Mosaic

“I am a mosaic of everyone I have ever loved.” -some random 14 year old on Tumblr probably. 

I know a girl who hates this quote, because it reminds her of the people she has pieces of, who are no longer there. 

I don’t know how I feel about this quote. I think it is true. I also think that it strangely fits up with some lies that I’ve been believing for years. I am broken. What is a mosaic, if not broken glass remade?

I wonder how long it takes for people to be added to my mosaic. Less than a month, so many EKC people are a part. My music taste has expanded again because of Alex, Naomi, Kami. My understanding of God is broadened by Eden. My idea of love is made more pure by Cheryl. 

I am not my own person at all. I used to struggle with thinking that about myself, particularly in a negative light. People don’t actually like me, they like the mirrored mask that I put on around them. I did enjoy those masks. But I’ve grown out of them, and wouldn’t you know it, people actually love me more. 

I am made up of the people around me, but in the best ways. I am made better by these people. 

I have a lot of different ways I could present myself. I love lists, so I’m going to list out the main ones. 

1: backpacking athlete granola girl who climbs six mountains a day and has memorized her local REI. 

2: motorcycle OR car girl, as these currently are interchangeable in my mind. 

3: field frolicking hippie without the drugs. 

4: fully bought into the book nerd part of me. 

5: music. No more explanation. 

There’s more, but these are the ways that I like to present myself, in terms of style, personality, music taste, anything. 

I don’t want to settle for just one. Can I be all of them? 

(I know the answer, obviously. Let me muse)

I was panicking because everyone these days seems to fit into perfect little boxes and I don’t. Then I realized that I redownloaded TikTok today, and people have to shrink themselves to make it on the internet. So I deleted TikTok and stopped panicking about it. Social media is so harmful, but I am too tired to get into all that right now. 

Yesterday, Nay asked me if I wanted to go to Wichita with her at around 8:30 pm. I said yes, we got to our friend’s house at 10:30, and got home at 3:00. I felt so much like a teenager. In my last year of being one. And I didn’t ask my parents for permission, I just told them where I was going. 

This next bit is also brought on by that whole relapse in my social media sanity thing, so let me get it out of my system and then not think about it again, so I can get back to dealing with my big girl issues. 

I am no one’s person. I see the people I consider my best friends go days without talking to me unless I talk first, choose their new boyfriend wholeheartedly over me (which is reasonable). I don’t want to be someone’s ONE person necessarily, I’m over that whole part of my life. But it would be nice to be important enough to check in on. 

Maddie does that. And I abandoned our phone call to go to Wichita yesterday. 

Oh. 

Maybe that’s why I’m not checked in on more. I guess that makes sense. 

Wow, self awareness can’t let me pity myself for more than two or three seconds. 

Fair. 

I still have that deep seated sense that there is something undeniably wrong with me, unfixable and life ruining.  I’ve heard many excuses for that. I’m a human. I’m an enneagram 4. I’m a teenage girl. None of those make it go away. It’s a process of learning how to live with that feeling, to ignore it or look past it. 

I don’t feel particularly depressed today, or any day in the recent past. 

Just a wispy form of sadness. 

I think I miss my people a lot. I heard a video of some of my YWAM people, and none of their voices were how I remembered them. Their faces are no longer well traveled. I haven’t talked to Ashlin or JT in more than passing in weeks. A bigger part of me than I expected knows that it’s ok, and it’s a part of life. But there’s always that little piece of me that will miss them forever and scream at the sky (usually but not always internally) about the inevitable separation and divide. 

Maddie I called for 30 minutes yesterday, but it felt like we had barely scratched the surface of the wall that time built. 

I don’t know with Trevor. He’s busy. Can’t or won’t fight that. 

I forgot about Mama Sarah. 

And I didn’t commit to staying in contact with anyone else. 

Ethan left the Thailand group chat today, and that was the strangest sort of gut punch. 

I am over it, as over it as I think I’ll probably ever be. Over leaving. This is the first time I’ve reverted back to thinking like this in a while. Bodes well for the next three months. 

I’m unsatisfied with most of my life right now, and I can’t pinpoint why. 

But that’s ok. 

Final good note: I got back into reading. My attention span is healing. 

Soundtrack: every word (Ivan Castro). Exit music for a film (Radiohead). Franklin House (Brenn). From the dining table (Harry Styles). Funeral (phoebe bridgers). Galena Ln (Nolen Durham)