Is it actually possible to move backwards in maturity? Or maybe the growth in maturity is actually letting go of the illusion of maturity. The obsession to grow up is suddenly released-- or maybe it is picked up again along the way.

For quite some time now, I have been wrestling with this sense of a lost identity. All the things that I thought I was are suddenly empty, missing, absent. All the things I used to take pride in seem to have melted away and I find myself standing in a personal wasteland of questions that are not even formed. I feel small and stupid and weak and incapable. All the things that I used to be able to do despite my reservations feel heavy and impassible. I feel as though I have nothing left and my thinking has become cloudy. Too much to think about and yet no actual thoughts seem to be forming. I only feel that there is no one in this world who can understand this miserable emptiness-- not even me.

This weekend I had a lot of time to think, a little time to talk in-between the thinking. Thoughts about trusting myself and breathing room and offending people and worrying about what other people think. Thoughts about feeling trapped in a box, invisible from the world and thoughts about solitude and locking myself in a room to be alone with the only One who seems capable of comforting me in this time when I do not even understand the type of comfort that I long for.

I feel more afraid and more insecure than ever it seems-- although in a different way than ever. I am deathly afraid of offense and the overflow of my heart. Everything feels black and muddy and strange. I feel that I am walking through a fog and it takes every fiber of energy within me to muster the strength to attend to anything in concrete reality. And I feel a bit like no one understands that, that I am here, in this mirky box alone, waiting for the clouds to clear and life to begin again.

A few weeks ago someone made this observation about me: "You seem to be very concerned about being misunderstood." To which I could only answer, Yes, very much so. Thank you. And I have been thinking about that and wondering what to make of that in myself. I don't know why and I don't know how to change it-- all I know is that it is true and I feel very far from being understood at the moment. I feel like it would help to tell someone about this place, but the words never come and all I can do is stare silently and wait until I can go back home and go to sleep again. Becuase I don't know how to begin and I don't know how to ask for such a thing as understanding when I do myself do not actually poses it. This grayness that has no name just settles over me and I am lost.

For the first time in maybe my whole life, I find that I have little care or concern for what my life might look like after school is done. Suddenly the security of some grand career matters little and only today and the steps I take in the immediate tomorrow matter. And I find that to be very peaceful, very freeing. I think it frees up some energy for the real stuff.

This weekend I observed all intelligence, ability to form full, coherent and useful sentences totally absent from my person. Listening to directions and relaying them to another utterly impossible. Saying what I really wanted to say unquestionably disastrous. And as I contemplated how this could be, I began to wonder if the semester has been spent trading mind for heart and now I stand at the inevitable crossroads where the two must reconcile and I am alas redefined. But still this place feels mirky and dirty and in more poignant ways than ever, I feel ugly, rejected, and inadequate. I know not how to find the breathing room I so badly need. I long for just one other to understand and yet am crippled with fear at the thought of opening the door of it to another.

So I suppose that is all. I feel the need to apologize, to beg mercy for my lostness, my weakness. I beg for understanding, one once of grace, which I begin to wonder if such a thing must come only from me.