The Ties that Bind

As I sat at the reception desk today, feeling powerless, frustrated, pissed beyond words and completely overwhelmed with my emotions, certain things began to dawn on me.

I kept wondering why I was so pissed. I'm not usually the type that isn't a team player, or that minds picking up the slack, so here, now, why is this more than I can handle? Why is being asked to fill in for the receptionist such an insult?

Because I worked my ass off to move beyond this sort of work and finding out that my current place of employment doesn't see or recognize the potential I have, something is triggered deep inside and I freak out.

I have no problem proving myself, but when I do that and still my work sends me back into answering phones and signing for packages, all the work, the effort, the potential doesn't matter and I find myself running my head into a wall over and over again.

I have no problem doing my job, no matter how frustrating it is, knowing that there is either growth opportunity or even lateral movement. I can deal with the muck and mire, if there is a promise of more.

Now, this may be specifically for my work environment, but as I sit fuming, it clicks that this is the same problem I am having in my emotional life. I started therapy 6 years ago. If I am really no better off than I was then, I may as well keep the money and start drinking heavily. At least I wouldn't be so much of a downer.

As sad as that is, big picture is slowly dawning, and I am seeing at least starting to grasp why things have to change.

It's all fun and games when you are young, but when you start getting older and time becomes much less relative and much more real, wasting the precious opportunities that come along seems criminal. The invincibility of youth dies and with it the notion that everything will be okay.

All of the work all of the effort, all of the everything has to, at some point, amount to something more than ending up in the same places. The emotional releases, the healing, the all-nighters in college, they have to bring some sort of ability to look back and say "Look where I've come from" and as of right now, I have none of that.

Which brings me back to my work situation. So I have learned lots about myself in the last year, some of it good, some of it bad. Things such as, my past lends itself to shame. I feel inadequate and rarely rock the boat for what I really want. I give myself over to be revictimized and then when I never succeed, bitch and moan about it. Well, at 26 I am so sick to death of that cycle, and I am so scared of watching myself never move forward, I finally am ready to get off the carousel.

Three options: 1) suck it up and pray someone sees my potential 2) put in my two week notice and pray I land another job that happens into something better 3) have a nice sit down with my boss where I flex the non-existent muscle of asking for what I want and not accepting what I don't want. I think they call this 'boundaries.' I don't know, I have never really worked with the foreign ideas.

Of course the third option makes the most sense, seems the most reasonable, but at the same time scares me the most. Whenever I have put myself in a position of asking for something, I am usually unleashed on for the ten different reasons I was an ass to ask. Here are the ten most recent mistakes you made and this is why you can't have what we promised. That premise just about encapsulates 90% of all my relationships and some of my jobs. I guess I get my need for perfection and my fear of the unknown.

As the loose ends begin to tie and time becomes much more a scarce resource rather than endlessly available, my basic survival techniques are kicking in. I'm finding a little bit of fight I didn't know I have. I guess it's better to find out now what the expectations are, and whether or not this is something I can live with, or if I am looking down another barrel of endless frustration. My therapist says the key to boundaries is the ability to walk away, or let go. I guess she's right. If I am not willing to put my money where my mouth is, there is nothing to bargain with.

I guess maybe the work is paying off. Breaking out of the cycles may actually be possible and the years of therapy may mean more than just being another one of those people that never moves beyond the comfort of the old. I wasn't taught these skills, but if I can get ahold of them now, if can incorporate enough of them, or just get enough courage to stand firm, there's the possbilibty I won't end up being another sad story of wasted potential. Maybe time will stop feeling like the enemy and there will still yet be a chance to look back and think "Look how far I've come." Or, I'm going to get super wasted and it just won't matter anyways.

Pink Ponies

In miracle of all miracles, some things have been falling into place, well at least in my mind that is.

When the blindfold is pulled off your eyes and denial as a way of life no longer is a viable option, it's like learning to live with a completely new sense. Everything hits a little harder. The normal beatings we all take aren't as easily shaken off and it is much harder to ignore truths, no matter what they are.

Case and point. I have a tendency to get really excited about something I think is going to be perfect, and then get really disappointed when it fails to bring the assumed abundance I had believed it would. I'm like a 6 year old at a birthday party that just found out she didn't get the pink pony she wanted. Bastards.

Even worse, instead of accepting the reality as it is, dealing with the loss and moving on to some other bright and shiny object, I do the worst possible thing and try to change reality. I think if I stare at the spoon long enough, it really will bend. Um, not so much. And eventually, if the spoon doesn't bend, I do. I never needed or really wanted a pink pony. I can settle, really. Soooo much denial.

At 20 years later and too big for pony, I find myself having to deal with loss in a real and competent way. If things don't turn out the way I want them, what are my real options? This brown cow is not going to magically change and I am not going to magically stop wanting a pony, so how am I going to go deal with this? I revert to my six year old ways as I stomp my foot proclaiming "I was NOT taught these skills!"

Case and point: my job. Don't get me wrong, I am so thankful for my paycheck. I mean really, really thankful, but there are days when I literally think a monkey could do my job. Even worse so, my boss' treat me that way, or at least lately have. It's degrading. And I hate it.

That's the thing though. Something clicked deep down that hadn't ever before. It's not what you are doing, it's how you are treated in the midst of it. One of my boss' could ask me to wash and wax his car and I wouldn't mind at all. The other one acts as if my job title isn't Executive Assistant, but Personal Slave. Look, if I wanted to be treated badly, I would have stayed married.

This whole new way of thinking, this lack of denial and acceptance of a truer reality, has stirred some things up. Why do I take it? The title may be great on my resume giving me some access in the future, but what was promised in the beginning is rapidly becoming a game of cat and mouse. Um, so basically I'm in a repeat of the most hellish year of my life but professionally rather than personally. Wait, I've seen these signs and I'm not okay with where this is going.

If I had it all over to do again, what would I do different, because right there is where I have to start.

Mainly, I would stop feeling like a beggar and start feeling like a chooser.

What is the fear here? That this is my only option for the rest of my life? Jobs have always been easier to come by then men, so even though the anxiety is founded, it can hardly be seen quite as seriously. Browsing the want ads for the two are very different things.

But in some ways, they relate. I can look at myself and say two things 1) how is this helping get to where I want to go and 2) why do I think I have nothing to bargain or leverage?

I have struggled with how much I have "pandered" to people in my life, or felt as though I was less than. As I look at my professional life and I am watching my boss' ask me to do things I was not hired to do, or give me tasks that are meaningless and in no way challenging or even within my job description, I contemplate the pros and cons of giving in and settling.

I took the job with the expressed idea in growth potential, in a 50/50 between professional and personal and with their desire to bring someone into more of a decision maker role. Awesome. That befits a woman with a good degree from a top-notch school and the sort of experience I have. Not to mention the sheer desire to work hard and excel. Five months into the job and I am actually answering phones again? Um, sorry fellas, I draw the line somewhere. I have proved myself trustworthy, innovative, detailed and more than efficient in my problem solving abilities. If that is not enough, then I'm not sure what will be.

Believe it or not, I have standards. I know, it hasn't always looked that way, but hey, I'm learning. And I have goals. As I write out my monthly check to Sally Mae, I need to feel this was worth it's weight in interest. At this moment, that is not the case.

My pink pony turned into a frigging brown cow and now I have to figure out what to do with it. May be slaughter time. Who knows, I may be able to sell of the meat making enough profit to buy myself the pony. All I know is, this isn't going to magically change, but that doesn't change the fact that what I need is still what I need.

If only I had learned these principles back before I tortured myself needlessly for a year. Instead of trying to ride a cow down Main Street, I could have been eating T-Bone from that disaster for years.

Anecdotes

Things aren't always what they seem. We say it all the time, but how often do we really mean it?

I was sitting in my therapy session on Friday, talking about next steps in my life, paying good money for advice that should have come for free as a child, when my therapist stopped and looked at me with a sort of inquisitive look and said "For how brave you are, you're also a wimp." My first thought was Thanks. My second thought was I'm paying you how much and you're just now figuring this out?

Is it still courage if it is survival? To get to the sort of life I believe would justify the last 26 years of BS, I know any sort of lackluster bravery I have exhibited in the last few years will only be the tip of the iceberg. That's exhausting to think about.

I find anecdotes the easiest way to express what words fail to fully express, so here are a few to complete the picture of what a day in the life of a 26 year old woman that can't seem to get ahead.

I have been struggling to find a church and with the past few months of a rebirth of faith, this is fairly sad for me. The only thing that truly makes me tick, community, seems to be the one thing I am adrift in. So in the least, I have been attending a small group every other week, actually enjoying the company of the women. Thursday I got an email it was ending. It's been going for five years. Seriously?

Friday I had a conversation with one of the owners of the company I work for. I have known him for almost four years, but never through the current company. My boss (after five months of me working here) just discovered this and asked him if he recommended me for the job. He told me he said no. They asked him why and he said well because "I didn't know she had applied for the job and I would never have thought she would want to do this." They obviously asked him why, he replied with "Well, I'm pretty sure she's overqualified to be picking up your dry-cleaning. In fact, I thought you were talking about a different person," followed by an awkward silence.... I'm not sure if I'm more offended he said he wouldn't recommend me, or that my boss' don't know I'm not a moron.

As part of my therapy (or just need to not sit on my ass), I have been baking. A lot. Pumpkin spice cake, chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting, cherry and lemon scones with devonshire cream, cinnamon buns from scratch... you get the point. And it's all good. Except for a few hiccups in the beginning, I've discovered a knack for following a recipe. I like the feeling of bringing in some love to the people I work with. That is until I got a "complaint" from the HR department that I was bringing in too many baked goods and people thought I was being selfish by baking and bringing in what I didn't want to keep at home. Really?

As a recommendation from a few people, part of the moving out of pain and into life again is the emergence back into real life. So I decided to get out of town with some girlfriends. We spent a total of 24 hours in South Lake Tahoe with my friend saying "Hey, so if my tire goes flat, they are run flats, so we can still get home." Why she felt the need to say this, I will never know, but it seems to have jinx the occasion, because on the way home, precisely that happened, excluding the part about the run flat. Instead, 100 miles from home, I tried to fill up the tire with air (since the driver didn't know how) and it blew up in my face. I almost lost an eye. We spent the better part of Memorial Day entertaining a tow truck driver named Eric with stories of our two hours of drunkenness in high altitude SST.

Wednesday day was a bad day at work. Since my work load has been a little light, I decided to get some coffee. As I am leaving, I ran directly into the guy I had briefly dated before I met my ex (whom I left him for). I found out he works a few floors above me. Seriously? Later that day, a few of us decided to head out for happy hour. On my way there I happened into one of those guys that was a fling you wish you could forget. Sweet, 0-2. As I walk into Pyramid, I felt the blood drain from my face as I look at the bar and there he is, bald ass head and all. The ex. I sat down with my friends and took a moment to decide my next course of action: 1) drink copious amounts of alcohol and say something stupid later claiming innocence by intoxication, 2) walk up to him and hit in the face like a man (I prefer closed fisted to increase impact), 3) or wait and see if he noticed I was there, feigning an intensely amazing amount of happiness and joy. I took option D and got the hell out of there. Preserving sanity is always the best answer. As I walked away at a clipped pace, chain-smoking my way to my car, I couldn't help but think, I need a Radioflyer for this baggage.

It helps to laugh at the crappy things that happen. It also tends to put things in perspective. A few scenarios into my crazy jumbled attempt to find what fits all over again, there are a myriad of small and large failures, with a precious few successes in between. Somewhere in there a thought begins to form that maybe what worked before isn't going to work now. What I use to be able to return to isn't seeming to really do the job it did before. Partying like a typical 26 year old feels like putting on a shoe that's too tight. I can make it work for a few hours, but I'm going to pay for it the next day, and usually it comes at the cost of my dignity. Suzy-homemaker is great, until it's a question of the chocolate chip cookie baked to perfection, in front of me, or the gym. I have never been the one who can have flour on their face and manage to look "cute." I just look frantic.

The conundrum comes in realizing maybe my heart has known before my head wanted to accept the truth: once you leave home, you can never go back. It works in the literal as much as the figurative. Everything that once was, I have begun to grow out of, and they aren't working anymore. I've been fighting it for a long time, probably even before the ex and I broke up. Back then it would have been courageous to leave and stay gone, now it looks a little less like courage and a little more like survival. How free will I ever feel, how peaceful will I ever really be, how much potential will I be able to live up to surrounded by people, places in a place that is a constant reminder of such messages. I wonder, for someone such as me, that hates change, that loves to return to what was comfortable before, that errors more on repetition and less on adventure, making the ultimate decision of not being able to fall back into comfortable discomfort may be the only option for true thriving rather than surviving.

Walking away from my ex, knowing I was making a choice to not return to the old in any way, putting it behind me, one step at a time, it was bitter sweet. He would never know I was there, he would never know I saw him and I was glad for it. I didn't want to know anything about him, I didn't want to see him or talk to him, I just wanted to preserve what healing I have had and keep moving one determined foot in front of the other.

And so that is what I did. And now I consider, may that be the case again? May I have to put one determined foot in front of the other and walk away from a past that haunts me? I'm not sure yet, but while I'm considering it, I'm going to piss off a few people again and bake some more.

Saturday living

For many, hope is a luxury they can do without. The here and now is enough. They sit in ivory towers, close enough to the heavens, there is no need for answers. What are questions worth when every desire and need is fulfilled? Suffering is so far from them, there is no wrestling, no urgency, no struggle to fight to comprehend. Their hands never dirty with the mud of grief, their tears never bear the bitterness of deep loss. They jump from lily-pad to lily-pad manipulating the stars to align. The world holds only the colors of predictability. They fight only for the control of their destinies, managing the day to day to serve their purposes. Smiles and laughter are easy, never a consequence for the colors of melancholy maroon, or navy need. They seem to be whole from birth to death, the ring masters taming circumstance.

I would give anything to know that feeling.

I've spent most of my days holding my breath from one crashing wave to the next, breaking the surface only to be sucked back under, tides taking me farther and farther from the shore of wealth. Most of the time I didn't even know I was truly drowning. I thought struggle, barely surviving, it all seemed so normal. Injustice was a far thought, more theory than reality. I always thought it would work out. It had to. There would be a moment when everything came together. I would get my due. One day... right? Blind and ignorant, I was so shocked when finally, I broke.

There is a moment when if you live hard enough, give deep enough, love with everything, believe with more than your soul and work to see only the good, something terrible will happen and every belief you have will break. Suddenly the bright lights of reality shine and somewhere deep inside, eyes open to the truth of life. Not everything is roses. Some do not have the fortune of hope as a luxury, but when that deep place finally breaks, hope is all you have left. It's Easter morning. Friday everything dies, but Sunday shows itself as new.

This hope, born of loss, evil, the processes of a world hell bent on it's own desires, this hope takes on something different. It moves from the ease of thoughtless "tomorrow" into the clinging desperation of now. Hope is not what it seems. This hope is violent. It is determined and justly angry. Friday it finds itself on a cross, gasping, wrasping out a weak yelp for vinegar water. It bleeds from flesh having been ripped, the world shaking with pain and rejection. It stares in the eyes of the executioner and begs for mercy only to be turned away, and still, it prays for those that stand and watch in morbid fascination. Victimized for a moment is born of giving yourself to the last drop, praying, unceasing in its belief that truth really will win. It recognizes how powerless it is to the heart of itself. It hopes for the sake of hope, only to be met with determined death.

Then, it gives up. It dies. The spirit is committed and acceptance comes in a strange sort of peace. It's an uncommon silence. A vacuum pulls the sound, the sights and you find yourself in a white room, no floor, no ceiling, suspended in some sort of neutral place.

This is when acceptance is most painful. You reconcile yourself that nothing is as it was and never will be again. You will never see the world the same, people the same, yourself the same. Every injustice, every moment of violation by every person you ever loved come rushing back in. In terrible moments of deep sadness, your heart becomes a real of past memories, the highlights being the ugly things. Every violation, betrayal, lie and selfishness inflicted by those you love rises back to the surface in amazing clarity. It's all the things you ignored, the truths you looked past the evil you willingly blinded yourself to. Cruel words, jokes, the very people you loved the most taking what they can from you, all the while, your foolish heart had been all too willing to give it over, assuming everyone has good intentions. So much trust betrayed. The bitterness that never seemed to be a struggle rises in the back of your throat like the bile the morning after partying too hard.

As you sit in the suspension, you wonder at the people around you. Why? I trusted you...

As it all crashes in so fast, so deep, every wound you seemed to escape all of the sudden sears you all the new. There is a deep loneliness that hits in those moments. Everyone you ever trusted, really they had never been trustworthy. They had never been the people you thought they were, it had never been the life you thought it was. You've spent a lifetime chasing ghosts. I empathize with Paul when the scales fell off. That must have been an awful moment. To face those he had probably loved, realizing the depths of their evil, to face himself in the depths of his, the world shattered into a million pieces.

Then a noise starts to pierce the silence. The neutral room fades as it takes you a moment to realize the noise that is pounding in your head is really your own scream. Rage pours forth in a torrent coming from places you didn't even know existed. You want to hit something, someone, to release an anger, a wrath that seems to have no end. It will never help though. No one hears the scream but you. Nothing will change this reality and this is the reality you have been avoiding your whole life. I never wanted to see the people I loved this way. I wanted them to be good, to be kind, to be just and loving. But they aren't and they most likely won't be changing anytime soon. That reality happens to be worse than anything. In this moment, there is no justice. The youth I carried around, the hopeful belief in people, it has died along with my delusions of things one day magically working out. No one will be able to fix this. Nothing will give me my years back, there is nothing that can be done about the scars that will be left behind.

It's Saturday and Sunday has not yet come. In this moment, though youth has died, there is another truth that starts to take root. Though no one can fix any of it, now that truth has been revealed, the more important question becomes, "what now?" Piece by piece, the world has to move on and where I fit into it becomes paramount. What do I believe? Who is trustworthy? What does it look like to live in a world that truly is filled with evil everyday?

Who is really going to win?

Will it be those that sought to only use others as a footstool? Will it be the evil that steals trust that brings deep love? Will it be the ugly that seeks to eclipse the beauty?

See, most of life is lived on Saturday. Before the day break Sunday morning, before the real hope can be fulfilled, most of us only know Saturday. We are somewhere in between the death and resurrection. We haven't seen the empty tomb, but there is around the same area that was torn apart by the betrayal and revelation, something takes root. It mingles with the pain, the grief, the loss, the anger and wrath, but it's there. It's the quiet decision to not break. A solidarity begins to take hold, a silent determination, lonely breath into nothingness as you release a righteous "fuck you." To every person, place and thing that has taken what wasn't theirs, to every lover that sold you out for themselves, to every sibling that trampled on you for their pain, for every friend that betrayed you and every pastor that put their own belief's ahead of your heart, to every moment when I naively placed my heart, my loyalty, my trust, my hope, at the foot of someone who walked right past.

A deep satisfaction comes over as the awareness that finally, this may be my chance to break away, to find something different, to be everything I couldn't before.... me.

Saturday is when hope is needed. Sunday it is fulfilled, but Saturday, that's when it counts. In this moment there are no empty tombs in my life. Everything is wrapped in gauze, rigid with death. But that matters not. Death is only a part of this. If the tomb remains empty, fine. If not, fine as well. Justice will find me. Somehow, someway, it will find me. My hope is not in circumstances, it is not in people, in what seems to be, but instead, it is what will be.

In the mirror image of my Father, though it is dim, I have at least the vestiges of His fingerprints. Determined to the end of me, I will be a part of justice.

For all of the ways my heart has seen injustice, for all of the ways I have lost, for all of the things taken stolen, for the days when compassion was unseen, when love was unreturned, when my failures spelled ridicule, when shame was written on me as truth, when I had no voice, I will do what I have to bring heaven to earth. I am all that I am, limited, finite and foolish, but I have been marred, scarred and forgotten. I have been forsaken and disdained and for the life of me, I will never do it to another. I have to believe in the overcoming of all that is unfair and evil.

I may not have been born in a mud-hut only to die at 13, but I know the feeling of powerlessness, of feeling subject to those around and never comprehending why they treat you the way they do. I know the deep desire to only be a pleasure to those you love and have them turn on you as if you are a burden. I know the feeling of handing your heart to those you love only to have them reject it, and it's a different sort of death. No one should have to pay just because they were born in a certain place, incurred certain wounds, or loved without regard to themselves. When the innocent are overburdened, when people are victimized by those that are meant to love and protect them, when hearts that are fresh and hopeful are crushed, it's not okay. It will never be okay and I will never believe my Father is okay with it.

This hope that is now in me has nothing to do with a certain kind of life, wealth or love, but it depends on something bigger, more powerful, deeper and more real. It's based on the belief that Jesus was a revolutionary that would rage into battle for someone's heart in violent passion. Heaven and earth can blend in a magnificent way when there is a vision beyond the circumstance. I hear His words now, His parables and I see a man filled with violent hope. Things can be different, the world can be a better place, but it starts with seeing the battle as a fight against that which would steal the beautiful things: innocence, love, trust, honesty and faith. I can see why He would want to throw those that hurt children to drown. Childlike faith is to be desired not because it's blind, but because it is determined. It is simple, but powerful, the way a child loves their mother. No matter how terrible that mother, the child will always love. It doesn't see her failures, but the child will always cultivate the moments of love.

Faith and hope cultivate the moments of beauty in life and dwell on those. Saturday living is in seeing the world as it is, but marching on. In a quote from one of my favorite bands, it's having the heart not to lose it. Before Sunday arrives, Saturday means choosing to bring justice to a world that violates the innocent. It's recognizing the terrible, feeling the wounds, breaking and dying and being honest and angry about that which would anger the Father, but it's believing He will right it. Justice will win. It won on Sunday once, and it will win again. Everyday there are little victories, there are empty tombs everywhere. Perseverance is just about attaining something, it's about being part of the effort.

Until Sunday....

The Container Store

I just finished reading Sex God by Rob Bell. It was fabulous. And terrible. He has a way of writing where there is less black and white, more grey, but at the same time, it's more clear, more defined, more confident than most of the writers I have read lately. It's a short book, took me all of four days to read. The last chapter of the book is not so much a finish, has a hanging sentence. I was so suprised it was the end, it took me a moment to realize it.

I guess that makes sense though. He was talking about how life is risky and messy and unpredictable and that the real question is whether or not we believe God is good. Then it ended. What else can you say, really?

I walked by the Container Store the other day and thought: I wish I could buy containers to organize my mind and life. Then I realized, I already had those containers and in reality, maybe that was the problem. The ways I had thought about life, God, myself, people, the way I had defined them, explained them, expected them to be, that was what gets me in trouble now.

I related to God, to people, to myself based on a set of definitions and all I can think now is, I wish I didn't have those boxes.

What would it be like to view God not from a picture painted by men, but by no one but Him? What would it look like? Would it be compassionate, or harsh? Would it be black and white, or full of color? Would He understand the difficulties of the life each of us face, or would he just be frustrated we weren't handling it correctly? The limited can only wonder at the limitless.

How would I paint myself? A mountain in front of me named all of the ways I fail, the doubts I raise, the questions I ask that seem too demanding, too unfair, too selfish, me at the foot of it, a confused and frustrated look on my face, always wondering how to scale the granite edges.

I subject myself to levels of failure and success everyday. Was I a good enough Christian? Was I a pretty enough girl? Did I work hard enough at work, did I say the wrong thing, did I do the wrong thing, and what was it so I can never do it again. An endless maze, working as hard as I can to stand up to the endless do's and dont's that seem to come from left and right field, catching me off guard. A constant state of panic as I try to wind my way up a mountain to who knows where.

Is that what the God that created me would want?

I had an epiphany a few weeks ago. If I believe that God created me and that God is perfect, that He makes no mistakes, what does that say about all of the stupid things I do? How do they fit in with His perfection when I seem to fall so short, struggling to survive a messy world. I took comfort in realizing, if God is perfect, than His creating me only supports His perfection. He can do nothing outside of good, so me living, breathing, just being, somehow that is part of Him and thus I am helping God be more... God. He would be somehow incomplete, less God, without me being me. Like a mother is somehow less a mother without her child. Not that she doesn't have all of the trappings, but that without that part of her within the dynamic, relationship and existence, she is less of what she would have been. God can't be that though, so everything He does is perfect, planned, purposed and part of Him.

How than, does it serve His perfection for me to place myself on the endless cycle of whether or not I measure up? What if that's not what it is about at all?

If I stopped capitalizing refernces to God, am I less faithful to Him? If I decide to go to the gym instead of church, am I deteriorating Him? If I ask the hard questions, break a few rules and struggle through living a life somewhere below 6 inches deep, does that mean I am not as good as others? Do my mistakes determine me, or does my bad attitude, or my wrestling with bitterness, do those somehow make me less, or make my faith tainted? Or, in a beautiful interruption of the predictable, do they make me more of exactly what I am supposed to be: part of His plan, refusing to settle with definitions created by man?

I will admit, I am a sinner. In my fight with the demons in my head that linger from the past, I reach out for the first thing to comfort me, to ease the pain, to relieve the tension in my soul. Sometimes I reach for things that only make it worse, sometimes I find the things that speak to my soul, but choose to look at my relationship with Jesus the way I would look at a marriage. It's a statement of fact, choice, relationship and commitment. He chose me, and I chose Him, and that's about it. I don't know what tomorrow will bring, I don't know how much harder it will get, I don't know how many more stupid things I will do, mistakes I will make, ways I will stumble, things that will push me down, but I know this: I'm not going anywhere. Between Him and I, we are on the same team, partners, two that have committed to each other to be there through the thick and thin. I'm not giving up on him, no matter how confusing, frustrating, angry and unfair he may seem at times. And my hope is that I will learn, I will begin to trust, that He is in the same position with me. I can't offer Him perfection, but I can offer Him the same thing I can offer any other person I love: me.

When all is said and done, it has never been the things someone has said or done that has hurt the most, the thing that hurts the most is when they give up and walk away. Somehow that just highlights every other painful memory adding the final insult of complete rejection. I can forgive just about anything, but when someone severs a relationship, what can I do? That is the worst pain of all.

I can't say I won't lie, cheat, steal or something else bad, but I can say I will never give up. I will always seek reconciliation, understanding, intimacy, communication and effort. I will always fight to the death. When I can offer nothing else, I will at least give you the thing that matters to me the most: committment. I don't give up on those I love, and I will never give up on my faith and relationship with Him.

When every other container has been revealed as what it is, nothing more than an empty attempt to define and predict, the only one that makes sense is the one that means the most: sticking around.

Family Ties

For the record, I was right. I said some would have a hard time with me adjusting my perspective, but even I wasn’t prepared for what I would encounter. In a short sighted prophecy, I was unaware of the truth I was speaking. Heart wrenchingly so.
When the scales began to fall of regarding one aspect of my life, it was like seeing colors I hadn’t ever seen before, tastes I hadn’t ever tasted, feelings I hadn’t ever felt. But unlike the blessing this is when you fall in love, it was an awakening I still wish I had never had to face. The tastes were bitter, the colors ugly, the feelings painful and awkward. It was a second birth into the rude reality of betrayal, evil for no reason, loss with no rhyme, pain with no purpose. It was a life I didn’t want to have to know, it was easier to assume everything would work out, people were basically good and I would be loved no matter what. In a basic word: denial.
I had been raised in a family, a school, a community, and life where denial is the unspoken truth. Narcissism rules, there are those that get to have feelings and those that don’t. There is a distinct line between “have’s” and have not’s” of relational power and manipulation and I have always been a “have not.” Example: I was 13 when my first nephew was born. Now it goes without saying that my nephews are my treasures. I remember waking with them at night and feeding them and changing them and all of the amazing moments of their lives and I am moved to tears when I see them succeeding and growing and developing. I feel very maternal towards them. And why wouldn’t I? I was there for their birth, for their first steps and words, their very moments of personhood. What a treasure it has been, but that treasure did come at a price. The price for me, was an adolescence. It was my place in my family. They came in, and at the tender age of 13, I went out. I have no resentment of this fact, except that it has never been talked about. My family, my sister in particular, if I bring any of this up, will call me selfish, silly, or immature and mean. My loss is met with anger, a sense of betrayal and great shame. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Subconsciously I have always known my place. I am to be seen and not heard. I am a stage-hand in the second act of someone else’s play. Mostly, to be real, any one of my family members or old friends. No wonder I am so damn loud. The only attention I got in my family was when I wasn’t giving them what they wanted or needed. I was selfish for not babysitting more or for having soccer tournaments on the weekend. When I was 13 I had mono. My family didn’t find out for a year. They thought I was faking. I still don’t sleep because I’m so stressed at night remembering waking up in the middle of the night, listening for the boys because my mom was working and my sister was wearing ear-plugs.
So I found narcissistic people to be with. Friends that treated me the same way. I remember a friend I moved in with after I divorced was mad at me because I was depressed. This same friend betrayed a confidence of mine once, and when I found out got mad at me for getting mad at her. Another friend once yelled at me for 25 minutes because I wasn’t a good enough friend to her when she lived in southern California and it was the year after I got married. That same friend would later move into my old apartment, keep most of my things, including my bed, couch, pots pans, knives, TV, coffee table, lamps, linens and towels along with a myriad of other items and only pay me a portion of the $1000.00 we had agreed to. And it was my fault.
All of these things came to a head this last week when I got in a fight with my sister. I was telling her about a break-through I had in my life and heart, and because it had something to do with someone she had once known, she flipped a lid. This was a significant moment for me in my life and she flew off the handle, ostracized me from my family, shamed me and proceeded to find every way she could to humiliate me, get my family involved and destroy me. That was the last fucking straw.
One question: are you kidding me?
No wonder I am struggling so much. I have spent 25 years surrounded by people that could care less about me unless I am somehow fulfilling their need to be center stage. I am nothing more than a prop, much less a person with a heart, feelings, needs, desires, goals, hopes and dreams.
At 26 I am struck by the very sad reality that I have no clue what I want, how to define myself, or who I am because I have never been allowed to. There is a sick little sad realization the deep instinctual anger someone feels when someone hurts them that I have never been allowed to voice, is going to going to explode one day and I’m slightly afraid of what it is going to look like. Although, I now understand my dark fantasies of beating the crap out of people that have betrayed me more. And ironically, I feel a little less guilty about them. They probably deserve it.
No one has ever expected me to do anything more than them, to have anything more than them, to be anything more than them. I was never the pretty one, the smart one, the nice one, I was always just filler space. A funny wise-crack every now and then. Fuck that.
I guess now I understand why there is such a big gap between the person I want to be and the person I am. I may understand these things, but I can do nothing about the scars they have left. All I can do now is figure out what I was supposed to have known all along. Heart breakingly I now realize this will never happen until I start to redefine me based on me and start stopping certain other factors…. Such as the crappy treatment I have received to this point.
It sucks realizing your family is a dangerous place, that the sister you idolized really isn’t that nice, that the father you thought of as your hero cares more about someone else with no relation, than you. It’s hard to realize, I am nothing but a support system to dysfunctional systems and I will be the one to pay when I leave it.
But there is no other choice. If I am to thrive in a way that is more than just survive, I am going to have to keep jumping off cliffs. I may hate what I was born into, but either I learn to move past it, or I will spend the rest of my living days dying under it, never really feeling what is supposed to be mine.
Hopefully, as I learn to capture some of the heartbreak that went on under the surface, giving myself away will become easier, rather than painful. Hopefully, as I disengage of shaming people, the shame I wear will come off, a piece at a time.