An Unnerving Balance.

Within these last few weeks, something in me has changed. It’s the kind of change that happens as a response to something. Not the kind of change you set in motion. That makes it ultra scary because you realize you can be changed without your consent. I retrace my steps, trying to figure out where I went wrong. Which decision led me to the place where I got so violated? Why was a change this drastic so necessary?

Somewhere floating in the back of my mind, I know what happened. It’s not just where I went. It’s how comfortable I got there. Something had to happen. Something unforgivably hurtful had to happen or else…I would settle for something that really isn’t good for me. I’d talk myself into thinking that everything is okay. We’re safe. We’re good. I’d fall into the same false sense of security I did before. 

Deep down inside, I know this. I know although it hurt me and disrupted my life, it needed to happen. It’s the paradox of life: I had to be wounded temporarily in order to protect me from something that would inevitably crush me. Somehow, knowing that doesn’t change how I feel. How I feel is, I’ve been gunning for a breakthrough for a very long time. I’ve been building up this faith and this belief that if I have integrity if I work as hard as everyone else (or harder), if I just keep moving forward…I’ll get that breakthrough. And it’s not that I don’t believe it anymore. I do. It’s still apart of me and it drives me to carry out the tasks I have to in order to survive and make progress.

But I now carry with me this experience, this knowing that even when I do my best, I can’t outrun the pain. I can’t outrun the abuse. I can’t outrun the systems that have been constructed to ensure I never have a life worth living. I know there are spirits and energies and a God who has affection for me and empowers me. I also know there are forces that who wish to harm me and steal my future from me. Having firsthand experiences with them, seeing how effective and consistent these forces are makes me feel like there is no point. It makes it so hard to try. And yet I still try. 

The will to continue striving for a better life is buried so deeply in me now that I can’t ignore it. I have to heed its calls. I have to keep trying. But that doesn’t mean I’m not carrying an enormous weight of reality that has hindered me and made this journey even more difficult and less likely to end successfully. I constantly grapple with the fear that although I’m taking the steps and walking the walk to the best of my ability, it will amount to nothing. Because I’m mentally, emotionally and spiritually in a place that so closely resembles…nothing.

How do you continue fighting for anything in a world where it seems like nothing matters or makes a real difference? Where does the motivation come from when everything you thought was the point of it all, is suddenly flipped on its head and you feel like you’re running out of time?

I’m losing touch with my spiritual nature and that scares the shit out of me. Because for so long, it has been what has kept me from giving in to self-harm, suicide, a life of complete disaster. In December of 2019, something in me broke. And I don’t know how to fix it. There’s something still pulling me to connect with the Source we all come from. It’s there and I feel it. It won’t let go of me. There’s also the devastation of my reality pulling at me, forcing me to confront it. It won’t let go of me, either. 

Pouring everything I have into rebuilding spiritually feels disingenuous. Because right now, half of me feels like no matter what I do or how I think or what energy I devote myself to, nothing will ever really change. Thank Goddess for the half of me that still believes a better future is within reach. But this isn’t sustainable. I know that a lot of us live with the cynicism and constant desire to end it all. But just living with it seems like a sure-fire way for me to end up either dead or so dead inside I wind up killing everything I touch.

Each day is a toss-up. I don’t know if I’m going to wind up with my pessimism and distrust front and center or if it will politely hide behind other things I make room for in my brain. I just keep living. The thing is, when those thoughts hide away for a while, they still always show themselves again. 

They’re never really gone. 

Just hiding.

And in a way, so am I.