I went to the store this afternoon. The entire time I kept feeling like my chest was tight and I couldn’t breathe, but I didn’t pay any attention to it. As I am writing this, I have a sharp pain in my right hand that radiates up to my index finger. There’s nothing to be done about it. It is just a nerve pain. I don’t remember injuring my hand. All this pain represents is my nervous system misfiring and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. So, even though I feel pain, the best thing I can do is dismiss the pain. The reality is that for me it is a very real pain, but it doesn’t represent any physical injury.
Earlier this week, I read a psychological evaluation that was done on me when I was twenty years old. It said some very horrible things about me. It wasn’t the first time I read it and I don’t know why I have kept it. I think it is weird how every time I have read it, it seems completely different. The words don’t change, but I think I change. This time when I read it, I realized that at twenty years old, no one could see me. The only things that I knew to do were what I had seen and I had been so sheltered, the only role models I really had were my parents. I treated myself horribly because that’s how they treated me. I was manipulative and played the martyr because that’s what my mom did. I always wondered why no one saw me and got me help, but how could they see me when there were so many defenses up? How do you see all the pain inside when I am do every trick in the book to defend myself from this dangerous world that my mother told me I had to guard myself from?
And now I find out that the world wasn’t that bad. I find out so much truth and beauty out there and for so long I missed it because I was scared. I still am and trying to recover from that. I feel all these stupid pains and anxiety symptoms all the time, every day. I get lost in darkness a lot. I just wish there was something like a light switch that would stop the pain and anxiety, but it doesn’t work that way. And so, I pray a lot for forgiveness and understanding. I ask God to take this pain and help me to let go of it all. Some days faith is easy and some days it is a challenge. I hope that it is worth it and I know God is with me every step of the way.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
