I often times wonder if I create drama or if drama is the result of my lack of boundaries combined with my genuine attempts to please the people I love. I keep waiting for the day when life will feel ordinary. I keep waiting for the moment when I won't feel like I am starting over and turning a crisis into a well rounded manageable life. I so desperately want to be in any other place than I am so I start down a new road, hoping it will lead to the peace, joy, or normalcy I long for. However what happens more often is that I end up stuck in a situation I am not ready or equipped to handle. I feel trapped in a world where everything moves in slow motion...where life is walked with twenty pounds of bricks stacked on my shoulders. I feel heavy. Everywhere I look there are questions I don't have the answer to and I feel like a fish out of water...time is ticking and with each passing second there is an increase in desperation. The lack of oxygen is burning my lungs and every choice gets less and less thought out...because every choice is based on my need to exist instead of my need to make the correct choice.
Ben spent almost a week here in Nashville with me. I dropped him off at the airport on Wednesday night and sobbed the whole way home. I wasn't sure why i was crying. I didn't know if it was because of the fear of losing him or the sadness of not seeing him for another 8 weeks. Perhaps I was crying over the illusion being gone that he would bring me the happiness I have been missing for so long... or that with him everything would feel right. Whatever it was, pain gripped my body like the summer heat that burns your skin after extended time in direct sunlight. I am terrified. I swore a long time ago that I would never let myself love like this again. I would never give someone the ability to crush me with a word or abandon me by walking away. I would set better boundaries and be in control of every relationship in my life. The funny thing is that love, true love, isn't something that can be controlled. I look at the things in front of me and wonder what it would be like to only do the things I really wanted to do. I wouldn't be going to Disney world with work next month. I wouldn't be working weekends or nights. I wouldn't be seeing a dietitian or struggling with eating. I would be furthering my education. I would be getting my degree. I would be teaching or speaking or loving deeply...I would feel hope.
What happens when the people you love and need the most in your life are on two different sides of the country. How do you make the right decision when the decision to move could throw everything I have worked for off balance...and yet it could also start putting all the pieces into order. How do I move for a relationship that could possibly end in just friendship... and yet has the possibility of marriage. How do I face a past while living among the people who were a part of it. How do I decide between being near the one person who I actually trust, the one person who actually knows me... and my family and boyfriend? Will I ever recover? Will I ever be free? This "drama" that surrounds me battles for my life. Abuse. Sickness. Lack of boundaries. It all adds up to exhaustion and yet it all feels like I am making such a bigger deal out of things than needed. I look around me at the people in my life who are concerned about such normal things...and I can't help but wonder if I am the one creating all the energy around the crazy decisions and struggles I face everyday. How could this all be so real? But even if that were true...even if all this was a figment of my imagination and something I have created to distract or attain attention or support or whatever one would make something up for...even if I took all of it away the sadness would still remain. It's like trying to wake up from a dream while you are still half conscious...you drift in and out of sleep returning to the same pretend course of events that are being strung together in your mind. I want to wake up. I want to shake the heaviness from my shoulders and feel the lightness of walking free. But how do you wake up from something that you aren't sure is a dream? How do you keep pressing on even when you aren't sure there is light on the other side of the tunnel? I know its worth it. I know anything is worth risking the known in order to experience a life I have only dreamed of knowing...even with all of its ups and downs and imperfections.
So it all comes back to being courageous. Staying sick is weak. Staying sick and not chancing the harder option...living life as an adult in a world that could throw anything back in your face...that takes nothing more than just getting by and letting the rest of the world take care of you. Recovery isn't for the light hearted. Recovery isn't for those who want to be taken care of and pacified for their entire lives. Recovery isn't for those who run away or back down when faced with challenges and insecurities. Walking in freedom means looking at all the shit of life and saying I won't back down. You will not win. I will not be contained to a life of sickness and depression. I was made for more. I was not made to just survive... I was created for a life of soaring into the dreams God has placed within me. So I walk into the unknown with tears and fear in my eyes...longing for the day when joy will be my strength. But for today, I will say, I will not give up. I will keep fighting.
