Up And Out: Theology For Assholes

When I was in high school, I heard a certain phrase quite often. I especially heard it the year that I went from being a lowly 5'2" to almost 6 feet. I have heard this phrase a few times since then, but it is no longer a compliment.

"You're getting bigger."

You see, there are two ways we can grow. We can either grow up or we can grow out.

 When we grow up, it is a wonderful thing. We become taller, more muscular, physically more able to handle what life throws our way. Everyone notices when we grow up, and it makes them proud, regardless of weather or not they had anything to do with the current state we find ourselves in.

When we grow out, it is the opposite. Growing out is unhealthy. It is an indicator of our indulgence. It doesn't look good. When people see that you're growing out, they ignore it, because it's not polite to mention that your excess is wearing you down from the outside. 

Today, I yelled at my roommate over something stupid. I called him an asshole. He doesn't deserve that. Ever. No one does. Especially someone of whom I have said that I couldn't love him more if he were my own brother. I apologized immediately, in my own stupid insufficient way. He said it was okay, and not to worry about it, then he left to go study. The thing is, I couldn't really forget about it. It bothered me so very much that I could just say something like that to someone I would call my brother. It's not like I have never used language like that before. My mouth is pretty much an open door most of the time. I couldn't shake it from my head. It kept replaying over and over again, and every time I heard the words I used, I couldn't believe myself. He came home two hours later, and I apologized again for how I treated him. He said not to worry about it again, that it was fine. I know him well enough to know weather or not he means it when he says not to worry about something. He meant it. I never want to call him that again.

So which was it? Up or out? Which way did I grow?

Have I grown taller, and stronger in my ability to care for others, that something that ordinarily wouldn't bother me could keep me bothered for hours? Or did I grow bigger, more bogged down and heavy with unnecessary self hatred that has been such a default reaction for me lately when I fail the people I care about? It's not like they're not used to it (there I go again). 

Truth is, I don't know. I hope some day that I can learn how to care better for those who have been placed in my influence without hating myself. For now, it seems like my life is a strange mix of the two. 

I'll need some exercise if I'll ever be able to make sense of this mess.

Getting Older

Why do we even bring children into this world? Is it because we're lonely? Because we want our lives to mean something? Seems pretty selfish to me. The world is not a very kind place to live.

I'm not talking about me. I'm not talking about me. Usually, I'm talking about me. Most of the things I like to talk about are about me, but today, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about Jonathan.

I don't even know his last name. It's either Medina or Martinez, something like that. I run the after school program that is trying to teach him how to read. It isn't going very well. He's going to get older, weather he learns to read or not. 

Two months.

I have two months to get him reading at a level that is on par with his age group. He was a year behind at the beginning of the school year. If I bring him up one year, he'll still be a year behind. It'll just be a different year. 

It's not good enough. I keep telling myself to try harder to get through to him, but I just don't know how to do it. I think that me and his tutor are the only ones in his life that want him to go anywhere. My conversations with him go something like this:

"Why do I have to go to tutoring?"

"So you can learn how to read."

"Why do I have to know how to read?"

"So you can graduate."

"I don't wanna graduate."

"I'll bet your Mom and Dad want you to graduate."

"My Dad only went to first grade. Then he got a job."

"If you graduate, you can get a better job. You won't have to work at Taco Bell like I did in high school."

"You worked at Taco Bell? Cool! I want to work at Taco Bell."

It's just not good enough. I just can't be good enough to make them want anything. They're like jello. They'll become whatever is being put into them. They're going to work at Taco Bell. For all my efforts, they're not going to learn anything. I really wanted to be an agent for change with my life. But some days, we lose. We show up every day. We put everything me have into the game

-but we lose. I'm not writing this because I'm feeling sorry for myself, and my inefficient teaching methods. Some of us lose more than others. The world isn't very kind to little Mexican kids who can't read. That's something else that may never change.

Poem I Wrote While I Was Sick.

The 101 to the 46 to the 5, then the 210 until it hits the 57.

 

I’ve made friends with the signposts

I let the tell me what to do

All the colors of the rainbow

Pulling off like rest stops

Without gas stations

And where can I be filled again?

Another chance to watch faces floating by

In parade fashion,

Forgetting I was the one on display

Watch their lips turn colors of recognition

Speaking slowly as I crumble by

“What a nice young man”

I hope my daughters turn out to be just the way he is.”

Pausing before engaging in relationships

And not having sex with pretty girls.

And my friends have told me that I am not far from home

But I feel inclined once more

To lay down flat on this open road

Like all the other dogs that move too slow.

Who has sat in my passenger seat

To follow me home?

Though

I swear some day

I’ll find a set of watchful eyes

Disinclined

To fall asleep 

In my passenger seat

On the long winding road

That somehow

Someday

Brings me home.

Orange Chicken and Thom Yorke

I'm sick.

I'm trying with great difficulty to keep awake during open mic night at It's a Grind in La Mirada. Nobody wants to perform. What I really need right now is to eat some cheap Chinese food and listen to Radiohead.

I think I enjoy being sick. It makes me less accountable for my actions. Like I was some sort of social-awkardness super hero. I'm my own alter ego. 

Hyounjun says that I have multiple personalities that hate each other. Maybe that's it. I could see that. I often hide my keys from myself, or sabotage my own efforts to be a successful writer. Once, I even set my water glass on top of the refrigerator so that I could reach inside the refrigerator to get some ice, thus forcing myself to spill water on my own head.

Hmmm.

I don't have to think about this right now. 

I'm sick.

... To The Death

I can't find my phone.

It's been missing since Sunday, and I can't find it. It's not at Genie's house, it's not in between the cushions of the couch, it's not in my room. WHERE IS IT?

What could I have done to deserve this? I think I know.

I don't have time to deal with this right now. I have to make phone calls for work, and today is Deborah's birthday. I've got to call her, and tell her happy birthday, and that I love her, or she's gonna kill me!

That doesn't sound like her.

I went into  my car to see if my phone was in there. I got a parking ticket. I know already what I did to deserve that.

I feel this pressure inside of me all the time. I don't even know if it's real or not, but... I'm just tired of this constant fight. I'm tired of desperately searching for work, so that I can pay the bills I have racked up because I wanted to sleep in a bed and eat food. I'm tired of turning my apartment upside down to find something I'm just going to lose again. Today it was my phone, tomorrow it will be my keys, or my wallet. And the worst part is that in all this fighting , and searching, and hustling that I've been doing, I don't ever stop to ask myself if the fight I'm putting up is really worth the life that I live. I have to work THIS hard to barely make it. I mean, I'm so unbelievably poor, and alone, and inefficient. I can't be the things that people want me to be. I have friends that I haven't called because I'm afraid they don't want to be my friends anymore. I'm worried that my roommates hate me, that my father is disappointed with me, that my pastor talks about me behind my back, and that to everyone else, I'm a joke. Entertaining, short lived, fictional. My guilt keeps piling up, like a sink full of dirty dishes, and I can't do anything to make it feel better.

Shit. I forgot to do the dishes.

God doesn't make mistakes, they say. Secretly, I wish he did. If I were a mistake, that would explain how I manage to destroy everything I touch, or how I can't even manage to do a simple thing, like remember where I put my phone, or call my friends, or find a full time job after my parents paid for me to go to college, and I graduated with a degree. If I was a mistake, I could be fixed.

I've been fighting my whole life, so that I can maintain a mediocre existence. No one asked me if I wanted to fight either. We are born, we are slapped around, cleaned up, and then turned loose on the world, so that we can prove that we deserve to be here.

But what if I don't?

A January Exhale

Okay.

Christmas is over.

At long last, this season of frivolous consumption and unabashed consumerism is at a close.I am breathing once more. I can celebrate now. I can say it.

"For unto us a child is born. To us, a Son is given. And the government will be upon his shoulders. And his name shall be called 'Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.' And of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end."

(Isaiah 9: 6-7)

This is not a statement of the current condition of the world, but a promise of what is to come. I will have to wait.

It will be worth it.

P.S.: I've been keeping this blog for a year now. I thought it would make me seem deep and introspective. All it's ever done for me is let me know how well I've been taken care of. So, to all who have read my crazy ramblings this past year, I thank you. And to the One upon whose shoulders the government rests, I thank you for still finding room to carry me.

SuffoChristmas

I'm spinning around in circles. I've lost my Mom. I can't find her, and I've walked up and down every aisle. I'm not five years old and this is not a flashback. I'm 23 years old and I've lost my mommy. I'm in that place... that place surrounded by christmas music, where everything is red and green. That place where everyone goes to celebrate Christmas.

Where am I? Oh yeah. Target.

I'm shopping for Christmas presents, even though I have no money. Even though I know that presents are not what it's about. Even though I have no good ideas for anyone, and I have no desire to pretend that I know these people any more than I do. I have a sister in law, a brother in law and a new aunt this year. Can't even remember the Aunt's name. How am I supposed to buy her a gift? My uncle buys the entire family a tub of popcorn every year. We wanted to do that for him this year, but mom said that wasn't funny.

Mom. Where is my mom?

I feel more and more like I don't understand anything about life. How did Christmas become about...this? The worst part is, this isn't a new thought. Someone else always says something like this every year. How Christmas is a hollow shell. How no one really "feels" in the spirit of Christmas anymore. How we spend ten times the amount it would take to solve world hunger every year on shit we don't need. But nothing. We don't ever do more than complain. It almost seems like it's a part of the Christmas ritual to question the validity of this Christmas season and then do nothing about your convictions. I guess I just need to keep my head down, walk straight, and do my best to just survive this season. I'm dizzy.

I just need to get my mom and get out of here.

It's unfair. This numbness, this inability to think of anything but familial duty and my checking account balance, when I'm supposed to be remembering the only truly selfless action ever witnessed in the entire history of humanity.

It must be lame to have so many people who don't even acgnowlege you on your birthday.

He was born in a manger, you know? He was born in a feeding trough, and one of the wise men gave him embalming fluid. And we don't even remember. Happy birthday.

Mom found me. I'm getting out of here. Thank God (first time I've thought of Him all day). Me and Timmy are going to Dorithy's Place to throw a Christmas party for the homeless ladies he knows. We pray before we start. Timmy says that if we learn how to love people enough, somehow they will know where it comes from. Who taught him that? I certainly didn't. He and Karolina are at Dorithy's Place every Monday. Only missed three in the last two years.

Dorithy! That's my what new aunt's name is.

The women are all grateful. Timmy bought them Christmas presents. One of the women there told Timmy he was probably autistic. He thought she said "artistic", so he said thank you. We had pizza, and christmas decorations and candy. There was too much. We went out on the streets, and passed out candy and hot cocoa to the people who couldn't come inside. Tim says not to tell Mom or Dad, or Karolina's parents that we did that. They would make us stop coming if they knew we talked to people on the streets.

Life is not what i wanted it to be. One second, I am dizzy in Target, looking for my Mommy, questioning the purpose behind everything from gift giving to theology, to the breath coming out of my lungs, each consecutive cycle spending slightly more energy than it seems worth. The next moment, I am staring at my little borther, and his girlfriend, learning how to love people, learning enough that they would know why, and I am holding my breath for fear that my exhales would frighten this moment away.

So why should I care if my moments are pointless and numbing, or filled with purpose and hot cocoa? Either way, I can't breathe.