When it comes

There’s a need to put into words what it’s like when the feelings come.

It comes like a summer storm that hits in the middle of the night. The kind that wake you from your peace. The kind you can feel in the walls of your house. The kind of storm that steals the quiet and replaces it with chaos.

It’s never a float down a river or a winding road up a mountain. it’s never a slow walk around the block. There’s no turn off. No chance to chase it away with great habits or better choices.

Most often, it just appears. It comes with skin that crawls and won’t settle. That, if touched, would surely break. It’s electricity streaming through my veins that only escapes with a cry or a scream. It comes with feeling like a stranger in this life.

And yes, sometimes there’s a prelude. Sometimes I can see the clouds in the distance. A moment of looking to my future and seeing nothing but empty days. The panic that hits knowing what I wanted it to be, fighting and pushing and clawing for it to be, but falling so short. Then the fight starts to be fine with the empty visions. To find some sort of peace in not knowing, some sort of peace that lies with just me. And falling short there, too.

For all my life that I’ve had awareness of the world and it’s expectations, and I think I’ve been able to see myself for who I really am. I’m supposed to be kind to myself, but at times I’m not sure I deserve that. When I feel love, I’m a warm person. I’ll wrap myself up in that feeling and bring in everyone around me. When I’m hurt, it gets ugly. I’m cold. Everything hurts and I’m all claws and tears and only small glimpses of the inside before I’ll draw it back inside. And I dare anyone to try to find a way in, knowing they will want to run, too. I know what beauty is. I pursue it for myself and in others. But I don’t believe that I have it. Not only that, but I believe that I’m moving farther from it every day. And in this way, I blame myself for the pain.

Sometimes it’s outside of me. Sometimes I glimpse the embodiment of what I thought my life would be. I’m face to face with it and it takes the breath from my lungs. There it is- the life that I couldn’t work hard enough for, couldn’t be enough for, couldn’t hold together. Sometimes it’s glimpsing complete honesty in the world between two people. Its a cry from deep within. It’s a jealousy without hatred. It’s a longing. And it fades, gets mixed around with my reality, and falls into full on grieving.

The storms don’t stay. They barrel in and rip things up, leaving a wake of things to be dealt with and put back into place. And that’s what I do. I put things back into place and move forward.

I try to be thankful that I no longer live in storms and I try to stay curious about why they still show up. I try.

Who Was That?

I am back in this space of writing and thoughts and therapy. The first thing I did after years and years of visiting was to go back and read my past. That’s the beauty of the written word – all the feelings and experiences are there in black and white. When all that I’m left with now are unhealed wounds and scars, the feelings and experiences remind me where it all started. And my, how far we have come.

The control and and the distance and the screaming and the never being enough on repeat for years built until I reached the point of going numb to save what was left. I can hardly believe the excuses I made to make it ok. It’s embarrassing, really. I hardly remember what it was like back then – 12 years ago and then some that it was happening to me. Now, I’m not sure how I made it for so many years.

Eventually, it becomes impossible to shake off the feeling that I’m ugly, unworthy, unattractive, an idiot, incapable of making decisions or doing anything right and so…that just becomes who I think I am. It becomes what I know to be true. I saw myself for how I let it all affect me and I hated who I became. But I believed it and it was me.

So I was dead inside. Done trying. Done living.

And then one day – a spark. Just the seed of a thought that maybe there was

another middle

another ending

to my story. I started to open my eyes and see possibility. No more excusing the pain. No more putting on a smile. No more pretending to have a perfect life that didn’t exist. No more pretending to be happy. All of that was exhausting and humiliating anyway. I decided it was time to try to heal. It was time to put legs to this small but mighty idea that my life my story could be different.

I took time to think. I tried to find some leftover hope in the life that I tried for so long to make mine. Because I know what matters in life is not really money job clothes car house but the people that you share your stories with. In that thinking, I hit a wall. The questions I was asking myself didn’t have any good answers. What happens when the person you share everything with has long been uninterested, unconnected, a source of great pain, and growing increasingly far far away? It’s lonely. It hurts. And what happens when you try to talk and fix and go for help and it doesn’t work? Over and over it doesn’t work. Year after year it doesn’t work. We are here but we are not here. We smile for the pictures. We show up for the special days. But what was “we” is not here anymore. And no amount of thinking or trying or talking or hoping brings that back. What do you do?

You say enough.

And at the age of 43 with a home and two children you make the hardest decision of your life. In May of 2020, I ended my marriage. I started the process of tearing down what took 18 years to build. And it might sound like a happy part of the story, but this part is no one’s happy. But it was necessary, for me, I believe, to tear down that which caused the pain so that I might begin to build something that, maybe one day, might bring happiness and peace. That was my new hope.

Sneaky

I spend a lot of time wrapped in the busyness. I like being busy. I feel good when I finish a task. I feel good when I do something well. As a result, my self worth has become totally wrapped in this doing and finishing. And I’m not here. Not present. I tell myself that I’m good because I can do. I’m important because I make myself needed. And I’m fininding here in this middle part of my life that I’ve lost me and, unless someone is part of the doing, that I’ve neglected relationships. But I FEEL good. And I feel PERFECT. And when someone talks about changing, I don’t see me – because look what I’m doing. I can boil it all down to a photo of a moment that I made. And for a minute only, I smile about that and feel like I made something. But inside, what’s really there? At this time in my life, it’s starting to matter again. But the search for substance is a tough one when there are years and years and YEARS of doing rather than living built up. I’ve forgotten how to experience. I’ve lost touch with what’s real. Today I got snuck up on. 

I was watching a message from my church online…because it’s snowy here and I’m a lot of a chicken when it comes to taking my car out on uncertain roads. The message was about having big dreams, God-sized dreams, more specifically. Dreams that will not succeed without His work in them. Towards the end there was a challenge to “Exchange all of me for all of Him”. And it hit me. Suddenly I knew just how I saw myself.  And it wasn’t good. I thought that God wouldn’t want what I have to give him. He wouldn’t want to make that switch. He’d say that was a bum deal. He wouldn’t want my insecurities, my fears, my lifetime of crippling anxiety, my weak body, my mind of tangled thoughts, my doubts and my lack of faith. He wouldn’t want me. But as I poured over and over this He showed me that this exchange wasn’t meant to be fair, it’s meant to be cleansing. He doesn’t NEED anything that I’m giving. He has something to give me, but there’s no more space. I’ve filled it with the doing and the worrying. Those things I’ve found comfort in are taking up valuable real estate in who I am. The growth comes from my letting go. Those things about myself that I look down on aren’t from God. In my distance from Him, they’ve creeped in over time. 

When I give Him me, he takes the messed up parts and brings in His light and His strength. He takes my good parts – my deep love for my family, my incredible focus, my intense passion for teaching children, my ability to reflect, my love for change, my drive for the best, my ability to see the steps needed to accomplish anything. He can take all that and filter it through His strength and love and grace and cause the junk to melt away. Those things aren’t of him and the more of Him I can let into my life, the more those things will seem out of place. 

So my goal is to let go. My goal is to let Him in. My goal is to be still. My goal is to read and learn and pray. My goal is to seek. My goal is to do what’s important and stop worrying about doing everything. My goal is to be filled with light so the darkness has no place inside me.