A Ghost with a Crusted Heart

I know that for the few who of you read my blog these words have gotten old, but when a soul is overwhelmed, it can only sing one song. The words and feelings have grown old to me, but every moment that I think the scars healed they burst open again into gushing, seeping wounds...the kind of wounds that everyone tries to ignore and forget. But they are still so real to me. So real that it seems surreal, as if I am the one who is a dream. As if everything around me is not quite real; I can touch it but that doesn't mean that it will last. Every feeling fades so fast and all that remains is a dull numbness that won't go away no matter what I do and no matter what I say. I have become a ghost with a crusted heart. I have had so many hopes and so many dreams; so many plans that have crumbled at my feet. So many things that I wish to be, so many things I want...and yet when my mind snaps back to reality what do I have but a crusted heart. Reality is so painful, and every day I hate it more. I feel that hate crusting my seeping heart more and more, and yet all it does is grow. A teacher once told me that "bitterness is the only poison that destroys its own container"...and I feel it slowly killing me, eating at my bones and my soul, but it hurts so much to have everything you loved and hoped for stripped away until all that is left of you is a naked body at the mercy of a harsh winter wind. My little crusted heart seeps and cries and tries to heal itself, and then it grows hard, but when it struggles to beat it breaks open its own wounds again. It's an ugly cycle that never seems to end. And who wants to care for a heart with so many cares...who wants to nurture a heart that can only struggle to beat one more pulse? I feel so selfish, as if all that I want is only for me...as if the things that I love and I want are wrong. I know it's not true, and I know I shouldn't feel this way...but it still eats me. I long and I long and I long for love and yet I am so afraid to love. Every eye seems to have that evil gleam, and I feel like a wounded bird in the sights of a vulture. I want to hide away...oh dear God, I don't know what to do.

After All

Sometimes I think I'm too sentimental...it's when I can't stop thinking about the giant oak in the front lawn that I'll be leaving. And I wonder if I'll ever have the blessing of living on .49 acres again. It saddens me to think that I'll never be able to sit up late in front of this fireplace that has known so many of my fears and dreams. Silently watched me cry and warmed me with its piping flame on many a winter night. I want to see again the Christmas tree in the front bay window of my home...I want to see the reflection of the Christmas lights and see the snow laid deep outside. But it shall never be, and it makes me ache inside like I've never ached before. Maybe it's the fact of all that's come before, and maybe it's the reality that I'm losing the one thing that I thought I'd never lose. And the culmination of events just makes the horror worse. I shrink from each passing day knowing that soon there will be a day when I have to say goodbye and never come back. And it breaks me so. And I don't know what to do.
I want to curl up and fall asleep and to wake up knowing that it was only the deepest of horror dreams, but I know better. I've made my life a dream and a dream my reality for so long that it's hard to wake up and realize which is actually the truth. It cuts me to the core, for how can I experience the joy of Christ Jesus when I make myself stay numb to all the pain and ugliness around me? How can you be joyful, and yet numb? How can you both sing, and have a lump in your throat? I don't understand. I don't understand at all, and it makes me cry and shudder and shake inside. Most of the time I conceal my emotions well and I hide them inside for no one to see, but other times it's all I can do to utter a word without choking. So I lock myself in the bathroom and cry out my pain and frustration to God, hoping He'll hear me, hoping He'll somehow turn all these bitter tears into something good after all.

So Many Bitter Tears

Every breath, in and out, I struggle to hold back bitter tears. It makes me struggle to breathe and my heart screams and cries why within. This is my home--mine; why is everything that I love taken away from me--why? This is all I've ever known. I've walked up and down this hall for nineteen years; my first steps were taken here, my first words were heard by these walls that have grown to laugh and cry with me. And my heart screams out to my God why, Oh my God, why. Why are we put through so much pain, why do we have to have all that we value stripped away from us. I want to wake up and realize that it was all a horrible dream, but no, I wake up from nightmares only to realize that they seem beautiful to the daylight that I have to wake up to face. I don't know what to do anymore. I fight so hard to hold back a flood of tears--I have to be the strong one, the brave one--I have to. And yet on the inside I'm shriveling up and drying into an unknown something. A girl like many others who has had everything stripped away and has seen more pain that joy. I've seen joy, yes, but like Job, I ask God why He ever deemed to breathe breath into my lungs if all my days were meant to see such pain--meant to end in such a horror story. I guess it must be true that you don't really realize how much you love something, or someone, until it's gone. And by sorrow of heart the spirit is crushed. That's what I am--crushed.
And yet, no mere words can express the crushing depth of sorrow inside my little heart. Until you see my tears you cannot understand the truth of what I say.