For the past few months my life has appeared to be an uphill battle. The type of uphill that has hidden holes, rolling boulders, and fire pits that go off every time you try to sleep. I stopped writing publicly and started writing very privately in the middle of the night (a way to talk with out anyone hearing and in an effort to try and take some of the weight off my chest). A lot of my struggles have been quiet and internal, the kind that most people (especially women) are afraid and ashamed to divulge. Growing up I was forced to internalize most, if not all, of my emotions. I was trained to take emotional beatings while staring the man in the eyes, showing no emotional response and no reparations. I took physical beatings as a right of passage into the next year and sexual abuse prepped me for an adult life of accepting love in distorted forms. I was also trained to love (men) by showering them with gifts, sacrificing my happiness, and hiding my true self. No matter how many times I was hurt or how deeply the stabs would go I would somehow find a way to blame myself or justify the pain. After all, what is love with out pain? What is a life of happiness with out sacrifice? I convinced myself that the pain and lack of happiness was all a part of being a woman. I never knew a woman who was truly happy, a woman who didn't wake up and go to bed in pain and emotional turmoil because she couldn't be who she knew she truly wanted to be. The woman God called her to be. Because of this I lived in a shell, pantomimed my way through life with brief glimpses of happiness like appetizers in the meal of life, never to get the entree.
I've allowed men in my life to only give me small doses of love, never full cups, never quenching my thirst or filling my belly with the overwhelming love I know is somewhere out there for me. I don't expect those voids to be filled by a man, but by THE man. In my last year of my twenties I am finally seeing that I've identified myself by the men in my life. Who am I as a daughter? Who am I as a girlfriend? Who am I as a wife? Never....who am I? Slowly, I began to realize that who I am has not been fully birthed yet. I have been existing as a half-self only appearing as whole in small glimpses. As long as I wore a smile on my face, gave full hugs, and allowed others to gain what they wanted from me, no one desired to see me as any more than what I was. I want(ed) so deeply to flourish. To become this woman I knew was beating away inside me, but instead I was told that to be an "appropriate and great" mother and wife I would have to sacrifice myself. And that's what I did. Year after year, I willingly sacrificed any form of internal happiness so that those around me could be happy. If that meant me crying myself to sleep, I cried. If that meant allowing a man to lie to me, I believed him. If that meant accepting infidelity and multiple women, I looked the other way. Sure I made a scene, threats to leave, but I stayed. I rooted myself in men. I rooted my identity in appealing to what the "he" in my life wanted. I accepted apologies that never existed. I accepted the chaos and confusion. I told myself that my depression and pain was a phase and that eventually the man would change, but where did that leave me?
I waited on change that never came. I thought I could change the man, but really what God was trying to tell me was that I needed to change. I needed to allow Him to work in me so that I could see what He was trying to call me to be. I was so caught up in the pain and betrayal that I didn't see that I had lost my way and had ventured further away from God until it was too late. I'm not perfect. I made my own mistakes. I lost myself and struggled to find my way out of a possible destructive path, but with my one free hand, I reached up and God clasped His hand around mine.
I'm still on this journey. I'm still fighting up hill. I still struggle to see the good over the bad. When days are filled with tears and pain, it is difficult to see His face. I'm being broken down daily and searching for the woman God has buried in me, because truly, she is in there.
