I'm feelin' nice.

I feel nice.

I mean, I just got blown off on a date, but for some reason, I feel content about that. I expected it in that sort of depressing way that I sometimes do in the same way that I expect I won't be getting another girlfriend any time soon, especially not if I stay at Covenant like I'm planning to. For tonight, though, I'm okay with all of that. I'm fine with not being the center of someone's universe, as I've come to understand is what I'm really after. I used to think I was looking for love and acceptance and someone to release all of this pent up affection on, but I was wrong. I just wanted attention. I feel like maybe it's better that I'm denied this for now, like an alcoholic going through a detox. I'm not mature enough to love someone they way I should. I'm just not ready.

It helps that this bed is so comfortable. I seriously need to find out where Mom and Dad bought this mattress pad. It's like I'm sitting on a cloud, as cliche as that is.

I'm writing this blog a few nights before I'll post it. I'm at my home in St. Augustine and I don't have internet access, within reason, as long as I'm here. We have an old Pentium 4 Dell with high speed internet sitting in the other room, but it's so buggy from long use that I can hardly get it to pull up my Facebook page, much less type this whole blog out and post it. So I'm making due by saving this to my laptop until I have a chance to upload it to my blog.

I'm not even sure if anyone reads this. I know Micah and Shelby and Taylor follow me, but I don't know if they actually read any of this. I think they do. I think some other people who aren't actually following me also read it, like Baileigh, maybe. I'm not sure. No one talks about it. I almost stopped writing only after the first few posts because I wondered if there was a point. I realize now that, as public and attention starved as I am, this blog is really just an exercise in thought. I don't think well when I'm speaking. I only think appropriately when I'm writing. This sucks when you're trying to tell someone how you feel without sounding like a complete ass.

I worry that everyone at Covenant thinks I'm a whore. They have every reason to believe this because, in all honesty, I'm the biggest man-whore it has ever been my misfortune to see in a mirror, but I still try to keep up appearances. You know how it is. An honored companion and accomplice in all things criminal once told me, in regards to my thoughts on women, "Alan, you appreciate God's handiwork way too much. You need to start finding some of it disgusting." Is he right? It is true that I think every girl, without exception, has the capability of being absolutely beautiful if they try. Some of them just don't try. Even then I still see the beauty hidden inside them and have a tendency to fall in love with it, even if it never really will see the light of day. Does this make me a softer version of a satyriasis? A man obsessed with women, just not as sexually as the term denotes?

Do I have low standards? Is that my problem? I doubt it, but what do I know?

Why do these things even matter to me? They're so inconsequential in the big picture. Like, what does my taste in women matter to the president of the United Sates as he wields the power of the greatest country in the world at the moment? What starving child in Africa cares about whether or not I get a date with the girl in my history and doctrine classes while he's being forced to murder his countrymen with an automatic weapon? What person outside the small communities of Covenant College and St. Augustine, Florida, even knows that I exist much less cares that I have a sexual preference at all? Surely God cares but what divine purpose could a romance possibly have in my life outside marriage which is so many years away? Sometimes I wish for the strength to be like Justin. To swear off any interaction with anyone resembling a romantic relationship and to promise celibacy for the rest of my life in service to God. I have so much respect for that.

But I could never do it. As often as I tell myself that I'm a self-serving, people-pleasing attention monger, I know that, given time, all this love I'm prepared to give away was placed in me for a purpose. I was designed to love a woman for the rest of my life till death do us part. I swear that, when I die and they run an autopsy, they will find, stamped into my very DNA, the words "Human Being, Husband/Father Edition, V10.9.1" or something along those lines. It'll probably be written in some kind of God-code. Like Python, where you can Import(levitation);

When I'm not wishing I was a eunuch, I wish I could be like the couple at school that met only a little over a month ago and are already engaged as freshmen. Or my friends here at home who dated for a year and are engaged to be married as they graduate from high school. What a gift, to be so in love. I've been searching for that ever since I decided I liked cooties. Even if they don't make it and their relationships fall apart, they will remember these beginning days with fondness and a bittersweet taste. Some people don't think it's worth it and call it a curse. I'm more optimistic. More stupid, definitely, but at least I have my optimism.

Maybe no woman will ever love me. I wouldn't be completely surprised. The thought has crossed my mind several times, usually while writing obscenely dark and pathetic poetry that uses words like "black" and "alone" entirely too often. Perhaps I am unlovable, speaking strictly of the love a woman has for her husband. I am loved by my friends and family, no doubt in my mind, but to this day no girl has ever loved me the way my mother loves my father. Perhaps it will never happen. Unlikely, if I was in fact built to love and be loved, as I suspect I was, but what if? Will I be able to accept it? Will I be able to rest on the love of Christ alone? Perhaps it is my martyr's cause to be a creature devoted to loving someone while entirely denied that right.

But then, I am young. It has only been 20 years, the majority of which I was nothing close to an acceptable subject of anyone's affections. How can I possibly expect something as important as a life long love to just pop up in the first few years of my adult life? Some people don't meet the one they were supposed to marry until long after they've reached adulthood. Besides, who am I to guess at the purposes and decisions of a God I could never hope within reason to understand?

For now I am just a heart-sick little boy that none of the girls on the playground want to kiss. I think I'm tough enough to survive and so, for tonight, I feel nice.

Abba, Father, save me!

I pretended I was a dinosaur today. I pretended that I roamed the campus, eating anyone who got in my way and generally terrorizing both friends and enemies alike.

Not that I have enemies here, but I created some in my mind so that I could eat them.

Then I sat for two minutes holding an empty Nerf pistol against my forehead, pulling the plastic trigger again and again and again. I told my roommate that if the gun were real, I would have blown my brains out weeks ago. I was joking, but I had to convince my roommate that I was. I spoke the words convincingly, I guess.

I'm shutting down. I can feel it. There is a heavy weight in my chest whenever I think about the massive amounts of work I have to do, the confrontations I need to have. I feel so heavy I can't get out of my chair. I'm scared. I'm so scared and I don't know how I'm going to find the strength to keep going. I don't know if I can pull this off. I don't even know if I have the balls to walk into class tomorrow morning with none of the work done that should be. I'm tired and angry and hurt and scared. Father God help me! My own mother doesn't believe in me! She asked me yesterday how I did on my Doctrine exam. When I told her truthfully that I did okay in some places but not in others, she asked me if that meant she'd be saving the money she would be spending on my room and board next semester. She's been threatening to take me out of school here since summer. I feel like all I am is a drain on her precious resources. A damn inconvenience. A waste.

I'm so weak. I'm so broken. I feel like this is the part where God should be stepping in. I've admitted it. I can't do this on my own. I'm helpless. When is he going to step in? There is so much more I could lose, so much further to sink, do I have to go all the way before he'll save me? Do I have to leave this place? Forfeit my education? Lose my friends, my family, my money and my mind? How far is far enough? How broken is broken enough? How much more do I need to suffer before I've learned my lesson? Why am I so stubborn!?

Lord I've never been one for spoken words, so this is my written prayer to you. You are the sovereign king over everything I understand and everything I don't understand. You determine what is and what isn't, who lives and who dies, and the very flow of time itself. You know my thoughts and see my fears. All glory to you, Father, King of Kings and owner of everything that I am, body and soul. I love you, Abba, and I want you to be proud of me. Give me your strength, God, because I need it desperately. I thought I was struggling for so long, but I haven't even put up a fight. I laid down and died the day I thought I could do it without you. Foolish is my name because I've been nothing but foolish since the day I was born, but you call me your child and as your child please save me, Father, from myself. Grant me focus, determination, a bold spirit and a patient heart so that I can do what I am here to do and bring you glory in the process. Thank you for your love, God, and how you pursue me when I won't listen. I beg you to continue and to give me your help. Bless me, Father, and forgive my laziness and cowardice. Amen.

Sometimes I could choke on how silly I am.

I realize that I get offended by the stupidest things. Like when someone steals a pack of Oreos from my room or says "That'll do pig" to me without thinking. Or throws ice at me from an upper floor of the dorm. Really, it's not a big deal. It's cookies. Or it's a movie quote. Or it's an ice cube that didn't even hit me anyway. I don't know what's wrong with me these past couple days, but these things are really getting under my skin. They're not just little things to me. They're grievous breeches of some kind of code of respect and by committing these acts against me, someone is saying I'm not worth their respect. It's making me furious.

I'm getting angrier and angrier every day. Closer and closer to snapping at the people I love. I remember that I basically told my mother to shut up in the most snide way I could possibly manage a month or so ago on the phone. Why did I do that? All she did was ask me to go to a church that my brother attended while he was here. I heard her trying to force me to be like him, though, and if you know me and you know my brother, you know why that would make me mad. I shouldn't have snapped at her though. I never say things like that to my mother.

I feel like I'm full of knots. Every little thing is crawling under my nails, beating on my brain and tangling up my guts until I can't breathe, much less stay calm.

I'll pray about it. I don't know why I wasn't before. Or, I do know why, but it's a stupid reason I don't realize I'm using until I really look at it. I feel like whatever problems I'm facing are so small, so inconsequential, that praying about them would be a waste of time when I could use those few seconds to fix the problem myself. Like I've ever been able to fix anything on my own before in my life. My mom is right when she says I'm not an adult yet. I'm still the obnoxious child who refuses to hold hands when crossing the street. Soon I'll get hit, plastered across the road like so much red paint. It's just a matter of time.

When your daydreams are more violent than the movies that give you nightmares, there's something wrong.