For a split-second every day...

I realize that everyone in the world is just human. It happens a few times a day where I feel like we're all in this boat together and it doesn't matter where you live or what you have or what you lok like--we're all just here. It's a aconstant. A sameness. I think i was thinking about htis because I hate the feeling that people give you when they think they are better than you or just too good for other people. I was working at starbucks yesterday and this guy came through and of course got a triple enti nonfat something sort of drink that everyone in brentwood gets, and I asked him how he was doing and he just stated at me. No grunt. No nod. just a blank stare. Surely the fact that I am leaning out a window talking to him is some indication that I am not speaking to anyone else. But he just stares. I give him the total. He hands me some cash. He gets his caffiene fix. And that's that. And it ended up being the lead singer of that band Train. And I'm thinking---dude all I asked was how you were, I didn't even know you were "that guy" from Train--you were just a person, at least acknowledge me as a person. I'm not below you or above you, I'm just here, I'm just present and the least you could do was say hi or nod or blink or something to just acknowledge that I was visible. I think it's funny how all of life could be a movie..when you think of it that way, it's so much more enjoyable, living as some sort of protagonist getting caught up in all these bumps and meeting other people along the way. The other day I went into PF Changs to pick up some dinner and I was just standing there, people-watching, trying not to get caught and feel suddenly awkward, so i just looked at this lady in front of me in line. She had these capris on with Asics on with purple stripes. And she had ankle socks on..except the place where the heel is supposed to nestle into (you know that grey heel) well, it's pulled up and it just bunches over the back of her shoe. She's got this kid who's wearing a puffy sparkley marshmellow jacket and is running around everywhere, squatting by the kitchen door, picking up dropped fortune cookies and smashing them into her mouth (they were wrapped). And this kid comes up to me and puts her head right up to my stomach and looks at me and says "Wooow. you're pretty." and I'm completely caught off guard because 1. I was people-watching the awkwardness of her mom/grandma/babysitter and 2)I'm not good with the invasion of space, especially by kids who put their chins on my stomach. And i'm just like...uhhh ohhh ok. thankss and i think that will be the end of her head-resting-on-my-stomach conversation. But no. she just keeps resting her chin there. Mom does nothing. Roles are reversed, now she's the one people watching me, and I am in a very awkward place. She says "yeah. you look like one of the girls in my programs. I mean, she's younger than you, but you are definitely looking like her." I pat her puffy jacket as if to say...ok you can go now, thanks for that information. But she still stares. Mom turns around and is perplexed and ass if you're supposed to tip the people at to-go places. Kid (Lorelai I found out her name was) thankfully stops resting her head on my stomach and goes back to fortune-cookie sniping. I tell mom yeah, she grabs lorelais hand and says "Come on now, you need to go to the bathroom, don't you? That's what you said a few minutes ago. Let's go." and I'm standing there awkwardly half-smiling and laughing because of the whole situation. So. Yes. Those times are priceless, when an awkard moment is happening and there's nothing else to be done but just be there and laugh about it. It's painfully amazing.
ps. I can't wait for Juno to come out. I wish I could do something like that--it looks so real and so quirky and so amazing.

I don't know where my bed is any more--and that's ok.

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself."

So today I took down everything that was me in the dormroom. My postcards. My Eiffel Tower picture mom and dad gave me when I came to college, the little french pictures kym brought me from New York. I took them all down and now everything that's me except for, actually me, i spushed into a pile in the middle of this room on a 3x5 scrap of carpet.
ANd I'm scared to death.
Maybe it's because yesterday I turned 20. Or maybe it's because I am so unsure of what I'm meant to do in this world and I'm doing this thing, taking this step, concoting this plan that could be all wrong. Really. Latel I've been so frustrated with myself because I keep having these doubts about acting--can I do it, can I do it for the right reasons and stay doing it for the right reasons, is there something else I'm meant to do, what if I fail, what if I'm too timid, what if I'm not pretty enough, what if I'm not good enough---all these things, these realities (that actually aren't but I've let them become so) are just pulsating around in my head punching my brain to a pulp and making me so utterly confused.
I don't know what I want to do with my life. But honestly, it's not up to me and what I want, and its so much better that way. I don't understand myself. IT's like I know that God exists, I know that He's the reason and purpose in my life, and I know that I should be talking to him, running to him, resting in him--but I haven't been and I can't figure out why. Is it because Im too prideful to just let go of everything and give up control--maybe. THat's what I feel like I'm doing right now--I feel like i've lost all of my control on things and it's just all up in the air--I have no idea of what's going to happen and that scares me more than anything has ever frightened me before.
I was thinking about it and I've never told anyone that I'm an actress, that that is who i am and that is that. Because it's not. My dad was asking me why I wanted to do this and the only thing that I can possibly figure out is that it is this window for truth. Maybe lots of things in life are, but to me, acting in its odd, backwards way is a porthole to show truth. I feel like walking around in this world is not living in reality. I don't think that people acknowledge reality, instead they chose to create their own and give it a label of "reality". I don't know, because I'm rambling on and I am just convinced that what I want to do, what I feel like my purpose as a Christian in this world right now is just to show truth, to show beauty, to show these inescapable things that are so much more real than money and cars and clothes and earthly beauty and competition and gosh I just don't know.
When it comes down to it, the only times I've felt truly alive, like in this oneness wiht God (getting into odd mumbo-jumbo here) is when I'm onstage and its nothing that I'm doing but everything that God's doing that brings joy into my life. It's the experience of being a vessel, of being used andit's the most amazing feeling. ANd I've only had that happen a few times--but to know that that experience has happened when I'm just being, letting go and being open to be vulnerable is the most joyous experience and something that I want to pursue. I don't know. I really don't know.
I feel like the only thing that matters in life is being turly alive, and I feel like it's something htat to be truly alive you have to realize the beauty of God and bask in that, become immersed in that love and living in that. It's so simple and so beautiful, yet so incomprehensible at times.
"We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about"

that rapture is what I live for, what I seek, it's what matters. and it's more than just survival or being aware of who you are and where you are--i'm convinced of that.