we're moving on (or trying to)...

There comes a time when we must face the reality that we try so hard to mask. It would be easier and more enjoyable if this were not how it was, but I can’t control destiny. Sometimes I wonder if I even believe in destiny. Life happens. We change, evolve, transform. Relationships come and go, some lasting longer than others, some here and gone before we can take a breath. In the end, we cannot change anyone’s will. We may wish that they see things from our perspective, but it doesn’t always work out that way. We can hope and dream and dare to believe that our greatest desires will come to fruition, but life doesn’t play by our rules.

I must face the fact that Courtney and I are over. It is a difficult reality to face, but I would be doing myself an injustice if I were to continue blinding myself. What we had was wonderful. I’ve never felt so alive and joyful and content than when I lay enfolded in her arms. The memories constantly assail me, but I know that time heals such things. I reflect on Julie, how the memories never seemed to leave me. Remembering my time with Julie brings only apathy. I simply don’t care. It hurts for me to take a breath and continue living my life without Courtney by my side. I made mistakes that I regret, and it is difficult to forgive myself. Accepting God’s forgiveness and forgiving oneself are often two entirely different animals. My time with Courtney was beautiful, and I am deeply sad it is over. I wish she saw things from my point-of-view, I wish she saw that we could have that beauty again. But she doesn’t see that way. Can I blame her? No. We’ve both gone through wildly different experiences since we last saw one another, and the way we perceive “us” has changed. It is sad, really sad. I only hope I can move on, too.

I must be going to bed. I am going to Kentucky tomorrow. I was going to see Courtney tomorrow, but I don’t think that’s happening. It would be good—too good—for me to bear. A moment of clarity in a shattered world. Wonderful yet deadly. Such would be our time together. I must begin bandaging my wounds and preparing for the unknown road ahead of me. I only hope that my romantic life will be better this coming year than the last. As a side-note, it is odd to think that I went from having no girlfriends in nineteen years to having four (Sonja, Julie, Jessica, Courtney) in a nine-month period. I only hope I can find a girl who has the nerve to stand by me.

midnight meditations

I’m realizing how much I love Courtney. And it sucks because I can’t be with her. Not right now, anyways. We broke up right before my summer job started. Of the five people who went into working at J.B.M. with boyfriends/girlfriends, all were single going out. J.B.M. is the devil’s playground when it comes to relationships, I guess. One of my best friends got a text message from his girlfriend: “I’ve found someone else.” And that was that. Ugh.

In other news, I’ve been to Starbucks three times in the last 24 hours: an iced caramel macchiato, a chai tea, and a vanilla bean frappe. I think the vanilla bean was my favorite, but I’m still entirely devoted to the macchiato.

Two weeks till school starts. What is my schedule like this week? Swimming sometime with Nathan and Chris, most likely more Starbucks, work on losing touching searching, take Ams to Kentucky, and hopefully hang out with Dewenter.

It’s late/early, so I must be going.

a romantic serenade

One day Bucci's parents came down--July 4, I believe--and Tom and I thought it would be funny if I made Bucci uncomfortable by acting like I had an insane crush on her. Entirely fictional, of course. Ever since then, a joke has been running around that Bucci and I are in a strange love affair: I am head-over-heels for her, but she does not want anything to do with me. On Wednesday during lunch, the kids demanded that I sing a song. I told them that if they would be willing to wait, I would play guitar and sing a song I wrote for Bucci. I lost the lyrics, though, and spent ten minutes of my break writing out new lyrics. When dinner came, the kids kept begging me to play until it was time. Finally I sat Bucci down on a table and sat on the table next to her, playing my guitar for her.

These are the lyrics, to be sung to the rhythm and beat of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night":

My Bucc, My Bucc, don't lie to me
Tell me, Do you truly want me?
We'll walk through the pines
With our hands Entwined,
And We'll skip the days away!

My Bucc, My Bucc, don't lie to me
Tell me, Where would you rather be?
On a beach, getting a tan,
With our toes in the sand,
Oh! Heaven's got nothing on us!

A yellow house with a walk-around porch,
And hanging plants bathing in the sun.
We'll drink iced tea and watch the sun setting,
O'er the ice-capped mountains beyond.

And what else could we want, but to be in this place?
Wrapped warm in each other's arms?
There's a future for us, beyond this camp
Tell me, Don't you agree?

My Bucc, My Bucc, don't lie to me
Tell me, Will you be mine?
The wedding bells sound, in the chapel in the pines,
As we walk down that pine-strewn aisle!

goodbye j.b.m. (for now)

Welp. Camp is over. A bittersweet thing, really. I made so many good friends and so many great memories (my favorite: Elizabeth, during Wilderness Camp, standing in the pouring rain, announcing with bloodshot eyes, “I’m cold, I’m wet, I’m tired, I’m hungry, I’m going to bed!”). But not even the greatest things last. It is sweet, too, because I only have two more weeks before I return to school. I can’t wait to see old friends and make new ones. Working in the coffee shop will be wonderful.

Those two months at camp (including one week on an Alaskan Cruise) have had a tremendous affect on me. Courtney and I talked about the summer, changes we wanted to make, and I knew that I had to become more mature and responsible. Working with kids has helped me. I look back and I am amazed at how immature and irresponsible I was. I am, in a sense, a totally different person. Granted, the intrinsic nature of who I am has not changed—I’m still weird, strange, and something that people can’t quite put a finger on. Unique, I’d like to think. My intimacy with God has skyrocketed. During the Alaskan Cruise, God really assailed me with a plethora of convictions. The convictions tore me apart. Over the next week, I wrestled and fought with God, and finally He won. He has really been transforming me, and I am excited about what He has in store for me.

I’ve had lots of time to write. I am almost finished with my fictional autobiography (losing touching searching), and after I complete that, I will add the last touches on a romantic tragedy (No Perfect Endings). Both are spectacular. I have really stretched myself with these works and have embraced a different type of writing style.

Life is good. Not perfect, but it shall never be. There are times my heart aches, when the guilt and shame of my past returns. There are times when I feel like I can’t move forward because the past sinks its claws too deep into me. But persevere I do (I have always been good at perseverance). I don’t know what Fall Semester ’07 has in store for me, but I am willing to bet it will be better than the last Fall semester (let’s not talk about that, k? K.).

a lousy weekend

Every electronic thing I own is falling apart. My cell phone was stolen by a camper. It’s how I keep in touch with family and friends back home. I figured out how to fix my laptop, but the Windows XP Installation CD is missing two important files—so at this point in time, I can’t get onto my laptop. This blows, because I am working on a book that’s really exciting, and now I can’t work on it for a while. *sigh*

Ams' Graduation

I returned home Friday evening to be with my family and friends during Amanda's graduation. On Friday night Ams had her graduation party: lots of good food and good people. It was nice to see many of my friends again, and it was fun spending time with our relatives who spent the night (whom I had not seen since Christmas). On Saturday, a bunch of us went to a house on Bunnell Hill and explored. We're thinking about buying this house and selling our current one. It has an abandoned walk-in trailer in the woods, which I plan on renovating and making a reading lounge if we end up buying the place. Amanda and I went to Lenscrafters to order new contacts, Best Buy for some CD-Rs, and we stopped by C.V.S. so I could get some pens for camp. Last evening at 5:00, Ams had her graduation ceremony. She was so frightened, afraid that she would trip getting her diploma. "I would have cried," she told me. My aunt said, "Well, just looked over at us, and we would have all been laughing!" All of us ate out at Marion's Pizza near the Fairfield Commons after the ceremony, then most of our extended family left (grandma's staying the week because Amanda is getting her tonsils out on Monday).

Amanda and I are eating out at China Cottage at 11:00. Following that, I'm going to drop her off back home and begin my long trek back to camp. I won't get there until about 5:00, sadly, so I will probably not be able to go swimming in the pond today. Nevertheless, our training ends Thursday, and I don't start my first week of camp till next Monday, so I have a three-day weekend and plan on visiting the pond a few times. Kyle likes it when I dive into the pond off the dock. He says I look like a penguin, ha!

While at camp, I am unable to access blogger. However, I can still access xanga. So I am rerouting all my readers to the following address: http://www.xanga.com/ajbarnhart. Or you can just go to the top of the page and click on the "xanga" tab beneath the heading. Whichever is easier for you.

an entry from camp

I’ve been at camp now for several days. I made the five-hour trip last Sunday. Kyle and I hung out Sunday night and Monday afternoon, then Amos showed up Monday evening. We went swimming in a pond longer than a football field (and Amos and I swam the full length for fun, and it was exhausting). We’ve spent the last several days getting to know each other (we = the staff for camp this summer). Tom and Karen are in charge, Bucci is underneath them, and the counselors are me, Kyle, and Amos (for the guys), and Emily, Elizabeth, Jessica, and Margie. There has been a lot of laughter and it’s been really fun.

We’ve been spending a lot of time with God, which makes sense, since this is a church camp. It is good that I have been, so-to-speak, “forced” into spending time with God. It’s quite refreshing. I am exploring different types of prayer (for prayer is difficult for me), and I am meditating on scripture throughout the day. I believe this summer is going to be really good.

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I feel like a sort of “transition” has been reached in my life, and now my life is going in a different direction. I am contemplating youth ministry again. I am clueless about the future (in all arenas), but I trust that God knows what He is doing. I entered into a dark spell, a chasm of sorts in my intimacy with God, and I feel like things are beginning to go uphill again. It’s a good feeling.

I am wrestling with some deep issues in my life. Confusion. Bewilderment. Trying to trust God in a certain area of my life. We went to Pittsburg yesterday and walked a labyrinth. The whole time I prayed about this one issue. I am praying for guidance and illumination. Seeking what God wants me to do and trying to remember that God knows what He is doing with me—and that He will fulfill the promises He made to me many months and months ago.

My little sister is going through a hard time. Keep her in your prayers, please!