Feelings

“Sometimes my feelings are so hot that I have to take the pen and put them out on paper to keep them from seeing me afire inside....." Mark Twain

I used to be afraid of my feelings. I never knew what to do with them. I would feel someone's pain.....my pain....someone's hurt....my hurt....someone's need....my need and become overwhelmed.  The feelings would grab onto me and hang on....screaming to be released. I didn't know how. I had no idea. I just knew all the emotions churned inside and drove me crazy.  

I tried getting rid of them.....numbing them out...throwing up...ripping my arms....shooting up....anything to not feel....anything to silence their intensity. When I couldn't quiet them....I turned on myself angry for even having them. 

Growing up...it wasn't ok to express anything.....especially fear and sadness. When I started to cry....my parents shoved their fists in my face....threatening I better not cry or they would hurt me. I learned to hold everything inside. I learned to not feel....or at least that's what I thought I was doing. I think though....I just numbed everything out with all the addictions.  

It's taken me a long time to learn feelings are neither right or wrong. They just are. They're there. They come and they go. I don't need to be afraid of them.

I've learned healthy ways to release them....like running in the woods. Feeling the pain in my legs grounds me...and being in nature is soothing.  It's hard in the winter because I can't run....so I write instead....writing  from the inside out....writing from that place where my heart speaks....where all the emotions seem to cluster. 

When I need that physical release I work out with the wii or goofing around with my girls. It's not the same as being outside and running but it's better than hurting myself. 

Feelings - acknowledging them...embracing them has helped me in connecting back to myself and others.

Braver than you Think

"Promise me you'll always remember; you're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem and smarter than you think." A.A.Milne - Christopher Robin to Pooh

I remember being really stoned. My eyes had gone all weird and I couldn't focus. I felt off balance, dizzy and separate from myself. Almost like I was on the outside looking in. I was having problems walking. I had no idea where I was, how I got there or how to get out and go home. I remember falling, crashing into a wall and hitting my head. Some old lady popped out and started screaming at me. I had no idea what she was saying. Then the sound of sirens and the ambulance....... Life was a constant crisis. Constant chaos.

I kept saying I wanted it all to stop. I wanted it to be normal. I didn't want to do the drugs. At least that's what I said and even as I said it, I was shooting up and ripping my arms open with razor blades and jagged rocks. Even as I said it, I threw up if I ate even a small bite of something. In my mind, I wasn't allowed to be free. I wasn't worthy. No amount of wanting or needing made a difference. No threats from any authority could bring about the freedom I said I wanted.

I needed to stay high. I needed to hurt myself. I needed to throw up. I needed to not feel or think. Especially to not think. The images of what happened tortured me. Anything to numb out from feeling the terror, the shame, the pain - I needed that more. And then God touched me. He broke through the torment in my head, in my soul - He took away the 14 year drug addiction. The memories though, the pain and shame and feelings of extreme worthlessness - they were still there. I continued to throw up and hurt myself. I still needed to numb out.

I felt guilty. I wondered if God would kill me because I was destroying myself. I screamed at Him to do it already. I dared Him to take my life, but He wouldn't. Years went by. I lived two lives. I looked ok. People thought I was fun, happy, Christian. I wasn't. When people said, God is in control, I knew my life was completely out of control.

I started writing. Then running. In the woods, alone - He whispered to me. 'Face the pain. Don't run from it.' I never wanted to face it. I never wanted to admit it. I couldn't. To admit it meant it happened. I didn't want to believe it happened. But it did.

All I know - God is my strength - my anchor for freedom. The one thing in my life that gives me the courage to do what I otherwise can't. He brought me to the point of being ready to confront what I never could. He allowed me to use the cutting, the throwing up, the hiding to stay alive. Cause that's what it did. It kept me alive. It helped me survive until I was ready to face what happened.

All I know -is in His presence, I feel at peace. In the woods I feel His gentle touch and hear His whispers of comfort and there I gain the courage to come home and not use things that hurt me.

I want to make a difference. I want what I lived to help someone else find their freedom. Maybe that's why God let me live.

Hunger for Love and Acceptance

"Hunger is not only for a piece of bread, but for love. Homelessness is not only not having a home, but for being rejected and unwanted." Mother Theresa

For years I walked around with a profound sense of homesickness, an inner ache, a desperate yearning to go home. I felt it deep inside my gut and for years, I couldn't shake that twisting knotting in the pit of my stomach. Nothing took it away, - not relationships, not material things, not drugs, - nothing. I think now it was a hunger, a ravenous hunger for love and acceptance.

Everything I had been taught, told me I was nothing, worthless, bad. Images constantly rolled over in my head of my father spitting at me when he was in his rages, calling me names - garbage, retarded, worthless, - picking up furniture and throwing it at me, punching and slapping me and telling me it hurt him more than it hurt me; .....my mother beating me with a stick, teasing me, telling me I was stupid, an idiot, I couldn't talk right, walk right, breath right....I often wondered what was wrong with me that they hated me so much.

I wandered the streets, shooting dope, sometimes three and four times a day. I didn't care. My friend who I shot up kept telling me I wasn't shooting to get high, I was shooting to kill myself. He was right. I believed I had no right to exist.

One day I was in a fire. It was my fault. I accidently dropped the lit match I used to heat up the dope. My dog saved me. She grabbed me with her teeth and pulled me onto the balcony. A cop who had been looking out for me, heard what happened and came to see me at the hospital. He bought me clothes and when I was discharged, rented a place for us to move into together. He tried to help me. He told me over and over he loved me but I couldn't feel it. I didn't understand what he was saying. The amount of self-loathing I had was stronger than his love.

While I was with him, I was pulled into the rapist's house. He held me there for six months. He told me he loved me but he wouldn't let me go. And he hurt me. He hurt me really badly. Somehow I survived. I don't know how but I did. I never told anyone what happened or where I had been. I thought I deserved it. I thought it was my fault.

Then God touched me; cut through the pain, broke the chains holding me so tight. He took away the drug addiction but not the deep ache inside. That didn't go away. I couldn't let people get close. They would see what I knew, - they would see how worthless I was.

God never gave up on me. His love was so gentle. Some days I didn't care if He killed me. On those days when I felt wild, out of control, - when I ripped razor blades down my arms, or punched my head to make the memories stop, or held my head over the toilet throwing up over and over and over because I didn't believe I had the right to eat or live, - He was there, beside me, waiting. He never let me go. He waited. He stayed. Some days, I begged Him to kill me, to let me go but He didn't. He waited patiently. He waited until I was ready.

I live with gratitude, - gratitude that God didn't listen to me, that He let me live, that somehow He freed me.

I owe my life to Him. He broke through the emptiness and the pain and helped me to feel His love. I feel it. I feel it all the time. That feeling of homesickness is gone. That sense I'm worthless, garbage, - gone.

I want to help other people find freedom. I want them to know what I found out, that there is hope and there is freedom and God's love can break through anything and redeem it. Most of my friends have no idea what I lived. I don't want them to know but something inside me is compelling me to tell, - I think it's my love for God, my gratitude to Him. I need to tell.

Overcoming Hatred

"Hatred can be overcome only by love." Mahatma Ghandi

For years I walked around with so much hate and anger in me. I hated what my parents did to me. I hated the way they shamed me, beat me, made me feel less than human. And I hated the system that claimed they could help me. They were like my parents,- shaming, punishing, bullying.

I was arrested for drug possession. My social worker convinced the judge to let me do the time on a locked pysch ward instead of prison. Being on that ward,- that place of misery pushed me further into myself and broke me even more. Their methods of forcing me to conform were brutal. The chemical and physical restrains took away any shred of dignity I may have had. My brain became dull from the medications, the fight in me subdued, but the hatred grew. Hatred for them, for me, and for everyone who had hurt me.

One time they strapped me to a bed by my arms and legs for some minor infraction. They kept me there for two days like a chained animal, allowing me up only to go to the washroom. At mealtimes, they wouldn't untie my arms. A staff came in to feed me. Humiliated; I refused to eat. I hated them. I despised them. My anger grew. I wanted to hurt them, punish them in some way like they were doing to me.

Instead, I cut into my flesh, trying to rip myself apart, desperate to pull out the bad, the part of me everyone kept telling me was horrible and wrong. Scars formed on my body, but I didn't care, because they were already in my heart and soul and mind.

Hatred and anger became a way of life. It drove me. It fueled the fight in me. I turned on myself with a vengeance. My arms were full of bruises and marks from biting myself and cutting my skin open. The blood oozing out was my salvation, the thing that released the building tension inside me. My blood, a proof of life, that I was still alive.

Blood? That's what finally turned my life around. The blood. His blood. The blood He shed for me so I wouldn't have to hurt myself anymore. Like me, He too was beaten, shamed, ridiculed. He never opened his mouth. He never fought back. That amazed me. How could He not? They laughed at Him, mocked Him, and He said nothing, nothing except, "Father, forgive them...."

Hearing that, my anger began to subside. Thoughts of revenge slowly became thoughts of forgiveness. It's hard to forgive, to let go of the brutality of what some people did - but to not forgive is worse.

I want my life to reflect His love. He loved me when I couldn't love myself. He loved me when I was wild, out of control and bent on self-destruction. I don't fully get how He did that, but I am so grateful for the gentleness of His love that broke the chains that kept me stuck.