So many unspoken words…
I refuse to let them haunt me.
I don’t know what to say here
I have no comfort to offer…
this pain is overwhelming.
Numbness would be nice.
Tag Archive: future
Talking to my mom today sent me into a tail-spin. I hate that I am so afraid of being “found out” like I am doing something wrong and have something to hide… I hate that just speaking to my family on the phone has the power to make me doubt my past and begin to see it through their eyes. I came from a family of “brush it under the rug”. They are great at pretending that everything is ok and we’re not really broken in the extreme. Most of my life my dad yelled and screamed and belittled all of us and my mom just took it and let us take it.
I remember one night when I was a little girl, my parents had put me to bed. I got up to get a teddy bear off my shelf to sleep with and had curled up in bed and was just drifting off to sleep when my dad burst into my room, angry. He asked me if I had gotten out of bed and I told him I had gotten up to get a bear to sleep with. He asked me if I had left the room and I hadn’t. He then accused me of sneaking out of my room to watch through the cracked door as my brother changed clothes. He was crazy angry and accused me of lieing when I denied this. He beat me with a belt so badly I had whelps from the backs of my knees to the small of my back. He was in a blind rage. My mother came in afterword to ask me if I had done this and I told her the same thing I told my father. She told me it would make things better if I apologized to my father and just said that I had done this thing he accused me of. So I did and my dad pulled me into his lap and hugged me and told me he loved me. I don’t even know why, to this day, he would think I would be watching my brother dress or undress or why it would have been a big deal as we were both very young… I was about 6 and my brother was about 9-10.
When I was a teenager I confronted my parents about this and they both denied the whole thing and told me I must have imagined it. My whole life they have managed to make me feel crazy… Now I just want to live in truth and not brush anything else under the rug. I am through pretending. I long to walk in the sunshine and feel the warmth on my skin. I long to live in truth. I may not be perky and happy all the time, but I am real and alive, and that is so much better to me.
I was taking a shower today and staring at the shower head thinking about the time we had to change it. Then I suddenly remembered that there was a huge gaping hole on the other side of the wall. Changing this shower head was supposed to be simple… just unscrew the old one then screw the new one in place. Like most things in life it got complicated quickly. After trial and error we had to cut a large access hole into wall in the adjoining room to repair the problem. These repairs were taking place at about 9pm on a Sunday which meant we didn’t have much time to get the job properly done before we had to give up on it for the night and just rig it up and go to bed. Well now a month has passed and I had managed to completely forget that this huge hole existed. As long as the shower functioned properly and I didn’t have to look at the hole it was not a part of my reality. This became a metaphor for my life… I find that as long as I am functioning on a day to day level – as long as I can go to work, pay my bills, put dinner on the table, clean my kitchen, spend time with my husband – as long as I can do these things I fool myself into thinking that the gaping hole in my chest doesn’t exist. Then something horrible happens… something wonderful… my husband looks at me and says, “You don’t have to pretend here.” And I am suddenly aware of this wound. I feel it and allow myself to be broken for a moment. Just that small reminder that I am seen, that I don’t have to hide… It’s painful and wonderful at the same time. I usually don’t allow myself to feel this pain. I just gloss over it and pretend to be ok, to be happy. Something amazing happens in the middle of it all, though… Through the safe release of this pain… I find that under it I really am happy… that I really do believe everything will be ok eventually and I don’t have to rush through this healing process… I can give myself permission to be. There is so much grace in that realization.
There’s so much I don’t understand. I long to life a life of transparent honesty, but that’s just not practical in our superficial polite society. It’s all about what’s easy and politically correct instead of what’s real. When someone ask, “How are you doing?” they expect a positive answer. If you tell them the truth they are uncomfortable and don’t know what to say. No one knows what to do with the pain. As a culture we are not given any tools with which to deal with pain – there’s no etiquette for this. There’s no precedence for this transparency. This seems universally true – in work, play, school, church… there’s no room for pain. No one really wants to know about your pain and no one wants to honestly share their pain. Everyone wants to pretend to be ok – well-adjusted – happy – but most of us are dealing with some kind of brokenness, some kind of pain, even if we don’t quite have a name for it.
How do we break this habit? Is that even possible? Will we always be a society of isolation? We have more methods of connecting now more than ever before – yet we have never been more alone. All communication have become trivial and the art of sharing reality has been lost. Gone are the days of love letters… we are in an era of romance via hallmark. We depend on someone else to communicate our affections or not at all. If a card or e-mail forward does not contain the feeling we wish to convey we founder – having no words of our own. Why? Because we are a society of observers… always watching, reading, listening – not thinking, feeling, sharing. We surround ourselves with media in lieu of nature, we seek triviality rather than solitude – we spend our energy on status rather than investing it in another.
Where does this leave us? It leaves us all lost and lonely. It leaves us in a home crowded by TV, radio, internet, video games – where two lonely people live who have forgotten how to share what is most important – themselves.
When I was a teenager I read somewhere that, according to an old Indian legend, butterflies could grant you your lost innocence. This thought obsessed me. I began to truly believe this. I longed for the return of what had been stolen from me so cruelly. I already loved butterflies. They are so beautiful and so fragile. Their lives, though short, seemed to have more meaning, more purpose, than mine. It may sound silly, but I began to pray for this encounter, for this miraculous return of my innocence. For years I longed to feel the butterfly’s kiss and have my healing at long last. One day, walking through the woods, I was admiring the filtered rays of sun touching the ground in a plethora of small pools on the ground before me… praying once again for my healing, for this blessed encounter when, in a flurry of wings, a butterfly smacked me right in the face! I felt my heart burst within me. I laughed, flung out my arms, and twirled in the dappling shadows. I cried with joy. No, I didn’t receive my miracle… at least not the one I was expecting. I’m not going to tell you that my innocence was restored or that the hurt in my heart just floated away to be filled with blessed light. I didn’t suddenly let go of all the pain and fear that haunted me… none of the things I wished for came true. So why did I laugh until I cried? Because in that moment I felt God’s promise come into my heart and fill the emptiness I had been trying to desperately to ignore. He told me then that I would be healed, that my heart would soar again and that the innocent joy I had been seeking would find me. In one moment, alone in the woods, faith filled me and my search was over. I am still healing, I am still journeying, and I am still full of hope. I have found my joy and my innocence waiting right where I left them. I still fall into despair, but at the sight of a beautiful butterfly, God reminds me all that He has promised me will come to pass and my faith is renewed.
captivatingbitter 