The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

So I'm sitting here in the type of coffee shop that has its air conditioning turned up much higher than necessary and its wholesale coffee lined up on the wall like ducks on a row, and I'm thinking that *now* would be the perfect time for a run-on sentence. "Burn your bra, break your grammatical conventions, set your inhibitions free!" appear to be the modus operandi for the moment, and why not? Not that I would know anything about burning bras, of course, but if one's whole existence feels confined to the foolish limitations of one's own actual experience, then one does crazy things to remind oneself that one's existence actually means something. Delving into the absurd seems to be the intellectual variation of slashing one's wrists to feel alive.

I'm tired of ontological loneliness.

This whole quarter-life crisis thing is pretty ridiculous, you know? Only fat, spoiled children like myself who don't have to bleed for the most basic needs have the luxury of longing for intimacy. I try to hide this fact from myself by making out my existential angst into so much more than it really is, but what it comes down to is that I'm incredibly lonely. I'm lonely for a place to belong to. I'm lonely for a place where I feel safe. I'm lonely for a place to rest my broken heart. I'm scared that if I ever find that place, it'll be stripped away from me. I feel an incredible sense of loss every time a good friend gets married or begins a new romantic relationship--not because the relationship is romantic, but because it's exclusive. I am threatened by exclusivity, because I fear my own exclusion. There was once a time when I embraced my exclusion, celebrated it, revelled in it, but I found that self-imposed exile is an IKEA showroom. It looks like a home and feels like a home, but when the lights turn off it is nothing more than a warehouse...

And here comes this God who says He wants to know me and be known by me and desires intimacy with me, and I do everything I can to push Him away, because I don't *feel* (and what are feelings worth anyway?) like He's what I want. (Note that I didn't say that God isn't what I need.) Why shouldn't I want Him? Is it because I feel that He can't give me what I ask for? Because I feel that He will ask more of me than I could possibly give?

It's because God, by virtue of who He is demands to be the center, and that's where I want to be.

If I'm honest, my "loneliness" is the result of desiring the world to revolve around me. When I set up such a world, I get sad because I find that everybody goes away--they don't want to play in my little charade. And only God remains, beckoning me to find another way. I know that if I do things God's way, I'll have everything I want and need. But, goddamnit, I LIKE the ashen ruins I built, because they're MINE. Better my ball of dust then all of Solomon's borrowed riches, right?

Lord, I am so wrong. I repent; give me the strength to truly repent.