When you look at me.

I'm planning on moving soon, back to Northern California. My Dad won't be happy about it. I'm dropping my classes for the time being and I'm going to work as much as I can. I feel like I'm really glad to be where I am in life. It's refreshing.

Wish you were here.

Listening to Pink Floyd makes me inevitably pensive and lately I've a had a lot on my mind anyway. Mostly, I've been considering that change is in the air. Not only has a new season fallen upon us, but I've noticed more and more the pieces of my life which no longer fit into the person I want to be today and tomorrow and ten years from now. So I need to start shifting and transitioning, but the problem is always knowing where to begin. 

My health

My job

My relationships

My budget

My heart

It would be fruitless to say that I can make several drastic changes in my life suddenly and come out on top. (Besides, being on top is overrated. HEYO!) Anyway, what I'm saying, my friends, is that a simple-minded lady like myself works best with baby steps.

Here we go.

Priests and Paramedics

It has been a good yet tumultuous season in my life. I've been recording more music, which always makes me feel better about everything. It is as if, as long as I'm making music, at least I'm doing something I know I SHOULD be doing. Yesterday Jason, one of my closest friends since high school, was here in San Diego and we got a chance to sing and record a song together. You can and probably should listen to it here: http://www.myspace.com/karenreiswig

I hope all is well with you, and I hope there is something going on in your life that you feel you should be doing. If not, know that uncertainty can be even more rewarding. Or so I've heard.

God bless the man who falls.

This special entry is about my experience with, loss of, and appreciation for faith. Many of you know that these are not matters I take lightly. I wrote the note below so that those of you who've wondered may have a chance at understanding, and those of you who have not may delve a little deeper into my heart and my experience on this beautiful planet. Be well.

I read an article tonight from the Chicago Reader about David Bazan, a musician for whom I have an absurd amount of respect. (It can be found here: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-passion-of-david-bazan/Content?oid=1169181) He started his career in the music business under a Christian label, placed by religious media culture. Over the last 15 years, his faith has disintegrated in a way that most Christians aren't fond of, not only because they might fear for the damnation of his soul, but because it is hard to swallow ideas about deeply rooted doubt when you're relying on a shallow pool of family values keeping you afloat.

Reading this article brought me to tears several times. As a former Christian myself, it is especially intriguing to me to hear of another story like mine, of faith which fell short after years of dependency, hope, and even despair. Bazan expresses these experiences in horrifying yet graceful lyrics such as these:

Wait just a minute
You expect me to believe
That all this misbehaving
Grew from one enchanted tree?
And helpless to fight it
We should all be satisfied
With this magical explanation
For why the living die
And why it's hard to be
Hard to be, hard to be
A decent human being?

(From "Hard to Be" on his new album, Curse Your Branches)

I'm not writing tonight to advertise his music (though I strongly encourage you to give it a shot if you haven't yet), but rather to tell you about what is stirring in my own heart after reading about his experience.

I can't tell you exactly how it happened. I remember a night I spent in a friend's dorm room when I was at the Honor Academy where we laid on mattresses on the ground that we'd aligned next to each other. We laughed and talked about the states of our spirits. I told her in a candid moment that I sometimes doubted my salvation (the true redeeming of my sins) because I didn't know how not to. We had been in the internship for nearly a year and on the verge of graduation, we were expected to be the leaders of our generation, the ones who would shamelessly carry the Word of God into a lost and broken world. She was silent for a moment as she considered the weight of what I'd just said. "That's not good, Karen," she told me.

Less than a year later I had a conversation with a friend of mine in which I told him through tears that I didn't think I believed in Jesus anymore. And that was that. There were too many questions left unanswered. I could no longer keep myself in this world of faith-based beliefs simply because I'd been dwelling there for as long as I could remember.

A couple of years ago when I turned my back on the Christian faith with a colorful middle finger on my left hand and a bottle of 100 proof teenage rebellion in the right, I had no idea where to turn. Friends and family who were close to me at the time watched in shock as I uprooted all that I had professed my 19 years on earth. I observed the behaviors of church goers and even family members shift as they no longer viewed me as a respectable, Christ-centered young lady.

 Under the impression that I was simply sick of bearing an oversized cross, they told their children to stay away from me. Even good friends of mine would call to tell me that they knew that I was living in sin and needed to do something quickly to get my life back on the right track. 

In their defense, they had loving intentions. No respectable mother wants their impressionable daughter spending weekends with an alcoholic floozy, and if I thought that I had any chance of saving my friend from the fiery merciless pits of hell, I might act out erratically as well. But to my adolescent mind, their words and actions seemed nothing but overbearing and hurtful.

These kinds of encounters only pushed me farther away from the church and, in turn, any and all concepts of faith. I wanted to demolish my spirit, to live simply and without consequence. 

Even in my state of bitterness, however, I never wanted to be anything but a savior to those around me. I struggled with ideas of how to help anyone on this God-forsaken planet without mention of an alleged man who died on a cross to bear the weight of the evil of all mankind. I went through all kinds of plans for my career path, thinking I wanted to be a counselor or a doctor, desperate to "give something back" as I'd once desired to do on the missionary fields of who-knows-what third world country.

This was the hardest time of my life to date. I'd lost a lover, a community, and literally all sense of self. My identity, the very framework for my entire life, had been created by the understanding that I need only lean on the everlasting arms of Christ. And when he was no where to be seen, I felt utterly abandoned. And like any child left behind by a trusted loved one, I became angry.

I mocked anything that looked like, dressed like, or sounded like faith. It was a silly concept that I'd left behind once I became "intelligent enough" to start asking questions and no longer blindly followed some ridiculous idea about an unseen Creator. I ignored my fears that the story of Jesus could be real based on my need to escape the chains of guilt, doubt, and a certain identity that had been thrust onto me since I was a youngster. 

These angry feelings swarmed within me like a cluster of confused wasps for well over a year when I decided to sign up for a philosophy of religion class. I had a lot of respect for the professor from a few brief encounters and really only joined so that I could get to know him. Quickly, the part of my brain which dealt with matters of the spirit began to get stretched and prodded, and I couldn't resist hearing stories about Nietchzsche, the great Greek gods Apollo and Dyonisis, the buddha and Siddhartha. Here were tales of humans who, like me, had given everything to be accepted by their gods and their teachings only to find more often than not, that they were left alone and in deep despair. I would often shed silent tears in class, relating to the lessons my professor would give, feeling like he was literally picking apart the pieces of my soul which I'd worked so hard to cover for so long. Over time, however, I began to crave this feeling. I wanted to see the deeper parts of myself of which I'd previously been so afraid.

Since I took this class last semester (and since a brief encounter with Bazan earlier this year which changed my life), I've found myself more open to ideas about faith. I definitely cannot lay out for you what I do or do not believe to be true, but I can tell you that I have a real sense of respect for those pursuing religion. Because regardless of whatever torment I lived with as a Christian, I know that Jesus has done and continues to do wonderful things in the lives of believers. He, along with many other great names in the spiritual world, is a means of hope and a chance for becoming a part of something bigger than one's self. Both of these concepts are hugely important to me.

Though I don't know what I will believe to be true in five, ten, or fifty years, I'm thankful for tonight. Because just to feel alive is enough tonight.

Tonight, I keep having these semi-crazy thoughts running through my head. I spent all day in the sun and I'm on my period so beside the normal amount of irrationality that one possesses at a time like this, I have been seeing this wonderful man for a little over a month who told me today that he feels like I am "bummed" every time he has to leave early from a gathering because he works an absurd amount of hours and needs real sleep like a real person. I don't believe he was trying to, but this inevitably made me feel weirdly clingy and, by default, frantic that I'm going to now begin the vicious cycle that always dooms all of my relationships. So I'm running through all of these terribly emotional things that I could say to him about how he makes me feel and what I adore about him and sitting here, quietly, unable to sleep in the early morning hours, I've decided that I will be honest and tell him simply, "I like spending time with you. I'm sorry if I make you feel that way." I remind him that I have little concept of what it is to have a full time job, and leave it at that. I had to write this out in order to make sure I wasn't actually going to do or say anything excessive, stupid, or hasty. And now I feel better. 

Thanks for reading. Sorry my blog sucks. Goodnight. 

Californication.

I had this really profound realization about a month ago about how I'm so god damn grateful for what I have now and blah, blah, blah. Truth be told, it's human nature to desire that which we cannot have. When a challenge comes along, I, like most fools, find myself courageously interested but sheepishly willing. Since the beginning of this summer, I've had an unusual turn of events that have led me to believe all the more in the empowered, strong voice that has slept within me for so long. Those who know me casually consider me to be outspoken, but those who know me genuinely see the turmoil that rages within me because I am frequently too much of a pussy to stand up for myself when I need to.

Frankly, I'm ready to strip myself of the garb of insecurity that has been laid since the foundation of my adolescence when a boy in the 4th grade made fun of me and started the vicious cycle that was my unfortunate parade of self-loathing youth. I'm ready to fucking streak down California 101, yelling about how good it feels to not give a shit what this man thinks about my body or that woman feels about my intellect. (I could probably bypass the charge with indecent exposure in this fantasy, but what the hell? I've never been arrested.)

Human nature is the most beautiful and awful part of the world that I now know. These impulses are everything that I hope to redeem and suppress within myself on a day-to-day basis. I write this down only to remind myself six months or three years down the road that I sat up in bed around 3 o'clock in the morning one summer day and forced myself to acknowledge that I deserve better treatment than I have allowed myself these 21 years, mostly from within.

You're welcome to remind me of this as well, but I might just end up calling you an asshole. 

Goodnight.

We still have time.

Life is glorious. The buddha in me is breathing for once.

Also, I'm a terrible blogger. Follow me on twitter: twitter.com/karenclementine

Cheers!