Just Jul Lee

Tears For Good Measure

Tears For Good Measure
Date: DECEMBER 23, 2002

I wrote this year's Christmas play for my church. I was completely excited, thrilled at the prospect of my talent being exposed after many winters of silence. Desperate to impress, I failed to do so. It was awful, even I couldn't convince myself that my play was good. I don't know why they allowed me to put it on in the first place. All the hard work seems wasted.

Every year the church is packed out with visitors and members alike, so much so that it is standing room only. Not this year. Empty, almost completely. I tried not to notice that my friends did not come, that people who had said they would come did not show, that my play was not important enough. That I am not important enough.

Maybe I am reading too much into this but I need the boost I'm not getting. You see, I've failed God again. I have committed the sin I can't seem to shake and I feel so dirty and alone. I beg forgiveness and wonder if God is thinking of me. I know that He still loves me but I have fallen again and there is no one here to help me up. Think on this, I can't confess my sin to anyone so no one can know I have fallen. I have built my own cell of solitude. I loathe it.

I am sitting here thinking of Christmas. I love the holiday for the simple fact that it represents Jesus' birth. Years ago, before I was saved, I hated Christmas. I really did. To me the holiday reminded me that my parents were divorced, reminded me that I was all alone and fearful of yesterdays, reminded me that my father loved women more than me. That has all changed for now I love it. This year has been strange, though. I am not looking forward to it. Just like Thanksgiving, I have no special desire to celebrate. I feel as though this year has been a year of strangeness and emptiness. Why do I not look forward to the holidays I love so much? I had planned to move out before the end of the year and if I had I was planning to remain home for Christmas, to not even go to my mothers. To just remain alone.

I feel so inadequate. I feel as though I have not accomplished anything. Gee, this is getting a little pitiful. Stay with me though, please, I have a little more to say.

I feel terribly unloved. I feel as though I could die, fade from this world and none would notice or care. I feel as though my death would affect no one or cause anyone tears. My funeral will be as empty as the play Saturday night. I know this is not completely true, my mother would mourn and so would my father and brother, but I can't help feeling unneeded and unimportant. I can't help feeling as though no one needs me. I guess I am falling into my well of depression once more.

I sit here at my desk at work and wonder why I am even trying. Why am I going to go to college? Why am I persuing my writing talent? Do I truly have talents or am I deluding myself? What is so terribly ironic about this whole thing is that I won a nonfiction writing contest with a local newspaper and I have been published. Yet, here I am asking if I have any talent. This day is plummeting me into a deep well of dispair and I can do nothing but fall. I can do nothing.

So, here are my tears for good measure. Here are my words of sorrow laid to rest in my journal. Here is everything I have felt today, here is what I'm feeling now. The doors are closing and I stand alone, always alone.

I'm just Jul Lee, just a normal person with a talent, a talent others have as well. We have much in common...Welcome to Dragons Delyte and Faries Farce...Welcome to my world!