Moth wings and dust

To be but a moth on the wall
brushed aside as needed
a voice so small
you drown it out.
To be un-heeded.

panic settling

There is a setting in my brain a little like a "panic switch."  It starts going off when I know I'm talking too much, sharing too much, just in general being too much to handle. The frustrating part is not being able to shut myself up. I can see the alarms flashing (metaphorically) in my head, but the words keep shoving their way out into the world. Permanent and heavy.

The Monster I Created

They were a monster I created. An army of angry woman armed with flaming balls full of the fury that I lacked the courage to feel or express. I could not blame them for their hate.  I had stoked it, fed it, fueled it. A gift given to myself. The emotions I had shoved down deep, finally free and reflected back to me in their dismay.

And now I was asking them to forget all that.  To move beyond the stories I had told.  Not to deny that they had ever happened, or to question their truth, but to bury the emotional impact, and separate the stories from the man at the root of them.  Because I wanted to love him again.  But how could I ask them to do the same.  They were a monster I had created.  They had heard the stories I had told.  And they were unwilling to forget. 

Glimmer

In desperation, at the lowest of lows, head throbbing, feeling cracked like my heart, I utter prayers to God. I try to make sure to word it correctly. Must not let details get in the way. Lord I need you. I need your Spirit to fill me from within. Only Your love and light can fill the vortex inside of me and the cracks in my shell. Lord let me sleep, I beg you. And when I wake in the morning I pray I would be new and fresh, sustained by you.

This morning is tentative. The headache is gone as is the fever that has lasted 5 days. Inside is a tiny shred of hope. I am careful to hang on to that shred and put the rest out of my mind. If only for a little while.

This cycle. It doesn't have to be this way, but it is my way. And I always wonder when will be the time that I fail to reach out to God in time. He waits for me. I must trust that he also reaches out to catch me so that I don't fall for good.

Broken

I was broken then and I am broken now. It doesn't matter how long I play the part of someone whole, it doesn't matter how many friends I make and keep. The emptiness inside is always there like a vacuum threatening to crumble me from within like a vortex of pain, ugliness, and self hate. I try to be positive for a time, and it seems to work. But when shit starts hitting the fan I begin to falter. The negative takes hold. Then I regret the negativity and self-hate slices itself a fresh wound.  I ooze and bleed raw emotion desperate to find someone or something who can swallow it. Like a sin eater. And people go running. As they should. I would do the same.


And I yell and scream and tell myself to stop, but the pieces just keep cracking more and more, the shell I've molded revealing all of its weaknesses. Pieces of clay improperly and incompletely jigsawed together. They held up for a time. Each piece balancing softly on another, giving and taking even seeming to flex and flow, taking life like a champ. Until the pull from within grows and one crucial sliver slips inside, and when the next piece pulls there is nothing there to lend its edge.


And so here I am. Sick for days. Horrified at how well my husband manages his duties as well as mine. The house is running more smoothly without me. Its not even a question, its a fact. The world has seen too much of the dark chasm inside, and so I am ashamed and withdraw from them as well. It may last, or my neediness may kick in and send me running right back to try to find a way to restore their affirmation. Their belief in me. At least someone can believe in me.  I'm not ready to run back at the moment. And so I have Googled dark questions, looked for dark answers. Contemplated the end. Contemplated uprooting my family to start over somewhere else where no one knows yet.  Contemplated staying with someone who breaks my heart over his cold stone one just so that my kids can have the hope of Disneylands and families and the shell of a real family in their future. But I'm pretty sure even they know this family doesn't operate like the rest of them. They know they are missing out on things while their father and mother hide from ourselves and each other. Like playing chicken to see who will succumb to what first.

Frozen

Watched Frozen today with the family but we had to split up. Sadly I will remember this cute movie as the one I sat through and cried.

Roots

This week I started a Bible Study with ladies at my church. We are studying a book called "Stuck."

It's a little intimidating because its a much more personal bible study than I realized it would be. Immediately we were talking about, duh, what has you stuck in your spiritual walk, and in life.  I was quite comfortable when it was my turn, to offer up my own examples of places in which I could say I've been stuck: Self confidence, worry, and trusting God for all of the things...not just the big things.  That seemed pretty safe and inside of my comfort zone...

And then when I got home I plunged into the individual study portion, and realized that I am going to have to go waaaay deeper... and possibly do  so in front of people I am not sure I'm comfortable with, like a few coworkers from the preschool, in addition to a group of women I am just meeting, and may forever be know to by what I say in the study. Yikes!  So I put the book down and decided I'd get back to it in a few days.  And then the next day came, and suddenly I felt like God showed me the root of each of those issues. The one I would have to tackle before anything else in my life could change.  Its huge, and if feels impossible.  But I was reminded of a quote used in the study by A.W. Tozer:

  “As God is exalted to the right place in our lives, a thousand problems are solved all at once.”

So...maybe its what I've gotta do.  Here's the deep down, core of most of the problems I face in my existance... I have spent my entire life with the deep down belief that somewhere in my core, I am fundamentally broken. I have fought sadness, anger, depression, frustration all toward God because of this, and finally somewhat believed I had settled on acceptance that I was created the way God wanted to create me.  Broken. For some unknown reason or purpose.  But the pain still festered, and over the last year as I have watched Gabriel struggle with many of the same issues with ADD, insane sensitivity, and an emotional intensity matched pretty much only by me, the festering has built into a volcano, seeping destructive lava, mostly in a slow dribbling, aching flow, and at times erupting in monumental and catastrophic displays of fury.  This is the thing I am going to have to deal with.  And just as I began to think that there is no way I can deal with this in a Bible Study setting, delaying the inevitable even further, Dan confronted me in a rare moment of clarity.

He may  not be perfect, but he sure is putting up with a lot.  Out of the blue, and out of his second bottle of wine last night, he had the sudden epiphany (knowing nothing about my Bible Study topic), that I'm going to need to deal with the fact that I believe I am flawed and broken before I am going to be able to deal with any of the surface issues and struggles that have been plaguing me.  Ba-Bam. Convicted.

So I'm going forward. I am still skeptical that a summer bible study is enough. I am skeptical that I will be willing to put enough on the table to really get what I need out of the study.  But apparently its time to put it to prayer, and challenge God to make it happen.  I need to trust and believe that I am no more broken than everyone around me, and that God created me not just how he wanted me to be, but that he made me to be OK, and whole.  Gah!