Up a Creek without a Paddle

As much as I like to fly by the seat of my pants, I also love to plan things. I like to know that I have certain things concrete in order to let the rest of my world fill with lovely chaos. Because I love chaos as well. A good balance between the two is ideal.

Too much planning and one forgets that life is not within our control.
Too much chaos leads to a life that never goes anywhere, lacks focus and never turns one direction or the other.

Planning leaves one wondering where all the time has gone.
Chaos leaves one wondering when time will ever end.

Planning forces one to always look to the future to be prepared for the next thing that just might happen.
Chaos shifts the focus to the past where life was simpler, easier, "the good ol' days" because it brings comfort or the ever present, never prepared for what is up ahead.

I lived controlled chaos in college. I had my structures within which life was mildly tamed. I had direction. I was prepared to a certain degree and the past wasn't too great so I didn't want to dwell on it. I lived very much in the present and the future consisted to the end of the semester-never much beyond. My family and friends were consistent. My dwelling place was fairly consistent. I went out and did many things but I always knew what I was coming back to. It kept me grounded but allowed me freedom.

When I graduated, all of that changed. At first I dwelt largely in the past, the good ol' days. My life went completely to chaos. Then I slowly began to shift towards planning, finding the next step. I planned a month or two in advance. Then I moved to New Jersey and with the absolute lack of any comfort around me, shifted fully into planning mode, dwelling largely in the future. I have spent the last few months trying to find a job as well as daydreaming of all the possibilities after "this" whatever this is. My schedule is very full and sporadic and so I don't have much room in life unless I plan it a month in advance. But then this last week hit. And now all I can do is get through tomorrow. I have been very abruptly jerked back from the future to the very real and gritty present.

In some ways it's comforting. I have no room left to worry because it has been clearly shown that it's all out of my control. Who's to say that I should wake up tomorrow and find it exactly as today?

But I also feel stranded.

Only to me...

Only something like this would happen to me....

Nothing like someone stealing your car to put you in your place in the universe.

I'll finish this later when I'm not in shock.

Do you ever wish you could shut your brain off?

I think waaaaay too much.

I love different things. I love exploring new opportunities. I'm kind of an addict to change.
But . . . those kind of things can only be truly appreciated when you have some form of stability to fall back on. Something or someone that you know will take care of things with you. Not necessarily for you because well, I'm too independent for that. Someone who has shown they are reliable. But someone that you know will be there to work with you through it so you don't have to think about every absolute possible worst case scenario to prepare yourself. Because well, its just not a good thing to be unprepared.

This is how I feel right now in my life-that it is not a good thing to be unprepared. I'm glad I spent last year at Miracle Camp. I honestly don't think I could've handled leaving all semblance of security at that time what with my parents moving, graduating, etc. But now I am for all intensive purposes, on my own. My parents only live 2 hours away, and they pay for my cell phone and my car insurance-thank God. But that's it. And while I am becoming comfortable where they are, I am becoming increasingly aware that I need to make my own life and even if they wanted to, they couldn't really help me. It's like when they used to look at my math homework in high school and just shake their heads. There's no way they could help me because they themselves didn't know. The situations I am dealing with now from finding a part time job to an apartment to dealing with a culture that they have never encountered like I am right now...they can offer advice but they don't have anymore connections than I do out here. And they definitely don't know more than I do about Newark culture and inner city youth.

At camp I still felt like anything could go wrong and it would work out. It would be ok.
When I travel overseas, I leave myself with no other option than to believe that if something awful is meant to happen to me, then I will just have to trust it is going to be ok. I am willing in those circumstances to fully recognize that I am not in control and don't feel the need to be responsible.

But here. In real life. I feel responsible. I feel like I need to be prepared. I don't feel like there is anyone here that I can rely on if I hit a tough spot. Everyone else is so busy and wrapped up in their own worlds that are also constantly changing. I realize that I enjoy change when the people around me are stable because I know they'll support me if I totally mess up.
Instead I am constantly thinking.
Covering my own ass.
Preparing.

It's exhausting.

I've been avoiding writing anything even though I've had this thought for awhile.

I realized this about four years ago...but I'm realizing it all over again.

After I ended my engagement, I was incredibly afraid that I would shut down my ability to care about human beings. I already believed even before I was engaged that I didn't have the ability to care enough. The different friendship situations going on the same time as that unhealthy relationship reinforced my inadequacy to truly love. Looking back I realize how I was utterly cornered in every aspect of my life by situations where I wasn't enough for the other individual. And I was trying to be. They were expecting me to be enough and I was trying to be enough. When I ended the engagement I had already ended those other relationships. It was the end of an era. I was already bitter and suspicious before all of this so why should I expect anything else? But something else happened.

After working at camp for that first summer, after working with kids for the first time and finding that unlike the lies my relationships taught me, I actually did have the ability to care, I knew I couldn't walk away from it. So I agreed to work in an after school program with inner city kids, on top of a heavy course load and another part time job. Tough kids. Kids that didn't usually listen to me. Kids that fought and yelled. I wasn't prepared to handle them. But working with kids is like falling in love. Kids consume you. They demand all of you with no promise of anything in return and you don't expect anything. And when they do give, they are completely unaware of it. It is without pretentiousness or expectation. It is without manipulation. It just happens.

That's why I can't walk away. I can be bitter and cynical about ANYTHING else in the world. But when a little black boy named Ali walks up to me with his puckered lips and dreads and looks me in the eye, he could ask the world of me and I would give it to him. And when I watch him as he sits crosslegged on the gym floor in the middle of a game without a care in sight as life flies by, he gives me the world.

It's like falling in love. But safer. Better yet, the perfect picture of grace. Because I know no matter how vehemently Musukulah says she hates me one day, the next day I will receive an excited greeting and a big hug. Even as I get so frustrated that I want to scream, I can't help but smile. They always open my heart, even when I fight it with every fiber of my being. They see through my facade and aren't afraid to tell it like it is. It never stings for long for they are children so honest words are easily forgiven. After all they don't know any better.

Or maybe they do.

Maybe we could learn a thing or two from them.
The honesty and vulnerability of a child....even admist his or her corruption.