I had coffee with a friend– which oddly enough, is very self-reflective. I get to hear, learn, and get updated on how shes doing, what she’s been upto, and get another look at another human being, how they talk, connect, feel, believe… and it’s rejuvenating.

At the same time, I’m also telling how I’ve been, and explaining it a little bit, about it– drawing the words and observations of self into the daylight, and letting the cook in the sunlight. Things I know to be true, and admit to.

My current state is:
- Ashamed therefore hiding
- Hiding from God

The above was written and saved as a draft, Apr 2009.

It is those times of self reflect that I highly value, and now see as instrumental into my organization, and self-sanity. I’m going crazy, because I’ve been going-going-going, doing-doing-doing… remembering to mark some things, and completely forgetting others. Yesterday I met with an MSU Engineering advisor, and his words boiled down to: “Math-math-math”, I need to be proficient upto Calculus III (MATH 234). He tells me that I’ve got about two years to go, before I can enroll at MSU. my heart drops.

Today, I go into Math Lab… review my practice test question-and-answers… go up front to take my Post Test, to find that I’ve missed the administrative deadline by 3 days. So I’ve been dropped. My one math class for the semester, and it’s been dropped. I’m crushed… perhaps in recovery, I can bloom, or even flourish, but I have my doubts.

My enthusiasm has been stifled, I now fight a battle against secluding myself in a cocoon of anxiety, behind a wall of games. I have a paper past-due, and assignments keep coming. Life is demanding, and I feel inadequate to slow it’s vicious attack on my sanity.

I feel like I need to purge before I can work on anything, detox… and then dive in. I’m very nearly shaking, like a scared-small child in my soul.

I’ll get better, and I know it, I’m just giving a snapshot of the now.

–Michael

I’ve found less interesting blog posts resulting from WordPress, and more of form a venting. Because of that, I don’t want to raise the eyebrows of my readers.

My mood has a bitter taste, I’m frustrated, I’m stressed, my personal plans are frequently foiled. Not much is really asked of me, but in a way– it’s almost too much. I’m tired of dependency and reliance. So sick of being distracted. Where do I go? I can’t possibly hide. They’ll find me.

I’m deliberating on the execution of a dozen different breadcrumbs, of varying levels of information. Pockets of personal information, a game of notpron, for friends and family members to play. Solving the case of a disappearance.

I don’t have enough resources to play it very well. Perhaps I can work with what I have. We shall see. Won’t we?

Above are the words written in May 2009, and I echo them even today.

Running away would be an undertaking, as an artist has standards for their art, I too have a vision as to how I want to recreate the pillars of my life. A new name, social security number, and new drivers license for starters. I would want to move far enough away, to avoid chance encounters with familiar faces, and I would want to be successful enough that I wouldn’t “fail” and have to return home a prodigal son. I’ve played the scenario out in my head:

People would worry, as they do, and then get over it, as they do.

My parents, siblings, and Samantha, would all be worried sick, and heartbroken over my disappearance. They are the reason I do not simply fly.

With College and responsibilities, I am tied down. Without money or solid income, I am frozen in place.

I would want a vehicle, and/or good travel weather, I would have my survival kit, a nice sized notebook, enough pens or pencils to satisfy me, a computer, some cash, and I’d be all set.

The only reason I extend this post this far, is because I’m working through my drafts folder, from the oldest, onto the newest.

Time has flown by, and I’ve earnestly missed the opportunity to sit and write. I know I don’t really have time to spend on something I can do at any time, but I can’t not pass up another opportunity to get myself out in text.

The Semester’s has ended for ROTC and LCC, so I’m on Christmas break for the time being, and bone dry broke. I have $25 to my name, and it’s rather humbling. Thankfully, I have a full queue of tasks to work on from Jeremy, as well as two employment opportunities knocking at my door.

I look at even a few months ago, and I think of how different I am now, how many more experiences I’ve lived through, everything I’ve learned. I’m almost shocked, not sure if I’m different altogether, or if it’s just a side of me I’m experiencing.

I’m at a point of being socially overstimulated, walking on a fine edge of a break down, depending on how many people I have to meet and greet. I can’t maintain any sort of grin-and-bear-it mentality. My social endurance seems to be a mood as much as anything else.

Being creative, being spontaneous, being social, ebbs and flows– sometimes It is the epitome of my personality, and at other moments I am the very opposite.

Posting this, just this much, is an accomplishment, because I’ve got at least 6 half-posts sitting in my drafts… that are just waiting for me to say a bit more.

–Michael Robbe

I really don’t like moping on here, through here… but it seems that this is what it’s devolved to. Capturing a snapshot of my own pain, my own sorrow, my own confusion… and hoping to make sense so that I can heal, allow for healing.

Suffering, In the individual and combined definitions of the words, I am/feel: anguished, isolated, frustrated, unfocused, distracted, embittered, distraught, helpless, drained, lethargic, angry, cruel, envious, upset, annoyed, overwhelmed, lonely, selfish, and suicidal.

If this the first time I have ever felt this way, I might be confused to the origin. However, life has thrown this slew of torments at me before. I wouldn’t be worth my salt as an analyst if I couldn’t deduce where these things came from. Where their source was, and what needs to be done to cure it.

I know full well why, how, I am suffering this way, yet I am unwilling to concede. Stubborn, too stubborn; considering death, an alternative to giving in. I know I’m when I’m lying to myself. The relentless assault I endure for no other reason then I do not want to give in. Lifestyle changes, habit changes, a purging of self. Temptation is a road, and giving into temptation simply paves this road… making it all the easier to return the second time.

I cannot cry, so emotions are held in, as if to exasperate the pressure. I torment myself, instead, creating excuses… and “cleverly devising” my own successes, determining a plot that should not fail. I avoid church, I speak half-truths, I wear a mask, and gnash my teeth… who have I become? Why don’t I want to leave?

I waste my precious time, I start out my day without God, and furthermore avoid him at all costs. I know I am a tool of potential, so I devalue myself. I know my vices, I’ve acknowledged them… yet I do nothing about them. Woe am I, and woeful I persist.

Repentance would release me: Saying “Lord, I’m sorry, forgive me, I commit myself to change– and here’s how”. Pride holds my tongue, rebellion turns my head, deceit closes my eyes.

–Michael Robbe

Or so I consider myself. I understand myself through my fingertips, as well as I do, talking with other people… and hopefully I can attempt to put some time and effort into a pair of book ideas I have. I’m not sure how many hours a day I’d need to commit to writing, in order to produce something worth reading… but I now have a program that should help organize my plot, characters, scenes, and soforth.

To be honest, I’ve never done any sort of story writing, just my little introspective blog peices, here and there. Hopefully I’ll be able to create characters with such vibrant depth, that they connect with people. I’ve found that to be the most crucial component of any book: relational/desirable characters. The plot through which they move seems to be secondary to the strength of the people.

I realize I haven’t posted in a while, and find I really ought to: to help me do some outloud thinking, not for your benefit, so much as mine. Writing, and my coffee colloquys, are as much about self-reflection, as it is about understanding someone else. Questions raised, are echoed back and expose unquestion regions of the soul.

Bringing things to light, quenches so many struggles.

I’m too excited to type, I’ve a bubbly kind of ecstasy that seldom comes to the surface. One of my childhood vents, well established before the coating layers of apathy, reconstructed core of my being.

When nothing much is happening, or I’m otherwise too busy, I don’t post on wordpress. I’ve been stagnating, with a few goals of the inner-self, nothing too earth changing. Whitney David had pointed out a series of three traits of masculinaty which essentially concluded into a physically-mentally-emotionally-spiritually-socially well-rounded Michael Robbe. After citing a few examples, it was essentially that I was lacking: self-esteem, self-confidence, and a sense of drive. I agree, and would have to say these things are rooted in a history of pornographic encounters that still leave a stain on my character, and shackles around my expression.

So I determined to mentally place within myself “Michael the Marine”, a harden take-no-gruff mental persona, which kicked, pushed around, and otherwise beat my standard self. For the greater good, of course. I did not worry about losing the later, since I knew it to be the stronger dominate force in my actions and life. While “Michael the Marine” still very much exists, it has not be accessed lately as I find myself distracted, primarily by SSI.

SSI is both a spiritual safe-haven, and softening zone. I feel myself grow complacent with the walls of known security. My personality takes on a light-hearted, knowledgable, earnest aire. It’s quite refreshing, but spiritually I know I am suffering. Habits melt, against the grain of responsibilities, lack of sleep and friends-on-contract. I will only see these people here, so I will make the most of every event.

I’ve found my heart a rather famished thing, but where is a safe place to indulge its appetite, to love, and to be loved? I consider myself, altogether unique, so I do not recommend any of the following to anyone else: I’ve connected with Sam. I accompianied her to Wisconsin to her Mother’s Engagement party. We thought it a funny prank to pull on her family members, to call me the 21-year-old boyfriend, and play it up for the reactions we might get. With comical excuse to get close, we cuddled, on the trip to Wisconsin… an altogether unique experience.

I know that touch is an incredibly reserved form of affection for myself, perhaps as potent as direct eye contact. Neither of which I share quickly. However, I had adopted Sammey as a little sister, and very well meant it, I easily imagine Rachel acting in similar way. Over the course of the trip, cuddling was a source of warmth, a silent companionship. In a word: comforting. Late night chats, deep and from the heart. Bonding on a rutimentary level.

The safety here was, there was no mutual attraction, it was made clear and confident, that we simply aren’t compatable. Boundries were wordlessly imposed, and that was that. During the week of SSI though, those first couple of days, there was a definite sense of longing. It had all the markings I had known, of a crush… but it wasn’t…was it?

Secularly, I believe the definition is “Friends with Benefits”, and I’d have a hard time stating as such, because it seems so very crude when put in that light. If I can be so coy to believe, it is love without lust. Not altogether unselfish, but without toxins, without poison, without acid.

It has been a point of self-examination, as to what purpose this has been for. Seldom are these short expressions, not used later down the road for my own growth, development, and empathetic understanding.

I believe I am an empath, which I might expound on later. Just some fanciful thoughts, more in concept then in product.

…and the point of my Jubilation… I am Tethered! Ha ha ha!

Since the point of losing Windows XP, I have been greatly hindered in my ability to work for Jeremy. Thankfully I didn’t lose any of my data, because of a dual-boot of Ubuntu I had. My Data has since been backed up, and after some diagnostics, I find that my harddrive needs replacing… the very one that I’m using… bah… stuck in Linux. On top of that, I also have no place of study. A family friend in Eureka said that I could come by and work from his big, and for the most part, empty house. The problem I faced was lack of internet access. Eureka is in the boonies, so Cable Modem was out of the question… DSL posed expensive start-up costs… so just yesterday, I got myself a new phone… with its supreme purpose being the tethering feature that allowed for internet access. I also will be granted unlimited texting, July 19th… this isn’t a super-phone, but for the features I want, 25 a month for the tethering, and 20 a month for the unlimited texting… which is incredibly better than the 120 a month I was looking at for a blackberry, plan-of-my-own. Jeremy will also be deducting the tethering feature from my salary, so I have no need to worry about it. It’s as good as covered.

I’m adding an 8gb microSD card, and it’ll also be my mp3 player, and hopefully the bluetooth keyboard I’m getting will connect without much difficulty/at all. It will make texting a supreme grammatically-correct experience.

Now, getting my tethering working on my computer was an incredibly lengthy, while perhaps not altogether difficult process:

The software only works with Win2k/XP… so I’m like “I’ll try in on Win 7 and hope for the best”, I wrestled with it last night, and after scowering the forums, came across nothing of use. I needed an environment for testing/using Windows operating system stuff for my Web work, so I needed XP on Ubuntu anyhow. I tried using my recovery disks to create a virtual Media Center Edition XP, from what I could understand, after 3 failed windows reinstalls, it didn’t like the virtual windows drivers, and crashed each time.

I installed on my Win 7 (Annie, for those of you acquanted with my computers names) VirtualBox as well, and just wanted a quick, and easy install… figuring once I getting working on one, I will just move over the universal files, for a universal OS. The hard disk image is a straight up .vdi format. One big solid file. This morning, at about 8:30am was when I started working on this project.

After the 3 failed windows recovery installs, I switched over to some of the XP .iso’s I had lying around my Harddrive. …just had to find them first… I installed one that said “Spanish edition”, figuring I could just change the language settings, and have what I needed. Well, after the forums explained to me, no-can-do. I found an oddly extentioned XP Pro file I had, and found a way to decrypt the file.

After mounting the XP Pro ISO, I get it installed, and happily work on getting my alltel phone tethered. Within the confines of VirtualBox, I troubleshoot it operational. Yay! Now all I need, is to move it over!

The easiest method, seemed to be, the external harddrive. So I bring it up, on Annie, dump the files over, plug it into Kyrillos, and realize it doesn’t “just connect”, so I’m forced to return to the forums to locate the exact syntax to force-mount this Harddrive. It connects with: “sudo mount ntfs /dev/sdb1 /media/external” Ha, of course! because it’d be too simple if it was just /sda2′, or ‘/mnt/hda2′. I move the files over, and attempt to load it. Do realize you’ve got a 2.3+ gb file you’re moving, it takes a few minutes… both going up, and going down.

Windows would start to load, and then flip out with a BSOD, and flash-restart, so I for a few minutes I attempted to “catch” it with Print Screen, to hopefully just patch the virtual drive, and be on my merry way. Alas, catching smoke would have been easier. It turns out drivers weren’t matching up… and I figured the file didn’t move correctly, and attempted the move again. Same problem. I figured that perhaps the filesize, filestorage and the speed of transfer kept it from working… so I figured I could move to ethernet.

Moving files across platforms, especially experimental ones to tempermental ones, was a chore. Wirelessly, it was transfering at about 100kb/s … not fast enough for the files I wanted to move. So I send the file to “Zantor” the reincarnated family computer… hooked up some cat5 to pour the files over. The problems arose when it came to Win7 machines seeing each other (I had to turn on a particular service), and then find a way to give Zantor Permission to dump files onto Kyrillos. Something I hadn’t had to do yet… and didn’t quite know how to do… back to the forums…

An hour later, after the file had finally made it across… it too, was corrupted, when I realized, Virtualbox dynamically set itself up, because its utilizing system resources… so I mixed and matched with a 64bit system, and the 32bit system… I eventually caved and just sent the .ISO over, to start from Scratch on Kyrillos.

Installation went smoothly, I was suprised how well things went from there. It was just one small issue, after another; numerous battles. Windows installed, necessary drivers installed, troubleshot the “guest additions” and the empty file… got all the way to installing the Alltel software for me to connect… and… no USB support. At all. Apparently Ubuntu’s repository only offers the OSE (Open Source Edition) … which doesn’t come with a few features, such as USB. ARRGRGGRG, so very close. While uninstalling it, I ran into a snag… I didn’t remove (or think to remove the dependancies) so I was staring blankly at the screen, wondering why I no longer had the program, but it was telling me I had the program still.

SOOO, after I remove the elements from the Synaptic Package Manger, install a closed-source version of VirtualBox… attach the virtual harddrive file… I had to get it to recognize the attached device. Manually registering the device ID and port number. After a restart, I start it up, hook it up, and get online. Jubilation.

It was a sense of euphoria, the success of a job well done. A hundred hills, valleys, and mountains, scaled… my purpose attained, and the utility of my abilities, the confidence, and improvement of my own skill set. I was a giddy seven year, and was beaming for the next several hours.

That was my journey, and perhaps I should break it up, so that they aren’t so compacted together. Perhaps another day, when I can think straight.

–Michael

I believe I’ll write a series of posts, each being pulled from “my song”: The Weakerthans – Watermark. I suppose I rant about this song enough, and it’s probably not an accurate interpretation of the song… but amount of symbolism I can attach to the song. This is why I really don’t care whether a song is “Christian” or “Secular”, what matters to me is an optimistic and lyrically rich song. Something I can attach visuals to, key words to key lyrics; the volume and intensity of the song seems to match that of my personality, of my “soul”, of my being.

The first stanza of the song: “I count to three and grin, you smile and let me in…”

It speaks of a visit, and I see a porch and a doorway. Long before I had friends as close as I do now, I was drawn to the smirking smile that the person in the doorway wore. Counting to three, brought an image of such familiarity, that I know how long it usually takes you to reach the door.

To know someone that well, I know that that person is my best friend, someone’s house I visit everyday. An event that always, regardless of the mood before, brings joy, brings peace, brings a temporary satisfaction to the hunger for compainionship.

Smiling and letting me in, my visit is expected, maybe even anticipated. Reading the smirking smile on the face of my friend, how it’s filled with memories, both nostalgic and refreshing, having been friends for years, and looking forward to the years to come.

The sensation of joy is pure and wholesome.

Music-connected memories, can be bound, after the placeholder has been filled. My visits to the Davids, has filled this song-favorite of my, of the past 5-6 years. The anticipation of going over. The porch. The door. The doorway. Etched in my mind.

“Good music” like this, is almost too potent for me, the listening is too intense. Memories and emotions, after each song I’m simply drained, song, after song, each packed to the brim with links, thoughts, memories. I look forward to the day when a new memory, takes the place of an old one– because the new one is stronger, stronger than even my nostalgia has made it.

–Michael Robbe

Late one night, a week or two ago, I found myself curious as to what makes us love one person, more than another. Simply recognizing how we can claim some friends as close as siblings, and others as distant as strangers. I knew we could only love “so much” because as human being, we find ourselves as limited creatures. With only so many hours in a day, so many years in our life, only being in one place at one time. I had my own considerations and theories, but seeking some perspective on the matter I logged onto my Facebook account in order to poll others opinions to find out what remains when you subtract the relationship of the “stranger” from the “sibling.”

Nathan Schwartz, an SSI alumni, and I ended up discussing the question of: what determines the quantity of love you give a person? The product of our two-hour long discussion resulted in a formula (still in progress), that covers the wide spectrum of our English definitions of love.

Understandably word “Love” is an over-generalized and overused English word, where many-a-feeling can fall under the description of the word “Love.” In the Greek we see several different several types of love, “Agape” being unconditional love, “Phileo” being a brotherly love, and “Eros” being a sensual love. Nathan and I did our best to incorporate them as best we could.

T_Q ^ Chem + (T * Exp) + X = Willingness of sacrifice * (Hope) = Love

TQ, represents the Quality Time spent with an individual. Quality Time can be time spent in meaningful dialogue, purposeful and important. Any time that is significant and memorable, is very likely categorized as quality time.

Chem, represents the Chemistry between yourself and the other individual. Some people’s personalities simply “click,” becoming immediate friends. The better you connect with the other person, the higher chemistry “rating” you mark down. The opposite is also applicable, a person with which you don’t get along with, someone you absolutely clash with, would receive a very low, likely a decimal, chemistry rating.

^ or “Caret,” shows the exponential relationship between quality time and chemistry. For example, spending twenty short minutes, catching up with your best friend could compare to a half-day outing with a good friend. The better your chemistry, the more potent your time spent together is.

T, is simply time. Any time spent at all, whether humorous or dull, minutes or hours, moments or months. Time shared is an element to any relationship.

Exp, translates as experiences. Whether it is an easy-going or intense event, determines exp’s value. As examples: Through the trials of war, soldiers bond as brothers, sharing many diverse and difficult experiences. A class of students who are suffering through a boring or difficult teacher, all empathize with each other. Even you SSI students, are sharing in a truly unique experience through which, friendships will likely blossom. A negative experience is considered a negative value, decreasing from the end “love” result.

X is unconditional love.  The love parents have for their children, the love that God has for us, and the Christian love that we have toward everyone.

Willingness of sacrifice is self-explanatory; it is the measure of sacrifice you are willing to offer for that person. It was the overwhelming response I had gotten from the poll I had taken and is summarized beautifully by 1 John 3:16: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.” To lay down your life would be one hundred percent self-sacrifice, but there are lesser forms of sacrifice. Ultimately it is the maximum willingness you would extend that person, and it’s relative to each individual. Whether it’s a thousand tiny favors, sharing a meal or giving a kidney, the deeds are an expression of that love.

Hope is an optional addition to our equation, added to account for future anticipated events. Whether it’s a crush on that cute guy or girl, or the aspirations parents have for their new born child. Hope is the expectation of future time, chemistry, and experiences. Hope either is or it isn’t, and based on those hopes, it can drive a person to do miraculous things, sacrifice more than they could have before, all for the sake of love.

By no means is the equation meant to evaluate the concrete value of any relationship. It simply acts as a tool to help better understand the components that make up a complicated emotion called love.

–Michael

I’m no longer excited about the events to come, I don’t quite remember when I ever was excited for them… but I can express that the joy, if there was any, is now no more. It’s just a tangled web of logistics, protocol, and formality. It’s exhausting, I’m exhausted, and I could really care less. Days like this, the temptation of finally just disappearing off the face of the earth, becomes all too real.

I’ve been planning it for some time. Pocketing away some money, securing some supplies, devices that will keep me “off the grid” but still very much in my technological environment.

I don’t quite know what the point of the Eagle Scout Court of Honor is, whether it’s for my benefit, or for my friends and family– but the time put into it, and the placement in the year… it just becomes another open house. I hate that, it’s become common, weighed against other open houses, competing for the time and attention of friends and family. It’s been belated for over a year and a half, the novelty of “being an eagle scout” has worn off, now it’s just a matter of living “as an eagle scout”.

Honestly, I don’t need this ceremony– with all of the fuss, I don’t even want the ceremony any more. Except… now, it’s too far along… people are planning on coming, preparations have been made, what’s done is done… now to write my speeches and suffer through it.

Same applies to the wilderness survival outing, it was great in concept… bringing it to life though? Not worth the head-ache. Dates have fallen through, leaders have been a struggle to obtain. Wilderness survival, there’s so much planning going into this, it’s hard to believe we’re to “replicate” anything, because we’ll be so well prepared at not being prepared. Starving and waiting, is all this is going to amount to, with as many restrictions as are being put on us… and with as many accommodations as people “need to make”. This stuff isn’t complicated, it’s actually horribly easy… My enjoyment has been based solely on the enthusiasm of Jim and Hannah, seemingly the only people who want to do this.

That, plus I feel as though I have an obligation to SSI, after accepting the Technical-supervisor role, which seems to be overlapping a bit with the outing. I don’t feel adequate for the Job, and really don’t want to be caught in a position where I have absolutely no clue what I’m doing, and end up causing major issues because I was over-confident of my abilities, or under-confident in asking him to explain everything he just did… again.

Lately, because of one project or another, because I need to be to work, or back home again– I’ve been failing to eat. A troublesome issue that I really don’t want to become more serious. I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of stress, my own natural metabolism, or something I’ve learned over time to ignore.

I’m stressed, frustrated, and out of time. Without time, I don’t lift up my activities in prayer, and I’m not reading scripture. WordPress is the one place I feel like I can rant, without worries. Generally because nobody reads it, and it’s just good to document these things every now and again… See, running away would solve my problems, because they’re all time-based. Run away, and let them time out… pretending I have a place to run to, or that I’d return.

–Michael

I feel a small obligation to write something here, despite not particularly feeling a need to write, like I do feel, from time to time.

Many of my latest writings have been private planning, and sorting kinds of works. I’ve been more work-or-play oriented as of late. I’m either working for money, for self-improvement, or for family betterment; else playing online with friends, playing on LAN with Brothers, or doing something with friends. Not much room for thinking, simply doing.

Which I suppose has lead to a rock and a hard place, more than once. A particular point, was were I had a marvelous day, and topped it all off with my favorite vice, and went to sleep. The thing about a vice, is the sin that is a part of it. Sin, is ultimately what keeps from going into heaven, our sin nature is born in us and corrupts us. Upon Salvation we are made perfect in the Lord’s sight, our names our Written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, and our lives become a crusade for Christ. A Servant/Warrior hybrid, each and everyone of us. God cannot be in the presence of sin, as human beings with free will, we continue to sin. So when we sin, we become cut off from our supply line of Christ, or rather, we cut ourselves off.

Because of this vice, I cut myself off from Christ; because of the shame and self-mourning of sorts, I am isolated and alone. “Stunned” as it were, for a day or two. During this “stunned” period, I was subjected to a somewhat familiar demonic force, which had been stalking me the past month or so. Throwing a few punches everytime I endulged my vice, but this time he was out for the kill.

This strong, yet subtle, demonic force fed me familiar lies; rationalizing my death or disappearance, all while draining my will to live. My mind was churning endlessly, with all the ramifications of my own death. In a sense, I was planning my own eulogy, considering who would blame themselves for my death, how long their pain would last, and what I might be able to write to prevent any blame from being passed out. My old ability to mask myself, coupled with apathy, I roamed around the house, as if all were normal. I knew I had become incredibly selfish, just wanting to die, as I was planning my own suicide. Startled, in part, by the feroicity of this onset desire… I began to stare hungerally at a belt of mine on the floor.

Knives are too messy, drowning isn’t classy, so stranglation seemed the most logical choice. I was fully aware of everything that was taking place, and why I wanted to. Everything else had lost it’s flavor. I didn’t want to work, I didn’t want to play, I didn’t want to see friends; at that point, I dispised everything I knew, the thought of having to do anything was one of the most bitter, anti-productivity, laden mindsets I have ever known. I leave a cryptic-desperate-sort of facebook status, and I called my sole lifeline-of-a-friend, and after I reached voicemail, I don’t think I left anything emo, just a desperate kind of: “pray for me” message. I dared myself to pick up the belt. I dared myself to put it around my neck. I dared myself to put tension on it. My heart is racing with the implications– the battle fierce within me… and my phone rings. I take the belt off, and toss it to the floor of my bedroom. I miss the call, as it goes to voicemail. The calvary has filled my spirit, the dreary lackluster of life, leaves; I pray, read scripture, and reflect on what had just happened. My eyes were wide open the whole time, so I analyzed all of it… I needed to analyze onto someone. Hannah was on Skype, and I poured out what had occured, just a few hours earlier.

That was way back on the 22nd of May, and honestly there are none of the elements that clouded my mind and spirit there, remaining– they weren’t even there a few hours after the event.

I’m not really sure right now how I process death, anymore. I haven’t had anyone close to me die, lately. I feel like a really lousy comforter to people, because I can’t relate. Same goes with crying, or causing someone pain. An apology doesn’t seem like enough, and speaking only seems to make matters worse, especially if one stumbles over their own tongue as I do.

Consider me odd, but I feel as though I relate to the characters on House MD: Gregory House, and James Wilson; part of me is an over-rationalizing, analytical, apathetic, and obsessive persona, while the other is a butterscotch-sweet, fix-it-drawn-to-the-hurting, morally resolute, loving persona. The two make the oddest couple, but I’m imbalanced, I still have a great number of edges I need to work down.

I don’t understand what the purpose of my coffee chats are anymore– besides me, using my own story to make myself transparent, and to pull someone else’s life story out of them… I don’t feel as though I emotionally benefit from them anymore. I have a satisfied sense of closure, and don’t really feel like I know how to define myself, past that experience, which is already several months old. I’m numb to the soul pouring process, but I understand it to be very intensive for those new to it, and I am sensitive to the candidates who I chat with… but a brushing of hearts, is not to be taken lightly. I have 2-4 on a non-written waiting list, for “when-we-find-time” and pretty much rely on God’s timing for all of this.

If I can be as so bold as to state, that I believe I receive from people an extra measure of trust, a sort of charm that eases the unraveling of the deepest reserves of a persons’ issues. It’s not comfortable, I’m not asked to “perform” this “service”. It’s a very weaselly feeling, because it serves to feed my “fix-it” mentality ego, while psychologically groping around inside them. Perhaps it’s just a blinding element of my hideously low self-esteem.

–Michael