I’ve realized, as I’ve forged a new path with this blog, something that I’m failing miserably at that I’d like to be doing better. You know those pictures that are circulating where there’s a title, say “Bloggers,” that’s followed by six pictures with headlines of: This is What My Friends Think I Do, This is What My Parents Think I Do, This is What I Think I’m Doing, This is What I’m Actually Doing, and so forth? Well, I could put together a series of pictures of myself that portray what I think I’m doing in comparison to what I’m actually doing in terms of blogging.
You see, the thing about blogging is that it is highly reliant on one very important thing, at least personal blogs, anyway:
Relationships.
I have a few friends I’ve made since my introduction to the blog scene, but they should more accurately be considered acquaintances, at least with the way I’ve been treating these friends. There are those of you out there whose friendships I value, and it’s possible you don’t know it, because I haven’t been doing a good job at maintaining these friendships. I think this stems from two things: my lifelong inability to create balance in my life and my socially inept personality. I would like to be a very chill, God-confident, and caring individual, but what I find in myself are knots of insecurity and a nasty habit of self-absorption. It’s not just virtually, it’s in the physical realm of my life, too.
I chalk this up to being an only child, but one would think that an only child would see the lacking in their relationships because of their only-childedness and work to maintain what relationships said only child has because he or she knows just how valuable those relationships are.
Not me.
And for that I apologize: to the in-person friends and the blogging ones. Friendship is an important thing, relationships are important things. If they weren’t, God would have made us all uncaring, self-absorbed humans. I used to think of myself as a plastic doll – cold, incapable of really connecting, all idealizing and no authenticity. To a certain degree, I still see myself that way. For the longest time, I carried around this image of my heart encased by stone, and my life has been a saga of chiseling away that stone to reveal the warm, bleeding organ that lies beneath.
The problem with my perception of myself is that I think, because God spat me out and I’ve survived up to this point, is that I’m a wholly functioning human. The truth, in all its reverie, is that while I may be functioning, I’m not functioning wholly. Sure, my body is still in tact and I have those orifices that all you other humans out there share such as ears and noses and eyes and…other places, but I’m spiritually un-whole, and there are so many things I could be asking God for to make me whole that I just don’t.
If you have to ask you’ll never know, if you know you need only ask. –J.K. Rowling
I’ve asked the void many times why my life is the way it is, why I am the way I am, why things are the way they are, and never knew the answer. Then one day, I came across a quote that un-bound the blindfold from my eyes. There were so many questions with answers, so many blessings to have, yet the biggest thing that kept me from obtaining them was simply not asking for them. This comes in prayer, something I fail to do on a weekly, daily, hourly basis. I understand that prayer can be a simple want, regardless of its direction and intent, but if your letter lacks an address and a purpose it won’t reach its recipient; it will continue to float in the void – purposeless.
So, let’s ask ourselves: what relationships do we need to work on? All of them, a few? And what are the things we could have that we’re just not asking for?