outside of myself

every morning i battle with myself over getting out of bed. i patiently remind myself that there's coffee to drink if i get up, so i sluggishly and regretfully leave the warm coziness of my bed and enter the tundraness of the bedroom. quickly the house shoes go on and i scurry over the pile or two of laundry in my room to make coffee. i'll fold that mountain after school.
i'm up before everyone else, sometimes even the sun, so the house is very quiet. i just want more sleep. but it's cold, so my body wakes up even when i don't want it to.
i battle with myself every morning over how badly do i need a shower. because everyone knows that showering in the winter time is painful. but with short hair i can get away with skipping every other day. it's beautiful. 

i don't like the sorts of days that don't involve thinking. but i need these thoughtless days, because otherwise i might burst.

and then i need days were i can't stop thinking and i feel so alive that i definitely might burst. those days overwhelm and drag me in directions i didn't know existed.

it occurred to me today, that i don't really know who i am yet. and that's perfectly ok because i'm a baby in so many ways. i'm just learning how to discover myself. in my mind i think i should know who i am by now, i think i should have it figured out. have me figured out. in my mind i feel old. but i know, from the lack of knowing, that i have a long ways to go. i am so very fragile and moveable. sometimes i worry about the how to become true. sometimes i worry about things i can't figure out, like myself. or how i treat others, or what i think of others. am i really loving that person? what bad habits are these that would cause me to think such a thing. or worse, to SAY such a thing? why do an endless supply of words come when i'm with this person but not with that person? why does this desire to be known by another human haunt me so intently? i've gone to the edges. i've torn my psyche up looking for some sort of answer.
sometimes i find it, if i ask right. if i phrase the words just right, my mind makes sense of it all and i see why. but that doesn't happen often.

sometimes things go really fast and then slow down to a painful pace and i'm stumbling around dizzy; mad that it happened again, like i knew it would.

i don't have the answers i long for. i don't know why sometimes i know myself and other times i feel like a stranger and outsider to myself.
i don't know why i seem to be endlessly frustrated by my actions towards others.

but i can sleep at night because of one thing in my life that is valid. 

that is God.

He knows me because He created me, and only by Him will i ever be truly known. my need to be known can be fulfilled. it is a tedious process because i get in the way to often. the very problem, the equation i can't figure out, gets in the way of getting figured out.

i'm not surprised that it works that way.

the gratefulness i feel, the joy, the peace. knowing that if i didn't know i wouldn't be able to sleep. He made me that sort of person, the kind who loses sleep like i lose everything else.

if i didn't know Him, i probably wouldn't sleep at night.

-noni