Of Wounds

I don’t know why it hurt so much this time around.  It’s happened before.  Maybe because I’ve been through hell and back then shamed for my “actions.”  Maybe because unless you’ve walked through it your thinking is bound to be only one dimensional.  Flat dimensions hurt people because they don’t allow room for understanding and empathy.  

There is, I think, a distinction in the love I have and the lust I was subjected to.  And yet they think one begets the other.  But even if there isn’t a distinction, I don’t think anything but beauty comes from ashes.  Don’t call this pearl trash because of the wound from which it comes.  Maybe they are swine and I shouldn’t have shown them in the first place.    

But anyway, this pain is exponentially worse than before.  In between panic attacks it aches in such a physical way as I’ve never known it to ache.  Like a gaping, bleeding, festering, rawness.  I can’t even describe to you the pain.  But I often hold my hand over it and weep, each pump pushing the tears out in a steady rhythm, as if the pain could be pumped out from my eyes.  Afterwards I’m sore from all the pumping.  And it feels like I ran a race and it is still trying to slow down.  Sometimes after climbing the stairs I need to sit down because this feeling in the physical and emotional combined makes me feel like I might faint.  

I think it’s getting better.  It started with moments.  Moments where I felt normal, not even peaceful, just normal.  Moments when I could smile.  Laughing made me feel like passing out.  And once I started I couldn’t control it and it would take over in hysteria and eventually become tears.

The moments slowly got longer.  Until they became days.  Some days I feel it four or five times for fifteen minutes at a time.  Some days I only feel it once.  Sometimes Jesus kisses me on the cheek and says, “We’re gonna get you healed.”  One time He said, “You need to be gracious with yourself.”  Then I began to be able to see people again.  In between the moments of fear and pain I could start to love again slowly.  

And I realized that sometimes there is peace that passes all understanding, and sometimes I just need to forgive myself for feeling terrible.  I can lay down and not perform and not talk and not be nice and not go to things I’m supposed to because I need to feel like shit for a minute.  I had to let go of the expectations I had for myself, so I could stop being a disappointment to myself.  And then I could realize that I’m not a disappointment to Him.

Then when I just allow myself the grace to feel it, I don’t.