Living a Story

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

I am Grieving

Feeling sad this morning.  I am in the process of grieving.  In the process of reconnecting to my childhood.  Beginning to see the needs I had that were not met.  I needed to be loved.  Seen.  Understood.  Accepted.  I needed to feel like I belonged.  I did not feel like I belonged.  Up until about a year ago, I felt like I didn’t belong anywhere.  I felt different.  Out of place.  Misunderstood.  I felt tainted.  Like there was something wrong with me that kept people from being able to love me.  I had a lot of people around me while I was growing up.  I had my family, my father’s church, my school, but I felt like I didn’t belong in any of those places.  I wondered what was wrong with me that made me so different.  It made me hate myself.  It made me wish I wasn’t alive.  It made me feel empty.  I was filled with the deepest sense of loneliness.  Feeling like I was completely alone and misunderstood on this planet and like I would be completely alone and misunderstood wherever I went after death also.  It filled me with fear because I thought that even in death there would not be an escape from this isolation and loneliness.

I think these feelings of being different, misunderstood, and like I didn’t belong are the roots of some of my suicidal thoughts.  I think feeling like I didn’t belong anywhere on this planet made me not want to be on this planet.  It made me feel like a mistake.  Like god or whoever created me messed up and I shouldn’t be here.  It made me want to correct his mistake and remove myself from this place.

I am adult now.  I have friends now.  I have a place where I belong.  But I cannot shake the thoughts and feelings I had as a child.  I cannot shake my beliefs about myself and the world that were created during my most formative years.  Do I belong here?  Am I loveable?  Am I worth it?  I’m feeling sad this morning.  Because I am remembering how I felt as a child.  I am remembering the isolation.  The loneliness.  The feelings of rejection.  I am not alone now.  But I am grieving the years that I was.  I am reconnecting with that child.  Learning that it was not her fault.  But as I reconnect with her my sadness grows.  Because no child deserves to grow up feeling that way.  No child deserves to feel like there is nowhere they belong.  So today, I am grieving.  Grieving for the child who grew up believing she was all alone.

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.