Dearness Only

Words…

**Since writing this last week, I’ve had some good prayer and feel in a much better place with all this stuff.  But thought I’d still share because it comes and goes and is part of the journey.**

There are three words that seem to be wrapping around me like a wet blanket at the moment. That seem to drag behind me like a lazy dog…

These are not words that I like. Yet at this moment they are filters over the glasses I wear to see myself. They are words that make me want to hide.

Mainly because they make me feel weak. I hate feeling weak.  I hate being weak even more.

Rejected:

This is a word that has nipped at my heels throughout much of my life. In the past few years it has largely been neutralised by growing in love and maturity and perspective, for which I am grateful.

However, rather embarrassingly, it remains a potential area of weakness if I don’t keep my perspective right.

So despite the fact that I have emerged (with all thanks to JC) a much more balanced and peaceful individual over the years, rejection is once again barking up my tree.

I am happy to report that I feel more able to silence it now than at any other point in my life, despite the clawing icicle of my current circumstance. However, at times I feel as though I’m teetering on the brink of a deep and frightening chasm of doubt and insecurity. One push and I might fall in. So I’m fairly gripping to the sides at the moment, because I refuse to do that to myself. 

And yet despite my determination to hang on to dignity and self worth, I find myself in the thick of the post break up cliche.

I’m asking all those things that we ask like: What is so wrong with me? What did I do to call this into my life? Will anyone ever want me? Will anyone ever choose me?

Humiliated:

What a choice little state of mind. To lose dignity. To have to look people in the eye and tell them that the man you loved didn’t love you back. That he chose a path that didn’t involve you.

To wonder about my choices and try to figure out how I lapsed in judgement to ever choose to make myself vulnerable in the precarious emotional environment that enveloped him.

To be alone at social functions and to know that everyone is now looking at you a little differently because they know why he isn’t there. Being observed in this way - with an irritating combination of pity and apathy - makes me want to scream.

Broken:

After we first broke up in 2002 I had many of my closest friends and family tell me (some years later) that they perceived that I never fully recovered.

They observed that after our initial break up I fell into a season of depression that I was largely oblivious to and stayed in for a long, long while.

They said I lost my spark, my va va voom, my mojo…

Of course in time I healed, but I always felt a bit like a teracotta pot that got smashed and was glued back together in a really crude and obvious way. I never felt quite the same and often felt frightened of romantic interactions after that. No surprises there, grief and loss change you.

But to now be forced back into what I know from experience is a particularly acute strain of heartbreak is simply terrifying. It cuts much deeper this time. It’s a more profound sense of loss. I also have a far greater awareness of what lies ahead of me and the challenges that will bring.  I am thankful that I am in a much stronger place of maturity and faith though and that will help.

Of course I will heal, and God - who is the author and perfector of my faith - is able to “keep me” as I journey through this. But I’m frightened of how this all might change me.

Three little words.  I didn’t choose them, but they appear to have chosen me for now.