This post will be disordered because my thoughts are disordered. I use to journal all the time. Without journaling I always felt like I was never quite anchored to anything. In fact this blog was started because my best friend noted how significant journaling was to my well being.
So, why have I stopped?
Over the past couple of months, I have fought desperately to receive validation from someone, the kind of validation that one is often supposed to experience from parents growing up. Journaling was my way of working out with God what I believe about things; it was my way of validating myself. It never filled me but it kept me sane. So when faced with the opportunity to receive that kind of love and validation from someone my heart pounced on it. I thought that this was finally my chance to be nurtured and loved into the woman I am suppose to be. I thought that finally someone would believe me instead of just wanting to contain me so that I wouldn’t be an inconvenient bother.
When the I love you’s began to change, I fought for them to come back. When threatened with separation, I cried them back into my life. I found myself faced again with the worst invalidation, because it was one that hit my core because it attacked my faith. I learned early on to numb myself to my family’s invalidation, I never gave my friends that kind of power to begin with, but when it came to the church models that God placed in my life, I struggled the most, and I struggled hard.
I hate myself, I always have. So when church members tried to love me I thought God was loving me. When they started to grow exasperated with me then I thought I was allowing the devil to have to much of a foothold in my life, and thats why these people are leaving me, they can’t be around where evil is. And when they gave up on me then it was always me. I am too difficult, I am too angry, I am too mean, I am too bad. I watched them praise, I watched them worship, I watched them claim surrender, so if they were giving up on me, with such entitlement, then I knew it was because I was less than human, I knew it was because I didn’t count as one of the souls that required saving because they must’ve finally realized that I was soulless. I internalized their rejection and never dared allow myself to fall into Gods love, because embracing His love, would for me mean that I would be calling them a liar. Worst, it meant that I am human and that who I am is simply too hard to matter long enough to someone before they leave me.
So why am I journaling now?
Two weeks ago my quest for validation ended when it left me broken in a very painful way. I hear inside of me that same little crying voice that wants to fight again to be loved. But my brain has noticed the I love’s you dwindle to extinction. My brain has noticed the carefully strung together words that signals to me that I have been given up on. My brain notices that there is no one to blame, and fighting only to be repeatedly given up on as more of me in unveiled, will incite blame in me, and if I am busy blaming someone then I place the burden on them to fix me, instead of me fixing me.
So without journaling, I lay in bed believing that I swallowed 24 pills because I was pmsing. I lay in bed believing that my pain isn’t real without the validation of doctors or statistics. I lay in bed believing that the demons are just plaguing me because i’m not praying hard enough.
Journaling is going to force me to do the most painful part of my recovery, which is loving what so many people have shown me is unlovable. And I’m sinking, I’m sinking really hard, but as per my last post, I want to be beautifully in over my head by sinking as a result of stepping out to press into God, not people.
“further and further my heart moves away from the shore”
Evolving Perceptions 