identifying with biblical Job.

Job 6:1-2

"Then Job replied: 'If only my anguish could be weighed and all my misery would be placed on the scales! It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas - no wonder my words have been impetuous.'"

I never really liked the story of Job. It is a doleful story, one that makes me get all melancholy and out of sorts. I know that Job comes out "on top" and that God never actually abandons his servant Job. The redeeming part is nothing short of amazing. However...it hurts me to see Job's friends give him bad advice and imparting judgment on Job's life and actions.

Nevertheless... I read Job 6 this morning-- specifically focusing on the verses listed above. And I understood. It makes sense to me for the first time.

I identify with Job's desire to communicate his despair. He wants Eliphaz to SEE his misery, not just to hear about it and then give "advice." A few months ago I was reading a chapter online of the book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon. Mr. Solomon writes,

"Depressives use the phrase 'over the edge' all the time to delineate the passage from pain to madness. The very physical description frequently entails falling 'into the abyss.' It's odd that so many people have such a consistent vocabulary, because the edge is really quite an abstracted metaphor. Few of us have ever fallen off the edge of anything, and certainly not into an abyss. The Grand Canyon? A Norwegian fjord? A South African diamond mine? It's difficult even to find an abyss to fall into. When asked, people describe the abyss pretty consistently. In the first place, it's dark. You are falling away from the sunlight toward a place where the shadows are black. Inside it, you cannot see, and the dangers are everywhere (it's neither soft-bottomed nor soft-sided, the abyss). While you are falling, you don't know how deep you can go, or whether you can in any way stop yourself. You hit invisible things over and over again until you are shredded and yet your environment is too unstable for you to catch onto anything...I think depression is not usually going over the edge itself (which soon makes you die), but drawing too close to the edge, getting to the moment of fear when you have gone so far, when dizziness has deprived you so entirely of your capacity for balance."

I write all that to say that humans have a yearning, craving, inmost desire to be understood. You cannot measure despair, darkness, depression, or emotional hurt. You can only hope to adequately explain in the confines of language how "deep" or "heavy" your feelings are and with a deeper hope that someone might just feel the same things as you, feel as deeply or have experienced a similar heaviness that can in turn give you better words to describe your situation and state of mind.

Poor Job. Like I said before, he does not die in a state of despair, but to have no one to understand and being unable to adequately define the feelings you have in your own situation. It's heartbreaking. But, common. I don't think I have, "And the moral to this blog is..." except to say that I appreciate the people who love by sitting & sometimes not saying anything. And I hope that I haven't pretended to understand when I don't. If I have, consider this my formal apology. (:

confessions of a blogger

I cannot believe I blog. I think this is one of the most/only completely embarrassing thing I do. but there is just something about it. Supposedly I have an audience of one, at least.... but the numbers are small as I am a private person, and a mess of a person. I even pick at my own name!

So I decided to dedicate this entry to things my little ESL kindergarten [now first grade!] students said when I was their teacher last year. Gosh, some of these things I read and they make me laugh so hard I cry.

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Jasmine: I goin' make you a flower.
Me: You're going to make me a flower?
Jasmine: Yes.
Me: Why?
Jasmine: I like your face.
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Me: You're so smart! Where'd you come from?!
Luis: Mexico.
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[I just asked them things they saw at the zoo or maybe animals they saw in a zoo book-- practicing past tense]
Roberto: I saw an elephant!
Jose: I saw a bear!
Nathan: ... I saw Happy Feet!!!!
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[One of the non-ESL students ran up to me to give me a hug; one of my ESL students looked at the non-ESL student and said the following]
E: You is NOT in ESL!
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[Reading a story about things that make noises we hear]

Me: Does anyone know what this is called in English? [while pointing to a picture in the book of a bell]
Students: No...
Me: It's a bell.
Francisco: Like taco bell?

___________________________________________


that's all I can think of for now. if I think of anymore, I'll add them. I will surely miss teaching those sweet children.

eustace: revisited.

I am a mix of emotions.
It happens a lot like this, lately.
I have always been against the question "How are you?"
[unless you have an understanding with your friends that how are you actually means exactly that: how. are. you. Without that understanding, it's a horribly painful questions to answer. I always feel like a liar]
"Well." or "Fine." is my normal response. [I suppose I'm referring to my health]

But lately, even with the honesty agreement, I probably couldn't answer it.
I am:
happy / to be in a new place & feeling right about being here
nervous / about not finding a job in a timely manner
anticipating sadness / about soon realizing that I am 900 miles away from my family
scared / about the response or possible lack thereof

see?

I am a gallimaufry. sentimientos mezclado. or something like that. I don't even know.

even so. I just reread that post I wrote over a year ago about Eustace and me. he really is still my guy. It is remarkable how deep things go and the manner in which they affect us. And then, the reality that pushing things away, moving away, can never be the source of the healing. The healing comes from a series of events...often beginning with sorting things... admitting cause and effect, and then finally realizing that as a human, without Help, you would just become a bitter shriveled up person.

that's what Eustace was facing. remaining a dragon indefinitely. I've been that same dragon living in a dark cave.

"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart."
I thought so too. which reminds me of the relient k song that says,
--you said I know that this will hurt
but if I don't break your heart then things will just get worse
if the burden seems too much to bear
remember, the end will justify the pain it took to get us there--
but when you're at this point, you can hardly see your hand in front of your face within a pitch black cave, let alone thinking of the end. you just feel the pain.

"And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt."
And when you're there, it's as if nothing could ever make it go away.

"The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off."
liberating yet terrifying. something to be felt over and over again, depending on the depth and amount of scabs.

"You know - if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away...It smarted like anything but only for a moment."
which is always the hope. it is fun: to dare to wonder what you'd look like blemish free. asking: does that person really exist within my seemingly irreparably damaged being?

--I lift up my eyes to the hills—
where does my help come from?--