Only Half of a Face

I finally have words for what I feel.

It's like I only have half of a face on Facebook.

One of my friends talked recently about using Facebook as "smoke and mirrors" to hide what was really going on in her life. I told her that if smoke and mirrors was the only way for us to get through, then smoke and mirrors it shall be. Perhaps it's simply human nature to post only the warm and the fuzzy, but I'm tired of feeling like there is no place for the stories in my life. I have always invisibly felt this, but Facebook is just bringing this truth to the surface.

All throughout the year there are these Facebooking opportunities to post stories and memories of a person's life. I love reading the stories, but they also make me feel. . . .well, they make me feel exactly the way I used to when I was growing up, actually. Hmmm. . . . very interesting. I remember how when I was a young person how envious I felt of the stories I heard from my friends. Not envy for the obvious reasons of a superficial jealousy, but because of how bad my own stories made me feel. My stories made me feel like I was an inferior person, because even from a very young age, I always knew that there was something inherently "wrong" with my stories, something "wrong" with me. I also knew that I was never supposed to tell my stories. I was ashamed of my life, ashamed of the stories that comprised my life, and that made me feel like I was less than everyone else around me. . . .both friends and family alike.

And so I kept my stories to my self.

I was twenty five years old before I started to tell my story, and I think it was only because I had to. . . .my life was falling apart, and the panic attacks were creating an internal prison from which I could not escape. My best friend in high school knew nothing at all about my so called secret life. . . .no one did. . . . not even my mother before she died. When everyone around me was excitedly sharing stories of first kisses and first sexual experiences, I cringed in horror to know that I could never share the truth of my real first kiss, of my real first sexual experiences. And my husband, bless his heart, married a woman he honestly knew nothing about, with a collection of stories that in the end were just too dark and too intense for him to live with. And so he did what I was afraid people would do once they heard my stories. . . .he turned his back and walked away from the damaged wife he would have never chosen had HE known the truth of my stories.

Perhaps the wedding vows should have been rewritten to include, "In sickness and in health, In stories dark and light, 'Till death do you part." Maybe then he would have been able to honor his vows.

I honestly don't blame him for walking away. I've been trying to run away from these stories for my entire life. They're not the stories that I want. I would never have chosen these stories. My life journey has irrevocably been altered by these stories. And they're not the stories that I want to share, either. But I'm tired of holding back the truth of my stories just to make other people feel comfortable.

These stories are like shrapnel inside of my mind and body. . . .and so they need to be released, because they are the very truth of who I am, the very fabric that interfaces every step of the life path I have been forced to walk upon. And, yes, I do grow weary of always having to "put my best face forward," because I'm tired of having only half of a face.

So in the famous words of Marilyn Monroe, "I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."

Falling through the Cracks...

I have recently come to understand that pieces of my life have fallen through the cracks, pieces that when viewed as a collective whole paint a completely different picture than when viewed as individual pieces. Specifically, the pieces that I'm talking about are the panic attacks, insomnia, ongoing nightmares, and the chronic anxiety that all still plague my every day peace. The question is, what do I do with this bigger picture? What do I do with these four letters that finally explain the collectiveness of experience? And is there a way for the PTSD to rearrange itself into an acronym with less friendly fire?

I can't run from this. There is no place on this earth where I can escape this anxiety, no place where a peaceful night's sleep exists waiting for me to arrive, and no place where the images of my dreamscape are filled with warmth and light. I can not run from what happens on the inside of my existence.

I'm done self accommodating. I'm tired of the distractions. And I'm exhausted by the journey in search of a therapy that will finally heal these wounds and dry up this never ending sadness like a stagnant pool across a deserted oasis. It's all too easy to say, "You need to move on...why do you dwell on the past?" But it's not that simple...because it's not in the past...it's in my every day present like tiny invaders in cells that remain invisibly flowing through me, but ever and always just outside of my awareness.

No one wants to hear the dark stories of childhood filled with real life monsters and silent dualities that leave me cut off still from truth and power. The book of my life sits upon the shelf covered in dust, while the books filled with happy stories and smiling faces are checked out daily by readers in need of the warm and the fuzzy. The little story of a depressed and lonely child just isn't filled with Rockwellian images, so I carry this sad tale tucked far beneath the surface in search of the one who is not afraid to read this dark little book of me. But there's no one to listen, because there's no one to tell. And so the story remains locked up inside my body while the whispers of its truth evaporate through anxious moments and quickly passing thunderstorms through the mind.

I have fallen through the cracks, both above and below, both in light and in darkenss. Is it enough that there is only the One who is not afraid of my truth, or afraid to walk with me as I make my way through the remnants of dust and shadow?