shapes, middle fingers, bricks, pizza.

I used to think this about myself:

I am an eternal optimist. 

I liked the idea. I'd practically chirp it at people. Eternal optimist.

An eternal optimist, because God is big, and God is my God, and because promises of justice, and rapture, and right-setting, because God said so.

An eternal optimist, because I used to believe matters of healing, hope, "calling" were dependent on how hard I was willing to work for them; that God values a hard worker, a determined person, someone willing to do the quote-unquote heavy lifting. And I am, if nothing else, a hard worker, so, clearly, I was set to Do Great Things; to Be Something Great. Clearly.

An eternal optimist, because I am a control freak prone to tunnel vision, and I believe in the power of people setting their minds to things and getting things done, which sometimes looks like "control-freak-tunnel-vision" and, other times, looks like "self-flagellation-tunnel-vision."

I wasn't an optimist. I was severely busted and in deep denial of what I'd suffered, but by gawd, I was smiling. Because I was Young, and the world was vast, and I had plenty of time, and I thought I was fine. I had so much room in which to spread out, in which to believe that the world would only get better as I got older. It's the theme song of The Rough Start: things will get better. It's the hope of those who haven't suffered a Rough Start, too; it's the universal hope, the spark in the bloodstream. The way forward. Things will get better. And we dream of it, an savor for it; drowsily in our beds, driving to our jobs, fervently taking notes in class, singing songs to God against a pretty ceiling. It will get better; the future is taking shape; we're on our way there!

For me: this hope took shape in the belief that my life would act as a barometer for my worth, and the work of my life would indicate whether I deserved the hope toward which I reached. It was my work to do, all of it. Out of the meaningless void, I was to stand back from the big picture and examine it with a critical eye; I was to envision exactly where to place each brick along each row of myself. The hope in this was the same shape as the work, and God will choose to help you if you really need it but God won't force you because God is a gentleman (please don't use rape analogies to talk about God. God.). In this arrangement, God stands back and observes, except for when he shakes his head disapprovingly while you clean up your messes. And eventually, in theory, you end up solid. Impenetrable. Invulnerable. You and God, standing in proximity; each uninvested in the work of the other. You nod, cordially.

But what about when you realize it was all bullshit?
But what about when you realize that it - whatever It is - will never be?

What happens when you realize the shape of your "faith" was kind of like a big middle finger to yourself? and you learned that that was the shape of God?

What happens when you get older, and things don't get better? when shit happens, or doesn't happen, and you realize that true, deep reconciliation of anything is rare, and resolution of anything is a freaking unicorn?

What happens when you acquire experiences, wounds, truths that are complete in their own big picture, but which are, in their fullness, unwelcome wherever you go? truths that clamor to be known, that live and breathe to be known in the spirit, by the spirit in us, but where can you bring them?

What happens God is bigger than anything! slams face-first into injustice that is imbued with pure evil? when the justice for which you've bled will escape your own personal experience? when you come to understand just how finite and breakable you are, and that God made you that way? when you realize that your tradition lied to you and that, actually, some wounds will never heal? when you realize that Youth allowed you enough space to hope that you'd see, on earth, maybe a single spark of the redemption in which you've believed, but now, you realize you won't? when you're faced with the demoralizing reality that some things will never be set right?

Hope changes shape. It rolls around in my head: hope changes shape. So I guess hope changes shape, or something.

When we're young, we look toward the hope of our older years as paved with personal meaning, brick by brick; when we're older, we realize what our coming years might mean, in uncivilized wilderness. I'm not saying that my own personal ship has sailed, so don't read it that way. I'm not an older person, but I'm older than I've ever been. And I don't know if things ever really Get Better. I grieve the death of hopes in the face of Hope taking shape. Hope, which propels us to look forward, still does so.. but toward what?

Whatever. I have pneumonia and a bad attitude right now and I have no witty ending so basically don't listen to me ever. (crawls under bed.) (wishes there were pizza-shaped hope under here.)

in which I am practically Donald Trump.

Come along, chirrun. Wander with me along the paths of lighthearted insomniacal despair. 

Let's say you've spent approximately the past five months coming to terms with your bright-and-shiny, newly-named Mental Health Thing, which you've kept private because no, you are not a crazy person, but yeah, you kind of are, but that has little to do with illness, amirite? (rimshot). Things seem to be evening out, which is nice. Real, bone-deep optimism and hope, and not just hope, but hope with the potential for longevity. Big deal. Yooge. 

Yooooooge.

But some serious things have happened in the meantime, and maybe you've blown off therapy for a few weeks, because you tell yourself I just can't talk yet but you know it really means I just don't want to sit in that room and fall apart, sobbing and wailing until I give myself a migraine. 

And maybe none of that has anything to do with anything, really, and you might just be starting to write about it because it's maybe time to start writing a little about it. Whatever. You find yourself upright in bed with a head full of everything, stream-of-consciousness-ing all over this screen, and your stomach is pretty furious with you because you are also an idiot who did this thing:

I'm ashamed to tell you what that is FINE it's a base of Lucky Charms held together by marshmallow with vanilla ice cream in the middle topped with white chocolate-Lucky Charms bark and I hate everything. I saw it in this video like two weeks ago... 

... and reacted like this: what. gross. will make. don't you dare and it just wouldn't go away; it, like, wooed me with the idea of crunchy marshmallow held together by gooey marshmallow - a horrifying technicolor sugar-Inception that burrowed into my brain and bellowed and bullied and bull-horned until I couldn't help but devote way too much effing attention to it. 

Moashmalluhs held tuhgethuh wid moashmalluhs? SOMEBODY BUILD A WOALL

Now, I'm a chef and all, which means that, when I am at my worst, I eat a bunch of gross crap because I feel tired of food almost always, until I remember that I am not tired of it, which makes no sense, but there you go. So, upon watching that clip of corn-syrupy pornography, I thought some things like these (and they were all correct): 

• That looks like it would hurt my mouth
• Wouldn't the marshmallow part freeze too hard to pierce with a spoon or fork
• That is not a cake at all
• The white chocolate bark part looks disgusting
• The whole thing looks disgusting
• This looks like I want to cry
• If I make this, I am disgusting

But I just had to. Because of how horrible it looked. Does that make sense at all? Shut up; yes it does. 

There is no correct way to engage with this sugary brain-worm infiltration other than ham-fisted suppression (ham sounds really good right now; please just pour salt in me), but if you're going to cheerfully throw caution to the wind and brain/pancreas/liver/stomach to the toilet (literally, on that last one), allow me to draw you a verbal map to the exact WRONG way to engage:

• Generally swear off added sugar for a few months
• Do a pretty good job at it
• Watch that video
• Make the thing
• Eat any part of it

There is also a less-tragic, but still totally wrong way to go about it: 

• With each necessary ingredient you toss in your cart, tell yourself you'll buy a vegetable
• Forget to
• Make only a half-batch of the "cake"
• Eat exactly five bites of it
• Throw the rest in the trash 
• Assume it's melting through some tiny hole in the bag and rendering itself a nuisance, as such tragedies are wont to do. 
• Spend a little while on the toilet, experiencing sharp pains and expelling sugary rainbows from your nethers.... 

...surely you saw this coming.

Choose your own adventure. They're all wrong. Had I abstained, even, I would always wonder, and I would rather know and experience than wonder! [And that, chirrun, is the kind of logic that will always get you in trouble.]

Run along, now. Eat your vegetables, or you won't get any dessert.