I am an emotional creature

It would seem, upon review of my life in hindsight, that I had reached my pain threshold. I went silent which means I also went without processing. Writing helps me to think and to make sense of my world, I gain immense clarity through my fingertips. And now as I write for the first time in two weeks it is clear to me that I was perfectly fine being hazy. 

The wound of the assault is still open and swollen. Reminding me every time I need a pill to stop my hands from shaking or to fall asleep that I am still in repair. The hurt of my teaching being under question remains. The loss of my cousin whose last words to me was that she was coming to my graduation...The breath that was knocked from my lungs when my mother told me after the second family death in one week that she wasn't coming to visit. She didn't understand that I was holding it together just long enough to make it into her arms. When am I going to fall apart now? 

I was overwhelmed. 

I am overwhelmed. 

I'm grieving the loss of multiple things and people all at the same time. None, perhaps more, than the grief I am feeling for who I was just a few months ago. I am finally in touch with my anger. Because I did not lose myself, I was stolen. And the reverberation of that feeling through my dark skin rings all the way back. I have eased on trying to bring her back, but instead trying to rebuild and renovate all while staying in motion. And I want to quit. I want to stop and sit in the floor and cry, but I won't allow myself. Not as a denial of the emotion, but because being an emotional creature does not mean my emotions get to own me. I can be sad, and hurting, and healing and still find joy and gratitude in a moment. 

Sometimes in the eye of your own storm and in the head of your own hurt you find access to the source. God only knows how I've gotten through the days weeks month successfully. It certainly hasn't been me. I suppose I can truly say that I fully understand the sentiment behind:

 “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

I am building my testimony. I thought I knew what my story was, as if it were resolved and concluded. I thought I was an expert on myself and was ready to begin to help others' become better versions of themselves. I knew the work. And I can't help but feeling as though right now God is saying, prove it. Can I do the things I know will keep me and grow me? Will I take the advice and guidance I would willingly prescribe to others?  

So if this is an opportunity, will I have the courage to take it? To sow into myself as a new earth as the old has been scorched. To recount that fire brings creation through destruction and to cling to my ability to rise from my own ashes.  

And the "I'm sorrys" don't water my garden. I don't know what to do with them anymore than the givers of the words. Wanting it so badly to be a salve or an invitation to connect, "I'm sorry" now just makes me cringe. Maybe because it's passive. There is no doing in I'm sorry. No movement no motion no friction even. I'm sorry lodges me further into my sore. Reminds me of the sadness in all my circumstance. 

Of all the emotions I'm tired of sadness the most. Anything else but sadness.  I've had my fill. But to deny it  only gives it power. So before you ask me how I am, I'll tell you: I am profoundly sad. I am in pain. I want to cry even when I'm smiling. I'm worried about myself. I'm exhausted and I constantly feel like I'm failing.  But that is no reason to be sorry. I am also resilient and open and loving and optimistic. I am an emotional creature and my complexity and paradox makes me who I am.