the justice system properly. They lie. They cheat. They WHINE. They sue. They pout. They do stupid things, say stupid things, breathe STUPIDLY. They are greedy. They are hypocrites.

They make their children into raging lunatics. They blame inanimate objects, unaccountable circumstances, and the faultless. People. are. crazy. Irritating.

But the hardest thing to accept, was that it was all of humanity that does it. 

Even my friends.

Even my family.

Even people I look up to.

Even me.

My family is crazy.

They are people.

I still sometimes hate all of it. I curse at the universe and ask why people have not learned by now. Learned of reality. Learned to get freaking priorities straight. Why don't people grow up already and perfect themselves?

And in the end, I drink in a large quantity of air and force my body to relax. Because there is no point.

People will do what they do best. That is: Make mistakes.

We make mistakes in trying to find what makes each of us happy. We're children, truly. Trying to stand so we can walk. Trying to talk so we can express. Trying to grasp so we can bear.

Apparently, I can't change the world in one fell swoop.

But I can change MY world, and even then it's by small increments of time, sweat, tears, blood, and palms to the face.

Line upon line. Precept upon precept.

I still have questions. It's why I can't ever delete this blog, as much as I hate the Universe of Blogging. And the Universe of Life for that matter.

I still have questions for it that can only be answered by my asking them.

Day of the V

I find that my procrastinatory skill is directly proportional to the frequency of my blog posts.

I don't want to go to school today. At all.

So. Here I am, making weird faces at myself in the mirror one minute and having intellectual/highly wrathful albeit imaginary conversations with people the next.

Oh... to be young and schizophrenic.

Anyway.
It's V-Day.
And you know what THAT means!
A thanksgiving day full of angry-yelling, eye-rolling, and anti-love-picture-making emos who are basically just embarrassingly cliché.

Unfortunately, I will not grace you with my appreciation of that sort.

I love Valentimes Day.

I don't know why, really.

It might have been that I was conditioned to liking it after all those years of artistic box-making in K-6... We got CANDY.
I think my subconscious mind still expects it or something.

But really. I do love this day. I think it's adorable. I get so happy for everyone. So many splashes of red across campus. A few black-clad stragglers. It's awesome.
An entire day, every year, to show that one person how much you love them and are willing to spend buckets of monies to prove it??
Romantic.

Gah.

I wish people felt love more often. It's such a nice feeling.

Sometimes the Blues is just a Passing Bird

I’m just a dreamer but I’m hanging on
Though I have nothing big to offer
I watch the birds, how they dive in, then gone
It’s like nothing in this world’s ever still

-Tallest Man on Earth








I can't seem to find it. 
Balance, I mean.


My attempt at soaring is beginning to dwindle due to the fact that I don't actually have any wings.


Sometimes I fear I will be unsuccessful and becoming the truest I can be.


I have a sinking feeling it will not be in this lifetime.


And yet my heart still tries.


One thing I know for a certainty, is that no matter what I say, I will never be able to resist my own inclinations to live. I can't stop. I can't stop the muscles in my body to move. I can't stop the sparks of recognition in my brain to electrify. I can't stop the yearning in my heart for reality.

I can't stop searching for the best plan of action to take.


What I really am saying is... I still care about my people.
I don't know how to be and not offend.
I don't know how to live and not push those I love most away.
I don't KNOW anything.


I am surviving on hope that they will come back to the light. Come back to love. Come back to the very thing I use to believe that they will.

In my mind, Truth is what sets us free. Every good thing is a manifestation of truth's existence.
Faith
Hope
Laughter
Love

My truth for them is not enough. My faith, my hope, my laughter, my love.... It's never enough because they don't truly want it.

It's amazing what your heart will do to your mind when you let it settle on something.
It's equally amazing that we have power enough to decide where we want it to settle.

The Wrong Way

I look at life the wrong way.
Not that there is a right way... but there are definitely wrong ways.

Sometimes, as I get into my darkly cyclical thought processes that we all create in our minds, I feel pure frustration with myself.
I'm frustrated that at the end of a previous intense modification of "way of life," I seem to come to a conclusion.
And then I end up right back where I started- questioning, doubting, yelling, not understanding, not clicking.

I can't seem to keep myself at a constant level of understanding with my life and love and friends and family and God and religion. I can't stay calm, as if chaos is inevitable.

Entropy?

But today, I realized that I needed to do some meta-cognition. How do I approach my own thought?

I go into my own thinking with an expectation that I WILL be happy, I WILL understand, I WILL work the puzzles of life out in my mind.

Of course, those notions fail.

Because the human mind in all its glory is curious and suspicious and ambitious.

It is beautiful.

And that is where I should get back to. The fact that I have crazy ideas, ideas that I pull and scrape and claw at for days at a time is beauty in and of itself. The fact that I can think at all must be some work of art....

Those dark cycles we get in? Take a step back. Look at it for what it is? A mind. Trying to unravel itself while keeping the structure of sanity intact.

Frustration is an intrigue by nature.
The attempt for comprehension is valiant on its own.

My wrong thinking resides in how I feel about my thinking.
Here's one correct way of thinking:

Be okay with it. 

Use the power of curiosity and intrigue to take allow in yourself a quiet peace of mind.
oh? (What? There's a choice in that too?)

Maybe that's where true happiness is found: in the quiet acceptance of one's own mind.

 The calm realization that your mind has reigns, and you are holding them. That sometimes your mind gets spooked, excited, curious, or hungry... Your mind has natural, regular, possibly dark tendencies... but you can lead it where you want IF you want.


It's weird to think that we usually get answers... The trouble is accepting them or not.

Things of Matter

I guess it's a bloggy day.
The sun hasn't shone in what seems like 54 days.
I guess my letter to the abyss of cyberland will suffice as a salutation.

Hello, world of microchips and electric pathways with no capability of human emotion.

You know those moments when you realize that maybe the online world could possibly be taking over the reasoning powers of the human mind? And that the world will probably die online. Each individual person will be sitting at a computer talking to somebody else on a computer, the blaring screen would be the last light before the "big light" and that the cheeto-infested keyboard you have at your finger tips would be the closest thing to human contact you will have had in a year before you expired?

Yes. Those moment are festering inside my brain as of now. Morbid. I know.


From my readings of Twitter, Facebook, and Bloggerworld, this is the feeling I got whilst reading.
Really.

The winter funk is in full swing.  I truly, almost forgot about its viral hands choking the life and hope out of everyone until I got onto all my life-sucking social net-working sites and was reminded of it's pitiful existence.







This is an address to all my saddened friends out there:

Don't give up. Please. For the love.

I'm going to remind you of summer.

I'm going to remind you of how you were when the sun shines. How you ARE.

YOU are still alive. Do you know what being alive means? Truly? Do you know what it means to flail your arms and jump as high as you can and spin around until you're dizzy with giddy laughter?
 Do you know what it means to rhyme as many words as you can without stopping or try to make the best rap of all time for no reason at all even though it's horrible?
Do you know what it means to read the most incredible books and realize that your character identifies with all the other characters? Do you know what it means to laugh so hard that you feel your insides will erupt and your abs contract with so much effort you feel your neck swell up and your eyes gush with water?
Yes.
You do.
You know how to live.
You know how to be you.


Remember? Do you remember how to breathe with the full intent of carrying oxygen to your brain?
Do you remember how to breathe with the full intent of living?
Do you remember how to walk with the intent of showing up at a place?
Do you remember how to run with the full intent of stretching and jolting your muscles and burning and pushing your will power to see how far it can go just to be able to scream at the top of your lungs, "I am existing as hard as I can!?"


Yes. I think you can. But you have to try.

It's easy to let yourself slide into the abyss. It's so simple. Because it's pulling you in. It's everywhere. It has no shape or form or physical faculty, but it's very real and very strong.


You must remember how to consciously acknowledge your own worth. How to remind yourself of your independency of external conditioners.

Remember to place your dependency on things that truly matter.

The thing about "things that matter" is that the word "matter" is the point, the pinnacle of the phrase.

Matter is "that which occupies space and possesses rest mass." Matter is rock. Matter is something that has volume, occupies the void, can neither be created nor destroyed kind of matter. 

Matter has weight. 

Matter has resolution. 

Matter cannot die, it simply exists. 

Matter is not something that is debated, or something to spur arguments. 

There is no such thing as an opinion about matter. 

It is resolute. It is infinite. 

Matter is reality. 

In terms of our spirits, matter is pinnacle because matter can never falter. The things that matter are those things that act as matter. The things that give matter in the physical sense a backbone.

Today, I felt a choral cry-out for help coming from the masses. An enormous wave of the lost and petrified.

There is no need, friends. No need to weep.

You only have need to be afraid if you let that fear grip you, if you let that sorrow choke you. But worse, if you let that abyss walk side by side with you. If you let entropy take its course and run you over. If you allow what the world says you should want to come in to the homes of your hearts and sit with it over tea. Because what the world says you should want is something unreal. Un-matter. 

Find the things that matter, friends. No. Remember them.

They're inside you. They're right there. Remember the things that will last and the things that are actually in your hands and in your hearts right at this moment. 

Because everything you have and need to be happy, truly joyful is right with you. You have the power. You have the capability. You have resources. You have friends. Family. Life. Love. Yourself. God.

Remind yourself to live today.