I love dried flowers.  There is something so uniquely beautiful about them.  As if they still have such life and beauty inside them, I can never bear to throw them away once they stop thriving in water.  Upside down and on the wall they go, to be watched by me. A life with a different view.

Dried flowers sometimes remind me of dried humans.  Not dead humans, dried humans. The humans that have given up.  The humans that don’t feel anything anymore or perhaps feel too much.  The humans that look so hardened on the outside but really so soft. The ones that lack so much compassion but feel so deeply unheard.  The ones that desperately want to experience life, but turn a corner of disappointment everyday. Dried flower humans.

I was one of these for a while and it was awful.  Some days I wake up and feel like a dried flower. Wondering when I climbed out of my jar and hung myself upside down to dry. Seeing the world suddenly different but not caring all the same.  Growing so apathetic to my own conditions that I have no desire to change anything about them.

I feel a bit like a dried flower today.  I seem to have woken up only to flip myself upside down, finding a new perspective. But now I’m constantly dizzy.  I feel like nothing makes sense. Everything is out of focus and my body hurts--or doesn’t--lacks capacity, desire, perhaps, to feel. I’m not sure if I’m apathetic or just protective.  I’m unsure if I’m exhausted or pretending to be so sleep can be my lovely escape. I love the sun and hate the sun. I compare and miss and bleed my heart for other people and feel so often like it’s just vines.  Vines that strangle me until my legs can’t run anymore and my lungs can’t fight anymore. I don’t know how I feel. I don’t know how my life is moving forward when I feel so stuck in one place. So stuck in a place I’m not even sure where I could be.  A pit with no ending, an endless fall. So how would I begin to get myself out?

I’m waiting for an end that I’m scared will never come.  Some sort of revelation and yet I see the new dawn of it everywhere I look.  I feel trapped in something. Something I can’t describe. Something that seems to eat my head and my stomach, leaving my body unable to feel or have a spark of any kind.  I notice it and I hate it. But I feel I’ve used all my tools against it. Another cage.

I can stand and say Jesus is good.  I am frustrated and confused but I know the King and I know he is good.  

I miss my friend.  So bad I felt like I carried her back with me.  I feel restless. Almost like sometimes I’m waiting for something to happen but usually I’m too impatient that I just push for something to happen.  It’s unhealthy.  And I’m so deeply tired.  And of course I judge that.  I’m sick of being sad. I’m sick of being angry.  I’m sick of seeing so many of the same things, hearing them, knowing them.  I wish I could unknow it all but at the same time I would never trade in my traveled life. My exposed life.  I love it. I love the rescue. I love the voice. I love the joy. I hate the deep agony but I love the Jesus.

I think I’m probably healing.  My guess is that’s why it hurts so much.  A piece of me is being put back together and it fucking stings. It’s draining. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong but that’s not true.  If I right myself up again, put myself back in a jar full of clean water I can see, see well. It’s not fully better, but it helps.