Finding beauty in the wilted.

There’s no telling what a person is going through in life. The smile they shine sometimes is the mask used to hide the hurting going on deep inside.

Sometimes they’ve swallowed down the hurt so far that they have even got themselves fooled. They say they're fine. Not damaged, not broken goods. Their past has no impact on their future, or so they tell themselves. 

But sometimes when they hear the right song, or something jogs the memory just right, those walls they built so high to protect themselves from that secret pain,  starts to crumble,  their facade starts to fade and the truth slowly starts to leak out. Suddenly the pain they’ve worked so hard to ignore is right there in front of them, painfully blinding their sight. 

Now, it’s taken every single thing they have inside of them to just get out of bed. Memories are awakened and suddenly painfully real. Flashbacks holding them hostage. Images alive in their mind of what they cannot believe to be real feels like it was now only yesterday.

They’ve tricked themselves into thinking it was never a big deal.

But while you are pretending to be a-okay, you keep telling yourself that it only made you stronger. Wiser.  Kinder. Empathetic. It made you a totally 'balls-out' real life person in this world full of people only pretending to maybe have a clue. And that it truly did. But at what cost?  Has burying the past into a grave so deep really helped you be the person you always longed to be? 

You see,  I was raised with a bipolar father who was not receiving medical treatment. His days were dark. His past terrible. His father was an abusive alcoholic. So my father was hurting on a level I was unable to comprehend as a child. All I knew was the sadness I saw in his eyes and the anger I heard in his voice. I knew he was ill. It wasn’t anything he could help, change, alter or get past. He needed medical treatment to physically fix the mental disturbances that he wrestled with daily. That day would eventually come,  a time when he finally received medical help for the demons that had hassled him for so long. But until that time came,  hurt was bound to happened. The cycle unfortunately continued. 

I witnessed pain and heartache that a child shouldn’t have to observe. I grew up faster than most kids do. I kept my thoughts so quiet and my feelings so hidden that at times, I think I was invisible. 

But regardless of what happened,  what’s done is done. Life goes on. I must now learn how to live in this life the best I can,  damages and all. 

I now look at my children. So blissfully content in their life and place they call home. I’ve often stared at them in pure longing and wishing to be them. Totally confident in their own skin. Free of hesitation,  happy to be unique,  joyful,  and totally content to be who they are. All they need is assurance of our love for them and it’s as if we’ve watered their blooming souls. I’ve watched my youngest at the beach. She runs and bounces through the waves in a way I don’t think I ever did. She walks with her baby buns half falling out and could care less. Innocence at best. Happy to be alive. Eating up every kiss and every hug at every chance she gets. She lives and breathes love.  

Its not that I don't want to be loved. However, I have a bubble. An invisible shield keeping the monsters out. Keeping strangers at a safe distance. But in my years of making this bubble bigger and harder to break,  I’ve managed to keep so much good out along the way leaving me feeling isolated and questioning my worth. No one ever wants to openly admit to these feelings,  after all, even in this day and age there still exists a level of taboo towards the broken ones. It’s much easier to pretend such sadness doesn’t exist rather than to try and fix it. For me that was my unspoken determination for most of my years.

But eventually I had to learn that burying the pain as deep as possible only meant a harder recovery and healing down the road. Actually the first step was allowing myself to finally feel the pain I’ve worked so hard to block out. There was a reason I blocked it out. Accepting the hurt as it existed has stirred up in me emotions that I’ve refused to feel for so long. I thought life was easier living in denial,  constantly saying “it’s okay,  it was no big deal.” But when it’s finally pointed out to me just how sucky things were,  a new feeling emerges. It’s a half numb,  half terrified kind of feeling. One day I’m grieving on a level I never felt before,  the next I’m trying to ignore the pain again. So for now I'm focused. Determined. Must keep going however possible. Must find recovery,  must heal eventually. Even if it means acknowledging the demons that hid in my attic for so long.  At least I finally have an understanding for the difficult days that I before felt I had no right to have. At least now I can accept that the only way to move beyond the past,  is to finally grieve it.  

I’m dying to be the person I’ve always longed to be.