Oh, Little Heart

Oh little heart, little heart, go into the light

I know it's bright

I know it's hard

But, oh little heart, go into the light

Oh little heart, little heart, open your hands

Let go of demands

Rest your swinging fists

Oh little heart, stop fighting, open your hands

Oh little heart, little heart, rest your weary eyes

He hears your cries

Dry those tears

Oh little heart, so scared, rest your weary eyes

Oh little heart, little heart, listen to what's true

You are being made new

Stop the radio static

Oh little heart, open your ears, listen to what's true

Oh little heart, when you feel the need to hurt

When you feel the need to harm

When the pain you must divert

And your senses you alarm

When other's words you must invert

And your defenses you must arm

When false strength you must exert

And all others you must charm

Oh little heart STOP

Stop pulling away, stop pushing away

Stop the tug of war and relent!

Settle down.

Breathe.

Lament.

Oh little heart, little heart, keep beating slow and steady

With each breath you are more ready

Accept love and concede

Little heart, you deserve to succeed 

Recovery Part 1

I woke up drowsy and sticky, my hair matted to my neck from falling asleep with it wet. I stumbled to the bathroom and stopped at the sink, the reality of who I am sinking in and jolting me to full awareness.

A seething feeling awoke in the pit of my stomach. I knew I couldn’t fix my hair because if I made eye contact with the traitor in the mirror I would break something so I kept my head down.

“You disgust me.” Myself whispered to myself.

I felt my fingers curl into my palms and my jaw set.

“You’re despicable.”

I tried to ignore it. I tried to take a deep breath and count to ten.

“You know you’re going to fail.” The voice, no longer a whisper, now taunted boldly.

I felt my blood boiling but I stood silent and unmoved, head down.

“Let’s just call this what it is. We already know you will not make it long term, so go ahead and mess up now.”

My fist clinched so tightly into my palms that I could feel my finger nails digging into my skin. My heart was pumping fast.

“Shut. Up.” I tried in my sternest tone but my voice cracked and gave me away.

“You will never actually recover, you know that right? You were addicted for too long. This is your life now.”

A single hot bitter tear escaped from my eye and I slowly looked up in the mirror. I saw myself. I saw who I was. I saw what I did. I made eye contact with myself. In a millisecond of rage and adrenaline I pulled back my fist and punched the glass with as much strength as I could muster.

The shatter was loud and satisfying and then deafening. The blood from my knuckles dripped into the sink.

In a frenzy I screeched like a wild animal being attacked in the forest and grabbed fistfuls of glass and squeezed them as tightly as I could until my hands were so full of blood I could not see my fingernails. I felt no pain, only anger. Only hatred. I kept squeezing glass until my fingers went numb.

One long slender shard twinkled on the counter top, catching my eye and presenting itself to me as if to allure me in, knowing full well what I would do. I gave in willingly and grabbed the glass, using my bloody hand to pull up my shirt and expose unharmed skin. I watched the glass pierce my stomach and the most wretched redemption song shook my body.

I only love pain. I only love failure.

My body crumpled on the rug, spattered red with blood. I laid my head on the cold bathroom floor and watched a fresh puddle on the rug slowly soak into the threads. My stained red arms tingled beside me. I briefly wondered how many towels I would stain trying to clean this mess.

I felt dizzy and faint. How could I be tormented any further? How could addiction possibly be any worse than recovery? I can’t decide which is worse. I debated with myself until I gave up deciding and closed my eyes.


********************

Can I please go live somewhere until the withdrawals pass? Is there some sort of detox drug I can take to ease this unrelenting torment?

Is this the hardest part? Does it get easier? Someone tell me it gets easier. Will I always feel this much self-hatred? The anger and the regret and the guilt, how long does it take to go away? It’s all consuming. Does it ever go away? It’s swallowing me, I can’t see anything but red. What if I live the rest of my life with this much hatred?

The shakes. The headaches. The nausea. The anxiety.

This is not hard. I refuse to admit that it’s hard. I refuse to admit I want the drug. I refuse to admit I was addicted. The hard part is ME. The hardest person to fight is ME. The determination in me to self sabotage is relentless and unyielding.

I want myself to fail. Not because I’m tempted by the drug, no, I’m way further tempted to watch myself crumple on the floor in defeat and mourning, desperately begging for love and acceptance without success.

Knowing that it’s forever, that’s the hardest to wrap my brain around. Knowing there is no end.

I coddle myself. I am the queen enabler to my own self. “It’s okay,” I coo “You poor thing, you don’t have to suffer forever, just for now,” I tell myself. Anytime I start a diet, anytime I’m in a sucky job, anytime I’m running long distances...anytime anything sucks. “This will be over soon,” I reassure myself.

And it works! I make it through long and miserable things because I know it’s over soon. I make it because I know this isn’t forever, it’s only for now.

But now when I begin to feel a panic in my gut, a deep overwhelming loss, I instinctively comfort myself. “It’s okay, you are only giving this up until...” wait. Until when? WHEN?! THERE IS NO END. You are giving this up until...until all eternity.

This isn’t just for now. This is forever. The shock is terrifying. How could I possibly make it forever? I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.

Someone tell me it gets better because I cannot bear the finality. It feels like death.


Oh.

My.

Gosh.


It’s a death!


Death. Oh. My. Gosh. It died.


Can you grieve your own sin? Can you miss it like it died? How wretched can you be to grieve it?

The cutting had gotten better but now it’s worse. It was so much better for years and thought I was cured. I thought I was done forever. But now I’ve failed in that too. What’s the difference between relapse and recovery? Can I ever fully recover from everything? That seems too impossible.

I can only solve one problem at a time. Life is so overwhelming and when you work on one problem, the others flare. I fear that if I switch my focus, the other problems will rise up so the question is -- really which drug do you fear the most? Which addiction is scariest?

I do not think I could ever tell enough people to stop feeling alone. I am alone. Recovery options are not options. I have to make up my own system and I am not that strong. I cannot handle this all on my own and yet I have to. It feels desperately alone.

The most hopeful thing of all is that for some reason my heart’s desire was to name this post “part one” which means that somewhere deep inside of me I must believe there is another step to this. I must believe somehow that I will proceed forward through this journey and that there will be another phase, a "part two."

Good Grief! (Grieving Good-er)

I can hear grief. My ears open and my head leans in. I can hear it like a locomotive far in the distance. I close my eyes and strain to listen. It is still miles away when I first hear the engine chugging and the wheels screeching. I can hear the whistle faintly and yet even in the quietness of it, I can tell it’s coming. It’s coming towards me louder, faster, closer. I can sense the hugeness of it. The train outweighs me, it can outrun me, it can hurt me, it can take my very life. And yet, I take off running towards it. It sounds familiar. It’s like you live in a house where you can always hear a train in the distance so when you hear it, it doesn’t sound scary or unusual. You don’t fear it anymore like when you were little. Now you are used to it and when it doesn’t come for a while you almost miss it. (Almost.) 

I can smell grief. It smells salty. Not good, not bad. Not sour or strong. Just familiar but displaced. Like if you were home alone and suddenly smelled an ocean. It’s salty like the cup of salt water your mom hands you to gargle with when your mouth is bleeding from a lost tooth. 

Grief tastes like a warhead that makes your mouth instantly water and your lips scrunch up. Your brain begins working like a Pavlov dog when you even see the wrapper. And yet, I crave it. Again and again and again. I crave it. I chose it over and over. I willingly pick up warheads, knowing there will be hell to pay. 

If grief had a color, I think it would be orange.

I grieve bad. I grieve ugly. I grieve long and hard and gross and loud. I grieve messy and reclusively and bumpy and jagged-y.

Somewhere along the way of life, I somehow, someway decided that I wanted my life to be full of grief. I decided that was not only okay, but what I actually desired. I decided that I needed to ambitiously and eagerly pursue a life of grief. And so I set out to do just that. Over and over and over and over again. I run headstrong towards change, temporary people, temporary situations, temporary jobs, short term stints. I say I hate change but I accept nothing less. I say I want permanency but I insist on momentary.

So, therefore, I have decided, as an act of my own will and a desire of my heart, I am going to learn to grieve better. I want to grieve less hard and less long and less gross and less loud. I want to grieve softer, creatively-er, and good...er. Less bumpy, less jagged-y. 

One time someone asked me how I grieved. "How do you handle grief?" She said. I smiled. It's a crazy question to ask someone, really. As if anyone has a typed up step-by-step grief plan. (We should though, shouldn't we?) I thought about it for a brief moment before I told her I handled it just fine. (For some reason pretending to be a non-emotional robot has been a favorite pastime of mine recently, I haven't the faintest clue why.) I said that I HANDLED GRIEF FINE. FINE! ME. ME. 

It's a humorous thing really if you know me. The girl who moved states in order to move on from someone. The girl who cries over everyone and everything. The girl who invented a stuffed animal personality to handle all the overflow emotions of life. 

I should have thrown down my water and screamed at her that I grieve TERRIBLY! 

But I am going to change that. I am going to ride the roller coaster and put fear aside. Half of why I grieve so bad is the fear. The panic. The anxiety. The lies I believe. "I'll never get over this. What if I miss this every day for the rest of my life!? What if I always feel this way?!" 

I believe I won't always feel this way.
I believe it will get better.
I believe that it's okay to be sad and it's okay to cry. And it's okay if I am sad for a long, long time.
I believe that no matter how I feel, TIME DOES make a difference. This won't always hurt the way it does right now. 
I believe in God. I trust that God has a plan for me. I trust that plan to include my life not always being in a grief place. 
I believe that grief is a process, a journey, and I believe I have tools and skills and strength to get through it and get through it well. 
I believe I can grieve GOOD(er)

Why I Leave (Impending Doom)

Pretend you are driving and you are enjoying it. There are no cars as far as the eye can see and the open road feels like a fresh breeze. You can feel your soul taking it all in. The trees are so bright, the grass is so green. Your favorite song comes on the radio and you don't even try to control the goofy grin on your face while you turn it up and belt out the tune. You feel invigorated and powerful. Happy. In control.

Slowly your speedometer begins to climb above the speed limit. 10 over isn't that bad, you reason. And besides, there is no one around and you have a long drive so you let your foot rest on the pedal and your speed increases slowly...so slowly you barely notice. There is no one this could hurt except myself, so it's okay, you think with a shrug. Cruising around you are totally relaxed, in your element.

Your eye flits to a yellow triangle sign so far over on the right that you are forced to turn your relaxed head to read it. It takes a second to sink in.

Dead End ahead.



You try to swallow the flash of fear that is overcoming your body. Suddenly you are aware of yourself tensing up and your heart palpitating. You turn the music down and sit up, trying to make a plan. After the shock disappears, you feel denial. How could this wide road be a dead end? Surely that sign was talking about a different road. Maybe there was an exit I didn't see and it was talking about that road. Or maybe that was on old sign and someone just forgot to take it down. Yeah, that's probably it!

But you know the truth. Because you've traveled on roads like this before. You know this is a dead end. Suddenly you realize you are going fast. Way, way too fast. You frantically press the brakes but they are a fake pedal, easily pressed down to the floor board of your car without catching anything or slowing your momentum. Is this a toy car?!

You can see in the faint distance an orange cone. A road block. It's a dead end.

It's only then that you realize you aren't driving. Your car is driving itself and you are completely out of control. The speedometer is still climbing - the red line inching up slowly and continually and you cannot do anything to stop it.

Panic.

You are going to die. Death is close. And there is nothing you can do. You aren't the driver. You cannot stop the car.

You play the options over in your head. Jump out of the car and die. Stay in the car and die. You've done this before. Jump out of the car and die. Stay in the car and die. What is the lesser of two evils? Suddenly you remember you are good at this. You force yourself to become totally relaxed. Not the real kind of relaxation but the adrenaline kind of survival relaxation. You take a deep breath and laugh because you knew you were right. You were right this whole time! You said this would happen and it did! (No one seems to believe you when you tell them how this has happened to you before). The orange cone is appearing closer. You see no road ahead -  only a large gap where your car will go off the cliff in moments.

I am in that car and I have crashed before. It's terrible. It takes months - years - of healing to get back to normal again. Years to sleep again. Years to drive again. And yet I keep getting in that car. I keep getting on that road.

I am always in that same car, going the same way with the same result. When people ask me why I have to leave I can't explain it to them. I can't tell them that my life is about to crash because they don't understand. It doesn't happen to most people so it's a difficult thing to explain.

I love people too much. And when I love them, we get in that car. It's not hard to do at first and it feels good. I feel happy and not scared. I feel high and in my element. I love others slowly but that speedometer is steady. It climbs and climbs and I begin to see a warning sign and then... well, I am scared now. Because we are going to crash. I saw the dead end sign and there's nothing I can do.

How can I not crash? How can I brake? How how how!? How do you live life in a normal way and still love others and keep it under control? I've been to counseling for years trying to learn how to brake. I've read millions of books about how to crash less hard. They even have invented medicine that makes you not feel the crash as bad. But I've decided, from now on, I'm just jumping out of the car. No more crashing.

I need saving. I need God. I don't know how to chose God without leaving. So in my life, I will make this decision again and again. I will only love my Savior. I will only worship my God. I will only serve Him. I will leave everything and everyone I love because my heart belongs only to Him and I seem incapable of keeping my loves prioritized.

This is why I leave. I leave places I love, I leave people I love, I leave things I care and am passionate about. Not because I want to but because if I don't, I will die.

(And if you don't know what to make of this, then we will not relate)

 

When I Am Sad

“What do you do when you are sad?” She asks me.

“I write.”

“What do you write?”

“I write.”

“What do you write?” She repeats, kindly and patiently, knowing I am slow to warm up.

Everything. I write books. I write poetry. I write blogs. I write on my stomach. I write on my shoes. I write at work and in the middle of the night and even in my dreams.

“I just journal sometimes” I offer casually, hoping I sound truthful. She jots it down in her notebook, satisfied with my answer. She doesn’t really care, she just needs an answer. She needs an answer that shows I am an adult capable of handling emotionally charged situations. She needs to write something down so she can type it up and prove she did her due diligence to research my ability to handle grief, loss, heartache and the emotional roller coaster that has become my life.

“Anything else?”

“Umm...” my voice trails off. Think. Think! What would a healthy person say?!

“I talk to people.” I offer, ironically refusing to make eye contact.

I cry. I scream. I pull over in the car and scream. I yell at God. I come home from work and lay on my bed without even taking my shoes off and I cry until I fall asleep. Sometimes I cut. Sometimes I run away. Sometimes I break the trash can in my car. Sometimes I take all the sadness and roll it in a big ball and stuff it way down in my big toe so that no one can ever find it, hopefully not even me.

Again, she takes my answer and jots it down in her notebook, seemingly satisfied with my healthy person approach.

“It’s okay to be sad.” She tilts her head and looks at me serious. Now she’s real. She’s not looking at her notebook, she’s looking at me. She cares about me. Stop it. Stop caring. She doesn’t just want an answer, she wants me personally to be okay.

“I have no feelings, like a robot” I tease – the safest way I can connect (or disconnect?).

She smiles, knowing it’s not true of course but believing me slightly. I hope she thinks I’m strong. I hope she thinks I don’t get sad very much. I hope she thinks I handle everything in stride. I hope she thinks I am healthy and strong and capable.

She closes her notebook and I sigh, realizing I was holding my breath. I breathe slowly and begin to write in my head.

What it feels like to Leave (A sequel)

I used to write. I used to think I would someday be a writer or at minimum a stay home mom with a famous blog. But life is funny that way because it turns out nothing like what you expected. Not in a disappointing way, just in a different way. I need to write. I used to write. I used to breathe. I used to have air and space and moments to reflect and consider myself. But being a [single] mother is far different than what anyone can explain to you - it's all consuming and the water that is “you” begins to boil. It feels pressure. Yourself begins to evaporate. There’s so much less of the water that is you. You watch yourself diminish before your eyes. You are a vapor and you reach out for the steam but you can't grasp it. It's gone. The tiniest beads of water spread haphazardly around the kitchen tile are the small pieces of you that you have left.

I need to write again. I need to think again. I got myself into a situation again. A situation that requires some breathing and thinking and writing and definitely a sense of self larger than tiny water beads. I feel lost and alone.

I used to write about what it felt like to be left. I used to think I was left a lot. I used to think of myself as the abandonee. Yet somehow over the course of the past two years my brain has shifted in that I am constantly the abandoner. I leave. I don't get left, I leave. (Neither worldview is a balanced, healthy view and in fact I think both could be labeled the same level of "victim mentality" victim-ingitis or something. But I'll indulge in it for awhile until it stops working for me and then I will pick something new. Right now it's working. I think.)

I pride myself on being a flight risk. It seems stronger. I don't get left, I leave! I am the rebellious teenager with arms folded standing by the door, one foot turned outward. I am rolling my eyes at everything you say and in a flash I can grab the door handle and run out. And I can run FAST. I'm ready. I have my running shoes on and I am not afraid.

I used to be a small child, standing at the door that had been slammed in my face and running to the window to try to catch a glimpse of the person who left. Sobbing hysterically and screaming I would pound on the glass of the windows, begging the car driving away to notice me, to give me once last glance. Then I would fall to the floor in the fetal position and scream and cry for a year or two and then I would move on and it would happen again. I decided no more of that. No longer will I let someone slam the door and walk away. Instead, everyone on my life is on the inside and I am by the exit.

Being able to leave feels safe. It feels protected. It feels freeing to know I can walk away any second I chose. It feels like I'm in control. It feels like I am strong. I don't make any sort of decision that would move me away from the door. I am hesitant to make any decision that even makes me move my hand away from the knob but with the right person and circumstance, I can do it for a quick moment.

I am not afraid to be alone, to start over, to close the door. I am not afraid to go outside into the unknown and start over again with new people, new job, new state, new lover, new friends, new church. I've done it before and l will gladly do it again.

What it feels like to Leave (A sequel to Post From 2013 "What It Feels Like To Be Left" )

It feels like you start running and you don’t feel pain anywhere. You run free and wild and you feel alive. An immediate release of positive hormones flow through your veins, like that first hit of tobacco or the first high of snorting a pill. The way your blood feels relaxed when alcohol sinks in. Your brain smiles like how you feel twenty minutes after taking an Ambien. It feels good.

You arrive at a sweeping open field with grass as tall as you and bright red flowers greeting you at every turn. The weather is PERFECT. It's beautiful and amazing. You stop running but your body still feels the wind as if you are on a boat. You look up and notice the sky and how perfectly deep and bright it is. You pat yourself on the back for running away. Good job! You left! Exactly what you were supposed to do! You did amazing. If you had never left, you never would have seen the color of this sky. You run and jump and frolic like a child. You smell the red flowers. You smell the tall grass. You absorb it. You feel amazing. You touch everything. Every sense in your body feels alive.

After a little while, the adrenaline begins to fade. You feel a twinge of hunger. A twinge of missing the person you just ran away from. You realize that your hand stings ever so slightly from slamming the door. You notice that your throat is faintly hoarse from screaming at the person you left. You resist the urge to glance back in that direction. You quote some positive bologna to yourself about how you only look up and forward and how you did amazing and have good boundaries for cutting someone out of your life. You shiver. It's kind of cold. I wish I brought a jacket. But it's okay. I love to feel the wind. I am not afraid, you tell yourself. I like leaving people. I am good at it, you remind yourself. I am glad I left them. I am glad I am in this place. You refuse to feel the exhaustion sinking in. Determined to be right, you settle down in the weeds and try to find distractions.

Picking apart a flower, you realize the daylight is fading. Its no matter, you say, I will be fine out here. You wish there was some music to distract your thoughts that you are trying so desperately to not think. But it’s quiet. And now it’s dark.

And even though you are proud and you don’t want to undo it, even though you feel strong and in control, somehow, in that cold, dark night you can't help but feeling regret. You feel shock. You wonder if you really acted that impulsively. Can you possibly close your eyes and wake up back with that person? You can't help but begin to feel that although you ran away, you were in fact, left, because there's nobody behind you. Nobody can run as fast as you and the truth of the matter is, you would have fought them if they did. If someone ever (which no one has ever) opened the door and screamed for you to come back, you would have flipped them the bird. You would have warned them not to follow you.

People do try to stop you. They stop you when you put your hand on the door knob. They tease and you smile. They slap your hand away and say "no, no" and you smile like you were kidding. But you were serious. And you sit there and wait and wait until you get up the courage to leave. And then one day, you tell yourself as if you are getting a piercing, don’t think just do it! If you think about it, you know you will talk yourself out of it, so you just go! And off you go. And they let you. Because you never leave when you think there’s a chance you can stay. You leave when you know they are tired, they are worn out, they are done with you.

I keep waiting for that person. That one person that will chase me and run and run and run past the point of exhaustion for me. When I warn them to get away, they will continue running. When I push them off, they will patiently keep following me at a distance until I am ready to change my mind. People tell me this exists. I believe them. I have not met that person but I do believe it’s real. I often wonder if it only exists in God. I don’t think anyone has energy to pursue me except God and sometimes I don’t even think He’s up for the task.

So you sit there even though the weeds are itchy. And you cry. And you scream. And you feel the deepest loneliness that feels similar to starving. Loneliness feels the way your body feels when you haven’t eaten for three days. Loneliness feels like panic, like emptiness, like an all consuming leprosy that eats away at your body. But you deal with it for a long time and slowly - very, very slowly, you get used to the field. And someone new comes along and you get to know them. You think they are fine and things are fine but you cautiously glance at the doorway and move your hand down to your pocket so you can grab the doorknob and run away again if you need to.

That is what it feels like to leave someone.