I Would Rather Be In Bed

It’s taken me a long time.

I mean years and years of screaming into some dark, uncaring void. Some void filled with my insanity and pain I kept trying to mask as normalcy.

Funny thing about normal, we spend so much of our time trying to portray some perceived normal we have built in our heads that we forget, the very things that make us vibrant and alive are the true path to living a life worth living. Maybe my path in life is wrought with anxiety and soul searching, but is better than living some cookie cutter life with a white picket fence and 2.5 children and just one husband till death do us part.

The constraints of some normalcy that society has vaguely decided is the only acceptable way to live your life would have left me desolate, lonely, and in a giant pit of despair. My first husband was a drug dealer and a very bad person, my children were my only salvation at the time and a desperate cry to right my life. Many people look at me, a person twice divorced with two children at a young age and feel disgust for me or worse…pity. My life has not been easy in more ways than I care to count, but it has left me strong and sure that I can take care of myself and the two beings on this earth who I am responsible for no matter what.

It’s taken me so long to come to terms with the fact that the things the world may perceive as weakness, are actually my strengths. I still struggle with that fact to this day, in many ways. I learned to depend on myself and only myself for any sense of validation and usefulness. I worked overtime for years to be sure that I could pay my bills on my own and take care of all my children’s needs on my own.

Every day I was full of strength and resolve that I was my only companion in this life that I could ever count on every single day.

It has taken more time than I can possibly put into words to find that my soul is made of titanium when I thought it was made from glass and one wrong move from shattering. There is no tragedy in this world that could bring me down aside from the two precious souls I brought into this world myself.

It was such a road laid with stumbling blocks. I was so unhappy with my life in general when my daughter was born that I wished I’d never brought her to life thinking she was going to lead me to some epiphany about life. Instead, I thought it would be better to keep her far away from my heart so when the time came to give up…it wouldn’t scar me so deeply to care what effects it left her with.

I could never do it. I spent so much time loving my children that I had no choice but to become strong. To harden my own heart to my own hurts to always find the will to protect theirs from pain.

It’s taken a long time.

To quit hating the person who made hard choices and to find her resilience instead.

I’ve survived so much heartache and loss.

Maybe it is wrong to view myself who could survive every peril this earth has to throw at me and keep fighting, but at the same time wilt from exhaustion at the terribleness as the world. Perhaps I have survived so much to see myself as weak and strong and be constantly confused by the two is my only choice.

The point is, it’s taken me a long time…

….to realize, that I am two broken girls wrapped in the same eggshell.

It’s taken me a long time to see two sides to my own story.

It’s taken me a long time to try and love myself instead of feeling only hatred.

It’s taken me a long time to find another person might actually care about me besides me.

It’s taken me a long time of being strong to realize how weak I am.

It’s been the longest and hardest journey of my life and one I’m still currently treading every day.

I wish I could say that becoming is some soul full revelation you feel in a matter of seconds and suddenly your life is changed for the better.

It’s so hard to find your way in this life. It’s so very difficult to decide what your life should be versus what you want it to be. It’s so tremendous to decide that there are some things in life that you have absolutely no intent on bending your will about as they are things that will never bring you peace.

Maybe no one else will understand, it’s ok if your journey is for you alone, maybe that’s all it meant for. What matters is that you find the time to take the journey at all and find the center that can bring you home after a lifetime of being away.

It’s scary to come home to yourself, the scarred, battered, burnt pieces of who has been left behind. However, only by coming home, can we find our way back to our own hearts and start stitching the back together. It’s taken me a long time to come home, but I’m finally here.