My secret place

I don't remember having a secret place as a child.  I had an active imagination.  I could create stories in my mind for hours.  Sometimes they would get written out, but mostly they stayed in my head.

I would often retreat into my head and my stories throughout my life.  Most of the time the stories would revolve around a hero of some type.

When I went through my emotional hell in 2010 the only place I wanted to be was in white nothingness.

I would close my eyes and imagine a world of white light.  There would be nothing there, just me lying on a floor of white surrounded by white, maybe covered by a blanket of white and I could disappear into the whiteness.  The silent white nothingness would swallow me up in it and I was safe.  It was quiet, gloriously quiet, and empty.

This last weekend opened up the wounds deep, digging into long covered infections unknown.

Once again I find myself wanting the white, the nothingness, the escape where I can fade into it. The white light where nothing can hide, but I can no longer be seen.  A place where silence reigns and my mind quiets.

My secret place, my escape is nothingness.  I wonder what that means.  A girl who wants to find home so badly, but the go to place she has created in her mind is invisibility, a non-existence.

Linking up with Faith Jam today.

Five Minute Friday "Home"

Home

Home, that all elusive place I hope to someday get to.  The place that my soul cries out for when all goes dark and I am left in sea of swirling darkness.  Home.  I want to go home.  And I am trying so hard to find the path there.  To journey to a place of healing where I know I am safe and loved and protected.  That is my internal search for home.

Home.  A physical place that I am in limbo on.  I sold mine/ours.  Living in the in-between.  Waiting to move not knowing what home will look like on the other side.  Much like my current internal home status.

Waiting.  Searching. Longing.  Home.  Please God, LET ME FIND HOME!  I need it.  I was not made for living this homeless life.  I need to know that there is more.  That there is peace and comfort and safety.  Security.  Love that doesn't leave.  I need to know I can stop the hiding.  I need a place where I am at peace with my self, my family, my world, and with You. 

I need a place to call my own.  I am tired of wandering this desert of searching.  My feet are aching for my Promised Land, MY own home.
linking up with Five Minute Friday

The Healing Road

 
What is it that this road to healing is going to look like?  I am so curious to know.  Will the path be rocky, or will I find it paved and solid?  Okay, so I doubt a healing path is paved.  That is just wishful thinking on my part hoping that it might be somewhat straight forward and easy.  I know that won't be the case.  A paved road indicates a road that has been traveled, time spent on it it, leveling it, clearing away the debris, and then the paving comes.  No one has been on my road of healing, so I am the one who is going to have to do the work. Getting a paved road is a process just as healing is going to be a process, and neither of them are going to happen overnight. 

I wonder how the road will end up looking when I am done.  There are lots of roads out there that never get paved for whatever reason.  They stay rocky, filled with potholes, possibly being over grown by shrubs and brambles.  Will my road to healing lead me to "home" or will it end up just being a road to nowhere?  There are those roads out there too...the ones that just end, with no connections to anywhere.

If I were an artist I would paint the picture of how my road might look:  Woman standing at the edge of a path, a path that twists and turns through a thick forest.  Someone waits at the edge of the forest to greet her and lead her to the one who can show her the way through the forest, The Path-finder.  The Path-finder leads her to the other side.  Here the road in front of her is a little more clear, but this is where the Path-finder stops.  She urges the woman on.  There is a steep hill in front of her, she can't see over the edge of that hill, but at the top of it stands yet another guide to help her face the unknown. 

This is where my painting would have to stop, because this is as much of the road as I know.  My Doctor led me to the Path-finder, my counselor, she took me through the forest of depression and silence.  She helped the words to come and now we stand together at the edge of the forest with the hill in front of me and my new psychiatrist standing at the top of that hill waiting to help me traverse the other side of it, the side I can't see.  The side that will determine if the road will lead to home or just end up going nowhere. 

The thought of a road going to nowhere is almost enough to make me want to run back to the forest, cut down some trees and build a house there on the edge of the forest.  Who wants to travel a road to nowhere?  Who wants to go through all that work just to find that all that effort has been fruitless? 

Don't worry, I don't plan on homesteading here, because what if I did and never braved the hill only to find out later that the road does lead to "home" and I find that all my efforts would have been worth the journey, but I gave up too soon.  That thought is more frightening than the first.  To be able to find wholeness and healing is worth the risk of possibly ending up on a road to nowhere.

My Heart Breaks for Her

 My heart breaks for her.

(It is hard for me to say "me" that my heart breaks for "me". I can say "her". My heart breaks for this little girl in the picture, but there is a dis-connect between her and me. I am not sure why that is. I am trying to connect with her, to allow myself to feel broken-hearted for myself instead of just feeling "broken".)


I run my fingertips over the picture. I touch her soft blond hair, look into those blue eyes that are so big, her chubby little legs poking out of her short, white, little girl dress and she is the picture of innocence and beauty.


I look at her and I want to snatch her up out of the picture and hold her, protect her from the shadow that I know is lurking, and the tears spill over the damn that has been holding them back.


She is just a picture. Flat. I can't protect her. The shadow will get to her. Her little white dress of innocence will become stained and dirty. She will become nothing more than a dishrag used to mop up the shadow's desires. She will become broken and scared; looking for home. Words will elude her, she won't have them to say. No one will come to rescue her. No one will come to rescue her and she will cry. She will cry and the memories will hide in the recesses of her mind just as I imagine that she tried to hide. My heart breaks for her, because I can't take that away. I can't take it away, because her broken-ness is my own.


I am broken and all I can do is look at her and let the tears spill down, because I couldn't save her. Now I am left here looking at a picture of a person that I couldn't protect and all I can do is try to un-loose the memories that she burried deep. I need to find her crouched small in the darkened corner of my mind and bring words to her wordlessness, take her by the hand and lead her to the home that she so desperately sought all those years ago.


I need to look at her and see that she is me and I need to find that same broken-hearted compassion that I feel for her and give it to myself. I need to let the tears spill down for me as well as for her, because it is time for both of us to stop hiding.  I need to find the right someone to help me do this. To show me how to find her, to find the words, and the memories, and then how to get back home.