Dorienne's Log

**Sigh***
Finally! Back where I belong and everything’s falling into place. For the first time in months, my outlook does not look so bleak. I’m doing what I should be doing and at the end of this quarter, I’ll be taking a long-awaited and long-deserved break. Of course, I’ll still be working, but at least I won’t be working and in school at the same time for a week.

I feel like this over-bearing weight is every-so-lightly lifting off my shoulders day by day, and I really do think that everything will be all right. I attribute 90% of this to going to church this week and making it to Sunday School on time. Everyone was so surprised to see me there, not racing in just before consecration. I start teaching on my own this Sunday and I’m really excited about it. I hope it’s not boring for everybody. I suppose if it doesn’t work out, they’ll either move me somewhere else or fire me altogether, but I’m hoping I don’t let anyone down on this. There’s a Wednesday night service tomorrow and I really can’t wait. I’m half mad since I didn’t get to put my tithes in on Sunday because I completely forgot about it. Usually I just have Mother throw it in for me, but she was busy with her own things and wasn’t there. I’ll have to find someone I trust to put it in on days when she can’t be there.

The written word is in the air and it’s loving me! I’ve been writing everyday and I feel like the well of words just keeps flowing. I’ve never been this in tune with a piece before. I feel like since I’ve completely laid out the plot, writing the details is all the more exciting. I love looking back on my old work and see how I’ve progressed as a writer. I wish this book was 100% my original with all my own characters and such, but all I can keep saying to myself is that this is just my way of proving to myself that I can write; that I can create and stay on target. God Lord! The day I actually finish it, I’ll be singing from the rooftops. I sort of want to delve into some of my other works, but I know I mustn’t. I must stick to this and finish it out; must keep the ADHD at bay! It’s what always kills me in the end. I finally have an idea on what must be done with A Ten-Minute Speech and I’m so excited to start, really start, writing the Luka books, I could just burst into flame. It’s all I want to do and all I want to think about. Sometime last week I found myself daydreaming about my own characters. My characters! That never happens and I keep wondering what it really means. With this fanfic novel, I’ve finally conquered my PC-writing demons. For years, I haven’t been able to writing creatively on a computer, forcing me write everything longhand and spend the next year deciphering my longhand as I type the entire thing. It’s a good thing that I’ve learned this now, because I’ve realized I have the tendency to be quite verbose. I’ve only just finished the first chapter of Flight and the book’s 10,928 words and 20 M$ Word pages. I’m wondering just how long it’ll take me to break my goal of 100K. The first chapter’s just on one day and there’s nineteen days in the first part of the book. I doubt every day will be 11K long, but still…my writing just gets flowery and I while I try my hardest not to ramble, I can’t help but delve into the characters a bit more. I don’t want to just write an episode; I want to create something unique that reads like an actual book and could be taken seriously, were it not actually fanfiction.

So, Dreamgirls…Yay! Jennifer Hudson won her Oscar and I feel oddly proud of her. I guess I just love seeing black women win Oscars, but anyway I’m horribly addicted to the Dreamgirls’ soundtrack. Of course, I’m playing One Night Only to death, but honestly, it’s the reason I bought the darn CD and I’m going to play it until my iPod breaks. I’m also slowly beginning to fall for Beyonce’s Listen, which I really don’t think was worthy of the Oscar nod, but whatever. One Night Only (Hudson’s version, of course), was a far better song, but maybe that’s just me. I’m probably not the most objective person to consider the two songs since One Night Only is currently stuck in my head, but so on and so forth…Obsessions: just the writing and One Night Only. SVU’s even starting to subside, but I think it may have more to do with my not wanting to be unduly influenced by the show as I write. I still need like a crackhead, but I missed last week’s new episode and I haven’t had a break down…yet. Thank goodness for USA network. Keeping SVU fanatics in good health, around the globe.

Adventures in Vegetarianism #2
I’ve been a full-fledged vegetarian now for more than a week and the Wendy’s #6 Spicy Chicken cravings have subsided substantially. I spoke with another vegetarian in one of my classes and she told me I’d probably start feeling weak after a bit, but I’ll stick it out a bit longer before taking a multi-vitamin, especially after that nonsense on the BBC news about vitamins actually shaving off the years instead of adding to them. Oh well. I suppose we’ll all go when we do. But, I’m really enjoying this not-eating-meat thing. Tonight, I made a grilled cheese sandwich with olive oil instead of butter. I’m well on my way to becoming a vegan…except for the fact that I love cheese and yogurt and would sooner cut of my own foot and feed it to my enemies than give up cheese and yogurt. But, the point is, I’m not eating any meat. I wish I could say that I give a crap about cows and pigs and such, but I honestly can’t make myself really care about animals. I just don’t want to like the taste of them anymore and I want to just live healthier. I just can’t see any positives to eating meat, especially since I read something about average humans eating something like six times the amount of animal meat we need to survive. That just seems utterly crazy to me.
Anyway, I haven’t lost any weight to this vegetarian diet, but that’s probably due to the fact that I polished off this entire macaroni and cheese dish by myself as I practiced for the pot luck we’re having at work this Friday. It’ll be Dorienne’s time to shine! I also randomly made a bunch of cookies and frosted them myself. I don’t know where the crazy cravings come from, but they are bizarre. But, cheers to me for not even wanting to eat any meat! And a special cheers to me for at least trying to get back on eating like a normal person should…

I went through all of my previous posts adding categories where necessary and it struck me, just how different a person I am from only a year ago. It’s mind boggling. As I sit here, words fail me. That the person who wrote this post, could be even remotely related to me seems unimaginable.

At church, we often discuss how Jesus has managed to change us for the better. Everyone else always talks about God bringing them out of the bottle, and leading them off drugs and helping them treat people better, but these things never seemed to pertain to me directly. As I looked back on long-forgotten posts, I saw just how profoundly I have changed. Words that spilled out of me a year ago almost shock me. If I did not remember each event surrounding my previous posts, I would swear I never wrote those things.

Hmm…I guess it is just humbling to see the person I was not too long ago.

Peter Boyle died yesterday and, like all deaths, it got me thinking. I did some pondering here: http://www.tv.com/users/kaitco/profile.php, but I feel more is needed.

When Jerry Orbach died, I had a constant stream of e-mails and instant messages from all the people who knew just how much I cherished Law & Order. What was so strange for me, was that for several days after hearing the news, I felt sort of…empty, like something wasn’t right in my world. I wanted to openly mourn him, but I felt I couldn’t or shouldn’t because I didn’t actually know him. I just saw him on television and thought he was great at his job. Eventually, while driving to work one day, everything just spilled over and I started sobbing in my car. Can you imagine it? Sobbing over someone I’d never met. I cried for him and for his family, but mostly, as I believe with hindsight, I cried for myself. With every death I see around me, I feel it coming ever closer. While I am a Christian and have the profound belief that death is, indeed, only the beginning, I cannot help fathom the sorrow and desperation surround death. Surrounding the unknown.

But more on what got me thinking today, was the death of a beloved celebrity. Everyone, everyone has a date with destiny, even those who have entertained us for years. I think of the stars who have entertained, mesmerized and shaped me, through their performances, into the person I am today, and I am filled with wonder. What will I do, how will I feel when Reginald Veljohnson or Kellie Shangyne Williams pass on into another life? My childhood was spent watching them and I feel that they are such a part of me…I don’t know it just doesn’t seem like I could imagine reading a BBC news post about their deaths. Even worse, Gillian Anderson. Good God! Her character, literally, is one of the reasons I am the way I am today. Hearing of her death….I would most likely need to take time for myself; time to truly mourn, like I’d lost a member of my own family. (and now all this has got me thinking about my beloved grandmother and how my own time is coming too…sigh)

It’s so weird, to know that I’ll miss someone I will never meet. I will never meet Peter Boyle, but I loved everything he did. I watch Everybody Loves Raymond nearly every night; it’s on for an hour in my town. I watched Taxi Driver not too long ago. I just don’t know. I guess…just my thoughts and prayers go out to him and his family. Cancer. At 71. Doesn’t seem right; now that I think of it, neither does death.

I’ve been making a lot of notes for my In Darkness series and the more I ponder about souls, the more I realize how difficult it is for me to give up on the idea of souls being reincarnated or, really, regenerated. It just makes sense to me and it seems like no amount of church is able to trump this fact. It allows me to account for the idea that God wants everybody to go to heaven. This is the only way for me to rest at night whilest I wonder about the murderer sitting on death row, who never got the chance to know Jesus. I have been blessed with the opportunity to not just know about Him, but learn as much as I want about Him. If I screw up at this point, I deserve to go to hell. But what about some little African girl who lives out with the tribes of nowhere, who really will never get the chance to know Him? It just does not seem like something that a fair, just and awesome God could do; to allow someone to go to hell when they never had the chance to learn, to never know any better.
I think all souls continue to come back to “life” until they get it right. It’s the only logic that I can follow that doesn’t have me worrying about my religion and sending me packing once again. And I just can’t let go of it.

We, my generation, we are Generation Y. Rather than a voiceless, aimless group, we ask the questions and demand answers. We are the first generation to grow up with computers, and one day the history books will reflect how this electronic intrusion has manipulated all of human thought. I find it ironic that I say this as I write in an online blog, but today all I ask is Why.

Why do people pass away? I know the chemical and physiological and evolutionary explanations, but these just tell me how; they never answer why. Why is that I can see one person on a Sunday afternoon, say hello to them, give them a hug, talk to them and wish them a happy, blessed week, and then seven days later learn that I will never speak to them again? Yes, she looked slightly paler than usual and she did have a bit of a limp, but I knew she was sick and just assumed that this was a part of it. Never had I imagined that I would never talk to her, attend meetings with her or hold hands during altar call ever again. There’s a part of me that still struggles to understand it. It doesn’t quite make sense in the grand scheme of things. There are so many cruel, terrible people in this world that never deserved to make it to the ages that they have, but they keep on laughing and living and being their cruel selves. Why should this Christian just slip away before another Sunday’s service?

In my heart, my only comfort at that thought was that I know she was saved and now she is at peace, but in my mind I am still confused. Who’s name did the pastor just say? No, that couldn’t possibly be her. It must have been another Kimm; someone I don’t know. Then, the realization hits and further questions are asked. Anger and wonder endures. Is this what will happen to me when I pass from this world? A mention during the announcements? But, what was I expecting the pastor to do?

I haven’t cried yet, though I do feel like the tears are just underneath my thoughtful facade. The service is Friday; she passed on Sunday. I feel almost robbed; like someone should have told me that there was a chance. It just seemed like she was sick, not fighting for her life. It’s not fair that people should die.

As a Christian, I know she’s at peace, but as a human being, this is where I struggle. I’m still in a state of disbelief and I am worried about what’s about to come. Not just the service, but those in future. There are so many more souls in my life now, so many more people I have to love. All I have is the question, how many times will have to endure this over the years? I know there’s no way to discern an exact number, but I know for certain, it is far too many.

Yesterday, I sang in the Mass Choir for the first time. It was fun and we sang a lot of the songs I have loved throughout the time I have been coming to this church. I like the idea of singing in our choir. It feels like I am literally praising God (wow, that sounds corny), and I feel so good afterward.
Anyway, I’ve always wondered what is about that song “Stand.” It’s so emotional, no matter who leads it or which choir sings it. It always gets people to their feet and I had to fight back tears; not specifically happy tears, but just highly emotional. Then, came the altar call and I had to grab a tissue afterward. I looked around and half the people in the church were dabbing their eyes. I cried, not because of the song, but because during the prayer, I truly came to realize what our pastors had been saying for quite some time. At that moment I realized, every day with Jesus really is better than the day before. It was just an interesting moment for me, and it made me cry.

Some days, the words of The Strokes, while not 100% applicable, can easily describe a day in my life:

What Ever Happened?

I want to be forgotten,
and I don’t want to be reminded.
You say “please don’t make this harder.”
No, I won’t yet.

I wanna be beside her.
She wanna be admired.
You say “please don’t make this harder.”
No, I won’t yet.

Oh dear, is it really all true?
Did they offend us and they want it to sound new?
Top ten ideas for countdown shows…
Whose culture is this and does anybody know?
I wait and tell myself “life ain’t chess,”
But no one comes in and yes, you’re alone…

You don’t miss me, I know.

Oh Tennessee, what did you write?
I come together in the middle of the night.
Oh that’s an ending that I can’t write, ’cause
I’ve got you to let me down.

I want to be forgotten,
and I don’t want to be reminded.
You say “please don’t make this harder.”
No, I won’t yet.

I want to be beside her.
She wanna be admired.
You say “please don’t make this harder.”
No, I won’t yet…

I have long since vowed to shut away the shallow, snobby and overall bitchy side of my personality forever. While I do manage to keep that part of myself in the dark, every once in a while the “other” me rears her head and I am left to face the idea that I will never be able to run away from which my primary education has taught. I grew up with rich, snobby, shallow kids and took on their personalities as my own because I simply did not know any better. It wasn’t until college that I decided that the “bitchy” way was not how I was going to live my life. I want to forget and pretend that I never was that way, and then there are days like today, when no matter how hard I try, it always comes back to haunt me.

First I received a call from someone from church asking for help. The bitchy side of me immediately flared up and I wanted to lie and say that I could not be of any assistance, but I didn’t. I decided that the Christian thing to do was to use the abilities given to me and help others anyway that I could. And so I sat waiting for my two-hour Judging Amy zen-block, feeling rather proud of myself for effectively beating back the snobby bitch-monster and doing so in a timely manner.

Now, I can’t really pinpoint why I’m so obsessed with Judging Amy right now, but that is for another day’s analysis. The point is, I am and for the past few episodes, Amy’s mother, Maxine has been hinting towards starting a relationship with her gardener. While the the gardener part didn’t bother me so much, because honestly, only a tried and true spoiled snob would automatically look down on someone because he or she was “the help,” what disturbed me was who was playing this particular gardener, Cheech Marin, as in Cheech and Chong do whatever ridiculous pot-smoking adventure they did back in the day. So for the past few days, all I could think about was, “Oh God No! Not Cheech Marin! She can’t be dating Cheech Marin!” Not because he was playing the gardener or because he’s Spanish, but because everytime I see his name I can only think of some poor, lowly and loaded, dirty, little, old man. And he was back for both of today’s episodes, well yesterday’s…, and in the first one, after I almost wanted to turn the channel from the ridiculous country music playing through the episode (and it wasn’t even fun country, just people screaming into poorly played instruments), Cheech Marin, the gardener asked Maxine if he could “court” her.

Of course, I was just beside myself at the thought. Maxine was supposed to be this respectable and good woman and here she was parading around with….with him! The second episode started and there stood respectable Tyne Daly, playing Maxine, hand-in-hand with not-so-respectable Cheech Marin, the gardener. At this point, I barely remember what else happened throughout the rest of the episode except the end. Toward the end of the episode, Maxine’s son, Peter is basically spying on her and Cheech Marin while they were sitting on the front porch and all Peter is saying is “I can’t believe she’s dating the gardener!” which, surprisingly, did not phase me in the least, because deep down, I now realize, I was really thinking the same thing. Eventually, Maxine comes in the house to tell Peter to stop spying and he starts to say to state the obvious, that she’s dating the gardener, but she cuts him off and tells him that he, the gardener (I think his name is Ignacio), is a good man and that she hopes Peter wasn’t thinking what she thought he could be thinking.

It was only in this moment that I realized that the old monster was just as prevalent in me as it always had been, and what was worst was that I hadn’t even noticed. I didn’t even see the shows message coming. The whole time Cheech Marin is on the screen, I have my eyes partly covered because I couldn’t bare to watch what was happening and, thus, I could not see what was happening. Of course, the show used Cheech Marin for the gardener, because whoever directed these episodes probably figured that the viewers would have some past reservations about Cheech Marin and the reaction to him dating Maxine would be exactly what they wanted. I didn’t even notice until the last moments of the episode that I was no different from Peter thinking his mother shouldn’t be dating “the gardener” in that, even in a fictional show I couldn’t get past my own prejudices and take an actor, a person, on face value.

….

It just gets depressing to think about how long it is going to take for me actually shake all the wrongdoings of my childhood. At any normal point in my day, I would never allow past snobbery (if that’s a word) to have an effect on my thinking. What’s frightening is that when my guard is down and I’m least expecting it, I revert back to the same old me. And that’s exactly where I don’t want to be.

I’ve been busy, naturally, and I honestly, I can barely remember anything signicant happening the past couple of weeks. Yesterday however fell just short of amazing.

I was sitting at my computer, trying desperately to make the lightbox on my church’s website work, when time simply caught up with me. I missed Sunday School, the first time since I had started going, and no one from the church had gotten back with me about when our young adult choir was supposed to meet and where I was supposed to go and everything….I guess it is worth mentioning that I did join the young adult choir the saturday before last. The choir director even gave me a special part to sing on my own….

Anyway, I’d made up my mind that I was just not going to sing and by that point, late for Sunday School had turned into late for church in general and I was feeling worse and worse. When I finally left for church, I was in a ridiculously foul mood and with no viable food in the house, I had to eat McDonald’s again and by the time I got to church I was ready to burst into tears. Nothing was wrong in particular, the day was just going horribly. I snuck in just before the choir was about to come in and basically kept my head down. I just felt angry and upset and in just a poor mood. When they started singing, however, I could feel my demeanor changing for the better and when it was time for the announcements, the choir director motioned for me to come up and join them. I was going to hesitate, but figured I’d go anyway. The look on my pastor’s face when I started to go up to the choir stands was priceless. The song with my little solo was already over, but I was happy to be up there singing with everyone else, regardless of the fact that I didn’t know the words. By the end of church, I was in such a good mood it was unbelievable. That much of a positive influence from two hours of church…..it’s still amazing to me. My good mood has been ongoing since I left the church yesterday. Perhaps it’s because I can’t seem to get our church songs out of my head, but nevertheless…..I don’t know…

My mother said to me while we were at dinner on Sunday that “something” knew that I was about to sing in the choir and didn’t want it to happen. I’m not one to always assume that the devil makes me feel negative. I am still under the belief that there’s enough straight negativity and evil in people without there being a need for some supreme evil being. I think it’s far more plausible that God was punishing me for my vanity and pride over a choir practice that surprised myself. Anyway, all that matters, is that now I feel good….for once.

That vanity thing though…sometimes it’s ridiculous. I wonder how someone like myself, who’s not overly pretty, can be so vain so often…

…and there goes my good mood.

I realized something today when our Pastor did the invitation to the church-thing. Many times people go up to the altar just because they and other members of their family need extra prayer. I understand that times have been bad for me and I am certain that times will get worse, but it just feels like I would never deserve all of the church’s attention no matter how terrible things got. I could never imagine myself feeling that I had the right to ask for an extra prayer or anything just for myself or my family. I am always more than happy to give out extra prayers to any and all who ask for it, but I just can’t see myself as deserving special attention from God and our church.

What got me thinking about this was something I quickly glanced over while reading a verse in my Bible. It’s this special Women’s Bible and it had this little side article about how women often put all others’ needs above their own, and while we like to think of it as being endearing and loving of all, it may really be a type of low self-esteem. I have always considered my self to have the best self-esteem of anyone I know, sometimes….many times, it can be a little too much, but as I sat today thinking about how I could never really deserve a prayer from the church, the idea of my self-esteem’s real nature. I say that I have high self-esteem, but do I actually have it?

Everyone is pressing for me to join the young adult choir and no one will listen when I say that I can’t sing and have nothing to offer the choir. I don’t feel that I have….I don’t want to say “earned”, but it’s the only word that comes to mind…..earned the right to stand in front of our church and sing. I guess I just feel like I’ve got such a long way to go, that I have no business being up there, the fact that I simply don’t want to sing, notwithstanding.

I just don’t see what joining the choir will accomplish. I have nothing to add, and the fact that I’m not exceptionally exuberant during normal church service anyways, makes me feel weary of joining as well. Yelling, loud clapping or singing, or even just standing just feels like I’m being fake, like I’m trying to prove something to all the other members of the church. I don’t see that I have anything to prove especially since I go to be….feel a little closer to God for at least a couple of hours during the week. Being exuberant during the service feels like putting on a show to me, even if people are truly feeling the spirit, or whatever. It was that exuberance that drove me away from the church originally, and the choir is always excited. Every time I see someone dancing and acting as if the Holy Spirit is flowing through them when they are singing in the choir, I wonder if they ever feel it at any other points during the week. I think if you’re in the choir, you should also be coming to Sunday School and afternoon service, which I’ll be going to once I’m done with Anheuser for the summer, but I know not everyone does. The whole idea makes me start arguing with the logical side of my mind and I can feel myself pulling away from my faith again. I guess there’ll be no escape for me and this issue.

Anyways….I’ve got to do some cooking and then get some sleep so I continue with this job of mine….