The Forge

There was something calling me to negativity: dark covering me, shrouding every scene i'm cast in.
Careful what you're feeling on the inside. You should try to remember the good times and the high life. Are you feeling alright?
Careful when you're feeling out of your mind. You should try to remember the strong lines in the spotlight til you're feeling alright.
-Finger Eleven

I'm thinking it's hormones. I mean, i suppose it could be a serious personality flaw that has taken a while to develop, but really i'm thinking it's hormones.

Yep, definitely hormones. That's what makes sense.

How else do you explain the state of perpetual flux? How one moment i'm charged with the energy of a thousand Duracell batteries and the next i'm ready to pull a Rip Van Winkle? How in a matter of sheer seconds after beginning a calm and collected conversation i am using harsh words and a menacing tone? How i can spontaneously lose what minutes before seemed an unstoppable buildup of momentum towards some goal or another?

Ah well, what can i say. If i've been a jerk lately, i apologize. If i haven't, well... great.

The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind. That's actually a really cliche and inaccurate way of putting it, but hey, this isn't Journalism and i've license to be sensational if i see fit. This second semester has the potential to bulldoze me emotionally; from what i understand, second semester of freshman year is the one that makes or breaks college students. All of the newness of the campus experience is lost into the abyss that was Christmas vacation, and i find myself in an almost foreign environment from the one i thought i'd been living in.

We've all noticed it. The talking has died down a bit. Tempers rage almost perpetually where they previously bubbled over in laughter. Maybe it had something to do with the downloading fiasco. But honestly, i don't think that's it. I think we've settled into ourselves a bit more than previously, and we're no longer so afraid of not having friends that we conceal our true thoughts on any of a variety of topics. Have they replaced the liquid in the fountains (i dare not call it water) with testosterone?

Whatever the case may be, i feel a lot darker than i used to be (hence the lyrics). I recently purchased the single "Animal I Have Become," from Three Day's Grace, and find my own life hauntingly fits that of the lyricist. Somewhere, and i don't know when, i became an animal. I lost grace, compassion, and love in favor of selfishness, anger, and (excuse the seeming juxtaposition) apathy. And i think i'm in need of someone to "help me believe it's not the real me."

Last night i filled several pages of my journal with some of the harshest (and yet most honest) words i've ever written about myself. And while that's--to use another cliche--neither here nor there, the emotions that led up to that entry seem to have all disappeared. For a moment, staring at the crude drawing that the custodial staff had pinned to the wall outside their office for our enjoyment, i suddenly realized just how cruel all of us guys really were. To each other, to them, to everyone we found a little bit strange... and i cried. It wasn't a long cry, it wasn't a loud cry, and it wasn't a bitter cry. It was a cry in which i realized that these two women had, for our sake, taken the time to produce something artistic. And it had been mocked. Here was an opportunity for us to show Christ's love and all i was hearing was "Yeah, a couple of the guys were talking about taking it down."

If it were up to me, i'd take that picture and keep it forever. Because staring at it, and listening to "Deathbed" by Relient K, i had a Joycean epiphany. I realized the depravity i was living in, and i realized that unless i was able to mirror the love and compassion that had gone into that picture i'd never be able to cage that raving animal within.

There are a LOT of times i've screwed up. I've entire aspects of my lifestyle that need radical alteration in order for a turnaround to be made. And since this isn't the first time i'm saying this, i at least know that much is true: if i don't work hard enough at this, i WILL be back here. Perhaps i'll be worse off (every time i say that's impossible, i'm put to shame by the working out to the contrary). But my hope is that this is the last time i look in a mirror and see someone broken in its silvery face.

The other day i had lunch with Megan (for those needing a refresher, Megan played Polly Baker in "Crazy For You" last semester). We discussed a lot--for over an hour and a half--about school and health and people and a lot of other things. And whilst i wish i could embody the enthusiasm and comfort that she exhibited during that meal, the thing i noticed most was the way in which she prayed.

If you know me (and particularly if you've ever been in my house for a family meal) you will probably get a good laugh out of my suggestion that our prayers tend to be not as long as they could be. Our formal prayer, if you're feeling facetious enough to call it that, has literally become at times a single word, namely deargodthanksforthefoodblessitamen. Megan's prayer, then, was slightly different. In the time i might have otherwise eaten half a serving at my mother's dinner table, she did not so much as open her eyes or raise a fork. There was instead a genuine sense that communication was taking place between creation and Creator; her face bore the markings of thankfulness and peace. It was chillingly serene, and i was tempted to repeat my blitzkrieg prayer if for no other reason than inner shame.

How did it get so wrong? At what point did it become okay to make a mockery out of even something as important as thanking the Lord for providing nourishment, converting an otherwise solemn occasion into a rote recitation with about as much meaning as a slide-rule? I don't know, but i'm certainly not going to deal with it anymore.

At this point i need to stop being my parents' son and start being my Father's son. No one can force me to do anything i don't want to. In fact, no one can force me to do anything i DO want to, either. That responsibility lies solely with me. Become a better Christian? My job. Take prayer seriously? My job. Become more comfortable around those i'm not really close to? My job.

So as i reflect upon the last few days, i try to remember the good times and the high life. Goofing off in Stagecraft with some upperclassmen i don't know much at all. Lunch with Megan. Dinner with Lisa. Hanging out in the apartments tonight with Jon Stewart, Simba, and a whole slew of really cool people while eating homemade mac & cheese and cookies.

And for the first time in a while, i'm feeling alright.