I'm nothing special. I do good, I give to my community. I love with a vigor. But something is a little broke. My life and hardships I've met and trudged through make me different but not special. Everyone wants their life to hold meaning or at the very least, give meaning to someone else. It's our way of making sense of pain and embracing the joy. If something awful we've gone through can add some sense of hope or enlightenment to someone else, then we did not suffer in vain...right?
Overall, I've had an extremely blessed life, filled with wonderful, loving, supportive people; until October of 2009 - February of 2014. This isn't to say that the good people of my life left, but rather I did. I moved far away from the goodness that I had always known and entered into a long journey that, in hindsight, I'm sure added character but also stripped me of many things; good things.
I desperately want for my story to be of use to someone, somewhere. I do not want what has made me suffer to win by virtue of getting to exist in my life and not do good somewhere for someone else. The hard part is that I am still trying to figure out just what the fuck happened. I moved back home to my nice life with wonderful people where I lived for 26 years a happy, whole, mostly undamaged person. I had these fancy thoughts of sitting back into that life comfortably. And I could. Most everyone does not know my secret. They don't know the damage that has been done to my spirit. They just see me as I always was. But I'm not and try as I might to forget, I know my secret. It affects my interactions with people on a daily basis.
Deeply rooted pain not only gets inside you and changes you, but it also isolates you. It's your dark secret that you carry around, hidden, but close to you at all times. You're always aware and you always feel just a bit different than the rest. I honestly thought that my spirit was so strong that it couldn't be shaken; that I would never lose my hope and faith in people. It's sad when life teaches otherwise. I don't believe that is God's will for me or for anyone else. We are broken humanity that can be filled with beauty. This beauty shines through people in the most simplistic ways. And it's there for the taking.
But what if life has taught you to be tough, to be hard, to not trust anyone, and expect the worst from people? I am constantly caught in the conundrum of wanting to embrace my friends and family, people that have been a safe, source of joy, and meaning for me for decades; to give myself to them and then comes the deep learned fear of expecting hurt, pain, deceit, ultimately abandonment. So I keep these undeserving beautiful souls at bay. We have our superficial enjoyable interactions but I no longer expose my depth like I used to.
Two women have managed to pry themselves into my hard shell and demand my heart and depth once again. One is my best friend from college, who thankfully has never lost faith in me and has vowed to always fight for me. In her words, she wants me back to the "pre-Colorado" Jess. I do too. The second is my poor girlfriend who fell for me long before she realized how broken I am. I've been trying to have a relationship with the most respectful, loving, intelligent, driven, depthy woman for over 8 months now. We share a deep love and I want to see it all blossom into what it can be. I want all these things and more but I keep her at bay. I want her as close as possible but when she approaches me in that way only emotionally intimate lovers can, I find some reason to push her back so the imagined possibility of her hurting me is minimized. I've done that with all my unsuspecting friends. They think I'm just really busy, or when we do talk, my life is just surrounded by work. Truth is, I just don't want to hurt anymore. I went from being such an open, optimistic, naive, opened-armed person, to guarded and suspect of everyone.
So my hope for this writing is to simply declare that I don't like this version of me. It's not who I am at my core but I've been so broken, I don't know who's for real in my life anymore and who's not. I can make educated guesses but there's such room for hurt. I don't want to isolate anymore. I don't want to hurt my beloved and plentiful people in my life that love me. I want to be the partner I need and want to be to the best thing in the flesh that I've come along romantically. I want for my best friend from college to feel secure in that I will always invite her into my life and my heart. I want so much. My faith is God can heal me from all this; this I know. God can do that for any of us. Trouble is, if If I'm having trouble being vulnerable to family, friends, my love, how much more scarier is it being vulnerable to the one the Created me?
I write this in a public forum, not to air my dirty laundry but rather to be real. I have always been and will always be that. My hopes is that someone somewhere will read this and know that maybe we're all not as isolated as we think. Having the right people in our lives that can hold up that mirror for us when we have forgotten what we look like is a blessing. Who ever has broke down my walls many times and reached to my depths, love, and interest...please sing the song of my heart; I've forgotten the tune.
At the end of the day, no matter what has happened to us, God does not desire for anything to impede our ability to love, grow, be vulnerable, in our loving communities. God help me.
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