At Eighteen

Isn't it interesting when you come across old journal entries or letters? I found this entry that I wrote when I was eighteen years old, my senior year of high school, on the brink of so many things. It is interesting to me to see where my thoughts were back then, how I processed things, how I viewed the world. I don't agree with everything I wrote, but I will type it just as I found it:

I thought I knew all there is to know of world hunger and pain
My pride rides high above itself, blinding my eyes, and making feel as though I have every right to be proud
I know less now, than I did before of what life truly consists of

I spend my days in a perfect bubble, crystal clear and unrealistic
One day though, my bubble will burst, leaving my mind in such a state of shock, my mentality will be perverted
Four walls around me these eighteen years have served as shields, separating me from life's realities
a balance of unbearable pain and real joy
I spend my days in my bubble trying to do what I can to help, but never really willing to push it to the point of bursting
in fear I would break

What is this pain? My mind can't comprehend what I would do if my world would shatter
There I'd be, part of the life of those in agony I'd watched while inside my circle of perfection
I'd be on the outside yearning to once again be within my paradise now transformed to hell

Now i get it, now i see what it really means to live
to experience real horror and grief when your insides feel they've been torn and shredded and death is what is longed for
I'd feel trapped in the pool of madness for my bubble would no longer exist and I'd understand for the first time, real faith and what it takes to have it
for I'd for the first time have small glimpses of real hell


My days are spent surrounded by junk and trash that this culture lifts up in praise, cutting me off from reality and building walls of emptiness and pride
Pride, something so thick blocking my sight that I don't even notice its existence
God loves me, I'm His creation, chosen by Him for eternity. But I look not at the truth of what this really means
Rather what I wish to see and believe

Am I willing to burst through the walls of pride and chisel my way through them to the bottom of the pit of humility? To take a sharp object to my bubble and burst it intentionally of all I've ever known?

If this is what it takes for me to see reality in this world for what it really is...then yes.