Rocky Ground

Growing is hard.

I know this is probably true no matter what, but it feels much moreso right now, holding handfuls of half-unraveled threads, trying to sort out which ones to weave back in, which to pull out, while the experience is undercut by the dull ache of open wounds and heavy eyes.

And I find myself surprised tonight by a soft voice somewhere inside.

"Gentle...be gentle.  You're coming back from the edge of death.
Look at what you're already doing.  You don't have to be hard on yourself."

I'm breaking up in the realization that I'm longing for my own self-love, for me to be proud of how far I've come.  There's so much pain there...

If I stop to rest, will I fall apart beyond repair?

This feels like self-surgery, every night, every silent moment, studying for my life in the spaces between, learning what I need even as I apply it.  And I forget that I'm worth my care, equally as much as everyone else is.  Maybe that's what this process is missing.

I push myself hard into the learning, sometimes harder than I ought to.  I realized the other night, it made perfect sense: this forward edge of growth is the only direction, the only purpose driving me to move at all right now, and when your mind's entire context has been shaped by the struggle against despair, agony of living with no meaning to justify the pain, feeling eternally lost, and longing for any end, no matter how dark, then to feel like the only options are to learn or to die seems natural.

Am I running from something?

Oh...of course I am.  Even without being able to name it, that feels obvious.

So what is it?

Emptiness.  I'm running from Nothing.  I'm desperate to escape, more now than I've ever been.  If I stop running, if I turn away from the one thing that feels like a ladder out of the pit, where else can I go?

And yet, beyond the fear...there's still something else.  I'm not only running from.  I'm running to.  I'm doing something I once thought I would never live to do: I'm creating a future.

Rather, the future is creating me.

I'm beginning to understand why it's called growth.  No matter what I, or anyone else, wants, does -- this can only be planted, nurtured, and waited on.  Who I will be is now becoming, and for all my self-surgery, this is beyond my direct control.

Learning how to balance my active role with the surrender required to allow this to develop is hard, coming from a framework of desperation.  It feels relieving to discover that what I once thought of as being-stuck is actually a movement of breathing.  I've almost forgotten how to breathe slow.

Friends (is there a better word for this?), I'm afraid to tell you that I need you.  But I think I do.  I can't learn how to be part of a We without you.  And to some degree, I think that I need your care.  Not desperately, but achingly.  I need to remember that I'm not alone, and that there's space for this growth even at this pace, and it's hard to remember these things on my own.  My grip on reality is stubborn, but thin and worn.

I want to be closer to you.