How Did You End Up Like This?

This is a question I've heard many times throughout my life. From my mom, my counselor, from friends in joking tone, and from a new dear friend that I met a a retreat I got to go to.

"How did you end up like this?"

When asked by my mom, she was asking in relation to supporting those who find themselves on the outskirts of friend groups. Being someone that would sit with the loner, until the person became comfortable enough to make friends and I would take their place sitting alone.

When asked by friends, they were wondering about my "prudish" nature, my quirks, and my "strange" belief systems.

When asked by my counselor, it was in the tone used when Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) asked Michael Oher (Quinton Aaron) how he ended up being so gentle and not even wanting to hurt anyone in a tackle when playing football.

When asked by this new dear friend, I'll call him P.J., it was a tone of maybe amazement? One of wanting to know more. I had just shared with him that I feel a bond with bike gang members and truckers, in the same sentence that I love Veggie Tales and babies and didn't want to kiss a boy until my wedding day.

My answer to the question, every time it is asked, is "I don't have any idea."

Watching the movie Courageous before work today, and I was blown away by the statistics they use for the incidences of children from fatherless homes being several times more likely to end up addicted to drugs, pregnant in teen years or a father of a baby in their teens, more likely to land in jail, and have multiple other legal problems. It's crazy!

I don't come from a fatherless house, but my dad was not always present. He was in the garage, or at work, or otherwise occupied.

Both of my parents came from households where they were beaten. My mom's mom beat and abused her. My dad's dad beat and abused him. They came from broken homes, so they tried to keep us from growing up in a broken home. Unfortunately, this is difficult to do without seeing it modeled. Instead of getting hit, my brother and I got silent treatments, isolation, and parents who would isolate from us to prevent anger from over spilling. Oftentimes we also received raised voices and watched as many holes were punched into walls in anger. I'm so grateful that I never had to watch my mom or brother get hit or hurt. They say, and I believe it, that more trauma damage is sustained when survivors not only receive the trauma, but have to watch a loved one go through it. I believe that to the core of me to be true.

Even hearing the yelling matches and fights as I drifted off to sleep when I was a child was difficult, and I was too young to know what they were fighting about!



I don't think I ever put two and two together until today. Somehow, watching Courageous has got me processing why/how I ended up the way I did. I can easily point out how it made me more prone to trauma in my college years. I can point out the ways that it has given me unhealthy coping mechanisms. But that's not what P.J. and my counselor are asking. They are asking about how I turned out okay, maybe even "good". It would be acceptable to be angry, hateful, resentful, depressed, and unforgiving. For awhile, I was. There are still parts that I battle with. However, the bounce-back from my trauma has been interesting.

I don't know why I am the way that I am. It'll be a question for the Good L-rd someday.

4 Years

Today I realized, with surprising pain, that it's been 4 years.

4 years since he kissed me. 4 years since my battle with boys started and the abuse ensued at hands not of my family. 4 years since I realized that G-d wouldn't save me from everything the way I thought He would.

Today, of all days, it hit me with the force that it had when it first happened. It hit me like a head-on collision with a train. Like one thousand anvils crushing me from all directions. Like the weight of the world is sitting on my rib cage, keeping me from taking any more breaths, yet I am forced to keep going. Forced to keep breathing, and living, and surviving. Forced to continue on in this world when nobody cares. Nobody gives a flying f#ck if I were to wake up each day.

Still, I wake up. Day after day I show up to younglife, to work, to bible study, and to my other obligations. I show up for people who don't care. People who wouldn't notice if I were never to show up again. I show up for people who have hundreds of other people that they could lean on, should lean on, because it's an inconvenience for them to meet with me. I'm a hassle, an inconvenience, and a thorn.

4 years ago, my world was shattered. It began a path of my delusions being stripped away, my hope in a better life being crushed, and my desire for a husband and a family began to fade. Slowly, these hopes and dreams became painful wounds, scars to be reopened hundreds of times since. I discovered that I don't matter. My boundaries, my voice, my wants, and my "no" doesn't matter. I realized that my feeble support system was incapable of seeing me through the realness of life.

It came to my attention that life isn't a love story, it's not some great romance. Life, maybe not yours but mine, is not some fairy tale. My life is simply something to be survived. There is no knight in shining armor. G-d won't protect me from the evil in this world. I can't find happiness, despite trying everything everyone and my counselor has suggested. My life isn't supposed to be one of the top 5, I'm not supposed to be important, and my deepest desires to know people and to be known, won't be realized.

Happy endings are for other people. Love is for other people. Miracles that show them day after day that G-d saves them, is for other people. My life is about the realization that tragedies lie around every corner. That loneliness won't kill you with any type of speed, and that major depression is a lifelong fight that nobody will show up to help you defeat. My life is about showing grace and forgiveness to others, but being constantly beat down. My life is about learning to deal with disappointments so much that you stop hoping. I'm a top student in the university of being there for others who have no qualms with pushing me aside. I am a master at being invisible, learning to deal with lives crushing blows alone, and surviving years alone.

Suicide

Yesterday, I mourned the loss of a 19 year old young man. I didn't personally know the guy, but my YoungLife students had had classes with him. They were friends with him.

The devastation in their eyes was heart wrenching, because I've been there.

I sat there, listening to them try to process the heaviness of losing such a young friend. I listened to the stories, and the questions, and the tears. My heart broke listening to his younger sister's recounting of his last day as he tried to spend some time with his sister before he left. I listened to the ways he quietly, silently, said his goodbyes. His sister said he made his bed. He never made his bed, but he made it before he went on his last late night drive.

I called my mom as I headed over to the crisis hangout after getting the news. One of my students requested we have a time to be able to facilitate them being together to process, cry, or just be with each other through their hurting. She asked me if I was okay. At the time, I was like, "of course I'm fine, I'm worried about my kids!" Then she asked if I was being triggered and she told me o be careful driving, especially with all of this going through my bead during my hour drive to the meet-up. (The hour drive is because I'm temporarily required to be out of my roommate's house due to construction, so I'm staying with my dad.) I told her that I would be careful and that I was feeling okay. She told me to call if I needed anything.

At first, hanging up, I was touched, but a little confused. Why was she so concerned about my triggers? We haven't talked much about this. She knows how hard it was when Country Boy died, because she received my millions of phone calls as I tried to process his suicide. However, she normally doesn't seem to acknowledge my traumas, and she doesn't really use the lingo. As I continued to drive, and process (because driving is a time brains commonly use to process due to the eye movements), I began to cry. I had memories, flashbacks, and tears my whole drive. I was glad for the time in my car to be able to sit with memories and feelings. I had time to sing worship songs and pray. The tears could come and I could prepare.

My heart hurts.

While talking to these sweet students, I learned that it was the 5th suicide of a friend for some of them and the 10th suicide for others. A 14 year-old lost her brother. A mom and dad lost their only son. A cop witnessed someone take their own life as he turned to get his business card.

This young man experienced such immense hurting and darkness in his life that he felt he had no way out.

At the ripe old age of 19. Fresh out of high school and life was imploding for him. His days felt like his life held no hope, no way out of his problems and pain. He felt he had no lifeline.

Yet, his friends and family and even people he doesn't even know are all reeling in his wake.Tears are being poured out for this immense loss. There is a hole in hundreds of people's hearts. There are rippled of effects from the drop in this pool of community. He experienced the loss of a couple of close friends by suicide. No doubt adding to the pain he experienced. But, for him, this seemed to be his only solution.

My heart breaks. My heart breaks for the loss of my friend. The shoulda, coulda, woulda's are still painful for me. Though there is not the same intensity at the sting of the loss of him, there are still moments I think I see him. Or times I believe I see his truck. Memories of him as I drive the roads and see the places I visited with him.

My heart breaks for his family and friends that will now have to try to continue on in life without his presence. They will have to battle with their own regrets and replaying of his final months. They will battle against denial, sadness, guilt, anger, questions, fuzzy memories, and wondering why. Faith will be called into question. The benevolence of G-d will be scrutinized. is parent's marriage will be tested like never before and his sisters will forever grieve with the rest of his family as they meet each milestone along the remainder of their lives.

They will be haunted by his memories, his smell, his room, and his pictures.

I am grieved for them that they are beginning this long and arduous journey. This path that nobody want to travel and nobody can prepare for. You can get help along the way, but ultimately each of his loved ones that he left behind are having to fight through the darkness he left behind.

I can see his side, within reason. And I've been on the grieving end. Even still, it all hurts. No matter what, it sucks. It sucks because a life was taken far too early. A life was lost way before he grew old.
There was a choice to end his suffering, that also ended in suffering.

I don't believe the choice he made was entirely selfish. I don't think he made the choice to be revengeful or to hurt anyone else. I also don't believe this was a choice he made lightly. He tried to ease the minds of those he left behind. No doubt it grieved him, thinking about those that would be hurt by his passing. Chances are, he didn't realize how many would be effected by his choice to leave this world.

My heart hurts for him. My heart hurts for the many, many others that I have grieved for that have died by suicide.

Now, I ask that you join with me to pray for his family and friends. Remember them as you continue on. Remember those you've lost or who have been impacted by the heaviness and pain caused by suicide. Pray for the parents, siblings, and friends of those who have passed on in such a manor. Remember that we all carry pains that nobody else knows about. Please, please, try to use your filter of grace to see these events when you encounter them. Me, of all people (who becomes angry at the need to use my grace goggles sometimes) is pleading with you to consider the pain of those that died.

Also use gentle words when attempting to comfort those left behind. It's okay to say nothing. It's okay to say that you are sorry for their loss. It's okay to tell them that you are hurting for them. Don't tell them suicide is selfish, it's not.

My heart is hurting.

White Robe Vision Anniversary

It's crazy to think that I'm at my one-year anniversary after my White Robe Vision.

For those who don't know what that means... A year ago I was in church singing along to the worship band. I had been struggling with anger, and depression, and aloneness, and everything that you can imagine someone would struggle with after mounds and mounds of trauma. To say that I was in a dark, scary place would be the understatement of a lifetime. I was singing, pleading with the L-rd for a miracle and for forgiveness when I had this image, a vision.

It was me in the fetal position, dressed in sackcloth with ashes and dirt covering me. I was sobbing. My view was as if I was standing watching myself in this dark but not scary space, but I also knew what it was like as the me that was on the floor sobbing. I don't know how I could be both, but I was.

Anyway, Yeshua (Jesus) walked over and helped me up. He handed me a pile of white clothes, a white robe. Instantly, I was dressed in white, holding His hand, and clean from head to toe. I knew in that moment that I was clean, forgiven, redeemed, and precious to the only One that truly matters. The weight that was literally suffocating me was lifted. I felt the physical sensation of being lighter and of being able to breathe. Tears, happy tears, were falling from my eyes and I was at peace for the first time in YEARS.

The high of this vision fueled my healing in counseling, my passion in bible study, and my joy in life. Since I was feeling better, much much better, I started EMDR. I don't know if I just got to the point in my "healing" where my brain started to process the anger and grief, or if it was because I was processing things in EMDR and therapy, but my joy was replaced by anger. Pure rage and grief and the darkest depression I have experienced in such a long time.

Not only was I battling the memories and nightmares that has stopped a short few months before, but I was suddenly from the highest high down in the my darkest pits. Even darker than I had just gotten out of! Suddenly the urges to start smoking again came back. The desire the slice my skin and jump on Tinder resurfaced. My prayers to not wake up in the morning or for me to die in some quick fashion started pouring from my heart again. My pleas for this life to be over or for me to wake up from this nightmare were back. The enormity of the betrayal I faced from ex-best friend hit me full-force. The horrors I survived and lived through hit me like a ton of bricks. My actions, reasons, and reactions all flooded into my memory boggling my mind with the crap that I've been through. Realizations of what my childhood was like, things I had forgotten were dredged up. Past hurts and scars and darkness all covered me at once. Crashing over me like tsunami-sized waves.

Now, after nearly 8 months, these waves are still skyscraper high, but I've sunk to the bottom of the ocean floor where the waves can't effect me so much because my brain has gone blank. I have a vague recollection that bad things have happened. A small understanding that I am hurt and have been damaged mocks me in the early hours when I wake up, or in the moments before I fall asleep. My heart squeezes and heat rises as my brain recalls the nightmares that I just had throughout my sleep were real events that happened. Anger overwhelms me and forces me from bed to try to go find some mind-numbing entertainment from the boob-tube.

I want to believe G-d has good in store. My heart craves the day when my life is redeemed and I maybe see some fruit that the sh!t that I *unfortunately* survived is going to be worth something to someone. Surely there is a reason behind the suffering. Surely there is a way that this can be helpful for something. Surely my life, my experiences, my pain and sorrow will not be a waste!

It's crazy to think that a year ago would start the roller-coaster that has been this past year. To go from so passionate and on fire for the L-rd, to questioning His beneficence towards me. Hope was replaced with rage and ecstatic joy was replaced with soul wrenching despair. My new found zest for life was, again, brought into the deepest of me begging for my life to end.

I'd like to say that my life is back to me being excited and on fire for the L-rd. I wish I could tell you all that life got back to smooth sailing, that I am happy and excited again and that I finished out the year with minimal lasting pain. Well, I could, but that would be a lie. Just when I started to think I was on the mend, my story would be used for goodness and I might be needed in this world after-all, I was knocked down again. Knocked down by someone who was supposed to be a mentor, a leader, a helper in the faith. At that point, the hits kept coming from every side. I confided in her about some recent family wounds and that was used against me, as ammo for the attacks. Ex-best friend joined in the attacks, people from work, patients, family, and anyone else that was in close proximity to me. They ganged up, at the enemies command, and I was bombarded by the tsunami waves that I thought I was avoiding by remaining on the ocean floor. There's no escape though.

Here, looking back on my year, I'm proud of myself for not falling back into self harm, not succumbing to the craving for a cigarette, and for not putting myself back onto Tinder. I fought like hell to still show up, to try to be as present as possible, and to put myself out there for others. I'm working harder than ever to find some good, some purpose, and some meaning in my suffering and loneliness. I am searching for hope and belonging somewhere. But I don't belong here. I don't belong on this earth. I will forever be a stranger, a loner, wandering along on this blue rotating rock. This is not my home. This is not where I will make sense. This is not where the answers will be found, where I am redeemed, or where my purpose lies.

My heart is so tired. My soul is weary. I don't know how much longer I can hold out here.

My anniversary of one of the most powerful gifts the L-rd has every given me is marked by a season of such despair and difficulty that I'm sent back into the pits of existence when I desperately desire to no longer exist. How can this be? It doesn't make sense!

Confusion on the Friend Front

It's been several months since I've posted, and it's kind of weird to think about that. Nothing has really been going on though.

Work is work. I battle apathy and terror. Depression and mediocre days war for my attention. My nightmares come back but they're different and beginning to fade. Though I wake up angry many days. My counselor has been on maternity leave since Thanksgiving-ish. I'm still single. YoungLife has become a distant memory and a struggle and a point of hurt, all at the same time. Friends seem to be a thing of the past for me.

I'm anxious in this period of waiting. I'm antsy. I feel something coming, but I don't know what it is.

Still, through all of these things, I hope there is something good coming. The past few months I went from things scheduled every day, being busy with YoungLife, work, counseling, piano lessons, and various other activities down to nothing but work. Spread out days of work, no less. I was supposed to go to a weekend getaway with some friends but they cancelled. I was supposed to go on a leader's retreat for YoungLife, but I couldn't convince myself to go, and then there was a funeral that ended up happening the day we were supposed to leave. I'm not sad I didn't go to that, because I just didn't want to. I don't want to force relationships with people who keep hurting me but that is stupid because then I'm all alone in the world.

Friends have been incredibly flakey lately, not even answering my texts. Canceling plans. Otherwise seeming to ignore me unless they need something. I don't know how I get here over and over again. Friends that say "we should hang out again!" "I'm so glad we met because we just get each other!" and other things, but then they don't answer texts and I don't see them. Maybe it's my phone that doesn't work? Maybe I'm the annoying friend that people try to avoid and only hang out with once in awhile because I'm so exhausting. Maybe I'm boring or have nothing to add to the conversation. Maybe I don't understand how the world works so it seems pointless to try to talk to me because it doesn't get them anywhere.

I'm a quarter of a century old and I'm utterly alone in the world. I don't understand. It's not for lack of trying. I joined YoungLife in hopes that I could make friends with leaders and make a difference in the lives of high school kids where I didn't have any help at that time. My teens answer half a conversation and then leave me on read before we make any plans. I pick up extra hours at work, try to arrange my schedule to be able to hang out with others but they cancel last minute and refuse to help me when I ask for a returned favor. My brother can't be bothered to answer my messages. My parents answer, but sometimes not for several days.

I DON'T UNDERSTAND ANY OF IT!!!

We're after the holidays, people should be slowing down and getting back into their routines. Surely somebody somewhere needs some company for something.

I'm too old to be upset and literally crying about these things. Yet, I found myself on the phone crying to my mom several times in the past couple of weeks.

Maybe I need to go back to counseling.