To the Girl Who Lives In Her Head

I am forever trying to find the sweet middle of embracing my brain’s dreamlike, creatively wired thought process, and seeing the cold, hard reality for what it really is. I think in pictures and stories and emotions, and spend much of my time lost in thought. I brainstorm the magnificent things that could be, and it feels like such sweet relief to hang out in the clouds. When my head is in the clouds, the world seems hopeful, the colors seem brighter, and pain is nearly eradicated. I seem to dance my way through life, and despite my surroundings burning before my eyes, I feel so liberated and full of glee. My expectant visions and their microscopic detail are what fuel my groundwork for making them become reality. That is, until my floating feet are yanked, and I am forced to come back down.

Coming back down looks like all sorts of things, but at its finest, coming down looks like the perceived outcome in my head being rejected by reality’s sting. I want to live in reality for what it is, and I do not want my expectations to jade anything. I also want to prove wrong reality’s odds against my dreamer haze. I can never seem to find the sweet middle ground. Either I live with the idea that those distant visions already are or will be reality…or I bury them completely and wallow on the fact that they are just a pile of “Could have beens” in my head.

My imagination is both my greatest tool, and ultimate curse.

It’s pulled me through the hardest long runs of my life, where the track suddenly becomes the finish line, the grueling race pace is most certainly normal and definitely doesn’t faze my already dead legs (comforting lies), and pain becomes okay (grimacing smile). It’s committed to over 10 years of praying and brainstorming up how to get to Los Angeles, sculpting my life in such a way that all of my decisions would be a means to it, driving across the country, and becoming a city transplant. It’s taken coliseum nose bleed dreams of being up close and personal to the “big kids”…and worked with some of the exact faces that were seen on stage 10 years prior. It’s taken such specific ideas and visions, that they feel more like an attainable, exciting map with red dots that I follow. And with each vision, my imagination seems to only but heighten and hone in all the more. My imagination dreams ridiculously absurd things, and ridiculously absurd things have come to fruition.

And it also has caused unhealthy obsession and emotional attachment and awakening to reality all the more devastating. It’s enslaved me into the state of “What could be”, and rather than acting as a means to achieve something, it has become my own torture chamber of striving for what is only an illusion. It’s kept me enslaved in a city that was eating my soul alive. It’s stayed co-dependent for 2 years, in hopes for a ring that would never come. It’s found alcohol to be a numbing confidant for 10 minutes, and waking up only to realize the detrimental feelings are still there. It’s had to say “Good-bye” one too many times. It’s left me depressed and questioning the value of my existence. It’s hoped and trusted, only to put a grave marker on what once was, or could have been, or seemed to be.

I am terrified of living through a dreamer lens of false hope, and I am terrified of living through a realist lens with no hope. I want to feel content and purposeful in the present moment that is reality, and I also want to think and live outside the lines and maintain a spirit of ambition. I want to be okay in the now, and I also want something to look forward to.

I am terrified of becoming complacent, and I am terrified of my ambitions becoming my own living hell.

This, my friends, is why I am not a philosopher, even though I used to be kind of obsessed with philosophy. And still kind of am. But kind of don’t need it. *runs into Plato’s cave*

To the girl who lives in her head:

I see you. Your greatest desire is to simply be free, and while others see you as such that spirit, you feel anything but that. You probably bite your nails until your fingers bleed. You’re probably indecisive. You probably have the stealthy chameleon ability to walk around nearly foolproof, and yet, internally feel agonized in those quieter moments. Your journal probably transitions from chicken scratch to cursive, and you have approx. 982374 drafts in the Notes section of your phone, laptop documents, and chicken scratched journal notes. You probably find yourself so deep in thought, that you forget you’re even driving, running, cleaning, and to your horror, realize that you only thought your earbuds were making you lip sync. You want the best of both worlds, but you can’t have it. Your mind feels a bit like a whirlpool, and trying to explain it would sound like you’re acid tripping. I gotchya, homie.

And when your feet too are pulled back down to the ground, you wonder why you get so ahead of yourself, only to be let down. You even might start to believe that your capability to think so deeply, so visually, is a curse altogether. But, is it?

I find that we either put our hope purely in what is seen, or purely unseen. The rationale of the present moment – the seen – leaves us bland and complacent and droning. The whimsy of the future – the unseen – leaves us emotionally attached to ideas that might not even happen, and rejecting what is real or tangible. The common denominator? Both surface as our flesh’s desires and our humanly preferred outcome. So which do we abide by? Which do we place our hope in?

We abide by both. But, we need to ask the compelling question:

Where exactly do we place our hope?

We need not be idle in the present, and we need not be flippant for the future. What do we need, then? We need God, and we need to find satisfaction in HIM. Dreams will fade, materialism will disappoint, and “that one thing” will never fill the void. We need actual HOPE to carry on, and that is why we need the hope and fulfillment and satisfaction in Him, not merely our dreams that leave us roaming in the clouds.

“God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him.” – John Piper

When we walk by faith and hope in the unseen, we no longer have to live in the wandering expectations of the clouds, but in full satisfaction of God. We can look to the future not in aimless striving for our self gratifications, but in ambition and confidence for how God appoints and clears the way. The mind is no longer a torture chamber, plagued by vanity and a striving after the wind for earthly things, but filled with the Holy Spirit. And when we abide by the Holy Spirit, our deepest longings are quashed by contentment and rest in Him.

And even when we’re pulled down? We can feel reality’s temporary devastation, but understand it is a means of His goodness.

“…Now the Lord is the spirit, And where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.”[2 Cor. 3:17]