stealing the life of mine

 

Twelve In 12

READING 

The Lance Thrower ~ Jack Whyte

The Pillars of the Earth ~ Ken Follett

I feel like I can’t breathe.  My hands are shaking, but thats probably due more to the huge cup of coffee I inhaled within an hour’s time.  The second cup is sitting next to me already.  I just put a deposit down on an apartment.  Now, I’m terrified I won’t pass the application.  I technically don’t make enough money.  I just don’t.  And the whole mess with my last landlord…  I don’t know what will come (or not come) out of it.  I just know I’m terrified it won’t work out and then what the hell am I supposed to do?

I’ve had short conversations with my mother (because she usually just makes me angry and depressed) and then a long conversation with Manny about My Future.  I really don’t know what I’m supposed to do.  I feel like I don’t know what God wants me to do at this point.  So I’m treading water, waiting for something to happen.  Be the change.  Yah, yah, I hate that new age crap.  Short term I know what I need.  I need out of that basement and out of that house.  And they need me out too.  Or rather Marion and Laura need me out.  Bruce could really care less.  If it was up to him, I bet he wouldn’t care if I stayed.  But he’s a man and doesn’t function like his wife and daughter.  So I need out of there, desperately.  And I mean desperately.  I need income.  I want to work.  I want to have money coming in.  I want to attempt to save and pay down my debts and get back on my feet.  I’ll live in a crappy, tiny studio apartment.  I don’t need much more than that right now.  I don’t care.  I’ll live in a box as long as I can feel some semblance of Sanctuary.  And that my cat can come.

"Sanctuary… is a word which here means a small, safe place in a troubling world. Like an oasis in a vast desert or an island in a stormy sea." ~ Lemony Snicket

That’s what I need. A small, safe place in a troubling world.  I need this.  I want this.  But thats the short term.  Thats the immediate.  Thats the right now, this instant.  In the long term, I have no idea what I want or where I’m going.  I’m really scared I’m going to waste my life away just trying to survive.  That I’ll never get out of Michigan and I’ll just continue to hate this place and the person its turning me into.  Manny’s right.  I need to get out of here and go.  I can go anywhere.  So where would I go.  He cornered me into listing places I want to go.  Places like San Francisco and Phoenix and St Johns. But my desire to go to those places is not a good reason.  Its because there is someone there that I miss and want to see.  I’m completely not a California girl, even though SF is more north.  I just can’t see myself living there.  I hate the heat.  I mean, I really hate the heat.  So AZ also does not make any sense, in any reality that one might create.  I don’t actually want to go to these places, I want to go to those people.  Maybe thats not entirely a bad thing, but I cannot put my happiness onto one person.  Its not healthy and I know that.  So I can’t do that.  I don’t have good reason to go there.  Which Manny argues is not the point.  He’s right and he’s wrong.  If I had unlimited funds, I would go and try.  If I failed there, I could pick up and move along to the next place.  But that’s not reality.  That’s not how life works.  I have bills and a cat and a car and stuff.

The only thing that is starting to make sense in my head is the concept of going back to school.  Going back to the original plan.  Grad school for performance on English horn.  Maybe for oboe.  But that was the original plan.

The part that Manny does not understand is where my faith comes into play.  Above all else, I want to follow God’s will for my life.  Way back forever ago, I thought God’s will was for me to go to college at Calvin.  I barely lasted a semester before I was back home.  Looking back, I want to believe that was still part of God’s plan.  Being at Calvin was the best and the worst thing ever.  I nearly attempted suicide way too many times.  But being in such a protected shell of a place did protect me.  Alcohol, drugs and sex were not rampant or easily accessible.  No one was constantly offering or pressuring the way it might have been at a secular or public school.  Things could have been much, much worse if I was someplace else.  So perhaps that was the right things for the moment.  But that was one of the first major left turns in my life.  I was traveling down the road in one direction and all of a sudden I’m standing on my head facing a direction I hadn’t even thought of.  So I spent time and untangled my life.   I got back on my feet and headed once again in the direction I thought God was calling me.  Finally finished off most of college and kept following the road, going in the direction I thought was right.  And all of a sudden, my world up ended again and I found myself heading back to Calvin, in a direction that I would have never guessed in a million years.  Every single person I told (who knew me back then) was floored when I told them where I was heading.  They couldn’t believe it, but I was convinced I was following the path God had for my life.  I lasted 2 semesters, twice as long as the first time before again I found myself with my world upended.  Again, nearly attempting suicide more times than I care to admit.

Sidenote – There have been other near attempts.  It is just part of my life.  The difference between the times in Michigan and all the other times is how I felt.  I mean, I don’t seem to know how to fix it when I’m in Michigan.  I don’t seem to have a good and safe plan to combat the persistent thoughts.  I really just don’t know what to do.  Every other time, every single other time, I’ve had people to turn to, I’ve had a plan already in place.  I really completely feel like I’m floating out here.  In so many ways….

I feel like I’m living in the Twilight Zone, watching myself repeat the same pattern over again.  The difference is that this time I chose to stay in MI.  Last time, I ran back home, completely broken and helpless.  This time, I’m trying to make things work.  Somehow.  But driving to rehearsal last night, I just felt the oppressive weight of my depression.  It was a physical weight on my heart and chest and body.  It the psychache. Edwin S. Schneidman coined the term "psychache"—intense emotional and psychological pain that eventually becomes intolerable and which cannot be abated by means that were previously successful—as the primary motivation for suicide.  In his book on the topic, he explains how that pain transforms from something just in your head to an actual physical pain.  That’s about where I am.

I’ve admitted in here before that there have been moments when I should really probably be checked into a mental ward.  I’m rapidly moving further and further across that line.  Not approaching it, but already crossing it.  The danger with dancing with this line is that being in a hospital can be both good and extremely bad.  Oftentimes being in the hospital (or mental facility) only compounds the problem and makes it worse.  It has to do with suicide ideation.  Thats the concept that the more a person thinks about suicide, the more likely they are to attempt it.  And to a large extent its very true.  Just stop thinking about it.  Distract yourself to the point where you can’t focus on it and you’ll forget out it.  You’ll be too busy.  Its the truth behind "Fake it till you make it."  The danger becomes when you continue to ignore what is not a passing problem, but a growing one.  All of a sudden you find yourself with a razor blade in your hand and your arm is dripping blood.  You don’t even know how you got to that point.  And that has happened to me.

Its a complicated and dangerous dance.  The analogy is that in NY, I could always find a partner.  Someone to help me through the dangerous parts of the dance and get me to the easier, safer steps.  I knew how the music flowed and how to just keep dancing.  Out here, I’m floating.  The music is pounding in on all sides and I’m tripping myself over and over.  Out here, I don’t have a strong partner to keep me upright as I trip.  I’m really, really afraid that I’m going to fall down and not be able to get back up.

This is probably the most honest I’ve been in a very, very long time.  But right now, I need to go back to work before I start bursting into tears.

PS:  The song below is so fitting.  I find it so chilling that in a place so religious and Christian (sometimes called the Mecca for Christian Reformed people) I find myself further and further from God, and "dancing with the devil."  Its makes me wonder if this is where God is calling me to be.  It also makes me feel as though I’m failing at my faith somehow, that I’m not doing what I should be doing and choosing to dance with the devil than to run to God.  What is frustrating is that the people who know my history and my life, the people I consider close friends, they aren’t all Christians and don’t understand the side of me that struggles with my faith.  The people here, those that completely understand my faith, they don’t know my life and my story.  I think part of the blame lies with me on both sides.  I don’t share my faith with many of my friends.  Not the deep internal struggles I have with it.  They know I’m Christian and how important church is to me.  But they don’t understand my faith.  They can’t until the Spirit touches them.  I don’t share my history with people here because its long and sad and complicated.  And how exactly do you share something like this?  It was painful for me to tell my own family and even they don’t know the whole story.  I’ve kept them sheltered from some of the worst of it.  So I’m not pointing fingers, but it is the reality of the situation.

Here I stand,
helpless and left for dead.

Close your eyes,
so many days go by.
Easy to find what’s wrong,
harder to find what’s right.

I believe in you,
I can show you that
I can see right through
all your empty lies.
I won’t stay long,
in this world so wrong.

Say goodbye,
as we dance with the devil tonight.
Don’t you dare look at him in the eye,
as we dance with the devil tonight.

Trembling,
crawling across my skin.
Feeling your cold dead eyes,
stealing the life of mine.

I believe in you,
I can show you that
I can see right through all your empty lies.
I won’t last long,
in this world so wrong.

Say goodbye, 
as we dance with the devil tonight.
Don’t you dare look at him in the eye, 
as we dance with the devil tonight.

Hold on. Hold on.

Say goodbye, 
as we dance with the devil tonight.
Don’t you dare look at him in the eye, 
as we dance with the devil tonight.

Hold on. Hold on.

Goodbye. 

Dance With The Devil ~ Breaking Benjamin