March 8, 2007
Protected: I’m screaming. No one’s listening.
permalink
We are so very weak
Sometimes I’m so struck by how strong we humans seem. We make it through such emotionally, physically demanding, draining events, and manage to continue on, even if at half mast.
But then other times I see that the “strength” I’m seeing is actually a poor coping mechanism. Like running on near-dead batteries, we’re just going through the motions until we’re totally used up and we breakdown. Just because Alison and I made it out of our childhood home of nightmares doesn’t mean we’re functioning properly, or that we used any real strength. (And yet, not to completely dismiss the true strength that we plumb from our depths, or truly, pull from the heavens.) We feed off each other. When I am upset, she takes a nosedive into the same abyss. When she sobs in her room, my wall comes up, wavers, and then I fantasize about finding a drink: defeated and floating next to her in that river of tears. We’re like mirrors. A science project: watch the plant lean into the light. We’re not even conscious of 90% of what we do and feel, for God sake! Whatever was He thinking when he wired us this way? Are we being protected from something without boundaries until we can handle it? Our minds are like endless mazes, and I wonder what’s truly inside. The illusion of strength seems to be wrapped up in that. What’s inside us all?
She draws pictures of me me with pointed cheeks and a smirk for the world. But maybe my 10 years extra experience, my icy interior and stony facade don’t really mean anything. I’ve just learned to cope in a different way. I’m wired differently. A single wound could still end us both, we’d both be vaporized at Ground Zero, and just 3 little days without water would send us to eternity. Maybe these are the realizations that are required for us to know God’s purposes in the slightest. Wouldn’t that be a terrifying irony… that our pain and confusion is because we just never listened, thought, conversed with Him enough to see… we must be broken. to know His love and begin to see why we are here.
I think perhaps it’s largely instinct that we continue on, not necessarily inherent or learned strength.
permalink