Faded Hope

“This is why I love Rachel Held Evans: Writing, like Faith, Means Living the Questions.

That is where I am right now, Living the Questions, letting it play out.  Believing that this road will end in immense beauty even if it’s tough right now.”

I wrote the above quote on Tuesday May 31^st 2011 and posted it on my old blog.  Ironically that was my wedding anniversary.  I don’t feel like this today.  I have lost my hope that this road will end in immense beauty.  Today I want to wallow in pain.  I want to stay in bed and re-imagine the past.  I want to flesh out all the “if only”s.  The pain disappears for just a moment when I imagine myself taking a different path in life.  Some different choices … Any different road that didn't land me here in this place.

I wonder where that hope came from.

Positive thinking can be hurtful?

This is making me think:

http://www.upworthy.com/why-the-religion-of-positive-thinking-needs-to-be-burned-at-the-stake-5?c=ufb1

I believe a lot of the pain I carry is from the religion of positive thinking being imposed on me by oppressors.

I don't have words just yet.  I'm pondering.

Nursing old wounds (written Sept. 21, 2013)

I'm nursing old wounds tonight.  It's one am and I can't sleep.  My heart hurts so bad I can physically feel it.  I want to throw up.

I want so badly to go back to being 14 and to be able to do over all my high school years with all the knowledge I have now.  It seems unfair that I am sentenced to carry pain for the rest of my life for mistakes I made during those years.

It seems like the deepest one ever falls in love is their first love.  Age 14 or 15.  But inevitably we ruin the relationship or even the possibility of relationship with this person because we don't know what we are doing yet.  We have no experience.  No knowledge.  We are selfish and scared.  So we screw up.

This seems like it should be forgivable.  Immaturity doesn't seem like it should be such a crime.  But somehow I still carry the pain.  Does everyone carry this pain?  Do we have to carry it forever?  For me it seems to be getting heavier.

It's funny too, because in reality I don't want to undo what I have.  I love my husband so much.  I used to be able to thank God for the broken road that lead me to him (thank you Rascal Flatts for those words).  I don't want things to turn out different really.  I just want to be free of the pain of loss.  And the pain of knowing I've hurt people I love.  And the weight of so many words left unsaid. It's one thing to wonder what might have been.  It's a whole other thing for that wondering to hurt.  Why does it hurt so much?

I wonder if I had had the guts to tell my childhood best guy friend that all of the sudden I saw him as more than a friend, what would have happened?  Maybe I never would have ever noticed anyone else.  Maybe it would have been him and only him for all my life and my heart would be whole instead of so many pieces in so many places.  But maybe not.  I probably would have screwed that up.  I probably would have been to curious about my other options to be committed so young.  Maybe?  I'll never know.  I'm just wishing that I would have never noticed the boy who haunts my thoughts and dreams.  Maybe if I would have dated my childhood best guy friend I would have never noticed him.  If I had never noticed him maybe then tonight I could sleep and I wouldn't be so broken.

I feel half alive without him in my life.  But I would be utterly soul dead if I lost my husband.  So I choose half alive.  That's the best I get these days.  I don't see a path before me that offers full life.  I only see a life ahead of me that insures that I carry pain. 


And then, part of me wonders if it's just my husband that I miss.  In some ways I think I was always searching for him, before I met him.  I didn't have any of these thoughts until after we had kids.  Now that we have kids we never have enough time together.  I don't have the time or energy to draw him out like I used to.  I miss him.  We still share a bed, but we are often worlds apart.  Maybe the pain I feel is just missing him.  And I think I must have made a mistake somewhere a long the way to hurt like this, so I start at the beginning.  And when I go back, there are so so many mistakes.  So many things that I did wrong.

Maybe I should just stop that looking backward.  It doesn't do any good.  I can't go back.  Those imperfections must stay in the tapestry being woven that is my life.  Maybe the question is, where do we go from here?  Oh, but that seems so daunting.  I easily know the right thing to do with an problem from 1995, but the problems I have now...I'm lost.

Maybe the pains of my past are mild compared to the agony I see set before me.  What about just staying in the present?  Ugh. It's pain, only pain, everywhere is heart ache.