February 25, 2013
Today is my one year anniversary.
Of what?
That is... the other agenda, the one documenting the discomfort of my life in my other brain.
That brain is remembering February 25, 2012 with a pinching strength, flooding my senses. My all too acute memory is a double edged sword, and with pain, it seems to sting infinitely deeper. I don't know how else to describe it, but I think my brain has got this shelf where I attempt to suppress bad things, like trying to shut a door to the cold storm. And involuntarily, at moments like these, it's like the date pops up in some neuro-spam filter, prompting my brain to open the door, and I'm caught in a deluge of memory that is all too specifically real. Though I try to trap the potency of those memories in the most finite space possible, I'm convinced that since the world continues to turn, sometimes I'm powerless to decide when those shelves explode on me.
A year ago today was my breaking point.
A year ago today I decided to cut some chains.
A year ago today I came to terms with the darkness of my life.
I can't believe it has been 365 days. That absolutely amazes me. Because in some ways, I feel lightyears away from where I was. Literally, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And some days I can smell and see and hear everything as if it were in front of me, trapped in where I used to be. Time is a pendulum, and quicksand, and my kidnapper.
But when I think about the "meaning" of this anniversary, I have to celebrate. What is so great about a year ago is that I decided to change. I decided to move. I made the decision to leave. I weighed all my costs and knew that I couldn't stay anymore. I needed this day to remind me of that. I needed this day to wake up. I needed this day to grow up. I needed this day to get out.
As I was writing this, I changed my mind about writing out "my story." I feel like my "aha" moment came when I tried to.
But if I'm honest with myself, God would I love to embarrass those girls. I'd take some sick satisfaction in knowing that the people who hurt me would be hurt by me instead; I'd get to be the bully and not the bullied. The devil in me wishes I could be brave and stupid enough to ruin them somehow. That they deserve it. That I'm justified. I should spit in their faces for a while, ruin their sleep, unravel their sanity... because THAT will make me feel better.
But I don't think I could be more wrong. Just thinking about doing something like that, I imagine the pain on their faces. And I see my reflection in some street puddle, and I don't recognize myself. Not who I am, or who I want to be. I don't want to become the opressor. I cannot identify with the monster. I cannot become what I fear. For those reasons, I honestly don't feel any need to verbalize or write out everything that I endured. I don't see the need to use this as a platform to shame someone else. And I'm praying that God would maintain this attitude within me and remind me of his grace that he offers me, and that I can through him do the same.
The irony in all of this shit is that though this experience has strengthened me and has grown me up in so many ways, it has simultaneously knocked me to the floor over and over again. And I hate that, because I am too obsessed with a romanticized picture of recovery. I'm obsessed with ideas of complete, supernatural transformation in a heartbeat. And sometimes I just wish God would strike me with some lightning bolt of newness and change my life. And that I could look down at that hole of where I used to be and say, "Wow, look how far I've come. Aren't I great?" and feel this wave of genuine, complete forgiveness, where I don't feel like my old self at all and feel completely transformed... but that is just so far from the truth of me today. I wish I could have experienced some supernatural healing or strengthening in a moment, harnessing some distant power of the stars and flipping life over. But I really feel like this year has instead taught me about trusting him and walking in the slowness and darkness of "healing."
Here's what I've learned: Healing doesn't mean light and peace and perfection. I think that notion of sweetness is "redemption." Healing means opening the wound. Healing means getting the scalpel shoveling out the dirt, weeding out the evil, burning the blood. There is nothing instant about healing. Healing means turning on the light. Healing means the destruction of the old in a painful way. Healing makes way for restoration. Healing means pain, it means real, it means slow, but it means GROWTH. Healing makes room for love.
I want this day to be my anniversary of newness.
February 25, 2012, the catalyst of my great and painful undoing.
The conception of a great divide between what was and what is.
The first day of journey back up the hole.
The first day of the recognition of pain in darkness and the crawl towards the light.
My anniversary of the day I stepped out of my road of pain and onto the road of healing.
A happy, happy anniversary to me.
To God be the glory.
