"There is always a small beam of light, even in the darkest places. You just have to be willing to lift your head to see it." --T. L. House
Dear Pain Addict,
You look at the people that say they love you and doubt it. You find love hard to believe? How can people love you when they don’t know and can't accept the depths of who you really are? How can they possibly love you when the people who were suppose to love you most couldn’t? You love yourself, but those days are also questionable. It's all apart of being human. You encounter days when you believe yourself to be extraordinary, beautiful and as someone who can conquer anything. You look behind you and see a fearless cape flapping in the wind. You stick your chest out and you soar. You’re a bad mama jamma during those times. Then there are those tragic moments that creep in and leaves your world empty. You question everything who you are. You become conflicted. You have a hard time recognizing yourself. You can’t explain your feelings to anyone in fear of never being able to convey your tho
ughts properly, of being laughed at, of being misunderstood, of not being accepted, of being seen as weak or worse, of not being loved. It’s safer to hold on to the fear than it is to give into hope or love. You live by…”expect the worst and gain the best”. You can’t be disappointed when you feel it will go wrong anyway. Right?? All that negativity takes you back to, “how can anyone possibly love a mess like me?”
So you eat your words quickly, right before they plan their escape. You swallow your doubt before it takes over you. The problem is, everything you forced back, you forced it back inside of you. It’s laying dormant waiting for the perfect time to flee. You kept your feelings locked away, so you thought anyway. All those emotions lay festering inside of you until a trigger unleash them and they can explode from you. I discovered that untamed emotions are like mini ticking time bombs and they will destroy everything in their wake, if left unresolved. You fear that eruption, because people will think you’re crazy. But you’re not crazy, you simply carry around a lot of issues. Issues that you can’t understand enough for you to fix just yet. You don’t trust your inner turmoil with anyone, so you plaster on a happy face and slowly die inside. When you finally realize you need to fix it, you find it hard to touch all the sacred places within you. You find that you are too damaged by all your frizzy emotions. You pray and pray and pray waiting for something good to happen, while it seems as if God is sitting quietly in heaven. You wonder if he hears you and has chosen to ignore you. You start your round of self-pity and wonder why you. But he hears you and he’s already answered you, you’re just too hurt to hear him. Then doubt sneaks in again and whispers, “How can I be loved when I’m like this?”
So you continue to walk around in pain, refusing to stop and surrender to the instruction already given. You feel alone in your hurt. You quietly shed tears in the dark and paint on contentment in the light. You know you have to keep it bottled inside, since as much as people say talk to me or I understand, you know that’s a lie. People can’t handle your pain. People don’t know what to say to you. You know they see it, they can’t prove it, but your eyes reflect that you’re not as happy as you pretend. You secretly like the pain, you won’t admit it though, but you do. You can’t possibly like hurting, it’s torture, but you do. It’s comfort in all your pain. That’s one reason you won’t let it go. But you don’t want anyone else to see the pain. You don’t want them to touch it, because they’ll taint it. They’ll put a bandage on it and point you in the direction of healing. You can’t figure out if it is them wanting you happy or if they don’t want to deal with your pain any longer. That’s old doubt getting the best of you yet again. So you go back up in prayer since God promised to never leave nor forsake you. You’re leaning on those words to get you through, as those words collapse under you. You’re desperate for him to rescue you, despite your addiction to pain. Pain is really all you know. Pain is what you trust, it never lets you down.
Then you find yourself waking to a new day, something feels different about you. Hope was granted and it was just the right amount of fuel to get your through another day. Then you hear, “I love you. You are beautifully and wonderfully made. I see all your flaws and you’ve never looked so beautiful. I’ll always love you.” You know the pain isn’t magically gone, but you know that HE is there to help you get beyond it. Remember that you can’t expect flesh to love you the way Jesus can. Life is a fight, it’s a struggle, but you are meant to win. You will win, just don’t give up. You are loved……stay here with us. Your life matters, even if life is hard at the moment.
Love Always,
Treka L. House
If you or someone you know is experiencing a crisis and/or considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1.800.273. talk(8255). More information can be found at www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org. Let them help you, save you.