One of the things that really struck me this week was the honest surprise people felt when I told them I was re-reading the Harry Potter series mere days after finishing it. “It’s a really good series,” I reasoned, but I couldn’t tell if people thought this reasoning was valid. The only person who was not surprised by it at all was Em. “I started reading Harry Potter again today,” I told her. “I know,” she said. And that was all we discussed about it. I just don’t understand why people are so surprised. “Whatever floats your boat,” my male co-worker yesterday. I bounced my head to the side as though I were saying, “What? You gonna do something about it?” “I just didn’t think you were serious when you said you were going to read them all over again.” “Well, I was I said.” And that’s why he used the phrase about floating boats. “I just don’t understand why people don’t understand,” I said to God in my car as I drove home from work. “I mean, J.K. Rowling has created this eccentric, imaginative, yet unbelievably realistic world full of magic and awesomeness. Why is it so hard to think that I wouldn’t want to leave that world yet?” “I read the books all the way through three times in a row,” Em’s co-worker told us over lunch Tuesday. It made me feel a little more understood.
We were having lunch with Amy because we decided not to go to Charleston as we’d planned. “I just think it would be better if we waited until we could stay a few days and had the money to go.” She then calculated the expenses of a day’s trip. “I was thinking we could go to a $5 movie, grab some lunch, and maybe get our nails done. I have coupons.” So that’s what we did, minus the nails, because we got a late start and Amy ended up meeting us. “I got her all excited about going to Charleston and then I broke her heart,” Em told Amy. I shoveled rice and corn into my mouth, my tongue feeling taken aback by the combination. The menu said rice, not rice with corn stirred in it. My tongue felt slighted, the odd combination of flavors too much to handle. But my hand kept shoving corn and rice between my teeth, and my brain tried to convince me that I liked it. “She wanted to get another pendant for her necklace.”
I have this thing where every time I go to Charleston a trip to the market is non-negotiable. I collect another beach-themed silver pendant for my silver chain necklace, even though I have yet to buy spacers and add the others with the original sand dollar I bought on Em’s and my first trip to Charleston together. It was special because it was the first time I went anywhere somewhat far away from my parents’ house without my parents since the trip I took to Tybee Island in elementary school with a girl we called ‘Pooh’ growing up. Really it’s okay about the whole Charleston thing. I’d rather go when we had the money too, but still. I was looking forward to it. But still, we didn’t want to spend the money. Well, actually, I would’ve spent the money, but I wasn’t going to be a turd about it and make Em feel like she had to go to make me happy, because then I would suck as a general human being. And I already feel like I suck as I general human being without obligating Em to flatter my immaturity.
Which is something I’m trying to work on. As it happens, it can be incredibly difficult to, you know, grow up. I like to imagine myself as completely different from what I really am – a Lauren 2.0, if you will. I see myself as content, happy even. I like to imagine I live in a quaint house and write in the evenings. I like to imagine I’m disciplined and health-conscious and God dependent. What I really feel is distress, because I don’t know if I can have those things. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to save enough money to buy a house. Stop- I’m worrying. I sat in a parking lot at school and specifically told myself I wasn’t going to worry anymore, and look what I’m doing. I guess my problem is that I don’t know how to be content, and of all the crap I give people behind their backs for being fake, I feel like a bit of a fake myself. I act one way on the outside and feel another way, at times, on the inside. My soul is at war with my body and my entire being is fighting against everything. I feel like a lost lamb, and every time Jesus gets close enough to capture me I dart the other way, running as fast as I can. Of course I know that He could catch me at any time if He really wanted to, but then that wouldn’t be free will would it? As many times as I’ve asked Jesus to come back into my heart, I fail to realize that it’s not just question I have to ask, it’s a lifestyle I have to live. And when I finally figure out how to live in that way, I’ll maybe feel more like the person I’m supposed to be.
