Living a Story

"All the darkness in the world cannot drown out the light of a single match."

Turning the Light Off

Sometimes the moment I turn the light off to go to bed is the hardest part of my day.  Because it is then that I feel truly alone.  Alone with my thoughts.  Alone with my memories.  Alone with my feelings.  In the dark.  And I know that I will be alone in the dark for the next 6-8 hours.  When I turn the light off to go to bed I know that everyone around me will be going to bed soon too, if they haven’t already.  I know that there will be no one to text or call if I need something.  I know that finding things to distract myself from my overwhelming thoughts and feelings is a lot harder to do in the middle of the night than it is when the sun is out.  And as I lie there in the dark I start to become afraid of what will happen when I turn the light back on in the morning.  What will the day hold?  What unexpected things could happen?  Will I be ok?  Will I make it through the day to turn the light off again tomorrow night?

I lie there, snuggled under my covers, arms wrapped tightly around my pillow, grateful that I have made it through the day and also fearful that I won’t make it through the next.  Life and death are very real to me.  They become very real when you have spent years battling suicidal thoughts.  Although I have spent more nights than I can count hoping that I would not wake up in the morning, I now fear that I will not wake up in the morning.  I fear that I will close my eyes to go to sleep and that I will forever be lost in the darkness and loneliness.  So sometimes, turning the light off to go to bed is the hardest part of my day.  Will I make it to see the light again in the morning?  Will I survive the hours of darkness that I know lie ahead of me?

I have spent years feeling smothered by darkness.  Feeling a heavy cloud following me wherever I went.  I have since been learning how to free myself from this grip of darkness.  The heaviness has started to shift.  But every time I turn the light off I am afraid that I will get caught in its grip again.

I want to FEEL Loved

I’ve been realizing something.  I talk a lot about wishing I could feel the love that people have towards me.  I talk a lot about the sadness I’ve been feeling recently and how I am trying to allow myself to feel it.  Emotions are new to me.  They are something I disconnected from a very long time ago.  And as I am allowing them to come up they are very uncomfortable.  They are foreign to me.  Unfamiliar.  Scary.  It is hard to allow myself to feel them without running.  Hard to acknowledge that they are there.  I am afraid that if I let myself feel them I will become lost in them.  I am afraid they will take over my life.  It has been a risk trying to let myself feel again.  Anger is still terrifying to me but sadness, sadness I am trying to allow myself to feel.  Not all at once but in little moments here and there.

This morning I was feeling very frustrated with myself for doubting my friends’ love for me again.  There is evidence for it everywhere and still I question if it’s real.  But then I started thinking.  I want to FEEL loved.  How will I ever feel it if I continue to stay disconnected from my emotions?  I think feeling loved scares me more than feeling sad and even more than feeling angry.  It is so unfamiliar to me.  But just like I am starting to allow myself to feel sad in certain moments, I want to try to start allowing myself to feel loved.  Not all at once.  But maybe in little moments here and there.  Maybe, over time, I’ll start to become more comfortable with it.  Maybe I will start to believe that the love around me is real.  Authentic.  So I will start slowly.  A little bit at a time.  Trying to allow myself to feel the love that is around me.

There is Always a Way

What is it that I’m afraid of?  Oh, I’m afraid of many, many things.  I think, more than anything though, I am afraid of being alone.  I have this deep wound in my heart.  It goes all the way to the core of who I am.  I’m not sure exactly how this wound got there.  I think it slowly grew deeper and deeper as the years wore on.  One hurt piling on top of the next.  I didn’t know what to do with this hurt and so I pushed it deeper and deeper.  The result is that I have this all-encompassing wound that I am not sure what to do with.  My beliefs about myself come from this wound.  As well as my beliefs about other people and the world.  Beliefs that nothing is safe.  That I am unlovable.  That I am going to end up alone.  These things aren’t true.  And yet the pain from my past is so loud, making them seem true.  I felt alone as a child.  It felt like nothing was safe.  I felt like no one loved me.  And I have carried these thoughts and feelings with me into adulthood, even though I am safe now and loved now.  It seems that no matter how much evidence there is that people care about me now, I cannot believe it or accept it.  And so I am still feeling unloved.

What am I afraid of?  I am afraid that I will never be loved.  Or rather, that I will never FEEL loved.  How do I put my walls down?  How do I let their love in?  I haven’t figured this out yet.  What if I walk around for the rest of my life feeling unloved because I do not know how to accept the love of those around me?  These are the questions that haunt me.

There is a way.  There is always a way.  I will figure it out.  I will learn how to love myself.  I will learn how to put my walls down.  To let them in.  I am brave.  I am strong.  I will keep going.  There is always a way.