writekaryn

I used to read all the time.  Hours and hours.  I’ve read for eight hours straight easily.  Unfortunately I read everything I knew was good, and, for awhile, it seemed that all the well-written books I picked up were full of graphic sex or murder or other nasty things.  This really bothered me.  I am very sensitive and often completely immerse myself in books, speaking and writing in the same tone and language as the author for hours and days after reading.  So I gave up my beloved fiction and enjoyed the often safer non-fiction.  Then, a couple years ago, I got completely sick of it.  I used to be able to read an informative book in a couple days, and now it was taking me months and months.  I resigned myself to no longer being a reader.  It was sad as it had been such a part of who I knew myself to be, but at least I had become a writer.  I assumed that I had simply read to learn how to write and that reading had been replaced by a higher calling.

On a whim, I purchased a copy of Real Simple magazine at the check out stand at Wal-Mart a few days ago.  I came across a section devoted to reader comments.  The editors had asked their readers to tell them their favorite love stories.  One commenter shared her love for The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery, stating that she had worn out several copies due to rereading.  While I had never heard of The Blue Castle, I was and am very familiar with L.M. Montgomery, author of the Anne of Green Gables series.  Knowing Ms. Montgomery to have married a minister, I felt fairly confident there would be no illicit sex or other profanities or vulgarities in the aforementioned romance novel.  I researched and finally found a reasonably priced copy online.  (Apparently the book is hard to find and a bit pricey.)

It arrived today, and in far better condition than I had expected considering the price.  I promptly devoured it, stopping only to spend a few precious hours with my husband before he had to leave for work.  It greatly exceeded my every expectation.  I probably read the whole thing in about four or five hours.

I am still a reader!!!!  My love for reading has not died, only my ability to find books I am willing to read has been significantly impaired these last few years.  I feel so happy.  I feel myself again in ways I haven’t felt for a long, long time.  The house is in utter chaos and, unusually, I don’t care one tittle.  I’ve spent hours, like the heroine of the story, in my own Blue Castle.  I am deeply content.

Le sigh, le sigh.

I am tempted to read it again.

Today was a really good day.  I got free makeup.  I work for a makeup company and I got their new holiday kit today!!!  I am so excited.  Woo hoo.

Let’s see.  What else?  John and I have been talking…as usual.  We always talk.  Communication is our strong point.  We have been praying to grow even closer and God has been answering our prayers.  Life is pretty decent.  I am not sure how to figure everything out, but I am encouraged.  God (and John) are doing a good job taking care of me.

Here is the makeup I got (I work for Bare Escentuals)

And here is a link to the site.  http://store.bareescentuals.com/bareMinerals%20The%20Surprise/BE_SUB_SEASONAL,47758,default,cp.html

I love my job.  :)

I am married now.  The wedding was lovely.  These are the first poems I have written since my legal name change.

The Hart

By Karyn L.

The deer looked in the headlights longingly

Hoping for affection

Terrified of detection

Paused with hesitation

Quick with expectation

But common sense

Took his wits

He stepped to the side

Just a little bit

And narrowly escaped

Collision

Sigh, he thought with wistful sorrow

Such is life

When something so lovely can cause such pain

I’m glad for my father’s wisdom

All that glitters is not gold.

He thought of Sylvia

Creature of the woods

Who once broke his heart.

Alas, a twinge of regret

At the thought of those pure doe eyes

That never truly held affection

For his tender hide

Well, experience has made me bitter

And cautious in the presence of beauty

Better a broken heart

Than a broken leg.

And he went along his merry way.

The Poem

By Karyn L.

I shall make a great poem

The poet claimed

With the first line

The same as the last.

She sat down

To think of grandiose things

To put on paper

Subtleties and mysteries

And battle scenes

With no blood

She could not stand the sight of blood.

I shall merely wrestle with words

And force them to conform

With the lines on my paper

Bullwhip them into submission

Thou shalt obey me, thy master

Hmmm….so close to thigh master

She laughed at the swift transition

From old English

To infomercial.

Now back to my poem.

It has to be great.

Perhaps a simile?

That would be like

Such a great thing as to put

In a poem

“The dew was wet like…

Like…

Like…”

Nothing was coming to her

Nothing fresh

Fresh like dew

She thought

How cliché to put dew in a poem

To begin with.

She twiddled with her pen.

She remembered she had laundry in the dryer

Hot and fresh

Like warm biscuits

Ready to be folded

So deliciously

Today I will be a housewife

She thought

And tomorrow I will be a poet

And tomorrow

I shall make a great poem

Tonight was an amazing night.  A night of revelation and renesannace.  Tonight John and I met with a couple that we, or rather especially I, admire greatly.  John would admire them more if he knew them better.  All our worries were cleared up and we enjoyed telling our story.  At one moment there was a question asked about where I wanted to be.  John and I don’t see ourselves in Redding forever unless you think three years or so is forever.  We’re thinking L.A. as in the city of angles, not of gumbo.  Anyway, I got really passionate…I thought that stuff was pretty dormant.  I’ve tried to build relationship with people down there who are involved with what I want to be involved with, etc, and it has been an uphill climb.  Doors are not opening like I might have wished.  I’m kind of glad right now because my relationship with John is so important and I don’t want anything to distract from our discovering one another and our great love for each other.  I adore him.  He is everything a man should be.  Anyway, I came alive in a new way talking about going down to southern California.  I guess I am pretty passionate about that dream.. It is definitely real, but maybe not ripe.  That’s good.  Give it some time.  We’ll see what happens.

I felt somewhat passionate about a couple things lately and I want to write a review about them so that you could hear my opinion.  I would first like to review a movie.  Here goes:

Barbie & The 12 Dancing Princesses

While the animation is decent for a movie that never hit the theater, even though there is sort of an empty feel as it is not rich with characters and people but only shows the main characters, the majority of which look exactly the same only with slight modifications, and the story line is decently intriguing for a little girl, I do not recommend this movie.  Unless a parent or individual is very strong in their ability to communicate, hey that’s not right, this movie sends a few very negative messages…especially negative because they are so subtle.  No, I am not talking about the way that Barbie’s arms and legs are so ridiculously thin and long, providing an image very few woman could ever accurately emulate, possibly causing anorexia and poor body image for many beautiful, sensitive women longing to find acceptance, approval and love.  While that may be an important issue, I feel more concerned with a moral issue.  The 12 dancing princesses, while not evil, are very unmanered.  Sometimes it is playful, but sometimes it is rude, insensitive and impractical.  If you would like to raise a selfish, spoiled brat who feels that they are 100% justified in their behavior, raise your children like the 12 dancing princesses.  Of course the princesses don’t act like that…because they are animated…but in the real world being allowed to do what ever you want, having no one correct you when you are knowingly or unknowingly rude, and living a life of playful disorganization is not a recipe for success in life.  Enter the villian…who has come to bring order where there has been chaos.  And she takes it a step to far, but many of the things she implements are not horrible.  But oh, how they are seen that way!!!!  And the 12 princesses gossip about how unfair she is.  Tacky.  Thank you Barbie for showing me how to be a beautiful woman of no character and no accountability.  Gee, that’s what I always wanted to be.  What really ticks me off is that it is so black and white.  Chaos is good.  Discipline is bad.  Because the villian is so evil, they throw away everything having to do with her, even though in some ways she was right.  Bad representation of right, but still right.  And even though the princesses were good, they wern’t all good by any means and no one was stepping in to lovingly correct them.  Where is the middle ground?  Where is playful meets respectful?  Where is alive meets self-controlled?  So, over all, it isn’t like the most heinus movie ever…but I hate subtlties that can sneek in and distort a world view to something that seems innocent enough but in the long run is really, really harmful.  Kids are encouraged left and right to be disrespectful to authority in our society and it is REALLY, REALLY UGLY!  It’s not funny or cute.

Product review: Pixie Gel Eyeliner available at Target

Basically in a nut shell this is a gooey eyeliner that is hard to get off of anything it touches and yet smears and smudges on my face with in about 6 hours on my face with no touching or rubbing.  So it starts off great but is really hard to get off the brush and then it moves on your face and is really hard to fix because it is so hard to get off, so you have these ugly eyeliner smudges that are really hard to get off.  Plus it is $18.  Gee, what a great idea!!!!  Let’s pay almost $20 for a product that works terribly.

These are trying times…well…actually trying moments.  I feel like there are so many things in my life that for the longest time I have never fully been resolved.  My weight.  I like chocolate and Snapea Crisps and sometimes, often, when I have something delicious, I don’t want to stop putting it in my mouth…over and over.  I ache in my heart.  I want to feel so full I can’t think about anything.  And I see other women, young old and in between. with flat tummies…and I guess fat tummies.  My laptop battery is dying.  Stinky.  It seems to be dying faster lately.  What is the deal with that.  My room has been messy for weeks and weeks.  My laundry is dirty and I have no quarters.

I feel scared that the wedding won’t be good.  I feel so alone sometimes…at church.  I feel like I only have a few friends here who know me and love me for real.  I need a pastor to marry us and it feels so hard to get ahold of one.  But maybe it will be okay.  5  There are lots of them here but they are so busy and you are supposed to do premarital counseling first…but the course only starts a couple weeks before the date.

I feel scared to be forgotten and overlooked.  I want to be loved and valued and to feel safe.  I think it’s going to be okay.  Jesus please help me.

I don’t feel like saying very much of impactful whatever.  I just need a moment to be myself and to clear my head.  I am so tired.  Very, very tired.  I really need to go to bed.  I need less stress in my life.  My work schedule changed and I think I like the old one better.  For real.  Having a day off in the middle of the week was so nice.  Now I do 8-4:30 mon-fri…no more weekends.

My friends came over tonight to help me wedding plan.  They are great.  Really, really great.  I am so grateful for them.  I also got a suprise package in the mail from my good friend who is English but is in the army and is stationed in Germany.  :)  Why so many soldiers in Germany I wonder.  I rarely if ever…never see foriegn soldiers on American soil.  Funny.  Ok, I’d better go to bed.  Maybe in DC there are soldiers from other lands.

Ta ta.  :)

Yea!!!!  Details to follow…

Sometimes I can be a real jerk.  My boyfriend is an atlas when it comes to his ability to handle my brutal honesty.  I say I like your old hair better than your new haircut.  He says nothing.  He mentions I might look nice with some highlights after I ask him what he thinks I could do to update my look and it is on again off again all out war for a month.  You don’t love me the way I am!  I feel hurt!  You are trying to control me.

When I get like that he says he is confused.  I use my brilliant logic to tell him he’s wrong and I am right.  He sighs and apologizes for hurting me and tells me how much he cares about my feelings.  The next day I apologize because it suddenly dawns on me how wrong I was.

Feelings….they are so potent and powerful.  What exactly is the point of them?  Right now they just seem to stir up trouble.  Sometimes I wonder if I am simply being a brat because for one of the first times in my life someone cares this much about me and won’t leave me if I am not perfect.  I know he is safe and my real self starts to come out…okay, not quite my real self…but the messy bits that have been hiding deep inside, refusing to rear their ugly heads for fear of complete abandoment.  In the past I was railed for misdemeanors and blamed when I should have been consoled.  I learned to keep my balance in a world that was constantly reeling under the emotional earthquakes of violence, rejection, yelling, mockery…bigger, stronger, meaner people who always won while I always lost….and I lost too… because all I wanted was to be loved, not to win the argument or to be righter or stronger.

Why do I do this to him?  Why am I not more easy going like he is?  Why do I get offended over misplaced words when I know his heart is in the right place?

I am terrified of rejection.  I love how perfect I seem to appear in his eyes.  He finds so little fault with me.  Even my skewed view of God doesn’t love me as consistently as he does.  I finally found the man of my dreams, the man who loves me as I always wanted to be loved, deeply and purely….and it hurts so bad if I even get the slightest hint that he might realize I am not perfect or might not be blonde.  Sigh…being a girl.  The highlight thing still hurts even though it’s completely illogical.

Sigh.  I am trying to figure out a way to make the pain go away.  I can’t.  Crap.  Maybe I could ask him to not talk about it anymore or stop talking about it myself….but I pick at it like a scab…hoping each time that maybe he’ll say something that makes it all better.  I bleed the issue all over him…he says he loves my hair the way it is….but it is too late now, and I think he is lying.

I could just forgive him…but for what?  Is it a crime to think I’d look good with highlights?  I probably would agree.  But I just don’t want to be changed.  I want to be liked for me…and he says  he doesn’t care, that he wants me to feel free to do whatever I want and that he loves and likes me for who I am…and he isn’t lying.  But what I want is to delight him…to be a delight.  Just for who I am…and to feel like there is nothing I could do that could make him love me more.

And I know he wouldn’t love me more.  But I see his response when I get dolled up…and when I don’t.  The love and attraction is still there, but not the same sense of wow and immediate response like when I’ve got on eyeliner.  And I like that my efforts are appreciated…but I just don’t feel as special when I see his response when I don’t make an effort.  And there is something I love about sincerity and loving of the true self.  I like putting on the glamour as well…but it’s an illusion.  Sigh.  I’m just as bad as he is.  Sometimes.  But he doesn’t complain like I do.  What’s the deal?  I’ve been around this mountain like 15 times in the last two months…is it just a guy/girl thing?  How do I make it stop?  Why do I refuse to just come to terms with this thing?  I just don’t understand.

Any advice?

My relationship: 99.44% two amazing people and a genius relationship.  He’s a prince, the best I could have ever found

.56% insecurity and pain and lame arguments that should have never happened in the first place.

Perhaps I should pray.  There has got to be an answer.

It’s a beautiful spring day and I am inside.  The first day of spring actually.  It’s funny.  I’ve been feeling a little hard on myself.  I have been over eating and undersleeping…I feel like I should have my life more in order, and I am so hard on myself when I fail in these areas.  I so want to be flawless, to have a stunning body that I have nothing to be ashamed of, to be invincible, beyond criticism.  I want to be loved, and it is hard for me to love myself inspite of my imperfections, failures and struggles I am working on and growing in.  I want results fast, or I want to give up.  I don’t want to do the hard work of saying no to myself.  My thinking can get so negative.  And in between subtle or obvious attacks against myself, I take momentary pauses to encourage a friend.  He’s the son of someone close to me and has been going through a lot of hard stuff, a lot of personal failure from the past….he had a rough start and has had a tough time keeping it together.  But he is also absolutely amazing…talented, caring, intelligent…his heart has simply been wounded, and it is very hard for him to feel accepted by God.  I completely relate.  Next to him I look like I have it all together even though I deal with exactly the same things…just maybe not quite as much.  My times of praying for him and encouraging him get my mind off of myself and onto what I have to offer and it feels pretty good.  This is a big lesson for me…learning to not focus on the negative or to let my failure prevent me from expressing what is good.  Learning to love the imperfect me.  My boyfriend is excellent at not eating too much.  I get jealous of that.  I feel insecure like I have to live up to his standards.  I am grateful that we both don’t struggle with this area and that he is kind to me…my insecurities and feeling of expectation are my own, not because of anything he has done.  Sometimes I want to cry and curl up in a ball.  I feel so wounded inside when I am failing in this area.  I hate watching my tummy get bigger, and I hate thinking about when I used to be 125lbs when now I am 140.  I’m so scared no one will love me if I don’t have an impressive figure…sigh…John loves me for who I am.  But it is hard for me to not want to hide when I feel like a failure, hard for me to get my mind off of it…circling round my thoughts like vultures ready to pick me apart.  Ew, that was a nasty analogy.  At the same time I want to run to him because he is so safe and kind.  I wish my view of God were the same.  It is in part…but so often I hide from him, trying to be perfect, feeling a bit resentful when I believe that he has that kind of expectation of me.  Hah, I pray for my friend and tell him how accepted he is and can’t seem to do it for myself.  Maybe I’ll try anyway.  :)  Sigh, I need to get my perspective on straight..I am really a powerhouse and there is nothing I can’t do because of my tight connections with Jesus.  I am not repulsive or disgusting.  I am not rejected or a failure.  I am not controlled.  I am free.  I am loved and I am beautiful.  I need to hear that, I need to know that.  I am not trapped.