my mind is screaming

This is the first time in a long time that I have felt such a desperation to write. There is no direction I am intending to go, no frustration I am trying to sort out. I simply, for one moment, need there to be no filter, no restraint, no pressure to be something or someone that I am not. I think I have carried hope for such a long time, believing that things will one day be different. However deep down I know it is not the kind of different that will ever happen. I have longed for there to be a day when suddenly I find what has been missing. The wound inside my heart is healed with no scars to show. Relationships are easy. Joy is found in abundance. Food is the furthest thing I am focusing on. It is the idealized depiction of a world that could be... but one that had become as easy to believe in as unicorns and mermaids... as there ever being perfection in every aspect of who I am.

I can't help but think its not supposed to be this way. I know that in the garden so long ago humanity became separated from the life we were created to live... separated from the one we were created to abide in. But everyday I see people who are living in this world and they are alive. They are not weighed down with anxiety and depression and fear of everyone and everything. They aren't overwhelmed by the idea of change and paralyzed in the midst of it. I meet people who enjoy life and seem to have peace in the confidence of our maker. And I wonder to myself, why can't I? I think the easy thing to do would be to turn to my past and place all responsibility on what has been done to me... but I just can't do that and actually believe it to be true. So its actually easy for me to take a can of spray paint and cover over all the pictures in the story of my life. I want so desperately to believe that my stories are nothing but lies and ploys for attention and excuses for failing to live a normal life. I want the sole problem to be me... that I have done something to deserve to feel this way or that I have brought this upon myself... because if the problem lies in my sanity and my behavior then I can fix it. Lets say I am a liar and I lie to everyone I meet. And lets say the punishment for that is extreme anxiety or fear... then the insanity will only last as long as I am bad... which means there isn't permanent damage, you know? I can change my behavior. I can be a better person. I can love deeper, serve more, encourage better. But lets say for argument sake something did happen. The abuse was real... then what. I can't take that away. I can't erase the damage that did to my heart and my mind. I would be abandoned with the memories and remain at the mercy of another person. I would be shattered, in a state that can never be flawlessly put back together. Millions of little pieces glued side by side, hoping to reconstruct something that resembles that life I once knew. But everything inside is different and the person staring back at me in the mirror is a stranger. I try to be better, just obviously not hard enough.

I know there are people who are able to find healing. There are people who bounce back and are able to resume life...often times being changed for the better by what they have endured. But I don't know if I have the strength to keep believing that for myself. I am so frustrated by how hard this transition has been for me. Every thought I have is intensified by anxiety and fear and it steals away joy, contentment, moments with my family. They say to stop freaking out and to just calm down but what does that even mean? When I feel like I am being swallowed alive by a life that is headed in an opposite direction of where I want to go. I feel like what I wants doesn't even matter. I feel like I am getting advice from everyone around me telling me about how good the direction I am heading in will be. I feel like I am screaming at the top of my lungs telling everyone I am going the wrong way and that this isn't what I want and I honestly feel like it doesn't matter. Like when I open my mouth nothing comes out... its like I am living in a nightmare where I am crying and falling apart and everyone somehow sees me smiling and happy. Outwardly I appear to be doing the right things but in all reality on the inside I feel like I am being tortured...like I am watching my greatest fears being lived out right before my eyes and no one except me sees a thing.

In reality the reason no one can hear me is because I actually am not saying anything. I am not screaming, but instead I am saying the right things at the right times... trying desperately to be the person I want to be. I kept living out the definition of insanity, trying harder and harder to turn into the person I pretend to be, and getting stuck in the same place I have been for the last 15 years. It isn't something anyone else has put on to me...but its this brokenness that so many days I don't believe I will ever live without. Moving is hard. It takes months, sometimes years to establish a new life. I have been here for a month. But I feel like I am drowning. I feel like the need is now. I feel like the world is slipping through my fingers and I am doing my best to hold on. But much like sand it slips through the cracks in my life and before I know it there is too little that remains to get back what I have lost.

I don't know what comes next. I don't know how to try and put a positive spin on how I am feeling. I do know the truth is that there is hope. That change takes time. And that there is a love that can heal the deepest wound. I pray for the strength to embrace, to trust, and to lose myself in my maker, so that one day I can honestly say, I am free.