Broken

My heart lies open and bleeding, my soul cold and withering. Some days it takes all I can muster to roll myself out of bed. Other days, laying alone in the dark with the voices is the last thing I want.

And it's all for no reason. Or perhaps for too many reasons. "Just pray" they tell me. And I do. And I feel emptier. Or perhaps I am just mourning the loss of that emptiness.

I had a good weekend - spent much of it with friends, old and new. And, spent much in an honest peaceful state, which would often be followed by an emotional breakdown, as if I was not allowed to feel that peace.

Trust. Oh what a truly annoying 5 letter word. I do not trust. I do not allow others in. And yet I found myself doing just that. I found my walls crumbling. I found myself showing that vulnerable child I thought I'd killed off, or at least had hidden well enough she could never find her way out.

I have found myself pushing away things which are not healthy, but which have kept me surviving for years. And then have found myself wanting to cling to those yet again.

I have found myself staring in the mirror and not recognizing the face staring back at me. Or, rather, recognizing it from a time long past - a face which once believed and hoped and loved. A face which openly cried and indiscriminately trusted. A face which didn't understand being worthless and broken.

I couldn't look at her, yet I couldn't pull my eyes from her. I wanted to cling to her while at the same time, I wanted to break the mirror so she'd be gone forever.

I longed to hide within the walls of the Church and cry out to God. And I wanted to avoid that place and the lies it holds. Christ is love, and His Church is for the broken, and yet it doesn't feel like it exists as such - not because of any person within the walls, other than me. Or perhaps I simply wish to not see it. Perhaps it is fear of that truth with keeps me at a distance while longing for the comfort it just may provide.

I've written before about feeling in a dark hole, of being depressed. And this is so much different. It's more, and less, and everything in between. It's like dangling on a rope halfway down the dark pit, a hand reaching out to me from above, and the comforting dark and cold calling to me from below. And I just hang there, my arms growing weary.

I shared a couple paintings of mine when I was out with friends the other night. One, dark and one light... and he told me that the two work good next to each other - the depression, and the hand reaching to help. And now, as I look at these paintings, I see myself in the blank space between them. It's empty here, and yet heavy with uncertainty.

Heavy with uncertainty in everything, except for the certainty that I'm broken.