On Pain

Okay, two rules:

I purge some of these negative feelings and I move on. 

I let them wash over me and then I ask them to leave.

 I saw this on facebook yesterday and grabbed a copy from thethingswesay.com. The second I saw it, it took me right back there! I even gasped and put my hand over my heart, the feeling was so intense.

I rememember doing this when I was a teenager. I remember doing this when they boy I thought I loved broke my heart in college. I still do this. In fact, on really bad days I avoid making eye contact with myself because I'm afraid of what I'll see there. It is so much more painful when you can see the pain AND you know what it feels like on the inside.

I wanted to put this up here because I think everyone has probably felt this way. Everyone has had an unspoken conversation with themselves in the mirror, hoping it would somehow make things better. Have you ever caught sight of yourself trying to hold together when you're falling apart inside?

I want to talk about the times when you see light in those eyes, but today I want to point out that we are the only ones who know the storms that happen on the inside. Sometimes strength is not letting it show. Sometimes strength is admitting that you need help and then driving yourself over there. Sometimes strength comes from reading something uplifting that you've read a hundred times, but it finally means something different to you today. Sometimes strength comes when you share your perspective with someone else and it helps them. And sometimes strength is not letting it show until that becomes the truth. Smiling until you feel like smiling. Praying until you feel like praying. 

I want my kids to know someday that I've been through some very down times in my life. Dark times created from circumstances and my stamina, or lack therof, in handling them. But the great thing about times like that is that they don't last forever. They're not strong enough to beat me all the time. The times that I feel like the darkness is stronger than me are getting fewer and fewer. I choose to fight. I choose to go out and arm myself with tools that strengthen me. I choose to take my burden out and talk about it and look at it from lots of different angles until it's not such a burden anymore... until I understand it better. I choose to sit pieces of it down or let others help me carry it or to throw some pieces of it up into the air and explode them with an imaginary missile! 

I don't want to post this, but I really also do. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in these feelings, but I'm a little afraid of being judged or falling off of someone's "pedestal." Please don't put me up there, it's an awfully far way to fall! I'll just have to write lots of happier posts until this one gets pushed down from the top of the blog. It's all true, though, and I wanted to have a record of it.